Foxy Digitalis
A few years ago, improvisors Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, and Ryan Sawyer discovered a new sonic language and named it Glass Triangle. An energetic blast of amplified harp, gale-force saxophone, and tumbling percussion, their debut recording was as brash as it was inventive. The trio is back, this time leveraging Glass Triangle as the name of […]
Energy Fields documents the trip of a lifetime. John Atkinson drove across the United States on a voyage to an artistic residency at the Ucross Foundation in the state of Wyoming. A clean energy and climate analyst by day, Atkinson used the U.S. Energy Atlas as his map to chart a course from his home in […]
I’ve got a bit of a Baader-Meinhof thing going with James McKain. A couple of years ago, he wasn’t on my radar, and now he’s everywhere I look. That’s not a bad thing; he seems to be at the epicenter of a new movement of underground free jazz. There’s a ferocity and sui generis spirit […]
Buy at Soundohm The first thing you notice about Blood In My Eye (A Soul Insurgent Guide) is the drums. They’re loud, angry, free, and funky. They roil and boil, frothing over intensely like a percussive shout laced with bile, spittle, and blood. The man behind the drumkit is Bashi Rose, one-third of the Baltimore-based Konjur Collective. […]
While they’re pretty much ignored in their native Turkey, the free-form collective KonstruKt has built a global following in the almost 15 years since they formed. Listening to their music, it’s not hard to understand why Umut Çağlar (guitar, organ, electronics, traditional instruments), Korhan Futaci (reeds, traditional instruments), and their bandmates are so well-liked in […]
The fierce scream of now. That’s how an article in the Jazz Right Now blog described an Amirtha Kidambi and Luke Stewart live set, and that’s as apt of a description of the music produced by these two creative musical stalwarts as any. Kidambi’s voice runs through the entire cycle of human emotion, from calm […]
The Astral Spirits label has been on quite a tear the last couple of years, both in quantity and quality, as well as across all the physical media formats. From the insanity of Crazy Doberman to the righteous shredding of Ava Mendoza to the otherworldliness of Rob Frye, the label is pumping out heaps of […]
Anyone who has heard Quin Kirchner’s magnum opus The Shadows and the Light knows that he’s a percussive force. The double-LP set literally dances with vibrant rhythms. Additionally, Rob Clearfield’s organ and piano work on that record is incredibly engaging, shining through or blending in whenever the mood suits it. Concentric Orbits arose from those moments during the Shadows sessions where […]
Open exists at the intersection of jazz and ambient music, a precarious territory to occupy. Recent records from musicians and composers as diverse as Carlos Niño, Nala Sinephro, and of course Floating Points (with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra) are proof that the fertile soil of ambient jazz can yield delicious fruit. Yet if […]