Friday, April 15th, 2005 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:15 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

Tax day ...

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)

Ben Yarmolinski -- "April 15th"/"Filling in the Form" -- April 15th Blues (Composers Recordings Inc., 1999)

This CD is a 30-minute operetta about two lonely hearts who find love on tax day. The songs are in that "stage musical" motif, light and bouncy. eThese (tracks feature heroine Jane Q. Public waking up in a panic as she realizes it's April 15 and her taxes still aren't done.

* Andy Scherrer -- "If You're Not Part of the SOlution, You're Part of the Problem" -- Serenity: A Tribute to Joe Henderson (Unit, 2004)

One of the Joe Henderson compositions on this tribute CD, which takes a straight-ahead approach to replicating Henderson's sound.

One of several nice little jams on this disk, the second duo CD released by these guys. The improvistions on the CD are all over the map, with some abstract, harsh sounds and plenty of more relaxed, groove-minded jams.

* Seth Misterka, Chris Dalhgren, Jeff Arnal -- "Red" -- Red (Generate, 2005)

Nice 15-minute improvisation of sax, bass, and drums, released as a 3-inch CD single. Each copy comes in a unique hand-painted cover. Clever idea, and it's a nice improv to boot, chaotic but with a definite flow, the kind of piece you can really lose yourself in.

*! Amy X. Neuburg -- "Residue" -- Residue (Other Minds, 2004)

A capella piece of overlapping vocal loops that builds up to an energetic chant.

* Ravish Momin's Trio Tarana -- "Dal Genyo" -- Climbing the Banyan Tree (Clean Feed, 2004)

* Joe Giardullo and Carlos Zingaro -- "per.plexo" -- Falling Water (Drimala, 2004)

* Toychestra and Fred Frith -- "Fellini" -- What Leave Behind (SK, 2004)

A 25-minute concerto for toy instruments and guitar, written by Bay Area composer Dan Plonsey. Cool stuff that combines the absurdity of the toys with menacing swirls of guitar (and even some menacing toy noises). Toychestra, a five-woman band that plays toy instruments, performed this piece with Frith a few times in the Bay Area before recording it; I got to see one of those shows, and it was pretty cool. Frith even gets a cadenza, in the fourth movement I think.

Jazz-improv suite from the team of Jeff Kaiser (trumpet) and Ernesto Diaz-Infante (prepared acoustic guitar). It's paired with Kaiser's "Alchemical Mass," a suite for his 18-piece Ockodektet and a choir. Anyway, I thought it would be good to give "Suite Solutio" a full playing at some point, and today seemed right. Not sure I can do the same for Kaiser's suite, as it's close to 35 minutes, but we'll see.

* Lowbelly -- "So Little Current" -- The Letter L (Fort Hazel, 2003)

* Nels Cline, Andrea Parkins, Tom Rainey -- "Alleys of North America" -- Out Trios Volume 3 (Atavistic, 2004)

Part of Atavistic's continuing series of abstract trio improvs. Lots of noisy Nels guitar to be had on this CD. This track is one of the quieter ones, beginning and ending with a quiet piano riff that gives it the "completeness" of a composed work. Big guitar noise in the middle.

Saxophone pieces that carry a jazz swing to them but revel in the freedom of solo performance. This is years before Braxton would dive into the more geometric sound of his Ghost Trace Musics.

* The Abstractions -- "Who Killed Desiree Brown?" -- Novo Navigatio (Pax and Edgetone, 2004)

Vocals -- in an insane/rambling kind of singing and speaking -- with a busy noisy burble in the background. Actually one of the tamer tracks from this Bay Area group, which is prone to Naked City-esque bursts of noise and aggression.

A nice follow-up to the Abstractions... speedy jazz/fusion with heavy prog-rock influence. Fun stuff from an (apparently) Japanese band.

Continuing the noisy stuff with a rumbling math-rock track.

... And ending the rock-minded theme with these guys, a jazz trio with rock attitude and volume level. This 12-minute track starts out as a nice break (loud drum thumps, but sparse overall) and develops into some aggressive soloing.

* Jason Moran -- "Gangsterism on the Rise" -- Same Mother (Blue Note, 2005)

* Gary Noland -- "Effete Stinkopations" -- 24 Postludes for Piano (North Pacific Music, 2004)

Modern classical piano pieces, although this one is more a good-natured trad-jazz romp.

Played this to promote DJ Fo's show, "No Cover, No Minimum," which for the rest of the spring will be featuring an hour of recordings from the 2004 Chicago Jazz/Blues Festival. That'll be 7-8 a.m. Pacific time, the middle hour of Fo's show, on Fridays, through July 8, 2005.

* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.