Friday, February 24th, 2006 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:35 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

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

* Decision Dream -- "Steamroom Variations, part 2" -- Steamroom Variations (Red Toucan, 2005)

* Alexander Von Schlippenbach, Paul Dunmall, Paul Rogers, Tony Bianco -- "Salamander" -- Vesuvius (Slam Productions, 2005)

With an extra 30 minutes in my show today, and with this being the last week in rotation for this fine disk, I finally took the opportunity to play one of these tracks in its entirety (there are only two on the CD, each about 30 minutes long).

Anyway, I've been playing snippets of these for the past several weeks. Great stuff: Improvised music with jazzy roots, from four British veterans of the art. Von Schlippenbach's piano holds down the lead voice providing much of the "jazz" sound, but really it's a group effort, all four voices crafting an overall sound. This is the more immediately ear-catching of the tracks, opening bright and fast, not slowing down til after the halfway point. Awesome stuff.

I'll admit to being disappointed with Matthew Shipp's new direction. That's a bit of shallowness on my part; where Shipp once carved angular, surreal doodles of piano lines, he's lately gone for a more organic sound, lush and powerful, with rich dark chords and a stormy-night atmosphere -- and, in terms of the surrounding instruments, plenty of cues from hip-hop and dance electronica. I admire him for working on a new platform. It just hasn't sung to my ears, and that may be my ears' fault more than Shipp's.

This is a solo piano CD, so in a sense, it boils the new direction down to its core element. You wouldn't call it "mainstream," but it's still got that lush, dark-nighttime feel. It's good overall, with some nicely adventurous playing, but I still miss the scribbly-scrawl nature of his older stuff.

* Andy Bartha and Billy Butterfield -- "St. Louis Blues" -- Take Me to the Land of Jazz (Delmark, 2005; recorded 1970)

Old-time jazz featuring trumpeter Butterfield, who's kind of a second-tier star from the '30s/'40s. Nice stuff, albeit predictable, with that New Orleans stomping sound on many tracks. It's important to remember how loosely improvisational that music can be -- they would often end up with the whole band improvising, no one playing any part of the original theme (except arguably the drummer). Interesting how folks who turn their noses up at free jazz can really get into that kind of free improvising; the difference is probably the retention of a steady beat (and, yeah, a musical key).

Decent mainstream piano-led trio. This one's a fast, daring song with a piano solo that flies off the tracks in a couple places. The rest of the CD isn't as edgy but is still good stuff.

Morris (guitar) recorded several nice CDs circa 1996-2000 with his quartet of Mat Maneri (violin/viola), Chris Lightcap (bass), and Gerald Cleaver (drums). If you don't know Joe Morris, his quicksilver guitar lines are well worth hearing, even if you don't think you like free jazz. My fave CD of this period was "A Cloud of Black Birds" on AUM Fidelity.

This is great stuff that I'm happy to play, but I'll be honest: I needed to find another long track. We're in the process of some major furniture moves at the station, including a shifting of bookcases worth of vinyl into a different room, and our engineer needed a pair of hands for a few minutes. Ah, behind-the-scenes excitement!)

Funk rock from a dedicated local guitarist. Will's been playing around town for years, as part of Peter Apfelbaum's Hieroglyphics Ensemble, or the three-guitar funk attack of T.J. Kirk, or his own bands. Nice guy, fun music.

* New American Wing -- "The Hare" -- New American Wing (self-released, 2005)

A 5-minute track, making up for the 40-second blip that was their only airplay from me last week. This one's cool -- a sneakly little 7/8 riff on guitar, with sax and cello playing chamber-jazzy unison lead lines. Taps into their post-rock sound; elsewhere on the CD they conjure up chamber jazz that even approaches modern classical.

* Stephan Vitiello and David Tronzo -- "Long Walk (for a Slow Loris)" [track 4] -- Scratchy Monsters, Scary Ghosts (New Albion, 2005)

Ambient stuff with near-classical piano frills, tribal rhythms, and some jazzy guitar in a gentle vein. Sometimes droney, sometimes sparse, sometimes (as in this track) catchy stuff that could be called jazz.

Jazzy bandoneon (similar to accordion) and drums, the latter from ECM vet Jon Christensen (you'll find him on Keith Jarrett's old albums). Saluzzi has done a few ECM CDs in recent years. He's got charming Euro-folk melodies on here as well as some looser, atmospheric improvising with Christensen. This one is sort of in between the two, with a crisp jazzy feel; Christensen uses drum sounds that wouldn't be out of place with a jazz-club piano trio.

I can already see this becoming a problem: This track is so infectiously catchy that I might never get around to playing the rest of the album, which is fine in its own right. Yeah, that's what normal radio stations do, but I do like to show off multiple sides of an album's personality over its nine weeks in rotation. I commented last week on the "hit single" potential of this track, and at least one other DJ was prompted into playing it from hearing it on my show -- so if it helps Blood sell more discs or gain more fans, it's all good.

Carla Kihlstedt -- "50 Miles" -- 2 Foot Yard (Tzadik, 2003)

A gorgeous old spiritual done up in an interesting style, with violin that gets into soaring passages in a cinematic mode inspired by Egyptian singer Oum Kolthoum.

* Assif Tsahar -- "Sand Between a Toe" -- Solitude (Hopscotch, 2005)

This one pairs saxophonist Tsahar with strings (violin, viola, cello) for its improvisational setting. Nice stuff -- he uses the strings for a dramatic, slow-building cinematic effect on the first strach and for great texture on the title track, a cover of the Duke Ellington piece.

Gorgously slow jam, reminds me of the final Talk Talk albums but denser, a touch more aggression. Slow and powerful stuff with a "normal" jazz quintet orchestration (Violin, saxes, bass, drums).

* Mats Gustafsson and David Stackenas -- "Bumble Bee Blues" -- Blues (Atavistic, 2005)

Ornette Coleman -- "Him and Her" -- Of Human Feelings (Antilles, 1980?)

Funky Ornette! Fast flowing sax over popping basslines, what great stuff.

What an awesome band, from a formerly local bassist now making his name in NYC. A tight big-band-style septet with edgy composing and some exciting elements like a burning/rocking guitar. Lane has convened a new Full Throttle and they've apparently got a record out on Clean Feed that I'll have to seek out. (Clean Feed doesn't do radio servicing, unfortunately.)

* = 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.