Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)
Horizontal lines denote microphone breaks.

* Tony Wilson 6tet -- "I Am the Walrus" -- Pearls Before Swine (Drip Audio, 2007)

Great guitar-fronted modern jazz band that gets into some crazy-ass free breaks that include loud, rocking passages. It's sometimes cerebral and moody, but they're willing to rock out quite a bit, with or without a beat. The result is a crazy-quilt of moods and styles, a fun listen. Sax, trumpet and violin are the other lead voices. Extra points for delivering a tolerable Beatles cover here: crazy/intense/flipping out and barely recognizable -- a big improvement over the pool of muzak created by most jazz-Beatles mixtures. Wilson also mutates Monk's "Hornin' In" into a mishmash of skronk, western, and metal.

* Michael Musillami Trio + Mark Feldman -- "Human Conditions" -- The Treatment (Playscape, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

* Rempis Percussion Quartet -- "Black Book" -- Hunger-Gatherers (482 Music, 2007)

Previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Abraham Burton -- "Little Melonae" -- The Magician (Enja, 1995)

Pretty good straight jazz, in a strong, aggressive tempo (this track, anyway). Some lush piano by Marc Cary followed by a meaty alto sax solo from Burton, full of tricks and twists.

Previously noted here. This one's a damn funny little rocker. ("Don't put them in your mouth!")

* Splatter 3 + N -- "Rumations" -- Clear the Club (Rastascan, 2007)

Previously noted here. This one gets into a nice groove that made a nice followup to a rock song, I thought.

? Tim Berne's Bloodcount -- "Mr. Johnson's Blues" -- Unwound (Screwgun, 2000)

More on the Berne thing here. This one's a great thundering track at the start, with Jim Black just pounding the heck out of the drums. The version on Seconds (noted here) doesn't do this justice; Black takes a more restrained approach and the song loses a bit as a result, I think. Or maybe my expectations just got too high after hearing this version. There's nothing wrong with a less heavyhanded take on the song; this kind of music is built for experimenting, after all.

After the intro, which includes a great 7/8 bass riff, the band gets into a long, exploratory improvisation. The combination -- rocking compositions, wide-open free playing -- is what makes this band such a great listen; they've just got the right formula for knitting it all together.

* Francois Carrier and Michel Lambert -- "Monkeys on the Green" -- Kathmandu (FMR, 2007)

Previously noted here.

A "hot jazz" quartet taken from a compilation of, well, New Orleans brass. It's got kind of a soft sound at the start, with staccato acoustic guitar strumming; then the sharper horn sounds kick in for a pleasantly ambling ride.

Previously noted here.

* Albert Ayler -- "C.A.C." -- The Hilversum Session (ESP-Disk, 2007; orig. released 1964)

A nice, skronky free-jazz session including Don Cherry on trumpet. Tracks are all in the five-minute range and focus more on brightly played out-jazz, less on the marching-band styles Ayler's known for. Gary Peacock on bass and Sunny Murray on drums; how can you go wrong? The ESP library is a treasure of the world; it's been great to see these sessions come out.

Voice and bass duets with a focus on otherworldly sounds, as you'd expect. Eighteen snippets of improvisation, kind of the formula used on Leandre's recent CD with Phillip Greenlief, previously noted here.

Previously noted here.

Kathy Kallick and Laurie Lewis -- "Used to Be" -- V/A: True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe (Sugar Hill, 1996)

Straight country, old cowboy style, played in conjunction with giving away tickets to Kallick's upcoming appearance at the Freight & Salvage. Kallick is better known for bluegrass work, and one of her solo CDs might have been a better representation. This one hadn't been played in at least five years, though, and I'm on a kick to "rescue" some of those forgotten older discs.

Previously noted here.

Carei Thomas Feel Free Ensemble -- "The Awestruck Waters of Antiquity" -- Mining Our Bid'ness (Roaratorio, 2002)

Kind of a comeback CD from a sax man who, as I understand it, has been living in the Minneapolis area. It's a good session in a solidly post-bop vibe, and while it doesn't get into blazing free jazz, it's shows a willingness to explore slower, ethereal experimenting here and there. That's not to say it's an "experimental" disk; most tracks draw from the jazz tradition and have a sense of swing about them.

* Matt Davignon -- "A Mistake"/"Some Held Breaths" -- SoftWetFish (Edgetone, 2006)

Previously noted here.

Enrico Pieranunzi Trio -- "Straight to the Dream" -- Seaward (Soul Note, 1996)

Rainy-day piano music for a blustery, rainy day (we're getting hit by a major storm this entire weekend, the forecasts say).

Previously noted here.

Really interesting. Both these guys are avant-jazz stars but from different camps. Parker is a king of the European free-improv tradition, the non-idiomatic kind of playing Derek Bailey was known for, and he sometimes strings out incredibly long circular-breathing runs on the sax for a twirling, mesmerizing effect. Shipp, as noted before, works in bocky dense chords that draw from the jazz tradition but carve unusual angles from it.

I wouldn't expect the two styles to mix well, but it seems possible at first listen here. This track, near the end of the album is a "cheat," as it's got both men playing so sparsely they can bend to each other's direction. Other tracks dive in with full force, and I think I like the results. It takes a little getting used to -- but remember, Parker has his fingers in multiple lines of jazz/improv and doesn't have to do that thin twirling effect all the time. I'm going to need more listens, but so far this seems like an inspired bit of casting by the Spring Heel Jack duo (who run this label) or whoever it was that thought it up.

Glennie has worked in improvisatory contexts before, most notably on Shadow of the Iron Sun -- but that album was marred by the addition of synth chords, an orchestral sheen that sweetened the mix but to me blunted the project's edge-walking intentions. Fred Frith added overdubs to these duo improvisations too, but with more substantial results.

As the liner notes explain, the playing on this session took place in a former sugar factory, and its main purpose was to provide some action for the documentary Touch the Sound. Frith later added some overdubs, which sometimes stand out for lacking the echoey sound of the originals and sometimes overpower the sound. Not literally; the mix was put together with care by Myles Boisen and Jonathan Segel. But to me, the new guitar parts cross-cut the rest of the sounds and grab the attention more than they should, since they lack the sugar factory's reverb.

The closing piece includes a Glennie composition, "A Little Prayer," that tunefully wraps things up. I'm not sure I like that, but I can agree it's appropriate, a fitting cooldown that helps you reflect on the concentration underlying all six tracks.

Amazingly, Stanford Lively Arts has booked the duo for an April 23 concert.

Sadly, the band members have gone their separate ways, and Weasel Walter now has to overdub all the parts himself. It's still good stuff -- loud, gripping you by the collar, but also rewarding you with chunky, unpredictable prog-rock rhythms, a zig-zagging sequence of patterns. Prog composing extrapolated in a punk direction.

The Lutts are apparently quite popular on piracy networks, which is a shame. Walter does all this work alone and I get the feeling he buries himself financially for his art. RIAA labels are being disingenuous when they talk about artists getting paid -- but here we're talking about a consciously noncommerical artist doing daring work on his own. In the absense of compensation, development of this kind of art could slow or even cease.

Previously noted here.

While I haven't read the liner notes, it's obvious Hakim is a pianist, and for some reason he was teamed up with Stitt in the studio for this session. It's decent stuff, mediocre and poppy -- a cover of "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" kind of says it all -- but it's got moments, including this straight blues. It's solid stuff, more than you'd expect after seeing "Sunshine" in the track list.

This was a random pull from the vinyl library. It led to a whole Joe Turner set when I did part of the Blues Marathon the next day. The story isn't that interesting, but you'll find it here.

* Jason Lindner Big Band -- "The 5 Elements and the Natural Trinity" -- Live at the Jazz Gallery (Anzic, 2007)

Haven't given this much of a close listen yet, but it's an ebullient big band with lots of modern touches -- this one opens with a driving organ and electric bass duet that, by itself, could sneak into an avant-jazz set. Later, it gets into a big Latin groove, loud and fun.

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