Jazz Recommendations – 2015 Releases

The Spoon is kind of all over the place.  It’s a quality that lends the album its charm, and the main ingredient in what makes it so compelling.  There’s also a logic to it all.  The recording came about as the endcap for saxophonist Ethan Helm in pursuit of his graduate degree, and one of the goals was to encapsulate the diverse influences of his teachers and mentors and collaborators from this period.  The process of learning and development and creative expansion and definition never truly end, but it’s not difficult to imagine that this was a time for Helm to be especially audacious in branching out and experimenting and checking out the lay of the land and his position upon it.

So there’s tracks like “Proteins” and “Folk Noise” that offer flurries of free improv fierceness, and there’s tracks like “3” and “010414 3 #2” that add heavy infusions of indie-rock melodicism, and there’s tracks like “C’mon” and the two-part “Spoon” that situate themselves far closer to modern jazz’s center, and there’s “Goodness Owl” which flirts with a Nordic Jazz impressionism, and then there’s tracks like “Exposure” and “Wifi Glen” that just sort of do their own thing.

But despite its sprawling landscape obliterating any whiff of cohesion, there is an appealing flow from one track to the other, which indicates a special attention paid to marrying one song’s ‘goodbye’ with the next song’s ‘hello.”  And though the range of expressions is wide and varied, there’s a hint of patterns with how they’re rolled out in bundles of threes and fours, so that the changes in tempos and tones and influence radiate a certain expectancy not unlike the motion of the ocean’s tides.

It’s a curious album, and it’s pretty easy to get hooked on it hard.

Your album personnel: Ethan Helm (saxophones), Noah Berman (guitar), Adam Kromelow (piano) and Nathan Ellman-Bell (drums).

This Self-Produced album is released under Family Cow Recordings.

Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from NYC.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon | CDBaby

When I first began this site back in December 2011, included in my initial volley of posts were a recap of the best that 2011 had to offer by way of jazz and improvised music.  One of those recordings was Bridges, from the duo of trumpeter Kris Tiner and guitarist Mike Baggetta.  I listen to that album now, and were I to write the recommendation all over again, it would say exactly what I’d typed back then.  Of their individual approaches on that recording, “… each on their respective instruments, they have an inquisitive style, music curiosity that isn’t so much interested about what lies around the next corner as an obsession in viewing the corner from unusual perspectives.  It renders a feeling of wandering great distances without ever traveling very far from home.”  And of their interactions, “… It’s as if their familiarity with one another leads to an understanding of what the other is thinking, but instead of using that as a planning tool for improvisation, the familiarity is seen as more useful as establishing trust.  They’re not bonded together by composition so much as held together by the magnetism of their improvisations.”

Their collaboration on Bridges was not unlike how the sun and the moon can share the same sky for a short while, their cross-purposes of day and night discarded with the understanding that the common goal of each is to light up the sky when the moment is right.  There is no conflict to overcome on their 2015 release The Stars Would Be Different.  There is a much greater sense of a unity of vision between the two this time around, and while their melodic shaping still possesses an individualistic touch, the synchronicity of impulse and direction creates a fullness of expression greater than the efforts of each musician measured in isolation.  Before they were planetary; Now they encompass the universe.

The gentle cries and comforting hums of opening track “The Stars Would Be Different” carry on through the entirety of the recording, both as an approach and as an afterimage.  “Leroy” has sudden bursts of activity, and those are enjoyable in and of themselves, but the way the duo enters melodic glides at the tail end of those flurries, like hazy contrails left behind after the jet has cut across the sky, is the kind of flourish that’s most worth savoring.  “Evening Hawks” reveals itself as would a moon behind clouds slowly crawling across the horizon… often obscured in fragments except for those jarring moments when viewed in its totality.  This effect continues on final track “Afterthought,” except now their actions are directed as ocean waves carrying the reflection of that moonlight on the shoulders of the tides.

They also perform three cover songs.  The playful way they approach the melody of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” is like a comic duo where Baggetta is the straight man to Tiner’s wind-ups.  A rendition of Hank Williams “Ramblin’ Man” has plenty of fight, but Tiner and Baggetta evoke the song like the nighttime hours are dwindling, last call’s been called and the bar neon flickers off.  And the duo takes the melody of Kitty Wells “All the Time” and rides it off into the night.

But the gems of this album are the originals.  It’s what’s going to make want to have been there for the performance and it’s what’s gonna make you wish they had kept on playing all night long.

Your album personnel:  Kris Tiner (trumpet) and Mike Baggetta (guitar).

Released on Epigraph Records.

Listen to more album tracks on the label’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from the Bakersfield, CA scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp

*****

And be sure to check out the write-up of their 2011 release Bridges, which still comes highly recommended by this site.

Read more –> LINK

*****

It’s particularly interesting how vibraphonist Yuhan Su reveals the storyline of her newest recording.  A Room of One’s Own begins rather ordinary, making a first impression that indicates it’ll be a typical straight-ahead modern jazz session.  It has a pleasant structure and there’s some tasteful soloing and the group interaction is rock solid.  But then near the tail-end of opening track “Amulet,” suddenly the harmonic influence alters the shape and form of that structure, and it’s a sonic equivalent of suddenly realizing that you’re in the middle of a dream and the walls fall away and everything is shot through with alien imagery that gives the barest approximation of a comforting reality.  But the thing of it is, this isn’t a bad dream, and once a level of acclimation to the new environs is achieved, the alluring beauty of this music emerges with a ringing clarity.  This transformation continues on the three-part “Valedicere” suite, which shifts between states of chamber music serenity, jazz-rock fusion electricity and a post-jazz pop melody free-for-all.   The lullaby of “No. 13 Waltz” has Su’s vocal harmonies to send things off to sweet dreams.  And continuing with the theme of dreams, “All Kinds of Dreams” stretches an elastic melody to its breaking point, then lets it recoil back into the motion of a nifty groove.

Lots of compelling moments on this one.

Your album personnel:  Yuhan Su (vibraphone, MalletKat, vocals), Matt Holman (trumpet, flugelhorn), Kenji Herbert (guitar), Petros Klampanis (bass) and Nathan Ellman-Bell (drums).

Released on Inner Circle Music.

Listen to more album tracks at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from NYC.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon | CDBaby | eMusic

Some bands are just particularly adept at finding that sweet spot where the borders of modern jazz and indie-rock enter a state of perfect unison.  The Bizingas quartet of trombonist Brian Drye, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, drummer Ches Smith and guitarist Jonathan Goldberger have a strong claim to be included on a list of those bands.

The best modern jazz doesn’t chisel out distracting lines of demarcation and lineage, and the best indie rock brings a real gravitas to quirky expressionism.  On their newest, Eggs Up High, this quartet manages to grasp both concepts in the same handful.  Of the former quality, the infusion of prog-y keyboards into the rolling seas of long, sonorous harmonies on “Hawaii” speak to the quartet’s deft balancing act of influences, as does the slash-and-burn melody melting into the enveloping rhythm of “Plant-Based.”  And of the latter element, the fiery bursts of “Once,” the quick wit of “Slip,” and the lovely erosion of “Axis” are the abstract concepts of a music’s soul, heart and head given shape and form.

And all of that is why this seriously tuneful, sharp, sometimes even catchy music guides events along the fastest route to Fun.

Your album personnel:  Brian Drye (trombone), Kirk Knuffke (cornet), Ches Smith (drums) and Jonathan Goldberger (guitar).

Released on NCM East Records.

Listen to more tracks on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon