Jazz Recommendations

This is something different.

Jacob Garchik‘s new album is a nine-part suite for trombone choir, all performed by himself and recorded in his home studio.  Subtitled “The Atheist Gospel Trombone Album,” The Heavens is Garchik’s sermon on his love of religious music, gospel especially, and his view of science and religion as it exists in our universe.

That’s your context.  The moral of the story is that this is an album of rousing tunes likely to get people up and out of their seats, and slap a big smiles on the faces of all.  But this isn’t some blatant misuse of an all-brass section’s inherent power.  There’s a tunefulness here, a respect that the melody needs to be handled with care, no matter how buff the instruments holding it may be.

Your album personnel:  Jacob Garchik (trombone, sousaphone, baritone horn, slide trumpet, alto horn).

Album opens with “Creation’s Creation,” just barely over a minute in length, and every second of it sonic beauty.  Sweet extended notes, harmonies like a warm embrace.

“The Problem of Suffering” is a struggling heartbeat, dangerously asynchronous, pounding strong.

“Optimism” bubbles over with enthusiasm, barely able to keep from running ahead.

“Dialog With My Great Grandfather” is a solemn treatise on the vast amounts of sorrow that notes may carry.

“Digression On The History Of Jews And Black Music” is full of fight and not afraid to let everyone know it.  Bouncing in place with an upbeat tempo, hands at its sides balled into fists of blaring notes, and volume that gets right in a listener’s face.

“This Song Is The Center Of The Universe” is a celebration.  Of Everything.

“The Heavens” is a Sunday morning prayer, to be relieved of the prior night’s sins and the current morning’s hangover.

“Glory/Infinity/Nothing” has the giddy build of intensity of the Isley Brothers’ “Shout.” The notes get faster and higher, and it’s easy to imagine a crowd of revelers giddily circling the bandstand.

Album ends with the sweetly lilting “Be Good.”  Trombones sing a melody that would make a pop song blush with envy, and harmonize with a warmth that would melt the most stubborn snowfall.

Most tunes are just a couple minutes long each, the longest being just over six minutes, and the entire album only runs for 28 minutes.  But the shortened length speaks well of the music’s succinct ideas, and the simplicity speaks to the heart of the music.

On his site, Garchik writes…

“I was inspired to create this project out of a deep love for gospel music, and for religious music in general.  I knew I had to play it but I wanted to do it on my own terms and in a way that was honest. In my mind, music and religion are both amazing reflections of human creativity.”

… The two things that stick out in my mind from that passage is the word ‘inspired’ and the phrase “I knew I had to play it.”  This tells me that the concept wasn’t some random Bright Idea that was more novelty than creativity, and that he was gonna make this album no matter what, that his intentions came from a creative need inside him, and again, not from some wouldn’t-it-be-cool kitschy epiphany.

Why is this important?  Because it goes to measuring just how truly remarkable it is that Garchik created an album with no possible commercial appeal from an inspiration that wasn’t even interested in taking commercial considerations into account, yet produced an album that, quite frankly, has the kind of crossover irresistibility that would make me feel comfortable recommending Heavens to people who are only casual music listeners.  It’s rare to find an album with High Art concepts and inspirations that also has a popular music quality that allows it to be appreciated as more than just an example of outstanding musicianship.

I think that’s pretty cool.

Jazz from the Brooklyn scene.

Released on Yestereve Records, which is Garchik’s own label.

You can read track-specific comments by Garchik on this page on his site.  They’re pretty neat.

The album is available on Garchik’s Bandcamp page, where you can stream the album in its entirety and purchase it in a number of file formats.

Available at Amazon (MP3).

Tiny Reviews, featuring:  Jerome Sabbagh Plugged In, Miles Okazaki Figurations, Chicago Underground Duo Age of Energy, Various Artists The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved.

*****

Jerome Sabbagh – Plugged In

Tenor saxophonist Jerome Sabbagh gets around.  Capable of thriving in all types of jazz environments, he’s worked with a disparate group of artists (Ben Monder to Guillermo Klein, to name one such range), not to mention albums under his own name.  On this current release, Sabbagh leads a quartet that rounds out with Fender Rhodes/keyboards, electric bass, and drums.  Inclusion of electric keys and electric bass might give the impression that this album is heavy on groove.  In fact, it’s a practical dissertation on how an artist can create hazy melodies while still resting the entire foundation of the composition upon its back.  Beautiful.

Your album personnel:  Jerome Sabbagh (tenor sax), Jozef Dumoulin (Fender Rhodes, keyboards), Patrice Blanchard (electric bass), and Rudy Royston (drums).

Released on the Bee Jazz label.  Jazz from NYC.

Available at eMusic.

Miles Okazaki – Figurations

Guitarist Miles Okazaki albums feel like a definitive road map for distractible drivers.  What begins as a set course often includes several tangential paths taken on the way to the destination.  The result is  thrilling ride full of diversity and change.  Figurations is the third in his planned trilogy of albums, and performed live.

Your album personnel: Miles Okazaki (guitar), Miguel Zenon (alto sax), Thomas Morgan (bass), and Dan Weiss (drums).

Released on the Sunnyside Records label.  Jazz from the Brooklyn, NY scene.

Available at eMusic.

Chicago Underground Duo – Age of Energy

Sixth release as the Chicago Underground Duo from Chad Taylor and Rob Mazurek.  A mix of free jazz, world jazz instruments, and a Sonic Boom dose of electronic effects.  Cornet, drums, mbira, drum machine, and electronics are the arsenal of choice.  Much of the album was recorded live with no overdubbing.  Switches seamlessly between music of fire, air, and water.  Really a wonderful album that throws enough curveballs to keep the album perpetually interesting and uncategorizable.  The sort of avant-garde music that could appeal to a wide cross-section of genre fans.

Released on the Northern Spy Records label.  Jazz from the Chicago scene.

Available at eMusic.

Various Artists – The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved

A mixed set of spoken word and music.  Based on the Hunter S. Thompson piece on the Kentucky Derby, various actors (and artist Ralph Steadman) read sections of the story with the accompaniment of Bill Frisell and frequent collaborators Curtis Fowlkes (trombone), Ron Miles (trumpet), Eyvind Kang (viola), Doug Wieselman (woodwinds), Jenny Scheinman (violin), Hank Roberts (cello) and Kenny Wollesen (drums, percussion).  Hal Willner is involved in this project, which should give many of you an idea of how strange and alluring this project is.

Released on 429 Records label.  Visit their site for streaming samples and free tracks.

Available at eMusic.

*****

Portions of these reviews were originally used in my Jazz Picks weekly article for eMusic, so here’s some language protecting their rights as the one to hire me to write about new jazz arrivals to their site…

“New Arrivals Jazz Picks“ and “New Arrivals Jazz Picks“ and “New Arrivals Jazz Picks”, reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2012  eMusic.com, Inc.

As always, my sincere thanks to eMusic for the gig.  Cheers.

Every time I hear the first notes from Indigo Kid’s self-titled album, I want to get in the car and go driving, and I want it to be raining as I drive past city streets and out into the countryside.

Two feet in the modern jazz world, this is an album that unabashedly utilizes melodic excursions and rock rhythms to get its point across.  The meandering route the album’s tunes take to traverse the path from first note to last give a storybook feel to many tunes.  The album is laid back, moments of ambient reveries broken by relaxed conversation, on a calm and reclusive day.

Your album personnel:  Dan Messore (guitar), Iain Ballamy (tenor saxophone), Tim Harries (bass), and Gethin Jones (drums).

Dan Messore’s guitar approach falls squarely in the Kurt Rosenwinkel camp (for those unfamiliar with Rosenwinkel, please see the first sentence of paragraph two of this review to see how he’s made his mark in Jazz).  Messore creates an introverted dynamic, but one where the listener is invited into the guitarist’s head… rendering the connection no so much one of solitary absorption as just an unconventional invitation to visit.

Iain Bellamy is on sax, he of Loose Tubes fame, and currently a member of Food, an ambient jazz group that out-ECM’d ECM before eventually being signed to same label.  Bellamy brings a serenity to most music he’s involved with, but here his contribution gives more a sense of searching outward, his notes asking questions and postulating theories on what’s been learned.  If Messore’s guitar is the falling rain, then Bellamy’s sax is distant lightning… quiet, but with a presence impossible to ignore.

If you’ve fallen asleep near a gurgling stream, then you have a decent idea of what bassist Tim Harries’ contribution to the album is.  It’s a series of blips and drips, pops and whirls, and though there appears to be no pattern to it, all the notes just seem to make sense when they hit.  Harries’ bass isn’t an accompanying instrument as much as it is a prominent part of the landscape.

Gethin Jones is my kind of drummer.  The rhythms aren’t laid down, but stitched together into sheets of percussion that get spread out over lengths of the song.  It has an immersive effect, which when combined with his unobtrusive style, blends seamlessly with the rest of the quartet.

The album compares favorably to Brian Blade‘s Perceptual (an album which, not coincidentally I’m sure, featured guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel).  Though it lacks textures of Perceptual‘s varied instruments, the overall mysteriously ambient tone make them a reasonable match.

Indigo Kid is an album that has really grown on me.  I recall the first time I heard it, and how even as the album progressed my opinion of it changed from a first impression of ordinary music to something far more impressive.  Now, I’m pretty much addicted to.  I fear what will happening to my listening habits as Autumn falls over the countryside and the gloomy loveliness of Fall in the Countryside is my view as I listen to this album.

Jazz from the UK scene.

Released on the Babel Label.

You can stream the entire album, and purchase it, on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Tiny Reviews, featuring Carla Marciano Quartet Stream of Consciousness, George Crowley Quartet Paper Universe, and albums by Espen Eriksen, Dave Stapleton, Sophie Alour, Andy Emler, and Bellbird.

*****

Carla Marciano Quartet – Stream of Consciousness

Saxophonist Carla Marciano is keyed in on the classic John Coltrane sound.  Channeling Coltrane’s early-60s period, when he’d deconstruct songs like “My Favorite Things” and rebuild them into dazzling towers of ferocity and loveliness, Marciano attacks compositions with the same zeal, and offers up a very cool recording.

Your album personnel:  Carla Marciano (alto & sopranino saxes), Alessandro La Corte (piano), Aldo Vigorito (bass), and Gaetano Fasano – drums

No better example of this is in Marciano’s rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” which embraces the melody with warmth and respect, while simultaneously pouncing upon the song and turning it into something fiery and dramatic.

It’s a nice development from previous recordings Change of Mood and A Strange Day, nice enough recordings, but Marciano’s sound had a little too much polish and emotional subtlety, which made them, well, nice enough recordings.  For Stream of Consciousness, this is music that makes a statement.

Fans of Nat Birchall’s work on the Gondwana label should be sitting up and taking note here.  This is an album you’ll want to scoop up.

Released on the Alfa Music label.  Jazz from the Salerno, Italy scene.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

George Crowley Quartet – Paper Universe

A set of straight-ahead jazz from the new generation of UK jazz artists making their mark on the scene.  Decent soloing, decent interplay, solid album.  George Crowley‘s sax always has an edge to it, even in the album’s softer moments.  Kit Downes’ piano always seems to get an extra emotional kick, whether it’s here with Paper Universe‘s typically upbeat vibe or as a member of the far moodier Threads Orchestra.

Your album personnel:  George Crowley (tenor sax), Kit Downes (piano), Calum Gourlay (acoustic bass), and James Maddren (drums).

The thing of it is, this might not be the kind of album that makes a strong first impression, might even seem a bit ordinary at first.  But much like that acquaintance who reveals a dazzling personality over a stretch of time, so this album did with me.  Over the course of a couple months, I’ve gone from viewing this as a solid but unspectacular album to one that I look forward to hearing each time.  The character of the album may reveal itself slowly via the details, like the nifty way title-track “Paper Universe” builds to the grand finale with a rising tide of repetition to hit the final mark with luxuriant swell of waves that bring the tune gliding across the finish line is one of those engaging personality quirks that won me over.  I mention all this by way of cautioning that this is an album that deserves, and rewards, patience.

Released on Whirlwind Recordings.  Jazz from the UK scene.

Available on eMusic. Available on Amazon: CD

Espen Eriksen Trio – What Took You So Long

Sophomore release from moody piano trio.  Two feet solid in the Scandinavian jazz sound, where melodies are like clouds… look solid enough to touch, can never be grasped, and make for the best rainy day jazz.

Artist site Link.  Released on Rune Grammofon.  Available at eMusic.

Dave Stapleton – Flight

Piano quartet that throws a string quartet into the mix.  Album seems to suffer from a lack of identity.  Some straight ahead modern pieces, some that utilize strings for prettiness, others for a more dissonant touch.  Not an ordinary album, the kind that warrants revisiting.

Artist site Link.  Released on Edition Records.  Available at eMusic.

Sophie Alour – La Geographie des Reves

Nifty post-bop release by the French multi-reedist.  Rounds out a quintet with vibes, trumpet, bass, and drums.  Plenty of compositional asymmetry, as if the tunes attempt to swing while briskly walking down a flight of stairs.

Artist site Link.  Released on Naive Records.  Available at eMusic.

Andy Emler – E Total

Emler leads his “mega-octet” through a series of genre-defying compositions.  Strange, yet catchy.  High-tempo pieces are a fun listen, though it’s the quieter interludes that carry the day.

Artist site Link.  Released on La Buissonne.  Available at eMusic.

Bellbird – Transmitter

Nifty little sextet that includes instruments like bass clarinet, banjo, piano and various saxes and rhythm section instruments.  Almost more pop, really, than jazz.  Quirky tunes that are also catchy.  Jazz for the Neutral Milk Hotel fan.

Artist site Link.  Released on Whirlpool Music.  Available at eMusic.

*****

The Carla Marciano and George Crowley reviews are original to Bird is the Worm.  However, portions of the other reviews were originally used in my Jazz Picks weekly article for eMusic, so here’s some language protecting their rights as the one to hire me to write about new jazz arrivals to their site…

“New Arrivals Jazz Picks“ and “New Arrivals Jazz Picks“, reprints courtesy of eMusic.com, Inc.
© 2012  eMusic.com, Inc.

As always, my sincere thanks to eMusic for the gig.  Cheers.

UK trumpet player and composer Jack Davies made a hell of a splash on the jazz scene this year.  A former member of Colin Towns’ Mask Orchestra, The London Jazz Orchestra and the Tom Taylor Octet, Davies released three albums in April 2012.  Three.  And not a one of them sounds anything like the others.  One is a big band album, another is a quiet jazz folk recording, and the third is a modern avant-garde production.

Three albums in one month is a hell of a feat, and I wanted to draw some attention to them today.  I’m hoping, later, to conduct an interview with Davies, talk a little about his three albums, but also about creating his own label, V&V Music, on which he released the three albums.

But about that music:  Let’s begin…

Jack Davies Big Band – The Jack Davies Big Band

There has been a promising trend in Jazz these days of young composer-directors creating big band and large ensemble recordings founded in the same modern jazz motifs that they give to their small-group efforts.  How this manifests is that, in addition to the traditional big band sound and format, the compositions get blended with unconventional meters, dramatic changes in tempo, cross-genre pollination like the inclusion of sections that rock more than than swing, and a willingness to sacrifice form to gain some substantive creativity.

Your album personnel:  Jack Davies (composer, arranger, conductor), Martin Speake (alto sax), Mike Chillingworth (alto sax), Josh Arcoleo (tenor sax), Joe Wright (tenor sax, electronics), Rob Cope (baritone sax), Andy Greenwood (trumpet), Tom Walsh (trumpet), Percy Pursglove (trumpet), Nick Smart (trumpet), Reuben Fowler (trumpet, flugelhorn), Kieran McLeod (trombone), Richard Foote (trombone), Patrick Hayes (trombone), Ed Hilton (trombone), Alex Munk (guitar), Tom Taylor (piano), James Opstad (bass), and Jon Ormston (drums).

For my eMusic new arrivals column, in which I made this album one of my Jazz Picks, I said, “Davies seems to prefer burning the envelope instead of just simply pushing it around.”  I finding that, months later, that statement remains quite apt.

Album begins with a track smartly titled “Entropy.”  What begins with rising horns like the pronouncement of a new dawn, ends with a wave of deconstruction… the compositions opening traditional form has fallen apart into a dissonant mass of electronics and refracted notes.  This kind of sound manipulation is typical throughout the album, and leads to some massively successful moments.

Track “The New Infection” plays it pretty straight.  Casual rise and fall, but other tracks like “I Will Wait For You…” are truly experimental in nature.  Electronic sizzle, an unsteady tempo, a tune that just hangs in the air, simply hovering.  Not the type of big band swing one could dance to.

The five part “1984 Suite” begins with ominous blasts of horn, stormtrooper tempos, and polytechnic waves of sound.  Distorted guitar cuts through the dissonance, eventually marshaling the forces for a concentrated march to the end.  Silence descends for Part 2 of the Suite.  Sax solos over the blip and squak of billowing electronics.  Part 3 “Dance of the Proles” is a lilting ballad where the sax sings of better days ahead and the horn section sings of bright futures.  Part 4 “Thrush Song” is a solo piano interlude, the sporadic tinkling of the keys, water dripping intermittently from icicles melting beneath the setting sun.  It leads into Part 5, “Mr. Charrington’s Shop,” which has a resurgent energy, eyes fluttering open as the band prepares to rise.  Saxophones call out, then a wonderful guitar lead that brings an easy glide to the tune that finishes with a saxophone-led grand finale.

This is an album that meshes the traditional big band form with unconventional jazz antics… and, strangely enough, they play well together.  The odd schema of rock-like guitar accompaniment actually enhances the traditional horn section phrasing.  The dramatic changes in tempo accentuate the beauty in each section.  The differences within complete the flawless whole.  It’s a neat trick Davies has pulled off.

Released on the V&V Music label.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Jack Davies’ Flea Circus – Flea Circus

Looking back at my weekly eMusic new arrivals column, in which I made this album my Pick of the Week, I described the album as, “Dark tunes cut through with pretty moonlight.”  That was nearly two months prior to my writing the review to follow.  That moonlight gets mentioned now as it did back then, I think, is pretty significant as to the music’s mood and its consistency.

This is a different kind of folk music.  The instruments give it some Old World flavor, yet the compositions imbue it with a sense of Blade Runner futurism.  Music of the Past, envisioning People of the Future.

Your album personnel:  Jack Davies (trumpet), Rob Cope (clarinet, bass clarinet), Aidan Shepherd (accordion), and James Opstad (double bass).

The trumpet is the sound of moonlight, the accordion the story of the soil.  Bass ticks off the passing of time as measured by rings of a tree, and clarinet is a friendly voice inviting wanderers to take a seat by the campfire.

The music is understated, but evocative.  At times whimsical, whispers of Kamikaze Ground Crew strangeness.  Other times, the notes are proffered with a firm handshake and steady gaze.

Opening track “Zapushalka” offers some of that whimsy.  Allusions to a tango, Davies’ trumpet fires lines of notes over the heads of the quartet, stopping only at song’s end to burrow down into the music of the others to bring the song to a close.

Second track “All the Night’s Adventures” is a trumpet serenade to the moon.

The trilogy of “Three Miniatures” begins with the stalking notes of Part 1’s “Monster.”  This leads to Part 2, “So Let Us Melt,” a ballad of beguiling charm.  It ends with Part 3, “Lamp Post,” as accordion brings a fuzzy pulse to a hypnotically paced tune.

Trumpet sounds often in flight, sometimes soaring high above, sometimes gliding just inches from the ground, but on tracks like “La Puce” and “Sehr Gesangvoll,” it sidles up onto a nearby bar stool for a friendly chat.  Accordion is cheerful laughter drifting from across the room.

“The Wood” keeps the Old World ambiance, and reminds us that haunted places and fairy tale monsters do exist.

The closing track “Tresses” has all four quartet members walking ahead together, their sound layered side-by-side, a perfect storm of harmonization, a satisfying synchronicity of tempo, all four voices as one, one voice spoken in four parts.

Overall, Flea Circus has an odd personality… the kind that keeps a person coming back to engage with some more, the kind that makes it easy to appreciate its quirks as positive personality traits and its flaws as the vagaries of unusual intelligence.  It’s a different kind of album, and originality earns some respect.  That it’s also pleasantly listenable, that gets it a high recommendation.

Released on the V&V Music label.

Available at eMusic.  Available at Amazon: CD | MP3

Jack Davies – Southbound

An album that is distinctively modern in its avant-garde approach to jazz.  Asymmetrical lines of attack, melodies hidden from sight, and rhythms sporadic, often masking their intentions until the last possible beat.  Of the three albums, Southbound is clearly the most contentious of the group, the aggressor of the trio.  But those aren’t traits absent from Big Band and Flea Circus… it is just on Southbound, Davies lays those qualities bare, shows them as they are when not clouded by large ensemble textures or folk music eccentricities.

Your album personnel:  Jack Davies (trumpet). Rob Cope (tenor sax), Tom Taylor (piano), and Jon Ormston (drums).

Many of the tracks are set against a backdrop of silence, as in the song “Paragraphs,” in which the lumbering sax and trumpet lines stand out starkly with no accompaniment, though there is a sense of sonic isolation that doesn’t dissipate when piano and drums join in.  Or “Little Glass Box,” which is the gentle footfalls of piano down a darkened hallway, only the faint candle of sax to help light its way.

At times, though, there is an elegance to the music that belies its preeminently aggressive behavior.  Opening track “Bird’s Nest” has the fluttering exchange of notes that abide by their own personal rules of dance, and the grace of “Minus Ten,” which attempts to simulate the unpredictable pattern of melting ice.

Then there’s tracks like “Churning” and “Excuses Excuses” bouncing with excessive energy about the room and spoiling for a fight, conflicting with album closer “In For Luck,” a quiet-tempered call for peace.

On its own, Southbound is a solid example of modern jazz, but when viewed as a facet of Davies’ three releases, it shines as strongly as the others.

Released on the V&V Music label.

Available on eMusic.  Available on Amazon: CD | MP3

*****

It’s rare to get three views of an artist simultaneously like this.  Take the time to enjoy the opportunity and the music alike.