Jazz Recommendations

This is bigger music from Matthew Halsall.  An expanded line-up and a denser sound has him digging into a modern spiritual jazz repertoire and leaving the cool blue of late-night jazz clubs behind.  The 2014 release When the World Was One is a change that Halsall had already hinted at with his previous release Fletcher Moss Park, a collection of pieces from earlier recording sessions that didn’t quite fit in with the crowd of tracks that presented an updated version of the Miles Davis modal period.  So, it’s clear this is a creative shift that has been bouncing around in Halsall’s head for some time.

Even with the expanded line-up and bigger sound, there’s still some familiarity to this music.  Along with many familiar names among the personnel, there are certain qualities to this music that recall past recordings, despite the shift in creative expression.  This is especially seen in the up-tempo pieces.  There is a fleet-of-foot lightness to a song like title-track “When the World Was One” that harkens back to the title-track of his 2009 release Colour Yes.

There is also a similarly languorous form of expression.  Nat Birchall’s sax on “Falling Water” has that appealing patience of a soloist who knows where they’re going and will take their time improvising to that final destination… not unlike “I’ve Found Joy” on Colour Yes.  And then there’s the solo from flautist Lisa Mallett on “A Far Away Place,” no less probing or persistently inquisitive than her counterpart Roger Wickham’s solo on “Freedom Song,” from Halsall’s 2008 release Sending My Love.

But commonalities aside, Halsall’s newest is a different kind of animal.  The stronger folk music elements of songs like “Sagano Bamboo Forest” and “Kiyomizu-Dera” reveal new dimensions of Halsall’s imagination.  There is also the inspired decision to add a kora player to the ensemble, bolstering the textures of the harp contributions, as well as an additional contrast to the heavy plumes of trumpet and sax.  And, overall, the music has a different feel to it.  Whereas most of his previous output sounded like a wrapped gift from the local late-night jazz lounge, his newest calls out for wide open spaces, to be played loud and long.  It also provides an extra dose of soul to go along with the ever-present beating heart.

It’s an intriguing development, and while there is a tendency to want more of the good-ol’-stuff, it’s vastly outweighed by the excitement of hearing something new and the wonderment of what-comes-next.

Your album personnel:  Matthew Halsall (trumpet), Nat Birchall (tenor sax), Lisa Mallett (flute), Keiko Kitamura (koto), Rachael Gladwin (harp), Taz Modi (piano), Gavin Barras (bass), and Luke Flowers (drums).

Released on Gondwana Records.

Jazz from the Manchester, UK scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Bandcamp | Amazon: CD – MP3 – Vinyl

Worth noting that Bandcamp has CD, Digital and Vinyl retail options.

This is the kind of free jazz where jumping off a cliff is more about how you flap your wings than how well you succeed at flying, and where hitting ground might be preferable to floating.  On Arashi, the trio of Akira Sakata, Johan Berthling and Paal Nilssen-Love offer up four tracks of serious intensity, serious fun.

The best thing about opening track “Arashi (Storm)” is its relentlessness.  A focused force of nature, the trio burns a path as precise as a straight line, and as deep as a scar.  Some roller coasters have the most amazing views from above, but often the rider’s attention is a captive of the speed and force of the cart in motion.  So it is with “Arashi (Storm),” though there are moments when it provides a glimpse of an amazing horizon line, just before the imagery becomes blurry yet again from the speed.

The best thing about “Ondo No Huna-Uta (Rower´s Song of Ondo)” has got to be the way Sakato’s voice dances off the percussive nail heads.  It’s so over-the-top aggressive as to incite smiles, not fear.

The best thing about “Dora” is how Berthling’s bass bubbles up from the surface, in between fiery dispensations from Sakata’s alto sax and the driving tumult of Nilssen-Love’s drums.  The tiny resonance of that bass breaking through the clearing has such a chipper rhythmic appeal that the contrast between it and the furious onslaught of the rest of the track is quite arresting.

The album closes with a quieter, more cerebral tune.  “Fukushima No Ima (Fukushima Now)” has Sakata musing wistfully on clarinet, while Berthling and Nilssen-Love offer up conversational asides that are indelibly tangential to the conversation at hand.  It ends with a dash to the finish line, but even this furious coda isn’t enough to dispel the brooding serenity that preceded it.  And that is the best thing about the final track, which is a good thing, because there really was no better way to bring down the curtains on this very fun recording.

Your album personnel:  Akira Sakata (alto sax, clarinet, voice), Johan Berthling (double bass), and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums, percussion).

Released on Trost Records.

That cool album cover by Cover image by Sagaki Keita.

Jazz from

Available at:  eMusic | Bandcamp | Amazon: CD – MP3 – Vinyl

*****

Some other stuff you should probably know:

This is Sakata’s first mention on this site, but the free jazz veteran has been putting out solid music for decades.  The most recognizable reference I could make would be his membership in the Last Exit outfit, which included Sonny Sharrock, Ronald Shannon Jackson, Bill Laswell, and Peter Brotzmann.  Johan Berthling is a member of Martin Küchen‘s Angles 9 ensemble and the Fire! Orchestra… both ensembles who have recently put out strong 2014 releases.  In fact, the Angles 9 release Injuries was recently my eMusic/Wondering Sound Pick of the Week, and Enter, by Fire! Orchestra was a very close second to getting named Pick of the Week.  Paal Nilssen-Love is a member of The Thing, a trio whose recent collaboration with Neneh Cherry was all kinds of wonderful.

Cheers.

With a debut, there’s always a danger of doing too much.  There’s a natural enthusiasm with the debut, no matter what the artistic medium, to aspire to express all of those creative ideas that have been bubbling up to the very moment the debut becomes official.  It’s the kind of thing that can lead to a wildly varying panoply of sounds and imagery, lacking cohesion and a frame of reference.

This, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing.  It can often lead to some pretty dramatic moments, and it’s the kind of thing where even if an artist falls flat on their face, they can get huge marks for the time they went airborne.

On their debut Becoming, The Jonathan Rowden Group maintain their balance, despite taking that prototypical “debut leap.”  It’s an album that has some post-bop, some chamber jazz, some avant-garde, and some of that Brian Blade Fellowship nu-jazz, and, strangely enough, Rowden is able to bundle it up in a way so that something approaching cohesion is achieved.

The gem of the album is the three-part “The Long Road Home,” which begins as a solemn hymn, middles with gentle sigh becoming a roar, and ends with the rooftop sound of a rainstorm slowly dwindling away.

Several tracks fit in with the modern jazz approach of incorporating infusions of post-rock and folk, where melodies are thick and heady and often go wandering off with only the occasional postcard as a reminder, and rhythms more likely to stomp and scatter than they are to swing.  “Snowing in Paradise” emits a rapid, though comforting pulse while piano and sax trade melodic gestures… some gentle, some as grand pronouncements… interrupted only by the sudden rise of bass from a deep hum to a lovely eye-of-the-storm solo.  “27-1” rides the shoulders of a profuse, drawling melody up to furious heights.  The indie-pop catchiness of “Autonation” sticks even when the song’s second half sees it carry out a series of rapid costume changes.

Of particular interest is the way in which Rowden wraps these tracks around the three-part “The Long Road Home,” which lies at the heart of the album.  By stacking a couple post-bop, nu-jazz tracks at either end of “The Long Road Home,” Rowden creates something of a story arc, with the major conflict of the three-part chamber jazz suite bounded by the introduction and denouement of post-bop tunes.  Add to that some small avant-garde infusions, like album opener “Becoming,” in which a slow minimalism slowly morphs into an expansive loud drone, and “Entrance,” where the shroud of silence is as thick as shadows… and now the storyline has some necessary textural ambiguities.  Rowden manages to balance debut creative exuberance with some deft album craftsmanship.  Nicely done.

One of those albums that thoroughly captures the attention, and then, when released, the album reveals just how much fun it was, too.

Your album personnel:  Jonathan Rowden (saxophones, electronics, percussion), Ryan Pryor (piano, fender rhodes, percussion), Chris Hon (bass), and James Yoshizawa (drums, pandeiro, bodhran).

Released on Orenda Records.

Jazz from the L.A. scene.

Available at:  eMusic | Bandcamp | CDBaby | Amazon MP3