Our friends at Parasounder Magazine out of Tehran offer a great introduction to jazz in Europe and Iran through their podcast, JazzBuzz. In this episode, you will hear some fine music, an interview with guitarist Ali Lotfi and more jazz notes, all in Farsi. I’m proud to support my friends and their music explorations.
Tag: Improvisational
Samo Salamon, Arild Andersen & Ra Kalam Bob Moses – Pure and Simple
This is some fine jazz improv. The trio of a friend to this blog, guitarist Samo Salamon, working alongside bassist and ECM Records legend Arild Andersen and Ra Kalam Bob Moses, and this group have an incredible way of flowing with each other’s vibes. Samo, of course, absolutely shreds on this album, and Arlid serves…
Jeff Gburek – Omnia Sacra et Miracula
Our friend and one of our perennial favorites at this blog, Jeff Gburek, comes to us with a mini-LP’s worth of meditative guitar music supplemented with an electro-acoustic bass berimbau, pine cones, and field recordings. There is an element of twangy, echoey, lo-fi music in these recordings which reminded me of the primordial, primitive guitar…
Various Artists – Pyramid Pieces 2
This is a comp we won’t have to wait too terribly long for. The Roundtable is a record label out of Melbourne, Australia which documents some phenomenal jazz from down under. Apparently, the first installment of Pyramid Pieces was a tour-de-force of Australian spiritual jazz, and the comp sold briskly, introducing the world to Jazz…
The Hauchzart Ensemble – Hauchzart Momentum Vol. I
What a remarkable work this is. The Hauchzart Ensemble includes our dear colleague Wilfried Hanrath, who plays guitar, bass, drums, beats, synth and electronics on this album, along with Matt Getchell, who also provides electronics, synthesizer and beats. This album takes quite a journey, starting off with a track that, if you can believe it,…
Southeast of Rain (东南有雨) – 42 Days (四十二天)
Sophia Shen and Lemon Guo work together as Southeast of Rain (东南有雨), an electroacoustic/field recording project based in the United States, with one living in New York and the other living in the San Francisco Bay area. The album is the result of 42 days of mixing avant-garde experimental music, natural sounds, traditional Chinese instruments…
Jisr (جسر) – Too Far Away
It’s a minor tragedy that Jisr have not made their debut album available as a download on Bandcamp, but you can find it over at La Boîte à Musique and Turtle Records in Belgium, Deejay.de and Decks in Germany and surely other fine record shops near you, though I’d pick this up quickly as it’s…
Makoto Kawabata, Richard Pinhas, Manongo Mujica, Juan Luis Pereira, Hiroshi Higashi – Alturas
What we have here is an experimental music supergroup. Makoto Kawabata and Hiroshi Higashi of acid-psych lords Acid Mothers Temple team up with the legendary guitarist Richard Pinhas (famed as the leader of the band Heldon, and still very much active under his own name). Joining them are two musicians from Peru in Manongo Mujica…
Samo Salamon & Hasse Poulsen – String Dancers
Musicians never cease to amaze me. Despite the horrible conditions which have led to worldwide lockdown, artists like Samo Salamon, a guitarist out of Slovenia, and Hasse Poulsen, originally from Denmark, manage to weave together an acoustic guitar-only album of improvisations that don’t sound like what you normally associate with “improv.” It’s a mellow album,…
Various Artists – Anthology Of Experimental Music From China
I don’t do top-ten lists, and I don’t ever plan on doing that in the future, but things can change at any moment. Still, if I had to nominate a favorite record label at this moment, there’s no doubt it would be Italy’s Unexplained Sounds Group. Each compilation is a tour guide of experimental music…