Because I will be on the road for the next few days, I will have to prepare a couple of posts ahead of time until around Thursday or Friday, when I should be settled again in Beijing. In the meantime, practice your Spanish by listening to one of Spain’s coolest podcasts, La Montaña Rusa.
Duncan Blachford is an Australian intuitive musician who delivers a gentle track of piano improvisation. Not bad at all for a non-pianist, I must say, as the track held my attention for its entirety.
I’m used to expecting amazing things from composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Gburek, and certainly so when he pairs with violinist Karolina Ossowska, but this is a shockingly good album even with such expectations. The album has four compositions which are about as gentle and pleasing as anything I’ve heard in the past few years. It’s farther out than, say, Kosmische Musik, yet elegantly restrained. This is music for taking an inner journey and finding what terrain lies inside of yourself. Don’t think of missing this one, I implore you.
I remember the Beijing lockups very well, as I lived in the city during the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. Some residents in Beijing, including the trio of Li Jianhong, Wen Zhiyong and Deng Boyu, made incredibly good use of the time and recorded an album of music combining free improvisation, electronics and ancient instruments such as gudi (bone flute) and trumpet. A sonically stunning album. Respect to WV Sorcerer Productions (巫唱片), who continue to release quality Chinese new music.
Mikael Tariverdiev was a Russian cinema and TV composer of Armenian extraction but raised Tbilisi, Georgia, a true man of the Soviet world. Though he was quoted as not particularly liking jazz, he was as good an improviser that Russia ever produced. From the release’s Bandcamp page: “Visions in Black and White is a collection of rare jazz and improvised themes by one of the greatest Russian film composers Mikael Tariverdiev (1931-1996). Transferred from the original tapes and beautifully remastered, these recordings manage to retain their original ambience and capture a master at work. Originally composed for cinema and TV movies…
The avant-garde music scene lost an incredible talent in the form of Jaimie Branch, who passed away on August 22nd at the age of 39. The blog’s friend, Noël Akchoté offers a lovely tribute album by transcribing the trumpeter’s work into works for solo acoustic guitar. It’s a raw album even by improv standards.
First, a disclaimer: I am posting this review with the understanding that Leo Records has licensed this astounding collection covering the career of the late enfant terrible of Russia’s then-thriving avant-garde music community, Sergey Kuryokhin, to Old Heaven Books Records in Shenzhen, China. If this is so, it’s wonderful to know that Sergey’s reach will continue to grow almost three decades after his passing. Collaborators on this box set include Igor Butman, Sergei Belichenko, Valentina Ponomareva and Boris Grebenshchikov among others. I’m excited to see Old Heaven Books continue to branch out.
Dutch composer and experimental musician Michel Banabila is joined on this one-track release by duduk player Cengiz Arslanpay and violist Oene van Geel for a warm, haunting take on improvisational music.
What a strangely beautiful album… From the duo’s Bandcamp site: Berlin and Reunion based duo, Amine Mesnaoui and Labelle are set to release their debut album on revered London independent imprint Lo Recordings on the 1st of April 2022. ‘African Prayers’ is a collection of seven new compositions, which includes lead single ‘Bleu Noir’, that aims to bring a contemporary and fresh interpretation to the Lila Ritual of the Moroccan Gnawa masters – also known as the Ritual of the Seven Colors. With a firm belief they can deliver a sound that finds its anchor in heritage and yet escape…
Wabjie are a Swiss trio made up of singer Soraya Berent, pianist/composer Michel Wintsch and drummer Samuel Jakubec who produce a sound that references Thom Yorke, Bobby McFerrin and Betty Carter at their most experimental, but perusing the promo sheet, one name was left off that hit me very hard when listening to the album (which will be fully released on February 25): Laurie Anderson. That gentle, experimental but ever-so-pleasant way Anderson has of speak-singing is matched quite well by Berent, whose voice flows effortlessly on top of rhythms that sound as if Björk had a date at The Knitting…