jazz
peter.quinn
A celebration of that most extraordinary instrument, the human voice, this year’s edition of Jazz Voice – which gladly welcomed back a live audience and a full-strength EFG London Jazz Festival Orchestra – ranged from music of intimate delicacy to stunning virtuosity. Across two separate sets, eight singularly gifted artists showcased their distinctive storytelling gifts, enveloped by Guy Barker’s richly detailed arrangements.Georgia Cécile kickstarted proceedings in impressive style with “The Month Of May” from her all-original debut album – recently nominated in this year’s Scottish Jazz Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Bergen’s Electric Eye’s pithy description of themselves is “psych-space-drone-rock from Norway.” They also say they “play droned out psych-rock inspired by the blues, India and the ever-more expanding universe.” Horizons is their fourth studio album.They’ve been honing what they do for just short of a decade. Their drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde has also regularly played with folk and jazz individualists Building Instrument and Erlend Apneseth Trio. Guitarist and keyboard player Njål Clementsen has been in post-rock/psych-rock bands The Low Frequency In Stereo and The Megaphonic Thrift. Amongst Read more ...
Tim Cumming
If you were looking for a word to describe Black String in performance at Grand Junction in Paddington, before the high altar of the church of St Mary Magdalene, itself a pinnacle of Victorian neo-Gothic bravura, then that word would be “intense”. Intensely intense. More intense than a blooming bank of Intensia.They may fold in to their sound influences from global jazz, post-rock, Korean folk and free improvisation, but the array of instruments they use to raise the unholy walls of sound in their music, from ancient folk instruments to squalling electric guitars, makes their performance one Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Over 1974 to 1978 Graham Collier issued five albums on his own imprint Mosaic. There was another in 1985 and eight releases on Mosaic by other musicians, but for its first four years the imprint was dominated by the British jazz composer, bassist and bandleader’s own work. In the same period, three books Collier had written came out. There was Jazz – A Students' and Teachers' Guide, published by Cambridge University Press, Compositional Devices, published by America’s Berklee College and Cleo and John, about Laine and Dankworth. Collier was busy.He had graduated from Berklee in 1963 and went Read more ...
joe.muggs
George Evelyn is one of British music’s more interesting characters. With equal parts Yorkshire bluntness, hip hop swagger and cosmic dreams, he has filled Nightmares On Wax’s beat collages and soul grooves with soundsystem heft and endless inventiveness for over three decades now. Ever since the N.O.W. sound really hit its stride on the second album, 1995’s Smoker’s Delight, it’s been like a slow, deep river meandering through the musical landscape: sometimes livelier, sometimes stagnating a little, but always making its own way with no need to change or divert for anything. On this, Read more ...
graham.rickson
Leo Sowerby: Paul Whiteman Commissions & other early works Andy Baker Orchestra, Avalon String Quartet (Cedille)Chicago’s Leo Sowerby (1895-1968) is remembered chiefly as a prolific composer of sacred scores, a Pullitzer-Prize winning composer famous for church cantatas, organ solos and songs. A self-taught prodigy, Sowerby had been including populist elements in his scores for a decade before he was contacted by bandleader Paul Whiteman (who famously commissioned Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue) in 1924, asking him for a piece of symphonic jazz to perform in one of his “Revolutionary Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Jazz’s most popular expressions today stand on or just over its borders: Thundercat’s rubbery bass virtuosity and dreamy laptop soul, Robert Glasper’s improv R&B, Squarepusher’s spontaneous electronica, Snarky Puppy’s jam-band anthems, GoGo Penguin’s rave piano trio, or The Bad Plus’s rock covers. Jazz and hip-hop’s relationship was meanwhile deep-rooted long before Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) became the decade’s most important album for jazz, lifting collaborators such as Kamasi Washington into the stratosphere, and awakening popular interest in analogue instrumental Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As the summer folds away on itself, theartsdesk on Vinyl returns. Beset by backlogs at pressing plants and delayed by COVID, it's finally here, jammed to the gunwales with commentary on a grand cross section of the finest music on plastic. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHGod Damn Raw Coward (One Little Independent)Let’s start with some NOISE! With their fourth album Wolverhampton band God Damn continue the reinvigoration that began with their eponymous 2020 Album. There’s metal in there somewhere but mostly it’s a roaring rage of punk rock, with singer Thomas Edwards howling his indignancy at, well Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of Journey instantly sets its controls for an excursion into the interstellar void between gaseous and solid objects. Opening cut “Intoxication” begins with lightly pulsing bass and a keyboard texture. Shimmering guitar floats over the top. Though more sparse and lacking vocals, it’s as if Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them” were performed by an earlier model of the band which had focussed on reducing performative grandeur as much as possible.There’s another evocation. When “Intoxication’s” treated guitar arrives, it has a Robert Fripp flavour. The King Crimson Read more ...
Tim Cumming
This was, said bassist Michael Janisch, his first gig since January last year, and his crack group’s Monday evening set, kicking off at the un-jazzy hour of 6.30pm, was an energising, dynamic group performance from A-list British musicians who are band leaders in their own right. They are Empirical’s alto-saxophonist Nathaniel Facey; his childhood friend – and one of Britain’s finest drummers (and fellow Empirical member) – Shaney Forbes; fellow Whirlwind Recordings artist, tenor saxophonist George Crowley; and on the keyboards and synths, Rick Simpson, whose own quartet was touring its Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Dazzling. That was the first adjective with which the illustrious Marian McPartland described Helen Sung’s piano playing, when she had the remarkable Houston-born pianist as her guest for an episode of the NPR radio show Piano Jazz in 2006.On Quartet+ (Sunnyside), Sung is celebrating “landmark women in jazz”, including McPartland (a new arrangement of “Kaleidoscope”, the theme from the radio show, worked in with a string quartet version of “Melancholy Mood”), and also Mary Lou Williams, Geri Allen, Carla Bley, and Toshiko Akiyoshi. “True pioneers and giants all,” as Sung describes them. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Anyone in San Francisco on 15 and 16 June 1968 would have had a tough choice if they wanted to see live music. On Saturday the 15th, Big Brother & the Holding Company and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown were playing The Fillmore. That night, The Charlatans were on at The Straight Theatre. The Sunday saw Big Brother billed with The Steve Miller Blues Band, Dan Hicks (without The Charlatans), Sandy Bull and Santana at The Fillmore. On both dates, Booker T & the MG's headlined The Carousel Ballroom.At the Carousel, the Booker T combo was supported by local stars It’s A Beautiful Day. Read more ...