Totally Flipping Out Part II: M B V

My Bloody Valentine just released their new album last night. It is called M B V. This is the follow up to the indie classic Loveless that Kevin Shields and co. have been promising to fans for, like, 21 years or something. It does not disappoint. I think basically anyone who likes Loveless will like this album. The song writing is great, in a similar vein with their older work. There are a few new sounds in their arsenal too. Just like Loveless, M B V deserves repeat listens, to unearth all the little layers of beautiful sound that are packed into each song.   

 go buy it here

Totally Flipping out about the upcoming Wayne Shorter Quartet Release

There is a new Wayne Shorter Quartet album coming out on February 5^th! I’m excited, you should be too. I was just 13 years old when I saw this band for the first time and got completely blown out of the water. They’re 2004 album Beyond the Sound Barrier was a mainstay for me and a bunch of close friends for most of high school. Now I know a bunch of people have heard Sound Barrier by now, and I think most people like it, but if you haven’t got the chance to see them live you are missing out on the fact that by the time that album came out, the band had already progressed a few light-years beyond what you hear on those recordings. In the early 2000’s the band was making a name for itself with radical revisions of classic pieces from Shorter’s oeuvre. When I saw them in 2004, they played three pieces, each stretching well over half an hour, with no readily discernible form. This band deals with improvisation on a grand scale. Furthermore, they are navigating this terrain without falling prey to any of the more tedious tropes that even the best improvisers often fall into. Shorter and company don’t embrace the more pure sense of improvisation that people in the free jazz scene tend to follow, While the idea of improvisation as a form of composition has been thrown around a lot, The Wayne Shorter Quartet’s music is one of the few working bands that actually justify use of such a phrase. I really don’t exaggerate in saying that they have the greatest sense of timing, patience and group rapport of anyone band that I’ve had occasion to hear. One of there improvisations really does feel like a structured, considered composition, without losing any of the immediacy of composition.

One could still wonder, whether this new album will capture the band’s live personality (or could any album do this?) Like their previous two albums, this next one will be a collection of live recordings from the band’s tours. As excellent as those records are, they don’t sound very similar to the band’s live performances, at least not the way that they play now. The new record also features a rather extended piece featuring the Imani Wind Quartet. Well… I’m skeptical about that one, but I’m perfectly willing to be proven wrong. There’s really no saying what this album will be like, but if you care about jazz and/or improvised music, there is really no excuse for sleeping on this one.

In my own alternate universe, this was the official jam of summer 2012

A Poem by Saigyo

My dilemma:

That deep realization will

never come to

My mind, the truth of which

My Mind realizes all to well

Sort of comforting to relate to the insecurities of someone who wrote in the 12th century.

Now if I could just kick this damn injury everything would be cool.

Phosphor album review

This was one of two titles I procured taking advantage of Potlatch records sale on its entire catalogue this past summer. Phosphor is: Burkhard Beins, percussion; Alessandro Bosetti, soprano saxophone; Axel Dörner, trumpet and electronics; Robin Hayward, tuba; Annette Krebs, electro-acoustic guitar; Andrea Neumann, inside piano and mixing desk; Michael Renkel, acoustic guitar and Inaz Shick, electronics. I knew that this ensemble was at the genesis of the movement of what has variously been called “reductionism” “lower-case.” That knowledge in no way prepared me for this album. The music contains none of the extreme sparsity or stretches of silence I had imagined. Their improvisation is actually quite busy, and shifts texture frequently. The names that have been applied to this style are most accurate in describing the nature and quality of sounds used more so than the overall structure of the improvisation. The performers all use deliberately limited means of sound production, including a preponderance of non-pitched sounds. These often make the instruments difficult to differentiate from one another, especially the breath tones that are prominently used by Dörner, and Bosetti. Similarly, Andrea Neumann uses her “inside piano” which is a custom-built piano soundboard, without the casing or keyboard of the instrument, to produce sounds difficult to identify as a piano, or even as recognizable extended piano techniques. It seems as if no individual idea presented in the improvisations develops or really changes much of its own accord. Each gesture simply enters the musical space for awhile, remains largely static and eventually disappears. All of the performers have a remarkable and admirable ability to sustain a sound or texture with no overtly expressive qualities, and almost no variation. The result is a foreign landscape of sound that alternately accumulates and subsides, constantly changing without ever latching onto a “direction” or predictable outcome. This music sounds fresh, and contemporary, it suggests that there are still further challenges in improvised music to be tackled.

Milton Babbitt: Composition for Guitar (1984)

A piece I have been enjoying very much regularly. I think this flies in the face of a lot of the pre-conceptions people have about Babbitt and his music.

Tom Rainey Trio at Cornelia St. Cafe, Dec. 30th

Tom Rainey performed a set of engaging improvised music with Ingrid Laubrock on Tenor and Soprano Saxophones and Mary Halvorson on Guitar. I was unfamiliar with Rainey as drummer and came away from the concert very impressed. He plays very few things that drummers play, focusing on a timbral approach reminiscent of Tony Oxley, or Paul Lytton, but unlike those drummers, his playing is always rhythmically propulsive and time-oriented. Laubrock and Halvorson both played with conviction and nuance in a set that often dipped into extreme, noise oriented blowing but also contained a great degree of subtlety and musical surprise. Rainey also made a touching tribute to the lately departed masters Paul Motian and Sam Rivers.