Cuneiform Releases for May/June 2016

Cuneiform Releases for Sep/Oct 2016

Cuneiform Records: The Albums of 2016

Cuneiform Releases for February 2017

Cuneiform Releases for May 2017

PURCHASE 'We Are All Smalls Pixels' by Pixel @
AMAZON (digital & physical): http://amzn.com/B00EFWSYJ8
ITUNES (digital): https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/we-are-all-small-pixels/id687623767
BANDCAMP (hi-fi digital): http://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/we-are-all-small-pixels
WAYSIDE (physical-ships worldwide): http://waysidemusic.com/Music-Products/Pixel---We-Are-All-Small-Pixels__Rune-spc-372.aspx

We Are All Small Pixels – yes, that describes us all in this post-atomic digital age – but some bands pack a big sonic wallop. In the case of Norway’s prodigious indie jazz combo Pixel, the little elements cohere into a singularly arresting sound, combining the improvisational imperative and acoustic instrumentation of a free bop quartet with the impassioned vocals and incisive lyrics of indie rock. 

Following up on its acclaimed 2012 debut Reminder (Cuneiform), which established the quartet as a bold new voice on the international jazz scene, the young Oslo-based band delivers a stellar second album that makes a mighty big musical statement. Led by double bassist, vocalist, and songwriter Ellen Andrea Wang, the combo further refines its fervently creative vision with We Are All Small Pixels, a genre-smashing manifesto that translates ancient spiritual insight into the digital age. 

For Wang, the fundamental building block of billions of photos and graphics that are the communications currency of her insistently connected generation represents “being a small but important part of the big picture. Whether human beings in the universe, or a simple chord in a big symphony, every pixel is unique and important.” In Pixel’s music, every perfectly placed note and wantonly propulsive beat paints a vivid 21st century picture, a seductive sound that embraces jazz’s harmonic sophistication, minimalism’s incantatory power, rock’s primal thrust, and pop’s lyrical concision.  

Featuring Wang on bass and lead vocals, drummer Jon Audun Baar, trumpeter Jonas Kilmork Vemøy and saxophonist Harald Lassen (with everyone contributing backup vocals), Pixels features the instrumentation inextricably linked to Ornette Coleman’s epochal “free jazz” quartet of the late 1950s and early ‘60s. The band takes advantage of the harmonic space created by the absence of a chordal instrument, but Pixel favors tightly orchestrated tunes and intricately constructed arrangements. Which isn’t to say that quartet is in any way predictable. With sudden metrical shifts, starkly contrasting textures and Wang’s vocals delivered in unison with the horns, the resulting sound is transfixing and unlike anything else on the scene. 

The album opens with the inviting, almost calypsonian bounce of “Be Mine,” a surging tune showcasing Wang’s crystalline vocals and a melody so brightly enticing it could easily find a home on an adventurous rock radio station. She follows that forthright lover’s plea with the jagged “Space,” an equally emphatic call for solitude, revealing in song the delicious push-me pull-me tensions, the contrasting and contradictory forces that animate so much of Pixel’s music. 

Part of what makes Pixel’s music so effective is that even when a tune is dissonant or abrasive it never wears out its welcome, with the majority of the album’s 11 tracks clocking in under four minutes. The album’s centerpiece and longest track is the instrumental “Night Dreamer,” an episodic journey that moves from the pummeling opening section to Vemøy’s beatific trumpet to a triumphant closing fanfare powered by more muscular Baar drum work. As if emerging from unquiet slumbers, the following piece “Easter Song” is the album’s shortest track, at barely over a minute, with a luminous wordless vocal that emerges from an undulating tenor sax line generated by Lassen’s circular breathing. 

With an insistently buzzy tenor line setting up Wang’s ethereal vocals, “Dreaming” is a gorgeous song defined by its contrasting textures. Wang turns fierce and feisty on “Daylight,” with the horns emphasizing her need and urgency. The album closes with the mysterious “Time,” a strikingly lovely song with a gently lamenting vocal refrain. Whether she’s wailing, belting or murmuring, Wang is an uncommonly expressive singer who knows how to mix it up with the horns. 

On a scene rife with exceptional young female players, Wang stands out as a particularly accomplished artist. As a composer, player, and perhaps most importantly as a bandleader who has melded like-minded players into a capaciously inventive ensemble, she stands at the forefront of a rising generation that’s remaking jazz in their own image. Her notoriety is quickly spreading via captivating performances and appreciative critics, resulting in a stream of impressive awards in Norway and on the international stage. In October 2012, the magazine Japan Jazz named Wang their “New Star of the Month”.  The 2012 Oslo Jazz Festival presented her with that year’s prestigious and lucrative Statkraft Young Star award, and the next year, she won the 2013 TONO prize, category «Årets Utfordrer» [Innovator], for the song “Call Me” from her Reminder debut album. 

Now 26, Ellen Andrea Wang founded Pixel in early 2010, which proved to be her breakout year. Featured on the album Norwegian Song 3, the project showcased her bass prowess in the company of storied Nordic masters such as Dag Arnesen, Pål Thowsen, and Palle Mikkelborg. Mentored by bassist Bjørn Kjellemyr at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, Wang has been in wide demand among her peers, appearing on more than a dozen albums with top-flight artists including Jon Balke, Jan Gunnar Hoff, Jon Eberson Group and Ketil Bjørnstad.

Before he took up the saxophone at 13, Harald Lassen studied the piano and sang gospel in church. A respected bandleader in his own right since 2008, he’s collaborated with American heavyweights like Andrew D’Angelo and Ralph Alessi. But Lassen, 26, has recently cemented his status as an essential new voice through his work with his own band Play Tell, which features internationally renowned bassist Mats Eilertsen and legendary drummer Jon Christensen (who powered Keith Jarrett’s great 1970s European quartet). Last year he received the prestigious JazzIntro Award and was named the Young Jazz Musician of the Year with his quintet Mopti (which recently released a debut album on Jazzland Recordings). Beside Mopti and Pixel, Lassen appears on four other albums released in 2013, including sessions by Duplex, and Dr. Kay And His Inter Steller Tone Scientists.  

Jonas Kilmork Vemøy, 27, graduated from the Norwegian Academy of Music in 2011. One of the most expressive trumpeters on the Scandinavian scene, he’s been sought out by a wide array of acts, including prog rock band Blokk 5, the Balkan brass-inflected The Captain and Me, and the pop/rock band Lama, created by former Jaga Jazzist keyboardist Nils Martin Larsen. In addition to Pixel’s second album, he plays on new albums by pop artist and songwriter Kristin Minde, and jazz pianist Jens Andreas Kleiven. 

Like Vemøy, Jon Audun Baar, 26, is a conservatory-trained musician who studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music with teachers like Jon Christensen and Rune Martinsen. A prolific sideman, he’s performed at major festivals with numerous bands and artists over the past four years. Outside of Pixel, Baar has been most visible in an acclaimed trio with the well-traveled guitar master Jon Eberson, a pillar of the Scandinavian jazz scene since the early 1970s.

Together in Pixel, these 4 talented musicians form one of the fastest rising and most innovative ensembles in Scandinavia’s flourishing jazz scene.  Performing at Scandinavia’s jazz festivals and clubs before ever-increasing numbers of fans, recording albums that garner international critical acclaim, winning numerous awards, the young Pixels are poised to take the international jazz stage by storm.

For more information on Pixel, see:
www.pixelband.no - www.facebook.com/pixelnorway - www.cuneiformrecords.com

Pixel, "Space" from 'We Are All Small Pixels' (Cuneiform Records)

Buy it here
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/other-worlds

Andrew Niven – drums, percussion, synth, sequencers
Eric Klerks – bass, 8-string guitar, synthbass
Max Kutner – electric and acoustic guitar

with
Mike Keneally ¬– keyboards, guitar, samples
Jonathan Sindelman – keyboards, organ
Daniel Rosenboom – trumpet
Jessica Lurie – baritone sax
Gregg Bendian ¬– vibes

Produced by Mike Keneally and Android Trio

Concentric Lines

ANDROID TRIO "Concentric Lines" from "Other Worlds" (Cuneiform Records)

Easily buy NEBELNEST here:
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/nebelnest-their-first-album-remixed-and-in-24-48-hi-res-2

Michaël ANSeLMI : drums
Cyril MALDeReZ : guitar
Gregory TeJeDOR : bass
Olivier TeJeDOR : synth, devices

Recorded in 1998, first released in 1999 by The Laser's Edge and remixed and mastered from the multi-track masters by Olivier.

NEBELNEST 'Psykial Trysm Najha' from "NeBeLNeST"

You can easily buy the album here: 
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/3-3-2

● Tomeka Reid – cello
● Mary Halvorson – guitar
● Jason Roebke – bass
● Tomas Fujiwara – drums

TOMEKA REID QUARTET 'Sauntering With Mr. Brown' from "3+3"

Easily buy this album here: 
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/make-way-for-mother-mallard-50-years-of-music-2

David Borden : RMI piano & Minimoog D
David Yearsley : Roland Juno 60 & Minimoog D
Blaise Bryski : Juno 106 & Moog Voyager

MOTHER MALLARD / DAVID BORDEN "TCSOC, pt 1" from "Make Way For Mother Mallard"

Easily buy this album here:
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/live-2019-a-map-of-books

Chris Cochrane- guitar / vocals
Gordon Beeferman - keyboards
Brian Chase – drums
Richard Dworkin – drums
Kato Hideki - bass
Stuart Popejoy - bass
Stew Stewart – vocals
Gelsey Bell - vocals
Syd Straw - vocals 
Marlon Cherry - vocals
Sarah Bernstein - violin
Eszter Balint - violin and vocals
Kevin Bud Jones – electronics
Jim Pugliese – drums, vibes and additional percussion
Hanna Fox -drums - percussion
Eddie Gormley - drums - percussion
Killian Karlsson – guitar
Zeena Parkins – harp
John Thayer – drums and electronics


CHRIS COCHRANE / COLLAPSIBLE SHOULDER BIG BAND 'Interdependence' from "Live 2019 : A Map of Books"

Easily buy 4037 by Happy Family here:
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/4037

Kenichi Morimoto - keyboards
Takahiro Izutani - guitar
Hidemi Ichikawa - bass
Keiichi Nagase - drums

HAPPY FAMILY 'Pygmalion' from "4037" [Cuneiform Records]

“The music of Michael Gibbs remains woefully under-recorded, even as the composer hits his mid-70s.... Inspired by Olivier Messiaen as much as Gil Evans, his music is luxurious, complex but accessible, and driven by rock rhythms and electric instruments...”
– BBC Music

While studded with treasured recordings reflecting his singular writing skills, Michael Gibbs’ slim discography has never kept pace with the breadth and depth of his creative output. In a career spanning more than half a century, he’s collaborated with a dazzling array of artists in jazz and beyond, including Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, Joni Mitchell, John Scofield, Gary Burton, Whitney Houston, Peter Gabriel, and Richard Galliano. 

Gibbs’ intermittent relationship with Germany’s NDR Bigband, one the world's longest-running jazz ensembles, dates back to the early 1970s and has provided a particularly valuable vehicle for his vivid musical imagination. “I feel I know the individual players so well, that I write for them personally, or use how I know them in making orchestrational choices,” Gibbs says of the NDR Bigband. “That’s a luxury these day, when other projects are written more for the standard instrumentation without knowledge of the personal attributes (stunning as though they might be, and often are).” 

Born on September 25th, 1937, Gibbs has studied with such noted figures as Gunther Schuller, George Russell J.J. Johnson, Aaron Copland, Iannis Xenakis, and Lukas Foss. By the beginning of the 70s, he was recognized as one of jazz’s leading young arrangers and composers, and he developed a personal, thickly textured approach inspired by Gil Evans, Charles Ives and Olivier Messiaen. 

Gibbs has honed a subtle and highly personal approach to arranging and composition, incorporating driving rock rhythms and asymmetrical phrasing. When first emerging, his work anticipated the jazz/rock movement of the 70s. Although better known as an arranger than a composer, he really is one of the great writers to emerge out of the 'Brit-jazz' scene, and four wonderful, new original pieces are highlighted here. 

With ‘In My View’, Gibbs makes an unimpeachable case that this jazz cat in winter hasn’t lost a step. Gibbs’ View adds up to one of the year’s most rewarding and successful big band projects. 

Michael Gibbs & The NDR Bigband, "‘Tis As It Should Be" from 'In My View' (Cuneiform Records)

“So much came from my association with Mike... He went from being my hero to a friend, and he’s always been my teacher... I’ve always fantasized about doing something with him adapting some of my music.”
– Bill Frisell

As a dauntingly prolific artist, Bill Frisell has recorded in a vast array of settings, but he’s never made an album like ‘Play A Bill Frisell Set List’. Captured live in concert with the superb NDR Bigband, the guitarist delivers a tour de force performance on a program of ingenious arrangements designed specifically for him and the NDR by Michael Gibbs.
 
Recorded at the Überjazz Festival with the NDR Bigband on Oct 26, 2013, ‘Play A Bill Frisell Set List’ captures Frisell interacting with one of the world’s great jazz orchestras, exploring sleek, spacious, vividly expressive arrangements of compositions drawn from throughout his career. Gibbs didn’t plan the concert as a recording session, but after many years of trying to bring Frisell and the NDR together he felt the results were too good to keep under wraps. “Jeff Ballard playing drums for this concert was a dream, and the band really enjoyed playing it, so the music was magical,” Gibbs says. “I couldn’t resist the opportunity to release it.”

It’s difficult to overstate Gibbs’ impact on the trajectory of Frisell’s music and career. As a Denver teenager, Frisell convinced his father to take him to a touring Newport Jazz Festival show at Red Rocks in the summer of 1968 and the experience radically opened his ears. “It was an amazing program, with Gary Burton with Bob Moses, Coryell, and Steve Swallow, and they blew my brains out,” Frisell recalls. “I’d never heard anything like it. So I started getting those records, and there’s some guy named Mike Gibbs who wrote half the songs on these records. He had so much to do with that sound, making a world for that group to inhabit.”

Frisell started following Gibbs’ music, and was thrilled to discover that he was composer-in-residence at Berklee when he enrolled in 1975. He took all of the classes that Gibbs offered and was tremendously encouraged when Gibbs complimented his playing after catching Frisell’s group at a gig.

By 1978 Frisell had relocated to Belgium to focus on his music, which meant he was well placed to step in when Gibbs needed a guitarist for a tour of the UK. The group included the German bassist Eberhard Weber, with whom Frisell would play a duo at every concert. The connection he forged with the bassist on this tour led to Frisell’s participation on Weber’s 1979 album Fluid Rustle, the first of the dozens of recordings that Frisell would do on ECM as a sideman and leader, and where his career truly started!

‘Play A Bill Frisell Set List’ is Bill Frisell’s first-ever appearance as the featured soloist on a big band session, and with Gibbs’ melodically verdant, harmonically suggestive arrangements, he’s not likely to find a better set list than 'Set List'. 

Michael Gibbs & the NDR Bigband, "On The Lookout/Far Away" from 'Play a Bill Frisell Set List'

You can buy this album here: 
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/lights-out

Alec K. Redfearn – Vocals, Moog Matriarch, Sequential Circuits Trigon 6, Korg ms20, Eurorack modular synth and field recordings
Matt McLaren – Drum kit, percussion, harmonica and neyanban

SWRM 'The Hunt' from "Lights Out" [Cuneiform Records]

You can buy this album here:
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/wicked-forms-of-old-snow

Bill ‘Kitsoulis’ Longhorse (BL) : Guitars, background vocals
George ‘Georgy Jet’ Liebensfeld (GL) : Lead & background vocals
Eric Bindman (EB) : Violins (electric & acoustic)
Henry Cross (HC) : Bass 
Don ‘DXR Mavro’ Fontaine (DXR) : Drums

Balloons For The Dog 'Peaches & Dogma' from "Wicked Forms Of Old Snow" [Cuneiform]

Beat Circus - Boy From Black Mountain

You can easily buy this album here:
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hotel-pupik-3

Pete Grogan – saxophones
Chris Williams – saxophones, effects
Liran Donin – bass, effects
Mark Holub – drums

Led Bib 'Iron Ore' from "Hotel Pupik" [Cuneiform Records]

Easily buy this music here: 
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/serpentine

Ken Field - alto saxophone and flute
Tom Hall - tenor saxophone
Dave Harris - trombone and tuba
Phil Neighbors - drums
Blake Newman - acoustic bass
Jerry Sabatini - trumpet

Revolionary Snake Ensemble 'Present' from "Serpentine" [Cuneiform Records]

You can hear more and buy this album here
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-hard-machine

Roger C. Miller : guitars, vocals
P. Andrew Willis : basses
Larry Dersch : drums

“I think of Trinary System as my third, and last, really good rock band.” – Roger C. Miller 

1969, Sproton Layer
1979, Mission of Burma
2012, Trinary System

Trinary System 'Monkeys (On Your Back)' from "The Hard Machine"

You can buy this album here:

https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/100-guitares-sur-un-bateau-ivre-100-guitars-on-a-drunken-boat

and to see a bit more of what this is about, this video works nicely!

https://youtu.be/Oo3My4YdDXM?si=e9IrQXQj5qI-ed7G

Gilles Laval 'Roches' from "100 Guitares sur un Bateau Ivre [100 Guitars on a Drunken Boat]

Thinking Plague-In This Life (25th anniversary remaster) $15.00
"Perhaps the finest attempt so far by an American band to add to the pantheon of classic Rock In Opposition records...Mike Johnson's compositions are astonishing and - the clincher - beautiful, and Susanne Lewis' vocals are ...eerily enigmatic..."
– New Sonic Architecture

"Every now and then a landmark group emerges. Thinking Plague in my opinion belongs in that category."
– Chris Cutler

Thinking Plague has been releasing impossible to categorize albums to a devoted fan-base for over 30 years.

In This Life, originally released in 1989, was the group's 3rd album and their first CD release after two previous albums that flew under the radar of most listeners.

Originally released by the ReR label, this was the first album to really bring this superb US band to a wider audience. It was their last to feature singer Susanne Lewis, who lends a convincing  air to the menace of some of the lyrics. It is also their last album to feature Bob Drake as a full member of the band.

Just over twenty five years have passed since I first heard this album upon its release, but what I originally wrote about it still rings quite true, even if I didn't anticipate that the band would still be a vital force two and a half decades later: 'Combine the sound of the 5uu's with the Art Bears, add a (non Dagmar like) female singer & woodwinds, & you come up with this unique U.S. slant on the European art rock song sound. What a great album; one of 1989's best releases!'

It comes back into print now for the first time in years. The two 'bonus tracks', which were taken from their first two albums and can be found in superior form on Early Plague Years have been removed and this presents the album as the band originally planned it. The CD is now shorter, but much more focused this way and a more coherent, single work. It has been newly remastered  by Mark Fuller from the original stereo mixdown master, as overseen by the band. 

Thinking Plague, "Lycanthrope" from 'In This Life' (Cuneiform Records)

Easily buy this album here: 
https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-gardens-of-loss

Mike Johnson – guitars, lap steels, fiddle, fretless banjo, sampler-synthesizer programming and "pencil guitars" (7)
Simon Steensland – bass (except 7)
Morgan Ågren – drums and percussion (3–6)
Kimara Sajn – drums and percussion (1, 2, 8)
Jeremy Kurn – piano
Elaine diFalco – vocals
Dave Willey – bass, drums (7)
Bill Pohl – guitars (8)
Elise Roy – flutes
Caitlin Hilzer – oboe, English horn
Nuno Mourão – bassoons (3)
Mark Harris – clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone
Shane Endsley – trumpets
Jon Stubbs – trombones
Oene van Geel – violins, "concertmaster"
Pablo Rodriguez – violins
George Dumitriu – violas
Pau Sola Masafrets – cellos
César Puente Sandoval – double basses

Mike Johnson 'The Lords Of Creation'' from "The Gardens Of Loss"

sales information will be here soon!

Olivier TeJeDOR: Keyboards
Michael ANSeLMI: Drums
Gregory TeJeDOR: Bass
Matthieu SaSSLeR: Guitar
Julien WACK: Sax, Flute, Guitar

NeBeLNeST 'Pillars Of Birth' from "Saalfelden 2007"

Sales information will be here soon

Herb Robertson – trumpet 
Ellery Eskelin – tenor saxophone 
Denman Maroney – composition and sampled hyperpiano 
Mark Dresser – bass 
 Phil Haynes – drums 
Recorded 4/11/1995 live in concert at the Knitting Factory, New York NY

Denman Maroney 'Mean Times 1' from "Mean Times" [Cuneiform Records]

Sales Information will be here soon!

Nathan Moore : electric guitar (right)
Eddie Prevost : drums
Ray Russell : electric guitar (left)

Recorded at The Crypt Studio, London, April 24, 2025

Moore / Prevost / Russell 'Raise' from "Stacked" [Cuneiform Records]

Sales information will be here soon: 

Michael Bierylo : guitar, modular synthesizer, loops
Ken Field : alto & sopranino saxophones, concert & alto flutes, percussion, loops
Roger Miller : guitar, Rogue lap-steel guitars,electric piano, piano, prepared piano, loops
Rick Scott : synthesizers, loops

b.mez 'Ledge' from "Under Circuitous Skies" [Cuneiform Records

Sales information will be here soon

Frédéric L'Epée : guitars

Frédéric L'Epée 'Festina Lente' from "Contre Courant" [Cuneiform Records]

“Ergo's music is also rooted in jazz...fused with electronica and a distinct avant-garde feel. ...quite beautiful and moving...a bit like Sigur Ros meeting Sun Ra uptown.”
– Terrascope

“This is music that evolves slowly, almost imperceptibly; yet for all its freedom, there's no shortage of structure...Sroka takes a different approach to composition, one where improvisation and structure work hand-in-hand, each feeding the other.”
– All About Jazz

As subtle as tomorrow
That never came,
A warrant, a conviction,
Yet but a name.
--Emily Dickinson

With his embrace of open space and strategic use of silence, trombonist, composer, and sonic architect Brett Sroka has honed an inviting improvisation-laced sound in his trio Ergo, an electro-acoustic group approach that often reveals astonishing, strangely beautiful and unexpected realms. What’s not surprising about Ergo is discovering Sroka’s affinity for Emily Dickinson, the poet whose radical concision and visionary deployment of silence is unmatched in the English language. Featuring drummer Shawn Baltazor and Sam Harris on piano, prepared piano and Fender Rhodes, As subtle as tomorrow captures the latest evolution of Sroka’s singular vision and is based on a brief and typically cryptic Dickinson verse.
 
A seven-piece suite in which overlapping melodies, motifs and improvisations organically evolve into and out of the music’s electronic elements, As subtle as tomorrow takes its name from a Dickinson poem that can be reconstructed from the fragments and phrases that Sroka borrowed as tune titles. Evocative and mysterious, playful and spiritually charged as a Zen koan, the music is inspired by the stark intensity and hymn-like clarity with which Dickinson considers and transcends thoughts of time and destiny.
 
Steeped in jazz and inspired by artists from Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Terry Riley to Sigur Ros and Aphex Twin, Sroka infuses Ergo’s music with an improvisational ethos. Every acoustic and electronic sound takes place in real time, created as the trio plays together. The experience of performing the music in concert deeply informed the suite’s development, and the music unfolds with its own interior logic.
 
In something of a “chicken and egg” approach, Sroka composed the themes on paper in conjunction with designing a Max/MSP software instrument to sample and process them. Under Sroka’s direction the trio is devoted to exploring the push and pull between structure and freedom, density and spaciousness, and electronic and acoustic timbres.
 
One can see Ergo’s transparent sound as a conscious reaction to the prevalence of frenetic, sonically dense music being created by some of Sroka’s contemporaries. “There’s something that appeals to me about space and silence and attractive melodies,” he says. “I’m interested in ambient music, which led to Arvo Pärt and John Cage and patient listening music that incorporates a lot of silence.”

Ergo, "That never came" from 'As subtle as tomorrow' (out 2/5/2016 on Cuneiform Records)

A junction is the point at which several things converge. For the visionary and award-winning jazz guitarist Rez Abbasi, his new band Junction weaves together musical currents he’s spent his career navigating. Abbasi has been at the center of some of the most enthralling and culturally expansive music of the past two decades, and his Cuneiform debut Behind the Vibration introduces a bracing new body of music, a sinewy 21st century approach to jazz-rock inspired by his far-flung influences. 

“Everything I do musically is stimulated by call and response,” Abbasi says. “I did the Acoustic Quartet project of covers from the ‘70s jazz-rock period and that impacted me to want to do an electric project of all originals. The new album reflects a continuum of what I’ve been doing all along – finding fresh orchestrations to present my music through. In some ways this project connects me more directly back to my first love, the energy that comes out of rock music. I wrote new tunes for this band and it was time for all these musical worlds to collide.”

Junction, the electric project that Abbasi formed to bring his original tunes to life, features Mark Shim on tenor saxophone and the electronic MIDI Wind Controller, Ben Stivers on keyboards, B-3 organ and Rhodes, and drummer Kenny Grohowski. The band is a supremely maleable ensemble that has forged a poised and texturally accute group approach. While exploring a vivid palette of electronic sounds and aggressive grooves, Junction maintains the dynamics, precise calibration, and interactive imperative of an inspired jazz ‘acoustic’ combo.

Sonically surprising, the album opens with “Holy Butter,” a piece inspired by a collaboration with classical South Indian dancers. In the first of many sonic feints, what sounds like a deeply funky bass solo is actually Shim getting down with his MIDI Wind Controller. Indeed, not having a defined bass player is a significant element of Junction, opening up the band’s sound as Stivers and Shim alternate low end responsibilities. 

Inspired by the Arab Spring, “Groundswell” is a slowly ascending tune that, while originally written for another ensemble, comes home in Junction, with Stivers on B-3—“the first electric keyboard instrument,” Abbasi notes—and a searing Abbasi solo followed by Shim’s oragami-angular tenor.  If that piece evokes the mounting of external pressure, “Uncommon Sense” suggests a wending internal spiritual journey with a hypnautically sinuous opening guitar line. As Abbasi puts it, “The title refers to a ‘sense’ that’s beyond our five and one that’s more difficult to connect to due to the clutter in our minds.” Before long, the becalmed lyricism gives way to a frantic search powered by Grohowski’s exceptionally deft trap work. 

A sparsely decorated noir scene that emerges and departs without pausing for a solo, “And I You” is a brief, cinematic mood piece that arrives mid-album like a shimmering urban oasis. “Self-Brewing” is one of the album’s most fusion-y pieces, with a steeplechase theme introduced by Abbasi and Shim on Midi Wind Controller. The album closes with “Matter Falls,” a mid-tempo anthem that hints at South Asian cadences. Both grand and invitingly intimate, it’s a crunching tune that points to further explorations. Clearly, Junction is just one stop on a spectacularly rich and incident-filled sojourn. 

With this newest album, Behind the Vibration, realized via his new electric Junction, Abbasi takes another bold step, embracing his rock ‘n’ roll roots with a bear hug that encompasses post-bop, South Asian traditions, and state of the art sonics. “More than anything that I’ve ever recorded, this album is the convergence of everything I’m interested in,” he says. “The musicians I’ve chosen are versatile enough to pull it off. It’s not only all of the influences that have come up to this point, it’s also the process of merging it with the technology of today. This is music that could’ve only happened now.” 

Rez Abbasi & Junction, "Self-Brewing" from 'Behind the Vibration' (out May 20 on Cuneiform Records)

I.P.A., "Sir William" from 'I Just Did Say Something' (out June 24 on Cuneiform Records)

Deus Ex Machina, "Figli" from 'Devoto' (out June 24 on Cuneiform Records)

The Claudia Quintet, "JFK Beagle" from 'Super Petite' (out June 24 on Cuneiform Records)

Bent Knee, "Leak Water" from 'Say So' (out May 20 on Cuneiform Records)

Thumbscrew (M. Formanek, T. Fujiwara, M. Halvorson), "Sampsonian Rhythms" from 'Convallaria'

Richard Pinhas / Barry Cleveland  [Featuring: Michael Manring & Celso Alberti]

Richard Pinhas / Barry Cleveland - Zen/Unzen [Edit] from Mu (out Sept. 2016 on Cuneiform Records)

Richard Pinhas / Tatsuya Yoshida / Merzbow - "TVJ 33 (Core Track)" [Edit] from 'Process and Reality' (out September 2016 on Cuneiform Records)

Richard Pinhas / Tatsuya Yoshida / Merzbow - "TVJ 33 (Core Track)" [Edit] from 'Process and Reality'

"Smith uses his magisterial instrumental voice, his inspirational leadership and his command of classical, jazz and blues forms to remind us of what has gone down and what's still happening."
– DownBeat’s 80 Coolest Things in Jazz Today

"A trumpeter and composer of penetrating insight."
– Nate Chinen, The New York Times 

Wadada Leo Smith – trumpet, director of the ensemble
Anthony Davis – piano
Ashley Walters – cello
John Lindberg – bass 
Pheeroan akLaff – drums 

With America’s National Parks, visionary composer and Wadada Leo Smith offers his latest epic collection, a suite inspired by the scenic splendor, historic legacy, and political controversies of the country’s public landscapes. Writing for his newly expanded Golden Quintet, Smith crafts six extended works that explore, confront and question the preserved natural resources that are considered the most hallowed ground in the U.S. – and some that should be.

America’s National Parks was released shortly before Smith’s 75th birthday in December, arriving, coincidentally, in the midst of celebrations for the centennial of the National Park Service, which was created by an act of Congress on August 25, 1916. The spark for the project, however, came from two places: Smith’s own research into the National Park system, beginning with Yellowstone, the world’s first national park; and Ken Burns’ 12-hour documentary series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.
trumpeter six-movement"The idea that Ken Burns explored in that documentary was that the grandeur of nature was like a religion or a cathedral," Smith says. "I reject that image because the natural phenomenon in creation, just like man and stars and light and water, is all one thing, just a diffusion of energy. My focus is on the spiritual and psychological dimensions of the idea of setting aside reserves for common property of the American citizens." 

His 28-page score for America’s National Parks was penned for his Golden Quintet, a fresh reconfiguration of the quartet that’s been a keystone of his expression for the last 16 years. Pianist Anthony Davis, bassist John Lindberg and drummer Pheeroan akLaff are joined by cellist Ashley Walters, affording the composer and bandleader new melodic and coloristic possibilities. "The cello as a lead voice with the trumpet is magnificent," Smith says, "but when you look at the possibilities for melodic formation with the trumpet, the cello, the piano and the bass, that’s paradise for a composer and for a performer." 

While these preserved landscapes offer the inspiration of powerful natural beauty, Smith’s always open-minded view of the world leads him to find that same inspiration wherever he is. "Every concrete house is from nature," he says. "Every plastic airplane that flies 300 people across the ocean comes out of nature. Every air conditioner conditions a natural piece of air. I think that the human being is constantly enfolded in organic nature and constructed nature, so I’m constantly inspired, inside the house or outside the house."

Wadada Leo Smith, "New Orleans" [Excerpt] from 'America's National Parks' (out 10.14.2016)

"São Paulo Underground's work - all of Mazurek's work, really - draws from multiple traditions, each of them already porous and absorbent, and combines ideas from each into something utterly new, while keeping it welcoming to almost any curious listener." 
– The Wire 

"Mixing the opaque with the diffused and blurring the lines between electric and acoustic, Rob Mazurek’s wide ambition continues to race toward the outer limits of what is possible in music." 
– Something Else 

São Paulo Underground: 
Rob Mazurek – cornet, Mellotron, modular synthesizer, Moog Paraphonic, OP-1, percussion and voice 
Mauricio Takara – drums, cavaquinho, electronics, Moog Werkstatt, percussion and voice 
Guilherme Granado – keyboards, synthesizers, sampler, percussion and voice 
Thomas Rohrer – rabeca, flutes, soprano saxophone, electronics, percussion and voice 

With their breathtaking fifth album Cantos Invisíveis, the multi- national, multi-ethnic, multi-everything São Paulo Underground sounds more confident and intrepid than ever, with a glorious program of music evoking lost haunts, enduring love, and the sheer delirious joy of making music together. 

In many ways the music on Cantos Invisíveis is a celebration of camaraderie and the spaces that allow love and friendship to unfurl. Alchemical aural conspirators for some 10 years, the group has developed its own approach to structure, with slippery forms, unabashedly beautiful melodies and lapidary textures laced with disquieting eletronica beats and stutterstepping improvisation. Rather than evoke a particular time and place, the music inhabits multiple planes simultaneously as "a projection of sound that celebrates as well as mourns past, present and future times," Mazurek says. "The vocal quality of this particular music shouts and hollers for love and compassion, the joy and sorrows of life. It’s a street parade for everybody." 

The experience of listening to Cantos Invisíveis often feels like stepping through the fourth wall, as if you’re in the room with the guys, watching the instrumental conversations unfold in real time. The production enhances the intimacy, creating space to enter the music rather than building a protective shell. It’s a communion that can only develop "as a result of a lot of beautiful time spent together working on music and ideas and then travelling together playing throughout the world," Takara says. "I think there ́s a certain atmosphere that only living and spending time together bring, and the record captures that beautifully. 

These singular players create music unlike any other ensemble in São Paulo Underground, which expands into realms seen and unseen on Cantos Invisíveis. The title translates from Portuguese as "invisible corners" or "invisible songs" or "disappearing corners or songs." Thismusic evokes the elusive nature of these songs, "the way we make our music, always masking it in some kind of way, a disappearing through layering and sound manipulation," Mazurek says. "The songs kind of disappear in a way like a cloud of pink in the sky. We create atmospheres that cause form and melody to disappear, and to reappear", so that savvy sound explorers can join São Paulo Underground on an unforgettable journey.

Cantos Invisíveis

São Paulo Underground, "Olhaluai" from 'Cantos Invisíveis' (out 10.14.1016 on Cuneiform Records)

Thinking Plague, "The Echoes Of Their Cries" from 'Hoping Against Hope' (out 2/10/2017 on Cuneiform Records)

Clouds scud across a storm-wracked sky, but while briefly exposing rare shards of blue, most often, blacker, gloomier grays lurk behind the mists. 

Sometimes a work of art enables us to articulate our thoughts and feelings in times of upheaval and chaos. In an era when the world has seemingly come off its hinges, an album like Hoping Against Hope offers listeners the consolation that they are not alone. But more than that, this intellectually complex work offers tools to help us make sense, affectively at least, of the whole sorry mess. 

Thinking Plague is a storied band, whose thirty-five year history has seen it cleave consistently to the extreme limits of what is possible to do within rock music. Much of the music it released has owed more to traditions external to rock, such as folk, chamber music, and particularly, the avant-garde tradition of twentieth-century classical music. 

Thinking Plague are often cited as the leading light of the American arm of the ‘Rock In Opposition’ movement, genre-defying and, above all, unique. 

The arrangements we hear on Hoping Against Hope are those we will hear live. Even when singer Elaine di Falco’s accordion is written and recorded in multiple voices, the parts are realizable by a single instrument. 

Leader and composer Mike Johnson and newest member Bill Pohl’s tightly scored twin guitars are panned out wide enough for the listener to balance the pursuit of an individual voice against the ensemble texture, which is the creative focus, a carefully crafted polyphony served by each instrumental voice. Pohl’s addition brings a second electric guitar to the texture for the first time, enabling more sinuous scoring, rather than making the sound more ‘rock’. 

There is a familiar vocabulary in play, a harmonic palette and a phraseology that has evolved considerably over the band’s lifespan without extreme points of rupture, despite major changes and sometimes long gaps between releases; this is clearly the same band that we heard in the 1980s, but Johnson is writing from a creative position that is fruitfully removed from that he occupied even four years ago. As demanding as this music may be, it is made to sound easy, and more importantly, beautiful.

Buy now

Thinking Plague, "The Echoes Of Their Cries" from 'Hoping Against Hope' (Cuneiform Records)

The Microscopic Septet, 'Don’t Mind If I Do' from "Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down to Me: The Micros Play the Blues" (out 2/10/2017 on Cuneiform Records)

It takes an unusual band to make news out of the blues, and The Microscopic Septet deliver a gripping investigation of the form on Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down to Me: The Micros Play the Blues, which continues the band’s brilliant resurgence. 

Since storming back into action in 2006 after a 14-year hiatus, the radically old-school combo has continued to evolve and extend its reputation. The new album builds on the band’s longstanding love of that most basic and profound musical form, bringing the same reverently irreverent and insistently playful approach to the blues that has marked the Micros music from the beginning. The blues provide another avenue for the band to explore jazz history while forging a sound quite unlike any other ensemble. 

Simultaneously embracing the past and the future makes perfect sense when you consider the fraught time and place that gave birth to the Microscopic Septet. In the early 1980s the New York jazz scene was divided, sometimes bitterly, between the emergence of the ‘new traditionalists’ as typified by Wynton Marsalis and the experimentation and stylistic mash-ups of the emerging downtown players. Rejecting allegiance to any particular camp or faction, the Micros forged their own path with an ethos succinctly summed up by co-leader Phillip Johnston: “Break all the rules and respect all the saints.” 

Embracing jazz’s populist legacy, the Micros brought Uptown jazz back Downtown, where they made a compelling case that swing could look forward as well as backward. The band adopted a name that playfully alluded to its orchestral palette. As Johnston explained at the time, “The instrumentation is enough to give us a big range of colors and work compositionally in an expansive way.” 

The band is built upon the felicitous partnership of Johnston and Joel Forrester, who met in the early 70s and bonded over shared musical aesthetics, humor, and similarly skewed worldviews. Eager to break away from the jazz straightjacket of head-solo-head formats, they honed extended, lapidary jazz compositions that segued gracefully between different themes in a single piece, hearkening forward to forms employed by Sun Ra, Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton. The music drew on the entire history of jazz, as well as polkas, tangos, antic cartoon themes, klezmer, and new wave rock. No matter how eclectic their influences, the Micros always hewed to the band’s prime directive. “It’s gotta swing, whether its Latin or R&B or straight-ahead blowing,” Johnston says. “That’s the foundation of what we do.”

Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down to Me: The Micros Play the Blues

Buy Now

The Microscopic Septet, 'Don’t Mind If I Do' from "Been Up So Long It Looks Like Down to Me"

The Ed Palermo Big Band is making America un-great again with a brilliant blast of Anglophilia, transforming British rock treasures into wildly inventive jazz vehicles on the double album 
The Great Un-American Songbook Volumes 1 & 2.

From the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jeff Beck to King Crimson, Traffic, and Jethro Tull, Palermo’s talent-laden ensemble storms the British Invasion and plants the American flag (upside down).

Ed Palermo Big Band, "The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys" (Traffic), 'The Great Un-American Songbook'

Celebrating 20 Years as Sonic and Spiritual Brothers, 
Chicago Underground Duo-mates Rob Mazurek & Chad Taylor
Team with British Improvisers Alexander Hawkins and John Edwards to Form 
Chicago / London Underground
to Record an Exploratory, Boundlessly Inventive Cry of Protest:
the Album 'A Night Walking Through Mirrors'

Chicago / London Underground, "Boss Redux" (excerpt) from 'A Night Walking Through Mirrors'

Jeff Libersher guitar, trumpet, vocals, keyboards
Dante Kester bass, keyboards
Thymme Jones drums, vocals, piano, trumpet, keyboards, acoustic and electric guitars, moog, noise
Carmen Armillas vocals
Mike Hagedorn trombone
Teria Gartelos vocals
Sacha Mullin vocals
Cory Bengtsen baritone sax
Beth Yates flute
Julie Pomerleau violin
Joan Morrone french horn
Ross Feller tenor sax
Rob Pleshar tuba
Todd Fackler tuba

"After three decades, many long-running acts have long run out of ideas. Cheer-Accident...sounds like a band that’s barely dug into its...ingenuity and daring." – Something Else!

Bands, like the human beings that comprise them, are mortal. Against all the odds, in the face of an unstable record industry that never embraced their restless experimentation, Chicago avant-rock pioneers CHEER-ACCIDENT have survived to release their 18th album, Putting Off Death. More than 30 years after first joining forces, fellow eclecticists Thymme Jones and Jeff Libersher have faced down the inevitable and returned with a new set of songs that’s as unpredictable, exploratory and viscerally compelling as anything they’ve released over the course of their erratically evolving career. The music is action packed and filled to the brim with living, breathing humanity. The band’s continuing hunger bleeds through in the music’s immediacy. As Jones says, "There's still something to prove."

The band’s third release for Cuneiform follows in the elusive, meandering trajectory of their earlier work, which is always instantly identifiable if never quite definable. They’ve managed to conjure a unique collage of intricate prog, lush pop and experimental noise, drawing on hugely disparate influences without ever settling on a sound that could be definitively traced to any of them in isolation. Meaning that they always did and continue to, sound like no one but themselves.

Following their previous release, No Ifs, Ands or Dogs, after a gap of six years, Putting Off Death is on the one hand simply an assertion that "We’re still here" from a band that never expected to be. CHEER-ACCIDENT continues to make vital, adventurous music after three decades despite - or maybe because of? - a revolving cast of collaborators (more than a dozen musicians are featured), and a notoriety in uneasy balance with an accompanying obscurity.
In the unusually long span since the band’s last release, the music industry has undergone seismic changes, which led CHEER-ACCIDENT to question whether traditional albums were still the ideal platform for their music. In the meantime, they continued to write music until the seven songs that make up Putting Off Death revealed their thematic and musical coherence and virtually demanded to become an album.

Listening to the singular blend of invention and accessibility, challenge and chemistry throughout the new album, another meaning for Putting Off Death emerges. Complacency can be its own kind of death, one that CHEER-ACCIDENT defiantly laughs in the face of. Jones and Libersher have adhered to the forward-thinking definition of the term "progressive" while subverting and diverting from the genre with cleverness and abandon.

"Back when [progressive rock] first excited me," Jones says, "there were a lot of questions being asked, and I like music that asks questions rather than just feeding people predigested styles like it was created in a lab. Even if something is musically complex, I need there to be a lot of humanity in it."

As Jones suggested, these are songs that ask questions, ones that can only be answered in the mindspace of the receiver. Putting Off Death, he says, is "not a complete thought. It's a question awaiting an answer. It requires an audience with which to interface. Others' ears and minds are required to complete the story."

Putting Off Death

CHEER-ACCIDENT, "Immanence" from 'Putting Off Death' (Cuneiform Records)

"With a career going back over 30 years, French-Canadian band Miriodor have carved out an instantly recognizable sound that straddles avant rock and jazz...Miriodor have a wonderful sense of melody to counter their more experimental tendencies, and [the band] pulls off the hard to achieve feat of being both quite odd and very accessible at the same time." 
– Astounded By Sound!

"Metaphorically, we could say that Miriodor is a planet, with aliens communicating in their mysterious ways with planet Earth," says Miriodor's keyboardist, Pascal Globensky. In that sense, the long-lived Montreal band's ninth album, entitled Signal 9, could simply be considered the ninth set of musical messages from that exotic heavenly body.

The Miriodor discography has been building strength upon strength with each successive album. The band combines jazz, classical, rock, and international influences for an arresting, idiosyncratic sound that eludes description but remains immediately identifiable as Mirodor.

Picking up where the most recent coded message from planet Miriodor, 2013's Cobra Fakir, left off, Signal 9 arrives like an invitation to an otherworldly voyage. Each track marks another twist and turn in a journey across strange, captivating landscapes populated by creatures, crafts, and constructions whose like has never been glimpsed outside the band's idiosyncratic ecosystem.

Globensky, drummer Rémi Leclerc, and guitarist Bernard Falaise have expanded Miriodor to a quartet with the addition of bassist Nicolas Lessard as a full-time member. Accordingly, the band works like a one eight-handed, four-brained organism here, operating more organically and collectively than ever.

And while Miriodor often forges some of their heaviest sounds to date over the course of Signal 9, the album is also loaded with off-the-wall humor and some beautiful, contemplative melodic moments. The combination makes for some crafty contrasts, frequently flipping back and forth drastically from one mood to another multiple times within a single composition for a jarring-but-thrilling effect.

Once you return to your everyday life after emerging from the alternative universe of Signal 9, the whole album seems like some kind of fever dream you've just emerged from. But the big difference is that it's a dream you're eager to leap right back into again.

Bernard Falaise guitars, keyboards, turntable
Pascal Globensky keyboards, synths, piano
Rémi Leclerc drums, percussion, electronics
Nicolas Lessard bass, double bass, keyboards

Signal 9

Miriodor, "Venin" from 'Signal 9' (Cuneiform Records)

THE GREAT HARRY HILLMAN GLEEFULLY HURDLE 
THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN JAZZ, ROCK, & IMPROV 
FOR A WINNING PERFORMANCE IN TILT

Edit Peptide

The Great Harry Hillman, "The New Fragrance" from 'Tilt' (Cuneiform Records)

Bubblemath, "The Sensual Con" from 'Edit Peptide' (out May 26, 2017 on Cuneiform Records)

Fifteen Years in the Making, Minnesota Eclectic Prog / Avant-Pop / Technical Metal Quintet BUBBLEMATH’s Sophomore Sequence, Edit Peptide, 
Proves a Worthwhile Wait with its Frankenstein’s Monster-Formula of Lively Textures, Wacky and Virtuosic Musicianship, Hypnotically Robust Vocals, and Charmingly Astute Attitudes.

Bubblemath, "The Sensual Con" from 'Edit Peptide' (Cuneiform Records)

Andi Schnellmann - electric bass
Manuel Troller - electric guitars
David Meier - drums and percussion

SCHNELLERTOLLERMEIER "209 Aphelion" from "5" (Cuneiform Records)

Cuneiform Records is an independent record label releasing adventurous, boundary-bursting music by artists from around the world. Founded in 1984.

Cuneiform Records

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