man. this is insanely good. fantastic, hynotic. 

Cuneiform Records: The Albums of 2016

THAT :: CONCERT CHAMPÊTRE
Unpopular Classics (Poulenc)
Live at QUEERING SOUND, 06 June 2021
Rhizome DC, Washington DC USA

THAT :: JS Adams + Christopher Mathews-Larsen
RECORDING :: Steve Sanford
MIX :: JS ADAMS

THAT :: CONCERT CHAMPÊTRE :: LIVE

Am7 CHORDS! MOTORIK BEATS! CICADAS! BUZZSAWS! KAZOOS!

LIVE @ QUEERING SOUND 2021 :: 13 JUNE 2021 :: RHIZOME DC :: WDC

CK BARLOW :: SAMPLER / ELECTRONICS
CHRISTOPHER MATHEWS-LARSEN :: GUITAR / DRUM PROGRAMMING / AZTEC DEATH WHISTLE
JS ADAMS :: PROCESSING + EFFECTS / FIELD RECORDINGS / LOOPS / AZTEC DEATH WHISTLE / AUDIO PLAYBACK
JEFF BARSKY :: GUITAR
JOSH MAXWELL :: BASS
+
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION :: KAZOOS
AUDIENCE COORDINATOR :: CHRIS VIDELL

RECORDING :: STEVE SANDERS

ONE CHORD PONIES :: A LIFE OF INDETERMINATE REWARD

DECONSTRUCTION/RE-ADAPTATION OF LA VOIX HUMAINE (THE HUMAN VOICE), AN OPERA BY FRANCIS POULENC BASED ON THE ONE-ACT PLAY BY JEAN COCTEAU. HELLO? HELLO!

LIVE @ QUEERING SOUND 2021 :: 15 JUNE 2021 :: RHIZOME DC :: WDC

[ live performers ] 
CK BARLOW :: SAMPLER / ELECTRONICS
CHRISTOPHER MATHEWS-LARSEN :: GUITAR
JS ADAMS :: PROCESSING + EFFECTS / FIELD RECORDINGS + LOOPS / SAMPLES / CALIFONE + PREPARED VINYL / AUDIO PLAYBACK
JEFF BARSKY :: GUITAR
JOSH MAXWELL :: BASS

[ digital contributitors ]
BLEEDINGBLACKWOOD . {AN} EEL . JASSIE RIOS . ROSHI NASEHI . SARAH O’HALLORAN . KATIE MACYSHYN 

RECORDING :: STEVE SANDERS
MIX :: JS ADAMS

LA VOIX HUMAINE :: 13 JUNE 2021 :: LIVE

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)

From our upcoming release "Somnambulist" coming out on Cuneiform records January 20th! Preorder is available now here: https://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/somnambulist

The Kandinsky Effect  - Somnambulist

X (Part 1)

If creating an unmistakable group sound is the ultimate goal of a jazz ensemble, the Spanish trio Naima is well on its way to securing a spot as one of the leading combos on the contemporary European scene. Featuring Enrique Ruiz on piano and synths, Luis Torregrosa on drums, and Rafael Ramos Sania on double bass, the Valencia-based electro-acoustic band has honed a dramatic, darkly romantic sound marked by astringent textures, arresting melodies, and tightly coiled rhythms. 

While the group has undergone several changes since coming together a decade ago, Naima has maintained the founding core of Ruiz and Torregrosa, who write and arrange the majority of the material together. Avoiding the jazz trio trope of a theme followed by a string of solos, they’ve concentrated on a group approach that often erases distinctions between soloist and accompanist. The ebb and flow of energy and finely calibrated inner dynamics, as well as their concern with melody and song sometimes brings to mind the trios of Vijay Iyer and Brad Mehldau and The Bad Plus, but in the hands of Naima, the results reach very different emotional terrain.

The artful use of electronic effects and synthesizer adds an unusual element to the trio’s sound, which flows from a collective ethos that "is one of the key factors of Naima’s music," says Ruiz. "It is what gives the band its character and also exerts influence while we’re writing new material. We use synthesizers as an extra instrument, amplifying our range of colors and intensities."

The origins for Naima date back to a fateful encounter between Ruiz and Torregrosa as teenagers. "We hit it off from the very start because he was wearing a t-shirt of [The Pixies] Surfer Rosa," says Ruiz. "But it wasn’t until nearly 10 years later when we bumped into each other again at a jazz concert that we decided to start up a group together." 

They had a clear sense of musical mission from the beginning, writing original compositions and developing striking arrangements of songs by contemporary non-jazz artists like Depeche Mode, Elliott Smith, the Pixies and The Smiths. "We were totally sure about what we were doing and where we were going," Ruiz recalls. "We wanted to set up a jazz band which would have a sound and some song material closer to the music from groups of the last 30 years, which we grew up with." Pursuant to that goal, Bye features two revelatory 'covers, Animal Chin, as performed by Jaga Jazzist and Smith's Can't Make A Sound.
A quartet in its first incarnation with tenor saxophone, releasing their first album in 2006, the group debuted sans saxophone in 2012. Inspired by other powerhouse triumvirates, Naima has also absorbed concepts from combos like disparate plugged in bands such as Tortoise, Jaga Jazzist, Cinematic Orchestra, and Christian Scott’s Stretch Music.

In many ways finding Rafael Ramos Sania was key to the band’s evolution, captured on Bye. "We were very lucky to meet him as its really difficult to find a musician who can fit into a group with clear ideas about how they should sound," Torregrosa says. "He was able to adapt wonderfully well and also contribute new ideas. With him we’re now a compact unit and this disc is living proof of that." With his big sound, elastic sense of time, and facility with electronics, he has contributed greatly to Naima’s riveting sound. 

Naima, "Bye" from 'Bye' (out 1/22/2016 on Cuneiform Records)

Gyp The Blood

“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)

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

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

Nice Day for a Lynching-Kenneth Patchen

The bloodhounds look like sad old judges
In a strange court. They point their noses
At the Negro jerking in their noose;
His feet spread crowlike above these
Honorable men who laugh as he chokes.

I don’t know this black man.
I don’t know these white men.

But I know that one of my hands
Is black, and one white. I know that
One part of me is being strangled, 
While another part horribly laughs.

Until it changes, 
I shall be forever killing; and be killed.

Recorded by The Claudia Quintet +1 with Special Guest-Kurt Elling


The Bloodhounds

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

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

"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)

Recorded at Avatar Studios NYC May 2012 (Katherine Miller)
Mastered at Pinch Recording NYC May 2020 (E. Scott Lindner)

Personnel:
Matt Steckler - alto/soprano sax, flute
Curtis Hasselbring - trombone
Todd Neufeld - guitars
Dave Ambrosio - bass
Satoshi Takeishi - drums & percussion

01 Night Cravings - Master A 44

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

Naima, "Bye" from 'Bye' (out 1/22/2016 on Cuneiform Records)

Cuneiform Records

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