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Evan Parker & Joe McPhee - They Both Could Fly

From Creative Sources CS 256: Hot Four - Eye of the Moose

Andreas Backer - voice
David Stackenäs - guitar
Joe Williamson - double bass
Ståle Liavik Solberg - drums & percussion

Digital download available from www.subradar.no

Hot Four - Antler Of The Moose (From Eye of the Moose - 2014)

Sten Sandell & Paal Nilssen-Love - Jacana

"London has long had a pedigree of crossbreeding improv's various styles and generations, but few have been as successful as this" - Richard Pinnell, The Wire

~~~

In his review of Exta (Fataka 7), the critic Brian Olewnick commented that “there's a tendency on the part of [John Tilbury's] younger companions to defer a bit to him”, adding that, in his view, this was not “necessarily a bad strategy”. In this encounter, their first as a trio, John Edwards and Mark Sanders do not defer to Tilbury at all, and it proves to be perhaps the best strategy of all. 

This is a vigorous music of equals, the democratic clamour of three distinct personalities committed to occupying a common space and working together to create something collective without erasing their differences in the process. There's tension, even friction, at times between Edwards and Sanders' quickness and Tilbury's more measured approach, but it's a productive tension and one that enables all three to explore areas of their playing that perhaps aren't always foregrounded: Edwards' ability to wait and patiently twist long resonant notes out of near nothingness; Sanders' sense of space and sharp delicacy with small sounds; and Tilbury's thunderous density and energetic attack. 

It's a startling performance and one that, like all great improvisation, exceeds, and perhaps even upsets, expectations.

~~~

1. Part I - 38:11
2. Part II - 29:26

John Edwards - double bass
Mark Sanders - drums and percussion
John Tilbury - bird calls, piano and tape

Recorded by Katherine Arnold at Cafe Oto on 17 June 2013 
Mixed and mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray’s Inn Road 
Title from Martha Rosler, Culture Class (Sternberg Press, 2013) 
Music by John Edwards, Mark Sanders and John Tilbury (PRS)
Produced by Trevor Brent

~~~

http://recordings.fataka.net/products/529458-a-field-perpetually-at-the-edge-of-disorder-john-edwards-mark-sanders-john-tilbury-fataka-9

John Edwards, Mark Sanders, John Tilbury - A field perpetually at the edge of disorder (Fataka 9)

Sidsel Endresen & Stian Westerhus - Solemn Vista

Johan Lindvall - synth, Jan Martin Gismervik - drums, Adrian Fiskum Myhr - electric bass

Lindvall/Myhr/Gismervik

track from forthcoming LP on Moserobie, release in 2016

Martha

this is how lindvall/myhr/gismervik sounds

johnny chang - violin
mike majkowski - double bass
d'incise - recordings 

Illogical Harmonies with d'incise - excerpt) [insub,rec06]

Sebastian Lexer (piano+) and Steve Noble (drums and percussion) first played together in the winter of 2011 and what seemed like an unlikely, even oppositional, pairing quickly proved itself to be an extremely well-matched one. Noble's sharp vertical hits and Lexer's sustained horizontal textures echo, disrupt and enrich each other, producing music full of complex slants and intricate resonances.

Sebastian Lexer & Steve Noble - Muddy Ditch (Fataka 13)

Live in Berlin Jazzfest at Berliner Festpiel - The 6th of Novembre 2016
Recorded by the Radio. 
Eivind Lonning-trumpet
Fidel Fourneyron - trombone
Benjamin Dousteyssier - Ténor saxophone
Antonin-Tri Hoang - ALto Saxophone
Sylvaine Hélary - flute
Sara Schoenbeck - bassoon
Julien Desprez - elec guitare
Eve Risser - Piano, Composition
Fanny Lasfargues - elec-ac basse
Sylvain Darrifourcq - drums, perc

Album de eve risser

Les Deux Versants Se Regardent - Live in Berlin

FIRE! - The Hands

"It's really hard to pin down an exact genre name to pigeonhole the music of the final track under. It is much close to jazz then anything I have heard John Butcher play before, but it isn’t jazz. Melodies are constantly hinted at, but never found. Rhythms keep trying to emerge and yet there isn’t anything here you could consider to be a regular pulse. This is improvised music. It's quite fast, full of firmly placed statements and a constant stream of confident, expressive little musical structures, but its completely improvised. No variations of jazz standards, no soloing. So why does it initially feel so different to much of the other improv I listen to?" - Richard Pinnell, The Watchful Ear

"It opens with scalar, modulating, percussive movements, and brief tangles in the lower register. But what’s more effective is the long, intense passage of ragged, pounding, insistent notes that scale back into a tense, suspended space. Harmonically fulsome and burring, Shipp refuses to lay off the gas for too long and this pushes Butcher into a simply howling phase (and it’s quite rare to hear him do this these days). At times it’s exhilarating, and it makes the more spacious passages that follow even more effective. Butcher’s liquid and animal sounds that emerge from near silence are extremely engaging, but best of all is the intensely complex weave of high velocity lines that close out the piece." - Jason Bivins, Point of Departure

~~~

The first meeting of two masters of improvised music. Concentrated solo pieces from each before an uncompromising duo.

When Matthew Shipp was invited to London's Cafe Oto for a residency in 2010 he immediately asked to play with John Butcher, perhaps not the most obvious choice of collaborator but one that proved inspired. Although they generally work in very different areas of improvised music, both players share an intensity of focus and pugnacious individualism that heightened rather than hindered their ability to work together. This is not a polite meeting in the middle but a genuine synthesis in which both remain resolutely themselves but both are transformed.

The concert was recorded for broadcast on Jazz on 3. For this CD edition, the recording has been meticulously re-mixed by John Butcher and expertly mastered by Rupert Clervaux to bring out the full physical force of the performance.

~~~

1. curling / charred (tenor solo) - 8:51 
2. mud / hiss (soprano solo) - 8:25 
3. fundamental field (piano solo) - 14:51 
4. generative grammar (duo) - 29:14

John Butcher - soprano and tenor saxophones 
Matthew Shipp - piano

Recorded by Sebastian Lexer live at Cafe Oto, London on 14 February 2010 
Concert broadcast on BBC Radio 3's "Jazz on 3", a Somethin' Else production 
Special thanks to producer Peggy Sutton and to Hamish Dunbar at Cafe Oto 
Mixed by John Butcher 
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray's Inn Road 
Artwork by Mark Spelman 
Music by John Butcher (1, 2 & 4) and Matthew Shipp (3 & 4)

Hand-numbered edition of 500 CDs with 350gsm card outer cover and 150gsm paper inner cover with four colour risograph print.

~~~

http://recordings.fataka.net/products/507328-at-oto-john-butcher-matthew-shipp-fataka-2

generative grammar (excerpt) - John Butcher, Matthew Shipp - At Oto (Fataka 2)

From the LP Hellstorm, Mathka, solo alto saxophone + pocket radio; live recording in All Helgona Church, Lund, Sweden, December 2010.

"Sarajevo" - from the LP Hellstorm - man erkannt langsam das Elend dass über uns gekommen ist"

"I can't quite think of anyone else who sounds quite like this: it is in a class of its own." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery

"Thomas runs the gamut of techniques, splashing clusters, weaving contrapuntal lines and building elaborate structures from the inside out. Despite their variety, they share a fundamental quality – they truly sound like spur of the moment creations, not the final draft of ideas mulled over for weeks, if not months on end. Their impact is enhanced by one of the more effectively engineered piano sounds in recent memory, one that puts the piano right in your lap. The value of this is felt immediately, as the first variation is brimming with above-the-staves clusters that are wincingly bright. Conversely, Thomas creates china-rattling thunder when he plunges into the bass register." - Bill Shoemaker, Point of Departure

"Une démonstration de force vraiment créative, intense, profonde et encore organique. Conseillé à tous les amateurs de piano." - Julien Héraud, improv sphere

~~~

A major solo statement, Al-Khwarizmi Variations traverses the history and the physicality of the piano.

Working both inside and outside the instrument's body, at times playing with recognisable musical material, at others going deep into sonic abstraction, Pat Thomas presents a compelling vision of what the piano can do in the 21st century.

Extremes entwine in his playing: solidity and flow; seriousness and laughter; uproar and imperturbability.

~~~

1. Variation 1 - 4:16 
2. Variation 2 - 4:55 
3. Variation 3 - 7:34 
4. Variation 4 - 8:06 
5. Variation 5 - 5:04 
6. Variation 6 - 1:28 
7. Variation 7 - 6:13 
8. Variation 8 - 4:55 
9. Variation 9 - 5:47 
10. Variation 10 - 1:57

Pat Thomas - piano

Recorded by Rick Campion at City University Music Studios on 19 June 2011 
Mixed by Rick Campion 
Mastered by Rupert Clervaux at Gray's Inn Road 
Artwork from a 15th century Mamluk tile, adapted for print by Paul Abbott 
Music by Pat Thomas (PRS)

~~~

http://recordings.fataka.net/products/507982-al-khwarizmi-variations-pat-thomas-fataka-4

Variation 8 - Pat Thomas - Al-Khwarizmi Variations (Fataka 4)

"Understated throughout, the pair fold together softly muted sounds – hissing, breathy escapes of air and their digitally transformed, equally subtle cousins from Dörner, and a masterfully restrained, widely varied palette of soft tones and brief peaking flurries from Sanders. The end result is a slow, naturally fermenting but never boiling-over landscape of beautiful, surprisingly restrained music formed with remarkable understanding." - Richard Pinnell, The Wire

"[Dörner's] melding of air and circuitry is even deeper and more fluid than his radical early work" - Bill Meyer, Chicage Music

"It’s an album that makes its transcendence and beauty obvious enough, but without revealing anything of why this should be so; faced with only the sounds, we have incomplete information about how it came to be, and therefore, like some mysteriously-veined marble obelisk, must accept it for what it is, towering before us. . . . a realm where causality and sound no longer have the comfortable relationship they’re used to. . . . big and noteworthy and peculiar." - Dan Sorrells, Free Jazz

~~~

A deeply enigmatic duo of trumpet and drums augmented by live electronics and an expanded percussive array (tam-tam, multiple high hats etc.), Stonecipher is a mesmerising work that operates in the blurred regions between the electronic and acoustic.

Dörner's electronics have never been more effective, creating viscous clouds of sound which are illuminated by Sanders' sparse, precise formations, producing a dense fabric of insidious extended tones, gradual inclines and sudden drops, and sounds that slowly fold back into themselves or abruptly open onto unexpected plateaus.

There's something beguilingly unhurried about the way that Stonecipher develops, but there's a real quickness bubbling under this apparent slowness that prevents the music from ever completely solidifying: just when you think you're on firm ground something moves and the whole landscape is reshaped.

~~~

1. Stonecipher I - 33:17 
2. Stonecipher II - 14:09

Axel Dörner - trumpet, electronics 
Mark Sanders - drums, percussion

Recorded by Rick Campion on 19 June 2011 at City University Music Studios 
Mixed by Axel Dörner 
Artwork by Jane Millican (detail of Scene, 2010, pencil on paper) 
Music by Axel Dörner (GEMA) & Mark Sanders (PRS)

~~~

http://recordings.fataka.net/products/513486-stonecipher-axel-dorner-mark-sanders-fataka-5

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