Reviews
Tyshawn Sorey. Verisimilitude. Depending on where you find him, Tyshawn Sorey might appear as a jazz drummer (the Vijay Iyer Trio or the group Paradoxical Frog, with Ingrid Laubrock and Kris Davis), as a new-music percussionist, a multi-instrumentalist (playing piano and trombone) or as a composer. Like George Lewis (with[...] Read more
Steve Roach. Structures from Silence. Since the mid-2000s, a lot of ambient music has been moving into increasingly abrasive and gothic territory—at times even cozying into the coffin right next to doom metal. The recent reappraisal of New Age music, on the other hand, has brought some welcome sweetness and even humour[...] Read more
Rasmussen, Dorji, Damon. To The Animal Kingdom. To these ears, the most exciting improvised music—regardless of its temperament—carefully balances surprise and stability. The strongest performances of this work tend to maximize the friction between compulsive change and the urge to establish a clear, communal sound world[...] Read more
Pauline Oliveros and Connie Crothers. Live At the Stone. The first, last, and only musical meeting between jazz improviser Connie Crothers (1941–2016) and electronic-music icon Pauline Oliveros (1932–2016) took place in August 2014. It is preserved in its entirety on this disc. Oliveros and Crothers were probably surprised by how many[...] Read more
George Lewis & Splitter Orchestra. Creative Construction Set™. American trombonist George Lewis’ three-part Creative Construction Set™ (CCS) for Berlin’s Splitter Orchestra (SO) is an organic recasting of ideas first advanced by the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians’ (ACCM) sextet the Creative Construction[...] Read more
Daniel Lentz. River of 1,000 Streams. Daniel Lentz is one of a number of composers who emerged in the wake of American minimalism and used some of the movement's primary tenets to leverage a distinct, hard-to-pin-down voice. But the sweeping River of 1000 Streams, a work for solo piano and cascading delays, is anything but[...] Read more
Joëlle Léandre and Phil Minton. Léandre-Minton. Few musicians possess the spontaneity and sheer presence of French bassist Joëlle Léandre and English vocalist Phil Minton. Here the two senior masters meet on a Paris stage in October 2016, delivering a three-part concert Si, lence/ Is/ blu, ish. Léandre is a master of[...] Read more
Giant Claw. Soft Channel. Giant Claw is the vapourwave–plunderphonics sound-collage pseudonym of musician, visual artist, and Orange Milk label-boss Keith Rankin, of Columbus, Ohio. Soft Channel, his new album, is a paradoxical object, at once one of the most fragmented and one of the most listenable variants[...] Read more
Jamie Drouin & Hannes Lingens. Alluvium; The Holy Quintet. Borough. Far from his Victoria, B.C., home base, sound-artist–composer Jamie Drouin helps animate notable improvisational landscapes on these European-recorded sets. Two extended tracks on Borough find Drouin’s suitcase-sized modular synthesizer and radio put to good use in The Holy[...] Read more
Andrew Raffo Dewar / Andrea Centazzo / Anne LeBaron. Encantamientos. Residing in a soundworld created from aleatory, signal-processed, and improvised music, the seven tracks of Encantamiento are performed by musicians who move easily from one genre to another without fissure. Percussionist Andrea Centazzo is known for his jazz and soundtrack work, harpist[...] Read more
Civvie. Inheritance. Weaving is a frequent metaphor for music-making, especially when the interplay of discrete elements creates a single cohesive texture. The Winnipeg trio Civvie's overcast, mahogany-hued sonics lend themselves to such a metaphor, but their peculiar instrumentation adds another dimension[...] Read more
Ka Baird. Sapropelic Pycnic. Nothing will ever remain the same. There is no such thing as firm ground that will give stability and security. Ka Baird’s solo album Sapropelic Pycnic revolves around the theme of transformation, in various senses. She processes the sounds of her flute, of her voice—multiplying[...] Read more
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