Wildbirds & Peacedrums - Rhythm 2014

If Wildbirds & Peacedrums' music had to be described with one word, it would be Rhythm, and the duo's fourth album delivers all the power and complexity suggested by its title. Following the success of 2010's expansive, experimental Rivers, Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin embarked on a long string of performances that honed their already powerful live act. Inspired, they pared Rhythm's songs down to the most vital aspects of their music: vocals and percussion. While Wildbirds & Peacedrumsalready generated more sparks than many acts with bigger lineups and fuller sounds, now they sound more self-assured and direct than ever. Thanks to Rhythm's up close and personal production, it feels like listeners are inside Wallentin's throat and Werliin's kit. Meanwhile, the duo's songwriting is equally primal and sophisticated, refining the raw power of previous standouts like "There Is No Light" just enough to give it a few more facets. The album's insistent lead single, "The Offbeat," is a fantastic example of the duo's newfound clarity: Werliin and Wallentin both have room to be as simple or elaborate as they wish, and they complement their hard-hitting moments with flourishes that nod to their jazz roots. Throughout Rhythm, they find different ways of expressing the album's focus, ranging from the way "Gold Digger" builds from slinky, bass-driven verses into something towering and imposing to "Mind Blues"' stomping beat and Wallentin's rapid-fire questioning of her very existence. Fittingly for an album that revolves around creative rebirth, songs such as this one and "Who I Was" explore identity, a quest that takes on mystical dimensions as Rhythm unfolds. Wallentin's voice is commanding on its own, but when it's multiplied on "Soft Wind, Soft Death," she sounds like a choir of beautiful but terrifying angels; meanwhile, "Keep Some Hope" and "Everything All the Time" touch on life's great questions with incantation-like intensity. Mysterious and riveting, Rhythm is one of the most stunning distillations of Wildbirds & Peacedrums' powers yet. AMG.

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Mazes - Ores & Minerals 2013

Their debut established Mazes' sound as an indie rock band with a fondness for power pop, but for their follow-up, the London group spread their arms open wide to invite in a wealth of influences and blossomed into a uniquely special band. Leading up to the release of Ores & Minerals, singer/guitaristJack Cooper explained that a new appreciation for Krautrock had played a big part in the making of the album. With Can being a near-constant reference point for bands and hipsters alike, that type of statement usually foreshadows a lackluster impression of Motorik rhythms, but instead of losing track of their initial vision, Mazes carefully incorporates slight details, like one-string bends or a chugging beat without letting any single stylistic idea dominate their songs. Angular guitar interplay and circular syncopation play a large part now, but never to the point that a song feels disjointed. Instead, everything flows naturally. The ghosts of Clor or aspects of Field Music can be heard in the London group's winding, quirky melodies, interweaving instrumentation, and geometric song structures. However, the songwriting is articulate and purposeful. Even when there are unpredictable spikes and shifts, the album feels breezy, subtle, and very accessible. Contradictory feelings dominate Ores & Minerals more than ever. A song like "Skullking" is filled with so much nervous energy that it is on the verge of spilling over, which is compensated for with the bittersweet calm of "Slice." Meanwhile, the best moments, "Dan Higgs Particle", "Sucker Punched," and the title track "Ores & Minerals," are excellent, sneakily elaborate spins on indie pop, molded around Television-esque guitar interplay. Overall, Ores & Minerals is a showcase of the band's strengths that finds an original band settling in and taking their ideas to the next level of clever. AMG.

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Irène Schweizer, Nicols, Lewis, Léandre & Sommer - The Storming of the Winter Palace 2000

At the Moers Jazz Festival in 1986, the quintet of Irène Schweizer, Maggie Nicols, George Lewis, Joelle Leandre and Guenter Sommer caused quite a commotion. The "Frankfurter Allgemeine" wrote: "a great moment of free improvised music; the listeners gave endless ovations, were stunned, moved, even happy just like the protagonist themselves, who lay in each others arms after the magic process of spontaneous interaction". The record with excerpts from the Moers concert as well as from the subsequent performance at the Zurich Taktlos Festival was awarded the German Record Crtics Price. Now this "great moment of free improvised music" is finally available on CD.

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Malachi Thompson & Africa Brass - Buddy Bolden's Rag 1995

Malachi Thompson is impressive not only because of his talents as a composer and a soloist, but also because of his versatility. The Chicago trumpeter has no problem playing Blue Note-flavored hard bop/post-bop, but he's equally comfortable in avant-garde situations. Though Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, and Freddie Hubbard are strong influences on Thompson, he has also learned a lot fromLester Bowie. In fact, Bowie is a featured guest on Buddy Bolden's Rag. This superb CD findsThompson celebrating the contributions of New Orleans cornetist Buddy Bolden, one of jazz's pioneers and a major influence on such greats as King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. It has been argued that Bolden single-handedly "invented" jazz in the 1890s, and while it's a stretch to say that he invented jazz all by himself, he most certainly played a crucial role in its development. (Jelly Roll Morton, by the way, claimed to have "invented" jazz -- again, no one should take credit for single-handedly inventing it). On Buddy Bolden's Rag, Thompson and his band Africa Brass salute Boldenin an unconventional way; instead of playing traditional New Orleans jazz, they provide inside/outside post-bop that acknowledges Crescent City brass bands as well as avant-garde and AACM jazz.Thompson looks back on jazz's early history but does so without being the least bit dogmatic about it, and the result is a very enriching and unpredictable CD. AMG.

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Unni Wilhelmsen - 7 (2010)

She may be less known on an international level, but Unni Wilhelmsen is something of a star in her own country, with her 1997 debut going gold and winning two Norwegian Grammy Awards ("Best Female Artist of the Year," "Best Album of the Year"). Not bad for a singer/songwriter who began playing guitar at the age of 20, and whose first performance at an Oslo club serendipitously caught the attention of a journalist, who helped connect her with the record label, leading to the release of To Whom It May Concern (Polygram, 1997) eight months later. Thirteen years and six albums on, the simply titled 7 teams Wilhelmsen with producers Jan Bang and Erik Honoré—the duo that, amongst many other accomplishments, brought the renowned Punkt "Live Remix" Festival into existence six years ago.

Not surprisingly, Bang and Honoré bring a more electronic-centric sound world to Wilhelmsen's folk-informed pop and a host of guests who, despite spending most of their time in the jazz and improv worlds, clearly understand the importance of getting to the heart of a song in the same way that the two producers do. Wilhelmsen writes personal, direct songs of love but, despite the melancholy nature of the subject matter, avoids angst and melodrama. Instead, with a strong instinct for catchy hooks and eminently memorable melodies, Wilhelmsen delivers nine originals, along with a contemporary update to Joni Mitchell's classic "Both Sides Now" that, anchored by her gently finger-picked electric guitar, turns more expansive through Bang's samples, soft programming and string arrangements, Honoré's subtle synth work, and Lars Danielsson's ever-tasteful double-bass work.

Danielsson appears on half of 7, bringing warmth and spare lyricism to the bottom end. Another jazzer, trumpeter Arve Henriksen, brings similar personality and beauty to the haunting "Pedestrian Slow," where Bang's economical woodwind arrangement adds orchestral breadth. The trumpeter's shakuhachi-like tone creates a soft, layered cushion on the more rhythmically propulsive "Orange," which also features another fixture on the Norwegian scene, electric bassist Audun Erlien, heard most recently in Bergen with trumpeter Mathias Eick and in guitarist Eivind Aarset's Sonic Codex.

Aarset also makes a couple of appearances on 7, though they're of the same absent nature as on Bang's own exceptional debut as a leader, ...and poppies from Kandahar (SamadhiSound, 2010). Samples of Aarset's "guitar atmosphere" add celestial textures to the folkloric but electro-centric "Revolving Door," "Pedestrian Slow," and the atmospheric closer, "Forslag Til Drøm," the album's only non-English tune.

Throughout, Wilhelmsen's non-melismatic vocal approach brings a vulnerable honesty to the music. For Wilhelmsen, it's all about exploration and growth, and by teaming with the forward-thinking and unfailingly innovative Bang and Honoré, she's shaped an album where direct subject matter, delivered with egoless simplicity, transcends its inherent singer/songwriter roots through sonic landscapes that more purposefully convey the inner meaning of 7's deeply personal poetry.  Thanks to B. AllAboutJazz.

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David Murray - Interboogieology 1978

For this fairly early recording, avant-garde tenor saxophonist David Murray teams up with cornetistButch Morris, bassist Johnny Dyani and drummer Oliver Johnson for some fairly free improvisations, with the originals written by either Murray or Morris. Two of the numbers also utilize the adventurous voice of Marta Contreras. The results are stimulating if not essential; a lesser but still interesting effort AMG.

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The Rides - Can't Get Enough 2013

Rock was still in the wake of the ornate studio excess that followed the release of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (not every band was the Beatles, unfortunately) when Super Session came out in 1968. A loose album of rock and blues jams featuring Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield on one side of the LP and Kooper and Stephen Stills on the other side, with a rhythm section of Harvey Brooks on bass and Eddie Hoh on drums tying both sides together, it has held up amazingly well over the years. So here we are in the 21st century and Stills, former Electric Flagmember Barry Goldberg (who played electric piano on the 1968 album), and the now-not-so-young-anymore guitar wiz Kenny Wayne Shepherd have formed a sort of super trio in the hopes of recapturing some of the magic of that original super session. The million-dollar question is, do they indeed actually recapture the feel? The million-dollar answer is, no, they don't. But that isn't an indictment of Can't Get Enough, really. The Rides are a competent hard rock-blues group, and Stills, as a guitar player, has always been at his best when he has another guitar player to support and feed off of, and there are plenty of blazing electric guitar leads and tradeoffs here. Curiously, though, particularly given Stills' proven ability as a songwriter, what there isn't here is any striking new material. The best cuts are covers, including versions of Muddy Waters' "Honey Bee," the Stooges' "Search and Destroy," and Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" (none of these stray far from the original song templates), but the original material, written jointly by Stills, Goldberg, and Shepherd, seems tired and weary, more riffs than songs. Yeah, there are electric guitars everywhere, and this is a nice-sounding band, but, given the caliber of the talent, it would seem the songs should be better instead of just bounce-offs for guitar pyrotechnics. AMG.

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Fire! Orchestra - Enter 2014

Fire! Orchestra are based around three improvising musicians, saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassistJohan Berthling, and drummer Andreas Werliin. Originally working under the title Fire!, the trio recorded with artists Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi but -- like on 2013's live album Exit! -- this release sees them perform as the Fire! Orchestra, a 28-piece Nordic jazz ensemble that includes members from groups as varied as Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Dungen, and the Thing. It's a sonic adventure -- with parts one to three averaging 15 minutes each and part four clocking in at a more modest nine minutes -- and a kaleidoscopic journey into prog rock, jazz, and heavy blues riffs, reminiscent of the late-'60s big jazz bands fronted by Sun Ra and Charlie Haden, although in a modernized format. For every squawk and wail, there is a cohesive rhythm and melody line. Drums, bass, and Fender Rhodes form the backbone, as members almost wait in line to have their moment. The complex arrangements mean the basis of the tracks change, and some instruments take the lead while others drop to the main riff, like in part three where the baritone sax takes over for the main bass hook. Although a studio recording, the tracks here are live-sounding, with high energy and feel more structured than those on Exit! The vocals on the album are haunting, soulful, and magnificently performed and usually consist of short motifs within very short sentence structures. A perfect example is the harmonious beginning of part one and the competitive vocals from Wildbirds & Peacedrumsmember Mariam Wallentin and Sofia Jernberg as they cry "Let us all go, let them all go, let it all go, feel it all go." Overall, the album is a thrilling listen, and is a lot to digest in just one sitting. There are times when tracks drag slightly, but it's safe to make an assumption that soon there will be a change in style, rhythm, BPM, or dimension, resulting in a complex and magical record with many twists and turns. AMG.

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Death In Vegas - The Contino Sessions 1999

The amount of hype that greeted this album upon release was notable even by U.K. press terms, leading to quite an unexpected amount of overall attention upon the band's second release. Justified? Not quite -- it's important to approach this CD on its own terms, and on that level it's a good album, but not a great one. Claimed goals at being inspired by Primal Scream's Screamadelica aside, Contino doesn't achieve anything near the same sense of reach and sweep as that album did, not to releases like My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and other cited role models. The Richard Fearless/Tim Holmescombination here seems to restrict itself to production and arrangement, commissioning a variety of players, notably a key duo of guitarist Ian Button and bassist Mat Flint, to interpret their songs under their overall guidance. Button and Flint are quite good at what they do -- the two get to shine right at the start on the crawling build and freakout of "Dirge" -- but sometimes an overall mood is set without much being added to it. Slow, steady beats and breaks flesh out things reasonably enough. The band's ace in the hole lies with the series of guest vocalists, starting (perhaps unsurprisingly) with Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie. Jesus and Mary Chain singer Jim Reid, Scottish singer Dot Allison, and punk legend Iggy Pop also take a bow, the latter guesting on the album's undoubted highlight, the aggressive, energetic "Aisha." Perhaps the most interesting move, though, is on "Aladdin's Story," withthe London Community Gospel Choir taking a bow in the same way they did with Spiritualized. At base, Contino is a reasonably entertaining and sometimes quite compelling combination of slower dance aesthetics translated into rock & roll terms and sounds. It just isn't the end of the world, that's all. AMG.

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Houndmouth - From the hills below the city 2013

Hailing from New Albany, Indiana, a town neighboring Louisville, young band Houndmouth make their debut on the meticulously produced From the Hills Below the City. The album's 12 songs findHoundmouth, composed of just four musicians, putting out a passionate and explosively large sound, revisiting bygone themes through both the down-home holler of heartland Americana and some well-schooled rock musicianship. One of the first things that sticks out about the group is the urgent singing of all four members, often backing each other up as one member takes the lead. Opening track "On the Road" finds vocalists Katie Toupin and Matt Myers in a spirited duet not too far off from the lovers-on-the-run anthems of Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros or the dustbowl nostalgia of the Lumineers, who Houndmouth have toured with at times. This song, much like the rest of the album, builds subtly and seamlessly, with supportive organ textures and tambourine showing up just in the nick of time for the brief tune's brilliant summit. The by-the-numbers production goes hand in hand with the bandmembers' tailored playing and thickly stylized vocals, hitting all the marks of emphatic country-enamored rock on tracks like the Toupin-fronted "Houston Train," a tale of being strung out, riding the hard-luck rails. There's plenty of Great Depression-era imagery throughout From the Hills Below the City, with signifiers like coal mines, riverboats, wartime rations, and random names of Southern towns making up the lyrical content for most songs. In its best moments, the album taps into an imagined nostalgia at the same time it grabs some of the weary rock & roll grit that made up greasy classics likeExile on Main St. and Neil Young's Tonight's the Night. However, those records were full of murky moods, glaring mistakes, and a very real mania. Houndmouth's take on rocking Americana is scrubbed clean and flawlessly rehearsed, and comes off as more of an affectation than anything visceral. The sounds are inoffensive and reeled in completely, and as the band spins a would-be devious tale of cocaine running and swarthy bar fights on "Comin' Around Again," it sounds harmless. The production, playing, and singing are the work of clearly talented folks, but 12 songs of this safe and manicured take on fiery music quickly drag. While those already predisposed to the romantic notions of early American iconography in new rock will adore Houndmouth, many listeners will be left with a few hooky -- if hollow -- songs. AMG.

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Maggie Nicols, Lindsay Cooper & Joëlle Léandre - Live At The Bastille 1982

There isn't much that could happen short of a serious illness that could make this session come out anything less than brilliant. The 1982 live date presents three European avant-garde music masters interacting on an intense and wildly entertaining level. Fans of Lindsay Cooper will really appreciate locating a copy of this somewhat rare vinyl release. She is a fine composer as well as one of the few bassoonists in progressive rock, who was later robbed of her physical ability to play this challenging instrument by a debilitating illness. Bassist Joëlle Léandre by herself could carry the entire album, and her vocalizing on "Heads Will Roll" is a memorable moment. Tracks such as "Un Journee" and "Forgotten Faces" are full of the surprises great improvisers come up with, from dusty little corners to entirely unknown rooms. This is a nice live recording done by the experienced Jean-Marc Foussat. AMG.

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David Crosby - Croz 2014

It's been 20 years since David Crosby released a collection of new songs, but he's hardly been quiet in those two decades. His occasional reunions with Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, and sometimes Neil Young get the most attention, but he also appeared on David Gilmour's 2006 album On an Island and, more notably, often worked with his son James Raymond on a band called CPR. Raymond is David's chief collaborator on Croz, a skillful evocation of Crosby's early-'70s haze as filtered through early-'90s professionalism. As always, Crosby is supported by a cast of heavy-hitters, but where 1993's A Thousand Roads sometimes seemed weighed down by cameos (an emphasis on covers also helped shift the spotlight away from the man at the center), Croz is tastefully decorated with sly solos by Mark Knopfler and Wynton Marsalis, the focus forever remaining on Croz himself. At the age of 72, his voice remains sweet, sometimes airy, and he and Raymond take advantage of both qualities, occasionally conjuring ghosts of CSN's early-'80s soft rock ("Radio" could easily have slipped ontoDaylight Again), but usually allowing the music to amiably drift and linger, sometimes settling in the conscious, sometimes dissipating. Even with songs as spare and haunting as "If She Called" -- nothing more than an electric guitar and voice there -- Croz is too dedicated to tasty, in-the-pocket grooves and cleanly sculpted digital production to truly be an heir to If I Could Only Remember My Name, but it's the only other solo record of Crosby's that attempts to reckon with similar emotions and sounds. ThatCroz prefers certainty to the untrammeled melancholy of If I Could Only Remember My Name is a reflection of where he stands in 2014: he's aware he's building upon a past he sometimes pines for, yet he's restless enough to forage ahead into new territory, but only when he's surrounded by cozy, familiar settings. AMG.

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