Modern/Avant New Releases: A running thread

[king ubu]

Wouldn't attribute too much to that, Outhere keeps imprints alive after takeover, or starts integrating them slowly (i.e. the alpha collection now includes Zig Zag discs, but for the larger and still alive Arcana, they seem to devise a separate nice price series, while for the also very much alive Ricercar they already did so).

Outhere has only very few jazz releases in it's catalogue so far, while Hat Hut is a strong brand, so keeping the brand alive is probably part of the strategy (that still seems pretty non-existent so far).

What I got to hear (ne hear-say, mind me!) is that he got paid a sum per master tape that amounts to a pretty nice starting budget for his current enterprise ... but that indeed with the sale he passed it all on (except for the url, but I'm not sure that was what Outhere expected ... it IS weird to use the old website to advertise the new label, but then I guess hathut.com still has plenty of traffic).

On ezz-thetics (with an a at the end, my bad!) I agree, hope Uehlinger keeps up the pace.

[Д.Д.]

But "ezz-thetics" is not even the label name, it is just the name of the series. The legal entity is still Hat Hut Records Ltd. of Basel, Switzerland (see bottom right corner below).

[Misterioso]

I don't think I can get used to "ezz-thetics"... What a horrible brand name.

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, Misterioso said:

I don't think I can get used to "ezz-thetics"... What a horrible brand name.

You don't like Lee Konitz and/or George Russell?

[Misterioso]

7 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

You don't like Lee Konitz and/or George Russell?

Do like them a lot but still don't think it's a good label name.

[David Ayers]

The Chinese is literally ‘hat’, you probably realise...

 

These posts got combined but are not related:

On 19/11/2019 at 3:23 PM, Steve Reynolds said:

I listened through once on Tidal and it is soft and almost all of that slow tempo that sometimes can be very powerful. I’m not sure they captured the dynamics that Mat & Randy exhibit in a live performance. The set they played included most of this music but some of it seemed to explode in volume and in tempo. Lucien’s pristine sound and touch is captured very well on the recording. I do wish they put some freely improvised intense passages/pieces on the recording. For me that is what elevated the set/show to the typical high level of performance that I expect from any ensemble with Mat. 

I also recently saw Mat Maneri with a Matt Mitchell Ensemble where he played parts of very challenging intricately composed music as well as some mind-bending improvised sections. The band also included Ben Gerstein & Brandon Seabrook along with Mitchell & Kate Gentile. It was a fine but not transcendent set. It almost hit the perfect balance between composed & improvised but the structures were unique & creative but did not give the musicians enough room to truly explode the music.

Then I saw Mat in a trio with Assif Tsahar & Ches Smith. An hour of totally improvised music with Mat playing at his highest level. Using a bass pedal, regular pedal, and no pedal, his mprovising was jaw-dropping. Stunning. As good as this music gets, IMO.

Hopefully if this was recorded well, Assif will get this released somehow. After Randy, Ches is the best drummer with Mat for this sort of thing.

Re. Maneri. I’ve heard this new one and a good few others. Dreary and samey, to me. I spent some time with the duo release with Ban on ECM and found little musically interesting, though we are lectured how Ban is up there with Bartok. He is not. 

Edited December 12, 2019 by David Ayers

[Steve Reynolds]

5 hours ago, David Ayers said:

The Chinese is literally ‘hat’, you probably realise...

 

These posts got combined but are not related:

Re. Maneri. I’ve heard this new one and a good few others. Dreary and samey, to me. I spent some time with the duo release with Ban on ECM and found little musically interesting, though we are lectured how Ban is up there with Bartok. He is not. 

Yes the the duo with Lucien to me is boring. The quartet CD with Lucien, Brad Jones & Randy is better but “samey”. Maybe even “dreary”. Definitely disappointing. 

3 to 4 years ago Mat was doing gigs with a Quintet with Lucien that had Malaby & the *great* Bob Stewart in tuba. Drummers rotated with Gerald Cleaver, Billy Mintz and Randy Peterson the drummers I saw. They also played a gig or two with Billy Hart as the drummer. The shows were excellent to totally off the chain. The last 2-Set show was at Cornelia Street (as we’re all of the 4 shows I saw - all expansive 2-set nights) and it was the only one with Randy Peterson. Nothing “samey” or dreary during any of the shows but the last one was on the edge of insanity but it should have been recorded and released. I thought the whole thing might implode. Randy was playing so powerfully that it was almost too much for the music. They would play similar type charts/sketches that appear on the new recordings but the tempos were not always slow and when they were slow, there was a huge power to the music die to having Malaby & Stewart in the band. For whatever sons might think of Tony Malaby, he isnt

Malaby & Maneri are awesome together. Great abstract foils. When they play together it gets way WAY out there and the tension gets to crazy levels.

For whatever reason, none of the great shows I’ve seen Mat perform at over the past 15 years show up on record - and the few recordings we get have really show no indication of what he does or is. Damn shame and I really don’t get it.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Steve Reynolds

[David Ayers]

11 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:

Yes the the duo with Lucien to me is boring. The quartet CD with Lucien, Brad Jones & Randy is better but “samey”. Maybe even “dreary”. Definitely disappointing. 

3 to 4 years ago Mat was doing gigs with a Quintet with Lucien that had Malaby & the *great* Bob Stewart in tuba. Drummers rotated with Gerald Cleaver, Billy Mintz and Randy Peterson the drummers I saw. They also played a gig or two with Billy Hart as the drummer. The shows were excellent to totally off the chain. The last 2-Set show was at Cornelia Street (as we’re all of the 4 shows I saw - all expansive 2-set nights) and it was the only one with Randy Peterson. Nothing “samey” or dreary during any of the shows but the last one was on the edge of insanity but it should have been recorded and released. I thought the whole thing might implode. Randy was playing so powerfully that it was almost too much for the music. They would play similar type charts/sketches that appear on the new recordings but the tempos were not always slow and when they were slow, there was a huge power to the music die to having Malaby & Stewart in the band. For whatever sons might think of Tony Malaby, he isnt

Malaby & Maneri are awesome together. Great abstract foils. When they play together it gets way WAY out there and the tension gets to crazy levels.

For whatever reason, none of the great shows I’ve seen Mat perform at over the past 15 years show up on record - and the few recordings we get have really show no indication of what he does or is. Damn shame and I really don’t get it.

Interesting. I’ve given the recordings time because I always have the feeling there could be more - and I’ve read your accounts of these concerts before - but even where there is some of that dry intensity (So What, for example) the overall is not quite there. 

[Д.Д.]

Steve, thanks for sharing your live impressions, very interesting. I think I saw Maneri live only once - with Joe Morris group, about 20 years ago. I hated it, mostly because of Morris's boring verbose playing. For me my favorite Maneri is still his three old Trio (with Randy Peterson and Ed Schuller) albums on Leo (which can be now bought for GBP 2.50 each as a part of the Leo end-of-the-year sale). I would reiterate my recommendation for the "Fantasm" trio disc with Maurer and Ban (https://open.spotify.com/album/4T2KdOPqKlfOKIeBXR9S68), I think having another violin player in the group brings out more variety in Maneri's playing.    

[Steve Reynolds]

9 minutes ago, David Ayers said:

Interesting. I’ve given the recordings time because I always have the feeling there could be more - and I’ve read your accounts of these concerts before - but even where there is some of that dry intensity (So What, for example) the overall is not quite there. 

Best Mat Maneri recordings to my ears are “51 Sorrows” with Ed Schuller & Randy Peterson & “Light Trigger” which is a duo with Peterson. The latter is the closest I’ve heard to his “sound” in a live setting. As you’ve noted, I’ve written about his concerts for years. I’ve probably seen more shows with Mat than any other musician and his hit rate for truly great performances/improvisations is probably higher than most any other musician - or his peak performances are more extraordinary.

I’ll add that Mat’s best recorded playing with his dad is the 2-CD set on Leo called “The Trio Concerts”. Mat & Randy play with incredible fire on these 2 concerts. Plus the crowd is extremely excited and apparently large which is unusual on both counts.

Maybe almost as great overall as “Dahabenzapple” or “Coming Down the Mountain”

[David Ayers]

10 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:

Maybe almost as great overall as “Dahabenzapple” or “Coming Down the Mountain”

Well those two are a high point for sure, and a big part of why I keep following Mat. 

[Steve Reynolds]

15 minutes ago, David Ayers said:

Well those two are a high point for sure, and a big part of why I keep following Mat. 

Of course you are fortunate to be somewhere near many of the great musicians from your country/region. Despite sometimes getting annoyed that I don’t have opportunities to see/hear some of my favorite musicians like Mark Sanders, Barry Guy, John Butcher, John Edwards, etc. live ever or very very rarely, I NEVER lose sight of the fact that I’m able to see musicians like Mat, Mary Halvorson, Ches Smith, Brandon Lopez, Tony Malaby, Tom Rainey, Nate Wooley, Tomeka Reid, Nels Cline, etc. many multiple times a year or even a month in some cases if I can incorporate these show into my life. These days it’s usually 2-3 a month so I have to miss things like Wooley’s massive Seven Story Mountain show from late last month and probably this year’s Mars Williams Ayler X-Mas shoe next Saturday (with Steve Swell, Nels Cline, Fred Lonberg-Holm & Chris Corsano).

I will be at Brandon Lopez’s Quartet show next Monday @ Roulette with Gerald Cleaver on drums forming what is now one of the most incendiary bass/drums tandems on the planet - and it will be my first time seeing the radical blistering hot saxophonist Steve Baczkowski in person. Word has it two sets which without Cornelia street around any longer is too much of a rarity these days.

[king ubu]

12 hours ago, Д.Д. said:

But "ezz-thetics" is not even the label name, it is just the name of the series. The legal entity is still Hat Hut Records Ltd. of Basel, Switzerland (see bottom right corner below).

Well, my best guess is he kept the right to the name (and the website ... but left Outhere in the dark about keeping it in use). From what I heard they were apalled to hear about his new label. Guess he's some sort of pirate imat core.

[Д.Д.]

Again, we don't really know the details. According to initial press-release by Outhere, Uehlinger was supposed to stay with them curating new Hat releases. It could have been that he brought them all these projects (e.g. the Giuffre release was mastered back in 2017), and they told him they are not interested. So he said "Gopfetori you Tubel, I will release them myself!". And he did. Lucky us?   

Edited December 13, 2019 by Д.Д.

[David Ayers]

On 12/12/2019 at 5:03 PM, Steve Reynolds said:

Of course you are fortunate to be somewhere near many of the great musicians from your country/region. Despite sometimes getting annoyed that I don’t have opportunities to see/hear some of my favorite musicians like Mark Sanders, Barry Guy, John Butcher, John Edwards, etc. live ever or very very rarely, I NEVER lose sight of the fact that I’m able to see musicians like Mat, Mary Halvorson, Ches Smith, Brandon Lopez, Tony Malaby, Tom Rainey, Nate Wooley, Tomeka Reid, Nels Cline, etc. many multiple times a year or even a month in some cases if I can incorporate these show into my life.

Yes we are lucky to be able to access so much improv at the highest level. Shifts your perspective too. I really no longer see recordings as the ‘product’, just a way to check things out. And that’s as true for Brahms as well as Butcher. 

[Д.Д.]

New (well, recorded in 1998) double-bass duo by Barre Phillips and Teppo Hauta-aho: https://open.spotify.com/album/11ir5zPLKH8fU20e2Q4NMc  

[Д.Д.]

I guess Ayler Records could not resist releasing one more album after the official label shut-down: http://www.ayler.com/frederick-galiay-time-elleipsis.html 

Hope there will be more to come. 

[king ubu]

Pretty good I'd say, after one first spin ... rec 1996, thought to be lost (for technical reasons, the masters were unusable, the safety okay, but no one checked them at the time) ... can be found at DMG only, it seems. It is a Monk tribute of sorts, a rather free one mostly, but tunes get played – or referenced. There's even some ballad playing, Murray on brushes ...

Details:

https://www.discogs.com/Borah-Bergman-Wilber-Morris-Sunny-Murray-Monks/release/14493102

[Steve Reynolds]

The Attic: Summer Bummer

with a new drummer named Onno Govaert

with Rodrigo Amado on tenor & Goncalo Almeida on double bass

3 improvised pieces making up 45 minutes recorded live on 8/26/2018 

even more amazing than the first one - intense yet restrained - as good of a sax-bass-drums trio can be in this era. Stunning from all angles.

on No Business records 

[mjazzg]

making me think of Braxton (unsurprisingly), George Lewis and Bill Dixon. Not a bad set of references. Interesting stuff.

There's a volume 2 too

[Д.Д.]

On 1/13/2020 at 7:11 PM, Steve Reynolds said:

The Attic: Summer Bummer

with a new drummer named Onno Govaert

with Rodrigo Amado on tenor & Goncalo Almeida on double bass

3 improvised pieces making up 45 minutes recorded live on 8/26/2018 

even more amazing than the first one - intense yet restrained - as good of a sax-bass-drums trio can be in this era. Stunning from all angles.

on No Business records 

Listened to it on Bandcamp (you can stream the whole album): https://nobusinessrecords.bandcamp.com/album/summer-bummer . I thought it was some pretty boring retro free jazz stuff. Bass and drums don't fit together that well, and the saxophonist (Amado) is very predictable. I liked the drummer the most, will check him out. I know the bassist, Gonçalo Almeida, and really like his more creative projects, like LAMA. He is an excellent musician, but in this trio he is selling himself short, IMHO.               

[Steve Reynolds]

1 hour ago, Д.Д. said:

Listened to it on Bandcamp (you can stream the whole album): https://nobusinessrecords.bandcamp.com/album/summer-bummer . I thought it was some pretty boring retro free jazz stuff. Bass and drums don't fit together that well, and the saxophonist (Amado) is very predictable. I liked the drummer the most, will check him out. I know the bassist, Gonçalo Almeida, and really like his more creative projects, like LAMA. He is an excellent musician, but in this trio he is selling himself short, IMHO.               

I’m also very interested in more “creative” projects and I know Amado does not use many or even any “extended” techniques and plays within traditional forms but I really don’t hear him as predictable and certainly not “very” predictable. That being said, I don’t listen to THAT much current improvised music made within such a traditional format such as this (sax-bass-drums).

I certainly am probably more interested in music with electronics, various string infested ensembles and more oblique abstract challenging improvised and composed music -  BUT I do believe this recording, as well as the recent trios with McPhee, Edwards & Kogel, recent Parker-Guy-Lytton or recordings or performances from Butcher-Edwards-Sanders or Delius or Malaby or Baars or Laubrock Dunmall or Matt Nelson with various bassists or drummers are mostly NOT making pretty boring retro free jazz music. But you are not alone. The recent trio release with Charles Gayle, Edwards & Sanders might be old school retro free jazz but if it’s boring that would be a surprise to me. I was shocked at how vibrant it was. Maybe one of my favorite 4 or 5 new releases from the past couple of years. I almost didn’t buy it as I figured Gayle was shot, the format was “retro”, etc. I sure was wrong about Gayle and the trio format in general.
 

I wonder what you would think of “Old Smoke” with Steve Basczkoski, Brandon Lopez & Chris Corsano. I saw the great saxophonist with Lopez & Cleaver play a couple of sets of music last month that was as exciting as Parker-Guy-Lytton might have been 30 years ago. Smoking burning hot and not retro in the least. 

Maybd it’s Amado’s measured or restrained approach that has you not liking him. I find his improvising very vital in a way that separates him from the more traditional fire breathers and the younger more abstract players like Michael Foster. 
 

Edited January 16, 2020 by Steve Reynolds

[Д.Д.]

Steve, we are just looking for different things in music, that's all. I am not particularly interested in, if I may quote you, "smoking burning hot". Of the ones you listed, McPhee-Edwards-Kugel is a good example of a waste of talent, IMHO (well, I would use "talent" when it comes to Kugel with reservations). I saw this trio live and left before the end of the set (and McPhee is one of my favorite musicians). I never liked Gayle (well, I thought he was moderately interesting on piano), even his supposed masterpiece "Touchin' on Trane" (anybody interested in my FMP CD copy?), so I am not going to investigate further. I don't like Malaby and Baars. I remmeber your mentiioning that Malaby has progressed a lot, I might check out some of his new stuff. I can't stand Evan Parker (his incontinent soprano playing at least - his tenor I like). Can't stand cliche-ridden Dunmall either (universally praised "Ghostly Thoughts" including). I can't imagine listening to Brötzmann these days (well, maybe the Berlin '71 concert and Last Exit and a couple of other albums). Laubrock is OK. Delius is good. Butcher is great. So we just have different musical preferences, not a big deal.

To be fair, it is difficult to play anything innovative in free jazz context in a tenor-bass-drums trio. You might just as well expect innovation in baroque music.

To comment on another thing you mentioned - "extended techniques". They are not a sign of "progress" or "innovation", and definitely not a sign of good music. I actually just returned from a classical concert where all the extended techniques imaginable were used (this stuff can now be notated, and is firmly incorporated in the vocabulary of modern composers and performers). The music was still shit.              

[Steve Reynolds]

15 minutes ago, Д.Д. said:

Steve, we are just looking for different things in music, that's all. I am not particularly interested in, if I may quote you, "smoking burning hot". Of the ones you listed, McPhee-Edwards-Kugel is a good example of a waste of talent, IMHO (well, I would use "talent" when it comes to Kugel with reservations). I saw this trio live and left before the end of the set (and McPhee is one of my favorite musicians). I never liked Gayle (well, I thought he was moderately interesting on piano), even his supposed masterpiece "Touchin' on Trane" (anybody interested in my FMP CD copy?), so I am not going to investigate further. I don't like Malaby and Baars. I remmeber your mentiioning that Malaby has progressed a lot, I might check out some of his new stuff. I can't stand Evan Parker (his incontinent soprano playing at least - his tenor I like). Can't stand cliche-ridden Dunmall either (universally praised "Ghostly Thoughts" including). I can't imagine listening to Brötzmann these days (well, maybe the Berlin '71 concert and Last Exit and a couple of other albums). Laubrock is OK. Delius is good. Butcher is great. So we just have different musical preferences, not a big deal.

To be fair, it is difficult to play anything innovative in free jazz context in a tenor-bass-drums trio. You might just as well expect innovation in baroque music.

To comment on another thing you mentioned - "extended techniques". They are not a sign of "progress" or "innovation", and definitely not a sign of good music. I actually just returned from a classical concert where all the extended techniques imaginable were used (this stuff can now be notated, and is firmly incorporated in the vocabulary of modern composers and performers). The music was still shit.              

Thanks for the post. 8 or 10 years ago I thought I’d never be interested in Brotzmann again. Over the past 5 years I’ve probably listened to more BROTZMANN than any other saxophonist. 
 

fwiw many people here who go to NYC shows don’t like Malaby that much either while me and a few others think he’s the best tenor (and soprano) saxophonist on the scene in NYC today. 
 

 

[Д.Д.]

8 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:

many people here who go to NYC shows don’t like Malaby that much either while me and a few others think he’s the best tenor (and soprano) saxophonist on the scene in NYC today. 

Not Ellery Eskelin?

Btw, I remember chatting to Eskelin many years ago and he was very complimentary of Malaby. 

And does Jonathan Moritz still perform in New York?