Modern/Avant New Releases: A running thread

[Rabshakeh]

11 minutes ago, Onxidlib said:

Here are my recommendations for Kang Tae Hwan. I stick to available recordings (not very much is readily available). I have all his albums except two which I got as rips from a dear friend. His work with Takada goes back to the 1990s. There's a trio called Ton-Klami with him , Takada and Masahiko Satoh. One Ton-Klami is from No Business Records and should be still in print. https://www.discogs.com/Ton-Klami-Prophecy-Of-Nue/release/10855063

Then we have the trio of Kang Tae Hwan, Miyeon (piano) and Park Je Chun (percussion). They made two CDs and one was reissued in 2018 and is still vailable from the label.  https://www.discogs.com/%EA%B0%95%ED%83%9C%ED%99%98-%EB%AF%B8%EC%97%B0-%EB%B0%95%EC%9E%AC%EC%B2%9C-Isaiah/release/14553491

The last one I would like to point out might not be his best (but good music anyway). It was released by the US label VHF and his currently available as CD for 4$ at Bandcamp. https://vhfrecords.bandcamp.com/album/love-time

Two more I would like to recommend, although they are OOP and will be hard to obtain. The inaugural recording of South-Korean Free music. https://www.discogs.com/%EA%B0%95%ED%83%9C%ED%99%98-Korean-Free-Music/master/218161

and his solo/duo/trio CD with Masahiko Togashi and Satoh. https://www.discogs.com/Kang-Tae-Hwan-Masahiko-Satoh-Masahiko-Togashi-Asian-Spirits/release/4220503

Happy hunting ;-)

Incredible. Thanks so much for the response.

[Rabshakeh]

On 02/10/2020 at 10:19 PM, Д.Д. said:

And got this one too: https://f-a-t-a-k-a.bandcamp.com/album/tangle 

I've listened to this a few times over the weekend. I like it.  It is pretty confrontational: Shipp gives Butcher very little space and he has to squeeze in where he can.

[sonnyhill]

26 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

I've listened to this a few times over the weekend. I like it.  It is pretty confrontational: Shipp gives Butcher very little space and he has to squeeze in where he can.

I listened to a bit of the Butcher, Lehn, and Shipp on Bandcamp; I like it.  I will pick it up on Bandcamp Friday in November.

[Д.Д.]

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

I've listened to this a few times over the weekend. I like it.  It is pretty confrontational: Shipp gives Butcher very little space and he has to squeeze in where he can.

Yes, Butcher sounds rather unhinged at times here. And untypically jazzy.

As mentioned earlier, there is a new release by the same trio on RogueArt: https://roguart.com/product/the-clawed-stone/154   

[Steve Reynolds]

4 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

I've listened to this a few times over the weekend. I like it.  It is pretty confrontational: Shipp gives Butcher very little space and he has to squeeze in where he can.

Shipp’s worst aspect of his playing is he doesn’t give saxophonists space. He did better last Spring with Evan Parker & Paul Lytton but he didn’t elevate Parker

I still havn’t forgiven him for mucking up a quartet set with Paul Dunmall, Joe Morris (on double bass) & Gerald Cleaver. When he finally loosened up and maybe he might have even stopped playing for a bit - BUT some 40 minutes in, THEN Dunmall (on tenor) finally sounded like Dunmall. An amazing 10 to 20 minute ending to the long continuous set. 

 

[Rabshakeh]

4 hours ago, Steve Reynolds said:

Shipp’s worst aspect of his playing is he doesn’t give saxophonists space. He did better last Spring with Evan Parker & Paul Lytton but he didn’t elevate Parker

Interesting. Back in the 90s when I was listening to Shipp perhaps more than I do now, I was sometimes frustrated at how traditional his comping was and how much leeway he gave to his front line. On lots of those David S Ware records he seemed to be merely enabling the saxophonist, or at most trying to spin things out and along. Given what other pianists like Schlippenbach, Schweizer or Crispell were up to at the time, challenging their front lines and dictating where the improvisation would progress, I used to think Shipp was too traditional and that too happy to take a subordinate accompanist/soloist role, rather than the new opportunities offered by the more democratic improv models that were then emerging. 

I had thought he'd improved recently - I really liked Morph from last year with Nate Wooley  - but I hadn't heard him playing yet with a saxophonist like Butcher or Dunmall that has less of an immediate stylistic connection with the various American avantgarde jazz traditions.

Certainly, I enjoyed this record and would second D.D.'s original recommendation. I've been listening to too much Butcher recently (he's easily among my favourite saxophonists of the last two decades) and it is refreshing to hear him pushed so far out of his usual zone of operations by what Shipp was doing. In place of the usual stalking improv predator was a caged bear that had to dance when Shipp told him too. And, as D.D. points out, the results were ... jazzy.

[Д.Д.]

I saw Shipp only once, I think. It was a David S. Ware quartet (with Guillermo Brown on drums) - it was probably one of the most boring jazz concerts I have seen. And they were plying right after the fantastic Happy Apple (where are they now?) concert and the contrast was stark.

One saxophonist Shipp is working with a lot is Ivo Perelman - they seem to release a duo records every week. I skimmed through a couple of them on Spotify, they sounded quite good. There was a trio record, "Dione" with Andrew Cyrille - I thought that one was strong, but I listened to it only once. I liked that old Shipp / Mat Manery duo on HatHut, "Gravitational Systems", actually how about I listen to it now, it's been ages. I suspect Shipp is a Scriabin fan, with all this drama... 

Regarding Butcher, who is among my favorite musicians today, I believe (and yeah, I keep repeating myself here) the way to enjoy his music is solo. His solo performances are so compete that with partners he has no choice but to subtract a from his paying, while his playing is so idiosyncratic nothing seems to gel well with it. I saw him many times in very different formations and the only time I really liked him an playing non-solo was with Polwechsel - but Polwechsel is a very different (and very quiet) animal altogether. I was at a Butcher mini-festival in Berlin last year where he played in various groups with good musicians (Agnel, Lehn, Schick, Buck, Mayas...) - and all was mediocre. The best piece was Butcher playing a bit of solo at the beginning of his duo with Agnel. These concerts will be released as a 5-LP set, so here you go, you have my anti-recommendation.     

 

            

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, Д.Д. said:

I saw Shipp only once, I think. It was a David S. Ware quartet (with Guillermo Brown on drums) - it was probably one of the most boring jazz concerts I have seen. And they were plying right after the fantastic Happy Apple (where are they now?) concert and the contrast was stark.

One saxophonist Shipp is working with a lot is Ivo Perelman - they seem to release a duo records every week. I skimmed through a couple of them on Spotify, they sounded quite good. There was a trio record, "Dione" with Andrew Cyrille - I thought that one was strong, but I listened to it only once. I liked that old Shipp / Mat Manery duo on HatHut, "Gravitational Systems", actually how about I listen to it now, it's been ages. I suspect Shipp is a Scriabin fan, with all this drama... 

Regarding Butcher, who is among my favorite musicians today, I believe (and yeah, I keep repeating myself here) the way to enjoy his music is solo. His solo performances are so compete that with partners he has no choice but to subtract a from his paying, while his playing is so idiosyncratic nothing seems to gel well with it. I saw him many times in very different formations and the only time I really liked him an playing non-solo was with Polwechsel - but Polwechsel is a very different (and very quiet) animal altogether. I was at a Butcher mini-festival in Berlin last year where he played in various groups with good musicians (Agnel, Lehn, Schick, Buck, Mayas...) - and all was mediocre. The best piece was Butcher playing a bit of solo at the beginning of his duo with Agnel. These concerts will be released as a 5-LP set, so here you go, you have my anti-recommendation.       

I agree that Butcher probably plays at his best solo, but I do find myself returning to his trio and quartet work a lot too - he is a player who thrives in different group and physical settings. I wouldn't want to be without Summer Skyshift or News from the Shed or Way Out Northwest: even if Butcher's own saxophone playing is not quite as inventive as on e.g. Fixations (14), he has to find different solutions to apply it. 

I've seen Shipp live probably more than any other player in jazz or improv, which is weird because I'd never class him as a favourite. Twice though when I have seen him play solo he has been really excellent - starting with a deliberately corny choice of material and then breaking it down and moving into exciting territory that brings to mind early Don Pullen (or possibly CT). But I have never heard him do anything like that on record (DNA with Parker is possibly the closest). A lot of his recorded solo or small group stuff seems too lush - Your Scriabin comparison is very apt - and, as I mentioned above, I found his David S Ware stuff retrograde and a bit boring, particularly in view of what else was out there at the time. 

[mjazzg]

I've been following tis discussion with interest and now decide to add my ha'porth.

I've seen Shipp a few times too and enjoyed every occasion to varying degrees.  The one that I enjoyed the least was his contributions to the David S. Ware Quartet, Susie Ibarra was the star of that evening.  I was transfixed by a solo performance in a steaming hot Red Rose Club.  Duo with Perelman was excellent and better than the couple of recordings I've heard. But the best was either with Dunmall/Edwards/Sanders at Oto where they took the roof off - I do recognise Steve's description of Dunmall not getting as much space as elsewhere but that didn't dampen my enthusiasm - or the other cracking performance was with Evan Parker and Spring Hell Jack where Shipp played organ and they just grooved like the grooviest thing.

I used to listen to his recordings a lot but found there became too many to keep up with (and tihs was before the Perelman duos) and too similar so I stopped bothering.  I get the overly dramatic embellishment observation too. Sometimes I quite liked that, not always. He's a musician who I suddenly remember and revisit on occasion, no longer someone that I follow  for every new release.

Now, John Butcher. He presents me with a conundrum in that everything about my listening tastes suggest I should lap up his recordings but somehow I've never found one that truly grips me.  I do keep trying and only last month bought the duet with McPhee and the one with Akio Suzuki, both of which i've enjoyed for the first couple of listens, the Suzuki the more so. I have duets with Hemingway and Paal Nilsson-Love and North By Northwest all of which have sat undisturbed on my shelves for a long time. My favourite has been a Clean Feed called 'A Brush With Dignity'.  I need to revisit. 

Interestingly, given what you've both said about his solo work I don't have any recordings.  Also, I've only ever seen him perform twice, once with sanders which was very good and partially released on Emanem. The other is a best forgotten mismatch with Sanders, Edwards and Thurston Moore the latter of whom just musically embarrassed himself to my ears.

So in conclusion, I need to investigate solo Butcher more. Suggestions?

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, mjazzg said:

 I was transfixed by a solo performance in a steaming hot Red Rose Club.  

Interesting! From your description of it I am sure that is one of the two Shipp concerts that I was referring to above. That was a great gig. I remember condensation dripping down everywhere. I for some reason took a bunch of non-jazz fans there that night and they were as absorbed as I was, and still talk about it. 

RIP the Red Rose.

[mjazzg]

RIP indeed.

It was the middle of a heatwave I remember that much and they kept the doors open, thankfully. 

My non-Jazz fan friends never seem to say 'Yes' when I suggest a similar outing...see what they miss!

Edited October 5, 2020 by mjazzg

[Rabshakeh]

On Butcher, I'm not sure that solo Butcher is necessarily leagues away from group Butcher - there's just more of him to enjoy. 

13 Friendly Numbers and Fixations (14) are good ones to try.

The thrill of his playing for me is mostly down to how advanced his technical thinking is - he has all the techniques, emotion and range available to Parker etc., but with a really developed approach to feedback, miking and use of the physical space that he is playing in (presumably an influence from Alvin Lucier). I sometimes feel that the field of free improv is a little overfull, but he is one player who always stands out as attempting and achieving something different.

[mjazzg]

1 minute ago, Rabshakeh said:

On Butcher, I'm not sure that solo Butcher is necessarily leagues away from group Butcher - there's just more of him to enjoy. 

13 Friendly Numbers and Fixations (14) are good ones to try.

The thrill of his playing for me is mostly down to how advanced his technical thinking is - he has all the techniques, emotion and range available to Parker etc., but with a really developed approach to feedback, miking and use of the physical space that he is playing in (presumably an influence from Alvin Lucier). I sometimes feel that the field of free improv is a little overfull, but he is one player who always stands out as attempting and achieving something different.

Thanks. I'll investigate those two.

I hear all that but what I never get beyond is the technique.  I find him a very cold player but that's just how I hear it, I appreciate that.

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, mjazzg said:

The other is a best forgotten mismatch with Sanders, Edwards and Thurston Moore the latter of whom just musically embarrassed himself to my ears.

He seems to have decided that his future lies in humiliating himself with vanity gigs. I've got friends who are active in extreme metal circles in London and they are having to put up with much the same from him in their chosen genres. 

1 minute ago, mjazzg said:

I hear all that but what I never get beyond is the technique.  I find him a very cold player but that's just how I hear it, I appreciate that.

I can see that. He is quite cold. A prowler rather than a shredder. 

[mjazzg]

2 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

He seems to have decided that his future lies in humiliating himself with vanity gigs. I've got friends who are active in extreme metal circles in London and they are having to put up with much the same from him in their chosen genres. 

Now I like SY as much as the next person and more than many and I thought this might be an interesting experience to see how Thurston interacted with such high calibre improvisors. Well, he decided to just play very loudly over them for the entire gig.  No concept of listening whatsoever.  A shame and a missed opportunity.

 

[Steve Reynolds]

I love Butcher with North by Northwest, with Red Trio and really with any great bassist & drummer. I saw him solo once and I’m just not a fan of solo saxophone 

 

[Д.Д.]

3 hours ago, mjazzg said:

Now, John Butcher. He presents me with a conundrum in that everything about my listening tastes suggest I should lap up his recordings but somehow I've never found one that truly grips me.  I do keep trying and only last month bought the duet with McPhee and the one with Akio Suzuki, both of which i've enjoyed for the first couple of listens, the Suzuki the more so. I have duets with Hemingway and Paal Nilsson-Love and North By Northwest all of which have sat undisturbed on my shelves for a long time. My favourite has been a Clean Feed called 'A Brush With Dignity'.  I need to revisit. 

Well Sir, you got all the Butcher duds, as far as I am concerned. That Butcher / Hemingway duo is probably the worst thing I heard by Butcher (and I do like Hemingway in (many) other contexts). The duo with Nilssen-Love is only marginally better. My copy of the Suzuki duo is on its way to Australia, hope the guy who bought it from me on Discogs will find something to enjoy there - I failed. The one with McPhee might have been interesting to witness but does not seem to work as an album. I don't like van der Schyff's cymbal sound, so I could not make it through the Northwest thing. There are not that many Butcher duds left, you are close to completing the collection.

I am curious about A Brush with Dignity, never even heard of it. Fabrizio Spera is a very good drummer - saw him in trio with Butcher and L.S. Ellis at TTM in Berlin. A disaster of a concert, I shared my impressions right after the concert in the Funny Rat - but Spera was excellent.    

For solo Butcher, I am in complete agreement with Rabshakeh - 13 Friendly numbers and Fixations are the first that came to my mind. Also Invisible Ear, which is quite different from those two, utilizing amplification, feedback and other electronic chicanery (to a great effect) - here it is https://johnbutcher1.bandcamp.com/album/invisible-ear. I don't like the celebrated Resonant Spaces because this one actually does fall into "technique exploration" category for me. I just downloaded his latest solo STUCK (here: https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/shop/john-butcher-stuck/ ) and it's a good one too.    

Butcher cold? Well, Ben Webster he is not. I think the best word that describes his playing is "elegant". His technique is incredible, but his solos never sound like technical practice pieces to me. There is a great flow, there is an abundance of ideas, there is no empty mindless chatter (hello, Evan Parker). It's all very precise progressing perfectly logically - like a mathematical theorem. I can listen these back to back with the best classical pieces for solo saxophone (Berio, Scelsi, etc.) and Butcher's music is right up there. There are very few solo improvisors who can construct a complete piece of music on the spot like this.                 

24 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:

I love Butcher with North by Northwest, with Red Trio and really with any great bassist & drummer. I saw him solo once and I’m just not a fan of solo saxophone 

You might want to consider this one, I enjoy it a lot:

Edited October 5, 2020 by Д.Д.

[mjazzg]

3 minutes ago, Д.Д. said:

Well Sir, you got all the Butcher duds, as far as I am concerned.        

Well that makes me feel a whole lot better...

 

17 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:

I love Butcher with North by Northwest, with Red Trio and really with any great bassist & drummer. I saw him solo once and I’m just not a fan of solo saxophone 

 

Yeah, I forgot the Red Trio (great trio) collaborations. I have 'Empire'.

[Steve Reynolds]

22 minutes ago, Д.Д. said:

Well Sir, you got all the Butcher duds, as far as I am concerned. That Butcher / Hemingway duo is probably the worst thing I heard by Butcher (and I do like Hemingway in (many) other contexts). The duo with Nilssen-Love is only marginally better. My copy of the Suzuki duo is on its way to Australia, hope the guy who bought it from me on Discogs will find something to enjoy there - I failed. The one with McPhee might have been interesting to witness but does not seem to work as an album. I don't like van der Schyff's cymbal sound, so I could not make it through the Northwest thing. There are not that many Butcher duds left, you are close to completing the collection.

I am curious about A Brush with Dignity, never even heard of it. Fabrizio Spera is a very good drummer - saw him in trio with Butcher and L.S. Ellis at TTM in Berlin. A disaster of a concert, I shared my impressions right after the concert in the Funny Rat - but Spera was excellent.    

For solo Butcher, I am in complete agreement with Rabshakeh - 13 Friendly numbers and Fixations are the first that came to my mind. Also Invisible Ear, which is quite different from those two, utilizing amplification, feedback and other electronic chicanery (to a great effect) - here it is https://johnbutcher1.bandcamp.com/album/invisible-ear. I don't like the celebrated Resonant Spaces because this one actually does fall into "technique exploration" category for me. I just downloaded his latest solo STUCK (here: https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/shop/john-butcher-stuck/ ) and it's a good one too.    

Butcher cold? Well, Ben Webster he is not. I think the best word that describes his playing is "elegant". His technique is incredible, but his solos never sound like technical practice pieces to me. There is a great flow, there is an abundance of ideas, there is no empty mindless chatter (hello, Evan Parker). It's all very precise progressing perfectly logically - like a mathematical theorem. I can listen these back to back with the best classical pieces for solo saxophone (Berio, Scelsi, etc.) and Butcher's music is right up there. There are very few solo improvisors who can construct a complete piece of music on the spot like this.                 

You might want to consider this one, I enjoy it a lot:

Love it

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, Д.Д. said:

I can listen these back to back with the best classical pieces for solo saxophone (Berio, Scelsi, etc.) and Butcher's music is right up there. There are very few solo improvisors who can construct a complete piece of music on the spot like this.            

I don't know that those composers had written for solo saxophone. Are there versions that you'd recommend?

Edited October 5, 2020 by Rabshakeh

[Д.Д.]

5 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

I don't know that those composers had written for solo saxophone. Are there versions that you'd recommend?

Oh yes.

https://open.spotify.com/album/0pzbtxim3lVmSj4Y1L2KoQ 

Edited October 5, 2020 by Д.Д.

[Д.Д.]

Btw, there is a live streaming of the Georg Gräwe large band concert right now: https://www.porgy.at/events/live 

I saw them a couple of times last year - outstanding. 

 

[Rabshakeh]

43 minutes ago, Д.Д. said:

Oh yes.

https://open.spotify.com/album/0pzbtxim3lVmSj4Y1L2KoQ 

Thanks. That's my evening plan, then.

[mjazzg]

Whilst we're on the subject of solo saxophone, this hit the spot

https://smallscalemusic.bandcamp.com/album/le-territoire-de-lanche

[Clunky]

On 10/2/2020 at 10:19 PM, Д.Д. said:

And got this one too: https://f-a-t-a-k-a.bandcamp.com/album/tangle 

oh.. i dug this one out to play the other day. Good session