Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Anthony Braxton’s Accessibly Antithetical Quartet (New Haven) 2014

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on Firehouse 12 Records
Reviewed by John Payne

This monumental four-CD box set photographs the one-time meeting of an avant all-star and super-like-minded foursome: The infamously abstruse saxophonist and conceptualist Anthony Braxton partnered with Nels Cline (guitar), Greg Saunier (drums) and Taylor Ho Bynum (brass). It is music that, because of the heavily theoretical predilections of its “bandleader,” might suggest a sound that reeks of a dry formality. It doesn’t. It does present a number of issues and questions. [Read more…]

Old Smoke Fuels The Sound Fury Of Theoretical Spontaneity

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Baczkowski/Lopez/Corzano’s Old Smoke
on Relative Pitch Records
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Because of his self-anointed position as the ambassador of all jazz, Wynton Marsalis served as musical advisor on Ken Burns’s episodic documentary on the genre for PBS. By deleting any real discussion of the music’s experimental arm, it was understood to be a death blow for avant-garde jazz. At that point, the entirety of jazz was atrophying, despite Marsalis’s acclaim. He attempted to cut off what he deemed an unneeded appendage to save the body he loved. Marsalis has further slashed at free jazz in the ensuing years, perhaps unable to believe his initial assault did not mortally wound the sound. [Read more…]

Mythological Jazz Asteroids in the Afro Futurist Space Belt

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Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery: The Comet is Coming
on Impulse!

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Experience by itself, the phenomenological philosopher Edmund Husserl said, is not science. In the hands of London band The Comet is Coming, experience is a strict adherence to improvisation and exploration that filters the scientific process into a musical call and response. It has purified their sound. So perhaps Husserl is only part right. Maybe some experience is scientific. Maybe some music is science. [Read more…]

London’s Jazz Scene Is Burning

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Theon Cross’s Fyah
on Gearbox Records

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Theon Cross’s new album, Fyah, is a monument to the importance of the London Jazz Scene and, by proxy, that scene’s reliance on Tomorrow’s Warriors. Tomorrow’s Warriors is a musical education program Cross took part in that primarily focuses on youth of the city’s African Diaspora community, bringing them into music instrument by instrument, note by note. On Fyah, Cross delivers a hybrid of jazz influenced by electronic music, funk and reggae. The music is driven by the tuba, an oft over looked instrument, which Cross has mastered and which gives the songs within a fresh coat of innovation. [Read more…]

Matthew Shipp Trio’s Signature

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on ESP-Disk’

Reviewed by John Payne

The rather prolific Matthew Shipp is the most relevant jazz pianist of the last few decades. With more than 85 releases of bold ‘n’ brave music as a solo performer and in duo/ trio/quartet formats alongside the avantish jazz likes of the David S. Ware Quartet, Ivo Perelman, Sabir Mateen, Darius Jones, Joe Morris, Jemeel Moondoc, Mat Walerian and two tons of others, he hasn’t had time to take a vacation. Several years ago Shipp told me he was thinking of retiring from recording, because, he said, there was just too much music out there in consumer land. I’m glad he didn’t, because his recorded output since spouting such balderdash has only grown more profound — and truly electrifying. [Read more…]

Adventures In Abstract Sound: The Music Of Eric Dolphy

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Musical Prophet: The Expanded New York Studio Sessions (1963)
on Resonance Records

Reviewed Henry Cherry

The music collected on Eric Dolphy’s Musical Prophet: The Expanded New York Studio Sessions (1963) is so unyielding and so open, it’s hard to accept the musician would be dead in just under a year. After rejoining former band leader Charles Mingus for a tour of Europe, Dolphy died from diabetic shock on June 29th1964. Having suffered stinging criticism back home in the United States, the musician hoped to leave the disparagement behind and become a musical ex-pat. Unaware he had diabetes, Dolphy slipped into a coma and expired in a Berlin hospital. He was 36 years old. Equally skilled across three instruments — flute, bass clarinet and alto saxophone — Dolphy put out eight albums as a leader in his lifetime. More than 22 others were released after his demise. Most recent among those posthumous releases, Musical Prophet is perhaps the most remarkable, as it includes among its three discs nine previously unissued tracks, making a complete album of unheard music. [Read more…]

Playing the Truth: Charles Mingus’s Jazz in Detroit/ Strata Concert Gallery/ 46 Selden

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on BBE

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

In January of 1979, two extraordinary losses occurred in Mexico. 56 sperm whales beached themselves on the country’s coast line. Reportedly on the same day, fabled jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus died of heart failure related to ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was 56. Mingus had gone to Mexico in the late stages of his disease to seek alternative treatment.  He was cremated and his ashes were poured into the Ganges, the sacred river that runs through India and Bangladesh. The whales were also burned, their ashes disposed in a dump. [Read more…]

Thelonious Monk, Not Yet At The End

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Mønk
on Gearbox Records

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk loved Laurel and Hardy, and playing Yahtzee with his wife Nellie, and ping pong. He once played 60 consecutive games of pong against John Coltrane, Monk winning all but one. He also lost his cabaret card (a license to play in New York clubs) for a time after being busted holding fellow pianist Bud Powell’s stash of heroin. An English Hungarian Baroness devoted her life to his patronage, even leaving her children behind, upon first hearing Monk’s music. His playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Kenny Clarke birthed Bebop, the complex rhythmic stew that changed the face of jazz. Monk’s life is sort of the quintessential American experience — filled with innovation, the impact of racism, even marked by a climactic third act when he clawed his way back to the top of the heap. [Read more…]

Expansive New Work From The Necks: Body

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on Northern Spy Records

Reviewed by John Payne

The Necks: Body (reviewed at Riot Material magazine)How to better classify an improvisational unit such as the Necks? Since the Australian trio perform their music on instruments associated with jazz — acoustic piano, double bass and drums — they tease us with whether or not they ought to be aligned with the severely rule-bound world of jazz at all. Whatever the case, it is hugely satisfying to hear the group’s lack of reverence for the form’s many hallowed conventions. With a healthy, punky boredom about all that, the Necks poke all ye olde shopworn swinging jazz a certifiably new bumhole. [Read more…]

Swimming in the River Coltrane: Both Directions at Once

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on Impulse!

Reviewed by Henry Cherry

While much of John Coltrane’s posthumously issued work filters the mysticism of his live performances, those mystic shadows do spread into Both Directions at Once, the newly released studio recording from March 6th 1963. At the time, Coltrane was working out transformative sounds while trying to retain a marketable presence. He wanted to sell more records, but he also wanted to explore the parameters of his band, his horn, and his mind. The two co-led sessions that bookend this album on Coltrane’s studio timeline certify his urge to remain in demand, while live outings like Newport ‘63 and Live in Stockholm 1963 validate his experimental needs. [Read more…]