Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Palo Alto Sees the Thelonious Monk Quartet at its “Final Creative High”

By Leave a Comment

Reviewed by Marty Sartini Garner

Palo Alto
on Impulse!
Pitchfork

Thelonious Monk once said: “Weird means something you never heard before. It’s weird until people get around to it. Then it ceases to be weird.” By the time Monk and his quartet strode into the auditorium at Palo Alto High School on October 27, 1968, people hadn’t just gotten around to his oblong, minimalist take on jazz—they’d left it behind. After decades of toiling in New York’s clubs to little outside recognition, Monk had briefly tasted superstardom, culminating in a 1964 Time magazine cover. Less than half a decade later, he’d slipped to No. 6 on DownBeat’s International Critics Poll ranking jazz’s best pianists, and writers routinely dismissed his playing as stale and uninspired. Still, he was Thelonious Sphere Monk: If he was no longer weird, and no longer a superstar, he was still a legend. A legend who couldn’t afford to miss a $500 payday at a high school. [Read more…]

Words On Fire: The Literature Of The Doors

By 4 Comments

by Alci Rengifo

The music of The Doors seems to find its place in every era since the band’s stirring debut first appeared fifty years ago. Spawned in the era of Vietnam, revolution and technological innovation, The Doors dived into a dark, literary well that is timeless and always relevant. Jim Morrison alone introduced a manic onstage persona that has influenced every rock genre to emerge since the 60s. He was Dionysus meets Rimbaud, hedonistic jester meets feverish wordsmith. Because the band was fronted by a figure who viewed himself foremost as a poet — the rare rock star who even wrote fan letters to literary scholars — their music endures much the same way the edgiest of classical literature still finds devotees. [Read more…]

The Exploratory Instincts Of Shabaka And The Ancestors’ We Are Sent Here By History

By Leave a Comment

on Impulse! Records
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Shabaka Hutchings, the London based musician behind The Comet is Coming and Sons of Kemet, had just  released a second recording with his South African based project, Shabaka & the Ancestors when Covid-19 canceled the promotional tour along with everything else in the world. Hutchings spoke with NPR about the illness, its impact on touring musicians and the financial hit the quarantine has put on those musicians. “Literally, all my gigs in the next two months have been canceled. And everyone I know is in the same boat.” Questions surround the entire world as markets crash, people lose jobs across every sector, and the illness continues to mount. Hutchings isn’t a doomsayer. “We have to make the best of the situation, or the situation will just be tragic. And all situations have the potential to be tragic, or the potential to be tragic and transformative.” [Read more…]

Organized Anarchy in OOIOO’s Nijimusi

By Leave a Comment

on Thrill Jockey
Reviewed by John Payne

What are we looking for when we listen to new music? What is most important? It’s not so much that each and every musical experience has to be formally groundbreaking and utterly unlike anything that has come before, though that rare occurrence certainly does help. Really, we’re talking about the same thing we ask of pop music or jazz or anything else, which is the element of surprise — surprise at how our assumptions about what music is and ought to be get a hefty boot in the booty; surprise at how our own pretensions toward being in whatever kind of vanguard get challenged, how we are forced to question our own orthodoxies, our own ways of breaking the rules. [Read more…]

Abandoned To The Voice In My Head: King Krule’s Man Alive!

By Leave a Comment

on XL Recordings/Matador Records
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Archy Ivan Marshall is a 25-year-old musician who performs under the nom de guerre King Krule. As Krule, he has delivered a stunning portrait of demonic exorcism across three full length releases and as many extended plays. As Archy Marshall, he’s added a book and another album, both featuring his brother, Jack.

In a universe devoid of the weary and multitudinous musical classification system, people would immediately recognize the emotional content of the Krule/Marshall output and stamp it as such. Within the varied categorization that has been embraced by those seeking to brand themselves with the musical ideologies of others as a lifestyle choice, defining King Krule as Emo is still a contextual misstep. His is the sound of an ambling internal, but revolutionary discord. [Read more…]

Gathering No Moss, Toh-Kichi’s Baikamo Wanders Freely If Not Ferally Through The Avant-Garde

By Leave a Comment

on Libra Records
Reviewed by John Payne

Since her 1996 duo set with Paul Bley on Something About Water (Libra), pianist-composer Satoko Fujii has led numerous groups in widely varied formats ranging from free jazz to avant-rock to new-music chamber works. The possessor of a most formidable set of playing chops, Fujii is an intellectually engaged and refreshingly progressive-minded musician whose idiosyncratically shaped and harmonized compositions have seen upwards of 80-plus releases on her and partner Natsuki Tamura’s Libra label (Tamura, who also goes by the name Kappa Maki, is on his own a beautifully unclichéd tone-warper with an equally brazen disregard for the hollow holys of his instrument). If you want a reference point for the kind of beyond-jazz musical freedom Fujii represents, you might think Carla Bley and Michael Mantler’s Jazz Composers Orchestra stuff of the early ‘70s. [Read more…]

The ’10s: Best Jazz Releases Of The Decade

By Leave a Comment

by Henry Cherry

In the last decade of his life, Duke Ellington, probably America’s greatest composer, had a resurgence. Jazz was in turmoil, expanding and contracting at the same time, not unlike a star going supernova. In Ellington’s case, he was reincorporating various musical influences. He returned to the sacred music of his early life, to New Orleans, to the songbook of his musical foil, Billy Strayhorn, after Strayhorn died in 1967. But it is the sacred music that truly reinvigorated what would be the master’s last era. [Read more…]

The Overlooked Ten From 2019’s Jazz Bin

By Leave a Comment

by Henry Cherry

Choosing music outside of the constraints of marketing and modishness is a difficult practice that for some is an absolute chore. In this technocratic age of curated playlists, there is less exploration among individuals. While online encyclopedias continue to define and annotate the music of the past along with current releases, it is sometimes easier to plug into the mindless algorithmic bliss provided by streaming services. That is NOT wrong. Everybody wants some simplification in these complicated times. [Read more…]

The Breathless Charm Of Tina Brooks’s Minor Move

By Leave a Comment

on Blue Note Records
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

Soulster James Brown was known as the godfather of soul for a reason. His syncopated music had the sound of a crisp, rehearsed band that could stop on a dime. In live shows, the singer demanded that same precision found on his studio recordings. Brown regularly fined bandmembers onstage for miscues and dropped notes, dancing his way over toward the offending bandmember in mid-song and flashing with his hand the amount of the fine. It’s been lauded as part of his perfectionism, a backbone of his “hardest working man in show business.” But to be clear, that is business, not music. [Read more…]

John Coltrane’s Cat In The Bag: Blue World

By Leave a Comment

on Impulse!
Reviewed by Henry Cherry

John Coltrane died from liver cancer 52 years ago. Nevertheless, in the last two years, he has released two new recordings. Both were lost, one forgotten in the attack of a relative, the other hidden in a Canadian film archive, protected from the devastating Universal Studios Fire of 2008 that destroyed more than 100,000 master tapes, some Coltrane recordings among them. [Read more…]

David S. Ware New Quartet’s Théâtre Garonne, 2008

By Leave a Comment

Out November 15 on Aum Fidelity
Reviewed by John Payne

When David S. Ware passed away in October of 2012, the world lost a sound it’s never getting back again. That sound was revolutionary, it was a tough sound, a punk-jazz sound that asks a lot of questions and can’t wait around for answers. Ware’s sax tone was a raspy, ragged, haaard-blowing, Ayler-ish thing that frequently produced a kind of fear ­­– fear that the man was gonna explode, he’s blowing so hard. That concern is palpable on this live concert recording, Théâtre Garonne, 2008, the latest issue from the David S. Ware Archive Series on the ever-righteous Aum Fidelity label. The set showcases the fact that Ware had already been suffering the strains of the illness that eventually killed him. [Read more…]

CUP’s Hydra-Headed Spinning Creature

By Leave a Comment

on Northern Spy
Reviewed by John Payne

Wherein the husband and wife team up to rinse and shine the aural punchbowl, no squabbling. Nels Cline & Yuka Honda are Cup, co-cookers of rich, musically nutritious stuff packed with savory, skewed nuance that reflects their artistic differences and affinities. Guitar visionary Cline’s scope, skills and, yes, taste, are renowned of late. His fiercely inventive rock/jazz/other playing with Wilco has boosted his fame-o-meter quite a bit, as have his numerous collaborations with the multifarious likes of Medeski Martin & Wood, Deerhoof, Charlie Haden, Julius Hemphill and Mike Watt, and his own all-instrumental Nels Cline Singers. Keyboardist/electronicist/producer Honda of the late avant-pop duo Cibo Matto has played a vital role in Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon’s bands and is a crucial presence on the downtown NYC new-thing/non-genre/performance-art scene. [Read more…]

Sound Itself As The Only Way Forward In Swans’ Leaving Meaning

By Leave a Comment

out October 25 on Young God Records
Reviewed by John Payne

Michael Gira founded/guiding-lighted the sort of no-wave / noise / spiritual-purification band Swans in NYC 35 some odd years ago, and, roughly, he’s made a career out of trying musically to express the inexpressible ever since. After a hiatus of a few years, during which he formed Angels of Light, Gira re-formed Swans in 2010 and proceeded to release a series of exceedingly, brutally beautiful double-CDs of mental mayhem-catharsis. [Read more…]

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

By Leave a Comment

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

By Leave a Comment

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

By Leave a Comment

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…]

Amon Tobin’s Fear in a Handful of Dust

By Leave a Comment

on Nomark

Reviewed by John Payne

On the occasions when he drops a new platter, the veteran producer/DJ-composer Amon Tobin can always be counted on to raise the sonic-magic bar several notches. From his early found-sounds ‘n’ beats productions such as Bricolage (1997), Permutation (1998), the magnificent Supermodified (2000) and Out From Out Where (2002), he progressed to things like Foley Room (2007), which explored the role of sound design and field recordings, and ISAM (2011), the titular acronym referring to “Invented Sound Applied to Music” and in which Tobin utilized advanced synthesis processing and production techniques traditionally reserved for sound design in film.  [Read more…]

London’s Jazz Scene Is Burning

By Leave a Comment

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

By Leave a Comment

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…]

The Literal Sounds Of Plastic On Matmos’s Plastic Anniversary

By Leave a Comment

Thrill Jockey
Reviewed by John Payne

In music, in general, combining high conceptual aims with what we call accessibility (a troublesome concept on its own) is not an easy thing to pull off. My no doubt annoyingly subjective list of musicians who’ve achieved a balancing in this equation (ear-friendliness + modernity) would include, say, Robert Wyatt, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Jon Hassell, Holger Czukay, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Terje Rypdal, Annette Peacock, Diamanda Galás, Coil and the Velvet Underground. This varied bunch shares the notion of basing the work on musical or thematic ideas, and in so doing not skimping on the soul; the goal is a kind of beauty. [Read more…]