2015 Jazz Thread
 

I remember doing a thread like this years ago. Huh. Anyway, I wanted a spot to discuss new jazz releases and reissues being released in 2015. What say you?

Have any of y'all heard any of these and would like to discuss?

Brian Chipendale & Greg Saunier - s/t
Dave Douglas - High Risk
Robert Glasper Trio - Covered
Matthew Shipp Quartet - Our Lady Of The Flowers
Kamasi Washington - The Epic

Or... anything else?

ok, I'll start the convo...



Robert Glasper Trio's COVERED is really good. Like really really good. This is a trio recording live at Capital Studios to a small crowd. Basically, he takes some of the more experimental collaborations he did for his BLACK RADIO albums and strips them down for a trio.

I'm not familiar with his drummer Damion Reid but dude smokes. The drums on "I Don't Even Care" are frantic drum-n-bass and one has to wonder how he keeps it going. The track ends w/ a brief interpolation of The Roots' "you got me." It's awesome.

Glasper himself is insane. Like, you'll think "how can he do that w/ only 2 hands?" kind of stuff.

They also cover Radioheads' "Reckoner" and Musiq Soulchild's "So Beautiful" and tracks by John Legend and Bilal.

"In Case You Forgot" is a crazy 13 min... thing. I can't describe it. Part free jazz, part ballads, part modal decay.

LOUDER AND SEV WOULD BOTH BE INTERESTED TO KNOW that Glasper has played piano on Q-Tip's THE RENAISSANCE, and Kendrick's TPAB.

In fact this ends w a version of "Im dying of thirst"

Here's a vid of one of Jhane Aiko's "The Worst" from this performance: https://youtu.be/2g6MsY8vD1A

Good thread! Thanks for this I've been really looking for good contemporary stuff. Have you heard Kendrick Scott?

I have not. Fill me in?

He's a drummer. Not really sure too much about him. I heard him on the radio the other day and it is one of the first things I've heard that is newer that caught my interest.

Here's a nice vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5KJlS8pDSE

and here is the song that got me interested in the first place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtoeuYm_eiI

I'm pretty interested in that Kamasi Washington album.

whaaaaaaaaaatttt????

where is this!!! this i must have!!!

are they "jazz drummers" though?

still, who cares!

They are not, but i mean a drum duo recording felt appropria

sheeeeeee.... have it on youtube right now-- BANANAS

https://youtu.be/HmdDkxV0208

greg channeling "animal" from the muppets

yeah, I wanna check that out too. I feel like I'll have to do each disc in seperate sittings, just out of the logistics of "free time" tho.

This is a good thread, noise, because, while I'm fairly familiar with a lot of older jazz, all the stuff that a lot of jazz fans know about, I am in the dark about new stuff. I look forward to recommendations from you and others.

word - I find it hard to keep up w/ new jazz releases honestly. I Feel like even stuff I"m into I might see somewhere and be like "damn that came out 2 years ago, how'd I miss that?" So yeah, that's kind of the goal of the thread, try to keep on top of interesting releases. Like I said, reissues as well.

While I am not a big fan of standards, or jazz singers, my wife and I enjoy going to hear Tianna Hall and her quartet perform when we can. http://www.tiannahall.com/

speaking of reissues...

John Coltrane's Quintet - So Many Things: The Europe Tour 1961

...looks really interesting. 4CD's and culled from various dates. Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and Reggie Workman. Oddly there's a lot of overlap on this thing, w/ songs repeating from disc to disc, but I mean, SIX versions of "My Favorite Things" by Coltrane sounds essential to me. His take on that standard is just bliss to me.

Is this out??? Didn't even know about this.

apparently it is!

http://www.discogs.com/John-Coltrane...elease/6773089

listened to the first disc of the Kamasi Washington album. It's really good. Think Coltrane over long drawn pieces that also incorporate a choir and orchestra at parts. Impressive stuff.

The store that catered to jazz closed a couple of years ago. There's still a good rock/alternative record store open, but its jazz selection is not nearly as robust. Makes it doubly hard to keep up with jazz, new or old.

However, and this is a big however, there is an excellent jazz radio station in my new home town. I need to listen to this more often.

well holy crap, look what pfork reviewed today...



Duke Ellington
The Conny Plank Session
Grönland; 2015

Listened to disc two of The Epic today. Loving it.

im gonna check these out, if I have the time. I didn't know jazz was still interesting. I love good jazz!

don't want no hiphop electrical blahblah de blah modern shit. im force feed enough of that.

I normally shy away from vocals in jazz, but this track... THIS TRACK

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkLz4MyDmuE

not a 2015 album, but a 2004 album... BUT I just found out that Kamasi Washington was in a quartet Young Jazz Giants that released a s/t album in 2004... also in the group was Thundercat under his birthname. WOAH. I'm gonna have to track this shit down.

NPR put out a 2 hr video of Kamasi Washington's release party show for The Epic.

http://www.npr.org/event/music/40206...pic-in-concert

Totally worth watching. Great setlist.

i find this thread to be highly irritating.
then again jazz tends to be irritating.
i also just found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=935D23qfO2k

yes,yes, offtopic


why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXuZBywW4gA

to stay on topic, there's one record coming out in august which i've been waiting for really long
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoEM8blFQco
we speak whale

Irritating, why?

I dont dislike vocals in jazz really, but i would say 90% of what i listen to is instrumental.

here a portuguese jazz band...red trio :

RED trio is a group that presents a multiplicity of approaches to music playing and composition in real time by improvisation.

Formed by three musicians from the new improvised music Lisbon scene from an idea by Hernâni Faustino, RED trio features Rodrigo Pinheiro at the piano, Hernani Faustino at the doublebass and Gabriel Ferrandini at the drums. RED Trio explores one of the most prolific jazz formations: piano/doublebass/drums. The trio's music is characterized for being fast, energic, highly focused, dynamic and sometimes nervous and violent. Most of RED trio influences are based on jazz and especially on improvised music. A three part counterpoint oscillating between the most subtle sound to a sonic burst full of violence and intensity.

from this year...live in munich

https://soundcloud.com/astral-spirit...red-trio-as010

or with jonh butcher : https://youtu.be/qHqHtIXKPok

cool, thanks!


Also of note is Vol 4 of Miles Davis' Bootleg Series, out this past week. It's live at the Newport Jazz Fest, w/ dates from 1955-75. I'm gonna check that out soon.

Also, Brian Charette's new album sounds interesting.

Picked up that Miles Davis box set today, will post my thoughts once i listen to all four discs.

whooo that new Miles Davis boxset is deep. Highly recommended folks.

I had completely forgotten that The Bad Plus put out a new album. It's a collab w/ Joshua Redman and it's really nice. Both parties meet halfway and sound totally comfy together.

great trio with joe morris, evan parker, and nate wooley

"There are two currents of thought concerning the relationship between jazz and free improvisation – one includes the second in the domain of the first and the other arguments that improvised music is now an independent field, generally with no idiomatic jazz ties. This super trio with Evan Parker, Joe Morris and Nate Wooley seems to fit in the first thesis"

and this is a great album

I've seen Wooley with Ken Vandemark, that was really different, very angular improv and have also seen Joe Morris solo. Not my favorite guitarist, but still a good set

Free Radicals are a group doing Jazz fusion freakouts in Houston and have been kicking out the jams for a decade now...

http://www.freerads.com/
https://youtu.be/bAgps0oVMn4

kris davis infrasound-save your breath

kris davis on piano with 4 bass clarinets (Ben Goldberg, Andrew Bishop, Oscar Noriega, Joachim Badenhorst) with organ (Gary Versace), guitar (Nate Radley), drums (Jim Black)

rock influenced jazz/improv. and the rock influence doesn't sound corny(!) as it tends to. good tunes and good playing.
it also has one of my favorite song titles-The Ghost of Your Previous Fuck Up

mario pavone trio-blue dialect

mario pavone on bass matt mitchell on piano and tyshawn sorey on drums

really good free jazz piano trio that plays a lot in time but plays free time sometimes.

mary halvorson-reverse blue

mary halvorson on guitar Chris Speed on clarinet, Eivind Opsvik bass & Tomas Fujiwara drums

they all write tunes. free playing not free playing. they even have a song based on john coltrane's chords from giant steps.
mary is one of the most interesting guitar players around these days.




speaking of the bad plus they released their interpretation of stravinsky's the rite of spring. a piano trio doing an orchestral piece.
it works. i think it was last year tho.




noisereductions, ill have to check out the bad plus joshua redman

sounds interesting...i like the work of mary halvorson (a fine "disciple" of joe morris) must check this out.

this sounds really intriguing to me. Thanks!




yeah that was last year - but certainly worth noting. One of the things I love about The Bad Plus is how they've been doing a lot of 'concept' albums in recent years to sort of challenge themselves. There was the covers album w/ vocalist (For All I Care), the Rite Of Spring, and now the album w/ Joshua Redman. I feel like these experiments then in turn have an effect on their 'proper' albums.

Anyway, the opening track on The Bad Plus Redman is one of the smoothest things I've ever heard them pull off. And I don't mean like 'smooth jazz,' I mean like you just wanna put it on repeat and zone out for hours. Just gorgeous.

there's always more Sun Ra...



Planets Of Life Or Death
Recorded at Maison de la Culture, Amiens, France, 21st October 1973.


1 Enlightenment 2:24
2 Love In Outer Space 17:08
3 Lights On A Satellite 3:53
4 Discipline 27-II / What Planet Is This 23:47


(released May 2015)

shameless self-promotion, I started working on a jazz site/blog last month:

thelowendtheoryofnoise.weebly.com

There's not a ton of content there yet, but the idea is basically just me writing up my thoughts on my jazz CD collection as I'm listening to stuff. Basically for me to keep track of album chronology and what I like about each, but also encourages me to actually actively listen to the CD's I buy, and also spend time focusing on particular CD's instead of just binge-buying piles of them and never finding time to listen.

The blog section is a bit more random thoughts on jazz stuff and reminders/heads-up on new releases.

Oh and as I add write-ups I'm also continually adding tracks from each CD to an ever-expanding Spotify playlist that you can stream there as well.

out next month: akira sakata, jim o'rourke, chris corsano, darin gray & masami akita. follow up to "and that's the story of jazz" + merzbow. previews sound enormous https://soundcloud.com/familyvineyar...-flying-basket

also highly recommended are the two sets trost put out this year featuring o'rourke, keiji haino & peter brötzmann

Been seeing/hearing a lot of great work from Paal Nilssen Love & Ken Vandermark. last show i saw was several weeks ago where i gripped a live recording and a studio album, both heavily improvised.