Karen Ng on saxes and cities
Karen Ng on saxophone and more…a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and curator based in Toronto. She talks with host Josh Thorpe about round-robin collaborative composing, how cities and spaces shape musics,...
jazz
Feathers and energy with Matana Roberts
In this interview Matana Roberts and host Josh Thorpe, we discuss and listen to some excerpts of Roberts’ new release on Constellation Records… it’s Coin Coin Chapter 5 (as...
Music like weather with Eric Chenaux
Josh revisits ideas and sounds from Canadian/Swiss guitarist, songwriter and composer Eric Chenaux. These include Eric’s own fried balladry, Richard Youngs‘ freaked out concertinism, the extended quasi-country of Nashville...
Strange sounds from Counterflows Glasgow
This episode Josh Thorpe listens to a few recordings from musicians and artists discovered at Glasgow’s Counterflows festival. Artists include an English-Ugandan collaboration w/ Rian Treanor and Ocen James;...
Blank out w/ Eric Chenaux
In this episode Josh Thorpe interviews Eric Chenaux, a composer, songwriter, guitarist living in France. Eric makes strange and lovely long songs that interweave the ghosts of many types...
Interview w/ viola player Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh
Ailbhe joins me to listen to the viola, the violin, some guitars, a horse-hair harp, some outside jazz and a sewing machine. Ailbhe’s great to speak with and her...
Brodie West Quintet’s Fortress
The interplay here, particularly between West’s saxophone and Tania Gill’s piano, has me seeing a malleable object, a bright children’s toy or heavy paper, folded inside out and back...
Loving strange tones from Karen Ng and Scott Thomson
These sounds are so themselves and so otherworldy. Idiomatic and yet surprising at the same time. Lovely. And lovely in that it is dedicated to the late Ron Gaskin....
Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson’s Searching for the Disappeared Hour
Halvorson on guitar and Courvoisier on piano work magic together. The timbre of the guitar, so similar at times to the piano, allows Halvorson to almost hide notes inside...
Chenaux’s Say Laura is tender confections
Pleased to see Eric Chenaux play in Glasgow recently at the Glad Café with Ailbhe nic Oireachtaigh. Chenaux’s new album Say Laura (on Constellation) with Ryan Driver is a...
Rat-drifting launches 3 new titles
One of our favourite record labels, Rat-drifting (based in Toronto and France), recently re-launched on BandCamp after a few years of rest. The other day three new records came...
Alister Spence/Joe Williamson/Christopher Cantillo – “Opening”
Bells and bell-like sounds and cymbals, and other metal sounds, a searching piano and everything slowed down to a pace of uncertainty; in the middle the double bass like...
Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl w/ Robert Wyatt
It’s nice to hear Robert Wyatt’s voice again, particularly with some heavy guitar licks. I missed this 2020 release when it came out. Halvorson here working also with Amirtha...
Susana Santos Silva Impermanence’s “The Ocean Inside a Stone”
A five-member ensemble, led by trumpet player/composer Susana Santos Silva. Unexpected fusions, often signalled by Hugo Raro’s synthesizer work, take to the listener to places of memory—now Radiohead, now...
Psychedelic & wonderful listening with Martin Arnold
Listen to the music of Martin Arnold, Rudolf Komorous, Archie Shepp, Jessie Mae Hemphill, and Nightjars. Martin is a brilliant thinker on the wonderful and the psychedelic, and he...
Uchihashi Kazuhisa and Ryoko Ono: “001”
Ryoko Ono on saxophone, and Uchihashi Kazuhisa on daxophone, an instrument developed in the 1980s. On this track, wildly assertive playing, competing rhythms, competing repetitions, noisy intrusions that linger...
Karen Ng’s “Day 3 i”
It’s difficult to know what analogy works to describe Karen Ng’s stunning solo saxophone recordings: a thought process, a dialogue with the self, a creator reacting to her moment-by-moment...
Punk Kong’s “Pull Ninja”
Unusual soundscapish jazz takes noisy turns, distorted climbs, and opens to beautiful spaces. Pull Ninja by Punk Kong
Geir Sundstøl’s “Warszawa-Alabama”
Very unexpected coupling of Coltrane and Bowie. Brødløs by Geir Sundstøl
Luke Stewart / Patrick Shiroishi, “Staying Human”
Long tones, voluminous room sound (parking garage!), spare and grand, maybe scary, maybe consoling. Luke Stewart / Patrick Shiroishi by Luke Stewart / Patrick Shiroishi