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...
free jazz
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
Punk Kong’s “Pull Ninja”
Unusual soundscapish jazz takes noisy turns, distorted climbs, and opens to beautiful spaces. Pull Ninja by Punk Kong
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...
Alcorn, Bordreuil, and Laubrock: “Indigo Blue (Wayfarin Stranger)”
Susan Alcorn, Leila Bordreuil, and Ingrid Laubrock – pedal steel, cello, and saxophone – create an otherworldly sense of summer. Bird Meets...
An hour of Unusual on Clyde Built Radio
An eclectic radio show on Glasgow’s Clyde Built Radio. We listen to a song of mine, Sonic Youth, composer Allison Cameron,...
Hotel Dilettante
Lol Coxhill & the George Burt & Raymond MacDonald Quintet with some lovely strange noises and dirty improvisation here. Also some...
Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake
“Season in the Sun” on The Newest Sound Around. Stark and warm, austere and tuneful, the new sound in 1962 and...