Efpi The Beats & Pieces Big Band has been together in one form or another since 2008 and is doing its best to breathe new life into classic big band jazz. The dancefloor filler of its time, moved the head and the heart, and was filled with a sweeping sense of life and joy. Ben Cottrell‘s collective bring that sense of wonder and momentum smoothly into the twenty-first […]
Mr Olivetti
901 posts
Magma / NEWS Belgian four-piece Tukan come at their interpretation of kinetic rock music as if some of them have spent a proportion of their time lost in the intense sweep of post-rave dance music. The drifting synths and Balearic keyboard motifs welded to live drums and bass make for an organic, muscular journey. There is a sense of that dance euphoria spread across most of the seven […]
Naïve LA-based Bryan Senti has already placed his debut album Manu online, a post-classical string trio treatise that places minimal Western leanings within a fresh narrative which borrows from the indigenous sounds of his Latin American roots. Finally it is receiving a vinyl release and well deserving of this honour it is, from the of the cover image to the lush black RTI pressing.
Psychic Hotline Tim Bernardes, one third of Brazilian indie-tropicalia band O Terno, chose the start of 2020 to regroup and focus once again on a solo album that took him from the touring treadmill and allowed him to concentrate once again on crafting something that was entirely his own. The sixteen tracks that make up Mil Coisas Invisiveis come straight from the heart and highlight a voice that […]
Discus The second album from Bo Meson this year finds his focus reverting to his own unstructured universe, taking the final opportunity to work with cellist Sarah Palmer before she departs these shores. That impetus finds Bo and the assembled players taking one long improvised run at the assorted material, plucked from various ruminations and ad-libbed like a music hall spectre; dramatic, arcane, sultry and .
Upset The Rhythm Shake Chain are a confusing and disturbing car crash of semi-danceable proportions. Their Snake Chain album opens with the sound of a post-punk band idly observing some horrifying local disturbance and it kind of grown battier from there.
Bureau B The mid- to late nineties was a pretty purple patch for German electronica and it coincided with a similar flurry of genre-less electronic based bands arriving from the States. The beauty of the German acts, like those that preceded them, was the lack of obvious Western tradition and unlike the bands from the seventies, a greater access to and greater complicity with the new electronic instruments. […]
Jazzland Not content with the numerous collaborative activities which he has undertaken recently, Norwegian pianist Bugge Wesseltoft and German producer Henrik Schwarz have chosen to release a second chapter in their duo format, the initial one having been released back in 2011. Their interaction of post minimal piano and electronic escapism has been given a further boost by the addition of some well-chosen collaborators.
Discus Martin Pyne‘s idea behind Ripples, that of duets between his vibraphone and David Beebee‘s Fender Rhodes, had me hooked immediately. The gauzy, shimmering haze of the vibes let loose from formal shackles and allowed to wander at will is accompanied by the sympathetic shiver of the Rhodes, and sounds like a dream made real and spread across the twelves watery vistas enclosed.
Discus Another month and another Martin Archer collaboration. You have the feeling that the man never sleeps, adventures in sound flowing through his veins at all moments. The thing is, the quality never seems to dip even when the variety is so great. Here, he reconvenes with old friend John Jasnoch on bass guitar, percussionist Lee Allatson and Sarah Farmer on violin and electronics. The title of Wasp […]
Jahtari Denizen of WaqWaq Kingdom, Kiki Hitomi and German clarinetist Volker Hemken have teamed up with Jahtari supremo and erstwhile disrupter Jan Disrupt as Cosmic Threat for a strangely removed journey into the outer limits. As if beamed in from some distant, forgotten outpost, Cosmic Threads merges dub reggae, electronica and gritty atmospherics with a soupcon of spiritual swing that leaves the listener constantly gaping at the imagery, […]
Efpi The fourth album for the agile pigeonhole-dodging quartet Let Spin finds them mixing things up a little, taking ideas of pieces into the studio and working them into a lather over the course of a couple of last year’s late summer days. This way of working, attempting to bring the vivacity of their live show into the studio, has been a great success; plus their idea to […]
SOFA The latest releases from experimental Norwegian label SOFA are very much on the cutting edge of musical discovery, or how our environment or things we take for granted can be manipulated to provide entertainment or a new aural experience. Having recently listened to the new Sarah Davachi album and read the reviews of the new Greg Davis LP, the search for how minimal drone music can affect […]
Discus I often think that the purest format for improv is the duo where one of the players is a drummer. There is something about the interplay between two musicians, both questing for fresh knowledge, plus the space provided between the grounding of the percussion and the wind scattered revelations of the instrument.
Computer Students™ Yet another discovery that I can’t believe has taken twenty years to cross my path. Cheval de Frise were a French guitar and percussion duo operating at the turn of the millennium, trading in the kind of tight, angular guitar rock that was coming out of Chicago. But they give it a neat twist by being a duo and playing around one another in a way […]
A member of Thee Silver Mt Zion and a co-creator of the avant-klezmer group Black Ox Orkestar, Jessica Moss has collaborated and played with the likes of Daniel O’Sullivan, Sarah Davachi and Big|Brave. To accompany her fifth solo album, Galaxy Heart on Constellation, she is on tour throughout Europe. Mr Olivetti put some pertinent questions to the Montréal-based composer and violinist. This album feels like a rather wild and […]
April Danish sax player and composer Fredrik Lundin is quite the collaborator, his list of ensembles longer than my arm. For his latest series of genre straddling pieces, he has enlisted the far reaching capabilities of the Odense Jazz Orchestra, ensuring a blend of freedom and swing that suits his compositions which try to shine a positive light on the current state of things on It Takes All […]
Not Applicable The Covid break two summers ago found renowned experimental trio Leverton Fox taking their gear and a loose idea into a Sussex woodland, setting up two ambient mics, sitting back and allowing their improvisational magic to unfold amidst the fallen leaves, spreading boughs and hidden animal trails. The whole thing feels like an invitation; an invitation to descend into the undergrowth and to listen as the […]