Evan Parker & Keith Rowe - Dark Rags (2000)

| Avant-Garde | Free-Jazz | Experimental | Drone |

Evan Parker is, of course, ever productive, his inventiveness and breath seemingly in infinite supply. Keith Rowe, far more active outside of AMM than he has been in ages, appears to be enjoying a creative renaissance. Twin pillars of European Free Improvisation, and infrequent collaborators by way of Supersession, Parker and Rowe have been overdue for a summit. Just such a meeting played out on the cusp of the Millennium, in separate concerts staged in Nantes, France on 12-31-99 and 1-1-2000. An originator and champion of prepared-guitar and horizontal ("table-top") guitar techniques, Rowe is a formidable foil for Parker's expressive tenor aerobatics. As "Dark Rag #1" opens, the musicians share anxious space within a time-suspended vacuum of tone. The kinetic potential here is clearly enormous. Like sprinters stealing hungry glances at the starting line, Parker and Rowe exchange gestures-a fretboard creak, a trill pregnant with anticipation-and take off. Though at first as patient as Parker is euphoric, Rowe responds to the saxophonist's hyperbolic flights in turn. While Rowe scrapes, strokes, and scours strings to spur Parker's impassioned response, electronic treatments broaden the attack, acting upon deliquescent drones and rhythms like a solvent wash. During quieter sections, Rowe's short-wave radio asserts itself, and Parker plays as if to commune with the murmur of indiscernible voices. At the climax, Rowe engages Parker with quicksilver trickles of electro-acoustic guitar tone, challenging the saxophonist--a bundle of nervous energy throughout--to match this magmatic flow. Parker obliges, but only briefly. He breaks the moment of mutual reflection with a spectacularly elaborate solo. Rowe's guitar responds to Parker's pointed provocation with irascible growls, maintaining a pricklier, almost quarrelsome presence through the remainder of the performance. Whether it's amiable argy-bargy or genuine tension, such antagonism heightens Dark Rags' appeal. It also leaves one wondering whether "Dark Rag #2," which opens in groggy dissonance, is the product of the ultimate New Year's Day drinking binge or the fallout from the first set's spat. Rowe needles Parker with shrill pitches; the saxophonist's slurred retort sounds queasy. Cartoonishly vivid bass-bulge and dry, heaving noises give away the joke. It's a hangover, improvised in nauseating Technicolour. Cute. A skittering, jazz-skewed Parker salvo signals the return to serious improv. Rowe pursues a more turbulent tack, providing an inconstant anchor that shifts and groans beneath Parker's blustery phrases. After much lurching and pitching, the harrowing section subsides. Parker plays the passing of the storm in spacious measures, exhibiting a rare vulnerability. Approaching the halfway mark of the 40:25 piece, Rowe tapers off the guitar noise to lulling near-nothingness, leaving a foreign short-wave song to underscore the saxophone. As Parker's solo continues, Rowe conceives a backdrop of metallic shimmers and eerie echoes. The two soundstreams merge beautifully, sustaining the sensitive interplay of these two superb musicians, while carrying the disc to its riveting conclusion.

Catalog: P200 (Potlatch)
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Achromatic Cold - Existence, Interwoven (2010)

| Dark Ambient | Noise | Drone |

I don't know if I have reached the darkest bottom I'm able to, but I must be close to. Existence, Interwoven is another of my conceptual works on music, and my third full-length album. It relies mostly on emotional compositions, instead of the harsh brutality shown previously. This lugubrious atmosphere, wherein songs try to reach the deep of the emotional subconsciousness, grants the album a wearying feeling. The excess of short yet repetitive gloomy-ambient tracks makes the listening experience exhausting to the mind. In a good way, though. There are few ambient-based albums that have drained me the way this one does, which is somewhat comfortingly warm. Feels like giving all of you to the music and being embraced in return. The recording sessions were also the hardest ones I've been in. Some songs, despite being shorter than 2min, were so morbid that I almost felt like immersing in sleep. Also, all songs where recorded on sessions from 2am to 4am (which may explains why it felt so tiring...).

If I had to describe the album in a few words, I'd say it's like a big and bloody drop of oversaturated black ink, viscidly flowing through the paper's borders. May sound overpoetic, but at least that's what it is supposed to be. Tracks like All Souls Interwoven And The Endless One displays a fluid and dense droning, filled with all that abstract feeling. Ones like Desolation are basic piano compositions, but the dismal ambience around it and its slow pacing makes it feel utterly dispirited. The abrasive softness of Tears Under The Cold Storm which buries a haunted and blizzardly growling melody, the grotesquely hollow Dreary Arms and Fate, and the guard from a few noise tracks (the beat-based The Pain And The Agony and the beautiful and spiritual The Angel And The Last) and a few other enigmas completes this morbid soundtrack. While it works perfectly to listen to it as a whole unity, a more careful listening shall reveal lots of small details in each composition (like the high-pitched eerie screams from The Angel And The Last, buried under all the upper noise layers, the side-sounds from Become One or the breath accompaniment from Drowning, Gasping).

All songs were recorded live (as most of my works). The Pain And The Agony uses real-time loops. The painting on the cover is by Zdzisław Beksiński. Finally, as I said, it's a conceptual album. But if I told you from where I took the concept, you'd shit bricks (or lol). So just try to figure somekind of story by yourselves.

Catalog: VB-25 (Velvet Blue Records)
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Kaoru Abe ( 阿部薫 ) - Winter 1972 (2004)

| Avant-Garde | Free-Jazz |

The long-awaited official reissue of the rarest of all recordings by mercurial, live fast and die young alto hero Kaoru Abe. Originally released sometime in 1973 or 1974 on the Sound Works label out of Osaka, this was a bootleg LP of Abe in full-flowing solo action. The records came in a plain white sleeve, the label makes no mention of Abe's name, and they came with a very high price tag for the time. Needless to say, this has since become a laughably rare record, unseen by even the most dedicated of Abe collectors. Rarity aside, this is an utterly thrilling missive from Abe's most uncompromising and satisfying period. As yet untrammelled by self-abuse, his utterly distinctive voice on alto rings swift, clear and true, scattering diamond shards of light in its wake. Stunningly concentrated and sure-footed - it needs to be heard.

Catalog: PSFD-158 (P.S.F. Records)
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Kaoru Abe ( 阿部薫 ) - Gloomy Sunday (1997)

| Avant-Garde | Free-Jazz | Noise |

To some listeners, this avant-garde Japanese player from the ’70s wins the sweepstakes for the most abrasive saxophone sound in history, an important competition indeed in this genre. With some saxophonists claiming their tone can remove coats of varnish from antiques, cook a 20-pound goose in one hour, or even wound a small rodent at 200 feet, there is no denying the impact of Kaoru Abe (阿部薫) on alto sax; and on clarinet, he hardly harbored ambitions to be the new Artie Shaw. Unfortunately, his premature death meant he never lived to see the heyday of Japanese avant-garde music, nor enjoy the prestige his type of abilities on saxophone might have garnered him as the interest in free jazz increased in the ’90s. He also never held at least half of his releases in his hands, since some of the best material from this player was only released in the years after his death. The entire CD format, allowing the expansive playing time required to properly document his unfolding energy discourse, was also not something he lived to enjoy. Several small labels have practically created cottage industries out of his posthumous releases, pumping out an annual multiple-CD set for several years running. Fans of his playing tend to count backwards from the date of his death to the recording date, the higher the resulting number basically indicating the greater possibility of genius contained within. There are several explanations of this, one rooted in debauchery, and the other in perhaps a worse curse, multi-instrumentalism.

At any rate, this performer’s lifestyle is said to have been soaked with liquor, stuffed with drugs, and sniffing with loneliness and tragedy. It had enough of these elements to inspire a movie treatment, nonetheless, so fans of Japanese free jazz have the option of searching for the film Endless Waltz, which supposedly tells the tale of his marriage to the writer Suzuki Izumi — who had even more problems than he did, if the screenplay is to be believed. In the decade that he didn’t quite finish out, the ’70s, some fans feel his talents sizzled with the inevitability of a roaring fire that is repeatedly doused with filthy water. If this was the case, he certainly shouldn’t be blamed personally for following a lifestyle that many believe to be required for such a career. Dexter Gordon performed brilliantly after drinking entire bottles of vodka, and several acknowledged free jazz masterpieces were recorded by players whipped out of their minds on LSD.

Some of the lack of appeal of Abe’s later material has got to come not from the perception that he is out of it but from his introduction of other instruments, including the dreaded harmonica and crudely played guitar. Historically, there are few known cases of saxophonists being praised for adding other instruments into their arsenal, so any critical about-face on this issue can be considered an important development in itself. Other Japanese music scholars have praised the later-Abe material and his use of diverse instruments, but even they seem to feel his work on the alto saxophone has never been equalled. One thing is for sure, no matter how extremely noisy the Japanese music scene has gotten, it has yet to produce another reed player as good as this one.

Catalog: TKCA-71096 (Wax Records)
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Shoji Hano & Keiji Haino - The Strange Face (2000)

| Noise Rock | Psychedelic Rock |

The Strange Face is a continuation of sorts to Shoji Hano’s 1991 Tayhei Nippon percussion CD, two tracks of which Haino played guitar on. Well, here we are again a decade later, but with Haino and his axe more up front. Clearly and loudly recorded in Asagaya Studio and released in 2000, this CD is filled with plenty of high guitar keens, sweet vocals with percussion tinkles, dissonant rockings, growling vocal exorcisms, jaunty workouts, light percussion patter with distant guitar shimmers and much more that you may and may not expect. The all-black booklet comes complete with Japanese liner notes and photos of the musicians. The cover shot of both of ’em together is really nice, although it looks like it may have been Photoshopped together.

Catalog: GEL CD 01 (Ultra Hard Gel)
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Musica Transonic with Keiji Haino - Incubation (1998)

| Noise Rock | Psychedelic Rock | Free-Jazz |

Musica Transonic shares members with High Rise, Acid Mother’s Temple and Ruins, so I guess you know what that means: volume and feedback grit that really hurt the VU meter’s feelings. When I first heard of this collaboration, I was a bit concerned it might turn out to be a long slab of undecipherable noise density. Boy, was I wrong. This CD is a pleasant surprise, as it’s only 32 minutes long and broken up into seven tracks. With Haino leading the way on vocals and guitars, there is actually quite a bit of dynamic (non-garden) variety. Lots of sudden time changes and shifts of attention occur—from the expected thick sound bushes to more subdued sections of hearable guitar milkweed and actual singing.

With Asahito Nanjo from High Rise on bass, Kawabata Makoto from the awesome Acid Mother’s Temple and Toho Sara on guitar, and hyper drumming by Yoshida Tatsuya from Ruins. As usual for the PSF label, the cover artwork is amazing and features dozens of small, shooting stars swirling out from a black vortex right toward your face.

Catalog: PSFD-98 (P.S.F. Records)
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Eyvind Kang - Virginal Co Ordinates (2003)

| Avant-Garde | Contemporary Classical |
| Experimental | Dream Pop |

Commissioned by the Angelica, Festival Internazionale di Musica in Bologna, Virginal Co-ordinates ranks paradoxically among Eyvind Kang's most ambitious and accessible works. The piece is scored for a large ensemble (the 16-piece ensemble Playground) and six extra musicians: singer Mike Patton, guitarist Tim Young, once Sun Ra violinist Michael White, Kang himself, and engineers Tucker Martine and Evan Schiller, who are responsible for the sound diffusion and live processing. Fans of Kang will recognize the spiritual yearning found in some of his NADE pieces. The 73-minute work takes the form of a suite of themes that draw from Indian classical music and American minimalism, with flourishes of impressionistic and big-band arrangements. Often a marimba will lead the group into a repetitive motif reminiscent of Steve Reich's percussion works, or of simplified gamelan music. The longer movements are built over trance-like repetition and melodic development akin to a raga, especially in "Doorway to the Sun." "Innocent Eye, Crystal See," with its luminously elevating chant (which shows the excellency of Patton's works on vocals. And yes, he's the only credited singer.), brings to mind Nana Vasconcelos' musical illuminations. Two shorter tracks take the form of songs: "I Am the Dead" and the closing "Marriage of Days," both interpreted with grace by an unrecognizable Patton -- as close to a choir boy as he'll ever sound. In fact, the latter is led by a flute melody and builds to an angelic finale your mother (or grandmother) would love! Once more Kang has managed to deceive expectations and come up with a brilliant album. But this one is so virginal white that some listeners might find it a bit too clean.

Catalog: IDA 016 (I Dischi Di Angelica)
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Peter Brötzmann, Keiji Haino & Shoji Hano - Shadows (2000)

| Free-Jazz | Noise Rock | Psychedelic Rock |

This CD contains nearly an hour’s worth of live performances recorded at the Schlachthof in Wels, Austria on March 31, 2000 during a Spring concert tour of Europe. Featuring Peter Brotzmann on clarinet and tenor sax, Keiji Haino on electric guitar and vocals, and Shoji Hano on bamboo horn and drums, this clearly-recorded thang aggressively wrangles its way through the jungles of hair covering your your head, your ears—hell, your entire body! Once inside your brain, this heapin’ helpin’ of scaldin’ soul-scour will quickly erase all memories of servitude that you’ve ever amassed. Haino’s vocal shrieking with Brotzmann’s acoustic squealing—all held-up by Hano’s faithful tub work—should clear out your ailin’ head better than a continual administration of nitrous oxide on the deck of a Caribbean-bound luxury boat. Brotzmann even momentarily shows that he’s still not afraid of a tune. The cover shows off a nicer layout than usual: tangled trees inked on the front cover, plus liner notes by Shoji Hano and pics of the participants inside.

Catalog: DIW-938 (DIW Records)
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Keiji Haino & Derek Bailey - Songs (2000)

| Avant-Garde | Free-Jazz | Noise Rock |

Released in 2000, this CD was recorded back in November 1996 at Moat Studios in London during the same sessions which begat some of the Tokuma releases of yore, if I’m not mistaken. With the Incus label at the helm, you can never really expect your cruise to be one of smooth sailing. The father of improv guitar, Derek Bailey, and Japan’s longtime sound wanderer, Keiji Haino, spontaneously mesh together many merging / clashing, guitar / vocal sound patterns here with as much displeasure as expected. Featuring Derek on electric guitar only and Haino on vocals only, who sounds for all the world as if he were strapped into the dentist’s chair for the duration and getting root canals in every one of his teeth with no anesthesia. A nice, squirrelly, abstract Haino drawing adorns the cover.

Catalog: CD 040 (Incus Records)
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Doo-Dooettes with Keiji Haino & Rick Potts - Free Rock (2002)

| Noise Rock | Free-Jazz | Psychedelic Rock |

Free Rock is a 2001 CD issue of a recently discovered, previously unreleased, archive recording dating from two decades earlier–August 3, 1982, to be exact–during Keiji Haino’s first visit to the Unites States. For this session, Tokyo’s all black clothes-wearin’ sunglassed man found himself sharing the stereo microphone in a sweltering garage with Los Angeles Free Music Society stalwarts the Doo-Dooettes–featuring Tom Recchion on mock cello and strungaphone, Fredrik Nilsen on bass and Dennis Duck on drums–and Rick Potts of Human Hands fame. The disc blasts out a solid 35 minutes of fantastic, vivid free skronk and slop rock that never fails to kick up a hell of a ruckus! Simultaneously, it sheds some much welcome light on one of Keiji Haino’s least documented periods. Another obscure piece of the puzzle is now in place. “A beautiful fusion of free jazz, modern music and psychedelia.”–PSF. Includes two beautiful fold-out booklets of notes and drawings. (The cubist portrait on the front is especially nice.) Highly reccomended!

Catalog: PSFD-131 (P.S.F. Records)
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Woah!

finally put things together
http://www.last.fm/user/Fareday/journal/2010/04/17/3kjyuk_the_blue_store

11bit - Abandoned Functional Human Factory (2008)

| IDM | Glitch | Electronic |

11bit is a more than 5 years old IDM project, based in Brazil. Abandoned Functional Human Factory is a collection featuring the best of the best of his early works (mostly from 2008). Although they are not as experimental or complex as his latter works, the album already displays a inherent capability to build ever-changing beats upon synthlines, which spawn from delicate ambient-ish repetitive riffs and Glitch sounds to techno-like lines and even some harsh shots (specially the saw-like synths on the title-track). The fractured rhythm is omnipresent, and 11bit manages to break-beat even at the most simple and repetitive tracks. I can tell you, after the first track kicks in, there's no way your brain stay still.

The highlights go for the album opener, Dust%. Probably his best-known early track, which even appeared around some IDM internet-compilations. Although it's close to sound ambient-techno like, with all the background atmospheric synths, the short loops and the quick movability - not to mention again, the beats -, punches your brain into the tangled rhythms, instead of carrying it into a subconscious trip. Tiny Story, fux0ring and The Hall sequence is also the strong arm in here, varying from vicious and acid drum-loops to delicate piano and string lines.

Catalog: VB-23 (Velvet Blue Records)
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Die Like A Dog Quartet - Little Birds Have Fast Hearts No.1 (1998)

| Free-Jazz | Avant-Garde Jazz |

The Die Like a Dog Quartet came together four years after recording their first album for the 30th Total Music Meeting festival in Berlin that took place in November 1997. The sets that the quartet performed over the course of the three day festival were subsequently released by the FMP label in two volumes entitled Little Birds Have Fast Hearts. Peter Brötzmann plays tenor, of course, as well as some tarogato and clarinet, and he is joined by bassist Wiliam Parker, drummer Hamid Drake, and trumpeter Toshinori Kondo who occasionally utilizes electronic effects. On this first volume, the quartet is in it for the long run; there are just two parts, totaling over an hours' worth of music. They go long, but not without pause, for there are definite let-ups over the course of "Part 1" (which remains engaging and varied throughout its 45 minutes), and "Part 2" is a relatively low-key piece. But "calm" and "low-key" for this group are still strongly out; there is no "casual" mode, there is no collapsing into old forms, this is a work-out, and all four musicians give 100 percent as they are known to do. This is not music for people wanting to hear some nice jazz, some hum-along-able standards; this is music for listeners who want to take a journey and are willing to let this quartet steer. The Die Like a Dog Quartet is not improvising for an audience, they are improvising because. Because that is how you find music. Little Birds Have Fast Hearts, No. 1 is a great example of why that is important.

Catalog: FMP CD 97 (FMP)
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Aeolian String Ensemble - Eclipse (2004)

| Ambient | Experimental | Drone |

Listening to Eclipse (44'15") by The Aeolian String Ensemble with the knowledge that a windharp is its sound source may make some difference to the listener. This instrument, typically positioned outdoors, frames a series of taut strings that are "played" by whatever wind, breeze or gale which might find its way over them. The resulting sound varies depending on the harp's positioning and location as well as the surroundings and weather conditions. The drones mingle with the ambiance of the environment in most interesting ways, which makes it difficult to point out precisely what makes this work so profound. The three tracks are a combination of recordings made in the field and studio manipulations of these recordings. The first two act as a prelude to the third and final piece, which is the title track. "Eclipse" (16'48") was realized within the shadow of a total solar eclipse. Although this work is the most minimal, subtle and least active of the three ambient pieces on this album, it is surely the most powerful. Layers of sustaining warm tones slowly gather, build and recede in a lulling and harmonious infinite moment. This work is a fascinating portrayal of stillness, yet it was created during the one celestial event where we as humans can sense the movement of the earth through space.

Catalog: RR-32 (Robot Records)
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Peter Brötzmann & Keiji Haino - Evolving Blush Or Driving Original Sin (1996)

| Avant-Garde | Free-Jazz | Noise Rock |

A set of duos for saxophone and vocals that sets the standard for improvisational chaos eruptions and all-acoustic shard exploration. Intricate voice / breath / horn interchanges that are sometimes thin as treacle, and at other times explode like pea soup ’n’ asphalt mixed together on the side of an Arizona highway in midsummer at noon. An extremely original work: I’ve never heard anything quite like this before and most likely won’t again.

Catalog: PSFD-79 (P.S.F. Records)
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Keiji Haino ( 灰野敬二 ) & Tatsuya Yoshida ( 吉田達也 ) - Hauenfiomiume (2008)

| Avant-Garde | Experimental Rock | Free-Jazz |
| Psychedelic Rock | Noise Rock | Free-Prog |

Hauenfiomiume? Wow. I dare you to say that really fast one time, let alone 10. Betcha can’t. This is the third album from the duo of Keiji Haino + Tatsuya Yoshida, following Until Water Grasps Flame in 2002 and New Rap in 2006. It’s also part one of a projected two-part release (with Uhrfasudhasdd). My, how ambitious!

Quite different from this duo’s previous output, Hauenfiomiume is exceedingly odd, quirky, and chock full of a wide variety of tracks that can and will turn on a dime. The sounds veer so suddenly! From classical acoustic guitar bathed in reverb to quiet, moaning, forlorn vocals to maniacally-paced distorted electric guitar and drums to weirdly sped-up interludes with screaming vocals to repetitive, dry guitar and drum riffs to strange, slow, echoing drum rhythms to somewhat straightforward rock to whispered vocals with electric reverb guitar supported by a steady kick drum beat to more classical guitar and keyboard tangles with vocals from Yoshida to a New Rap-style electric guitar and drum kit attack with hyperactive explosions to complex riffs with spoken vocals and backup singing to distorted feedback riffs to a quiet flute and drum interlude to rapid-fire stop ‘n’ start garble to fractured acoustic guitar rhythms with buried singing to upbeat, distorted rock to frantically chopped-up weirdness to heavily edited, ultra dry, distorted, stabbing rhythms with garbled vocals to clouds of blurry chaos to a strange baroque dream and back to the classical guitar that started it all.

It’s good to hear Yoshida on bass and keyboards as well as the usual drums, and his singing in particular melds nicely with Haino’s and helps set these sessions apart. Plus, Yoshida’s taut, heavily edited production takes Haino to places he’d never go alone. It also makes this variety show sound like a consistent collection. If you’re a private in the Army, don’t worry about blasting Hauenfiomiume in the barracks, because if your sargeant makes an unexpected appearance, he’ll be able to bounce a dime off of this music, no problem. All in all, this is a fresh, vital work from both artists. And it comes appropriately housed in an ultra-luxurious, three-panel mini-LP jacket festooned with colorful(!) artwork from both Haino and Yoshida prominently displayed under heavy gloss. This one’s a keeper.

Catalog: MGC-34 (Magaibutsu)
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Keiji Haino ( 灰野敬二 ) & Tatsuya Yoshida ( 吉田達也 ) - Until Water Grasps Flame (2002)

| Avant-Garde | Experimental Rock | Free-Jazz |
| Noise Rock | Free-Prog |

This disc is a recording of a live performance from April 2000. All 12 tracks are duets, but the instrumentation on each track varies, with Haino playing guitar, sarode, gyumbari, gothan, esraj and darbouka. Yoshida plays drums, Korg X5D and darbouka. (Track 10 is a darbouka duet, whatever a darbouka is—some sort of percussion.) Most of the tracks are purely instrumental. Only two actually have a little bit of Haino singing, and only one of those is really a song designed around Haino’s voice. The rest are freely-improvised instrumentals. Some of the songs–especially the electric guitar and drums duets–are dense and heavy-sounding improvisations a la Ruins. In fact, the guitar and drums duets really bring to mind the Derek Bailey / Ruins collaborations like Tohjinbo on Paratactile and Saisoro on Tzadik. But, about half the songs have Haino on a variety of ethnic (for lack of a more accurate term) instruments. These improvisations are mellower. When two longtime improvisers get together, you expect seamless improvisation and that is just what is captured on this CD. Calling it improvisation almost seems like cheating. No one expecting these sorts of results will be disappointed. This is not a rock album—expectations of such will not be met. Too good.

Catalog: NAIM12CD (Noise Asia)
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Keiji Haino ( 灰野敬二 ) & Tatsuya Yoshida ( 吉田達也 ) - New Rap (2006)

| Avant-Garde | Experimental Rock | Free-Jazz |
| Noise Rock | Free-Prog |

When I first encountered the title of this album, I half-jokingly feared that Keiji Haino may be heading off into a new (for him) musical direction. You know the stereotype, rudely and rhythmically boasting about his “ice” and “rims,” and barking a slew of profane abuse at all of his “bitches.” But, of course, that’s not the case at all. What we have here is a lively (to say the least) set of short duets for electric guitar, vocals and drums. Haino dons his axe, grabs his mic and compleletly goes off his rocker with Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida for a solid 48 minutes. A wide variety of squealing, snarling, gargling vocals sprayed all over loads of homely guitar plucking and dissonant feedback clouds–all propped up by the most manic, hyper-active, start ‘n’ stop drumming ever-make New Rap anything but.

Catalog: TZ 7262 (Tzadik)
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Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959) [2010 Full HD Remaster]

| Modal Jazz | Cool Jazz |

Throughout a professional career lasting 50 years, Miles Davis played the trumpet in a lyrical, introspective, and melodic style, often employing a stemless Harmon mute to make his sound more personal and intimate. But if his approach to his instrument was constant, his approach to jazz was dazzlingly protean. To examine his career is to examine the history of jazz from the mid-'40s to the early '90s, since he was in the thick of almost every important innovation and stylistic development in the music during that period, and he often led the way in those changes, both with his own performances and recordings and by choosing sidemen and collaborators who forged new directions. It can even be argued that jazz stopped evolving when Davis wasn't there to push it forward.

Kind of Blue isn't merely an artistic highlight for Miles Davis, it's an album that towers above its peers, a record generally considered as the definitive jazz album, a universally acknowledged standard of excellence. Why does Kind of Blue posses such a mystique? Perhaps because this music never flaunts its genius. It lures listeners in with the slow, luxurious bassline and gentle piano chords of "So What." From that moment on, the record never really changes pace — each tune has a similar relaxed feel, as the music flows easily. Yet Kind of Blue is more than easy listening. It's the pinnacle of modal jazz — tonality and solos build from the overall key, not chord changes, giving the music a subtly shifting quality. All of this doesn't quite explain why seasoned jazz fans return to this record even after they've memorized every nuance. They return because this is an exceptional band — Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb — one of the greatest in history, playing at the peak of its power. As Evans said in the original liner notes for the record, the band did not play through any of these pieces prior to recording. Davis laid out the themes before the tape rolled, and then the band improvised. The end results were wondrous and still crackle with vitality. Kind of Blue works on many different levels. It can be played as background music, yet it amply rewards close listening. It is advanced music that is extraordinarily enjoyable. It may be a stretch to say that if you don't like Kind of Blue, you don't like jazz — but it's hard to imagine it as anything other than a cornerstone of any jazz collection.

Catalog: B00314UNQI (Techniche Label OMP)
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Peter Brötzmann - Machine Gun (1968)

| Avant-Garde Jazz | Free-Jazz |

Nearly four decades after his death, the legacy of Albert Ayler is plain -- a plethora of reed-biting aural contortionists bent on exploiting the saxophone's propensity for making sounds that resemble a human scream. Many such players, unable to play anything resembling a coherent melody, rely instead on the extreme manifestations of the Ayler technique; their playing is more often than not a randomly executed wall of energy and emotion-driven white noise. Peter Brötzmann, on the other hand, is the rare Ayler-influenced saxophonist capable (like Ayler) of producing improvised lines of depth and sensitivity while informing them with enough raw power to make a lesser saxophonist wilt. Brötzmann's playing has little of the arbitrariness one associates with other similar tenor saxophonists like Charles Gayle or Ivo Perelman; Brötzmann possesses a surety of tone and a melodic center characteristic of a focused musical conception. While there's no lack of spontaneity in his music, Brötzmann's concern with motivic and melodic reiteration gives his playing a palpable sense of direction. Indeed, Brötzmann's obsession often serves as a pivot upon which an ensemble turns, making him a consummate team player, in addition to being an affecting soloist.

This historic free jazz album is a heavy-impact sonic assault so aggressive it still knocks listeners back on their heels decades later. Recorded in May 1968, Machine Gun captures some top European improvisers at the beginning of their influential careers, and is regarded by some as the first European -- not just German or British -- jazz recording. Originally self-released by Peter Brötzmann, the album eventually came out on the FMP label, and set a new high-water mark for free jazz and "energy music" that few have approached since. Brötzmann is joined on sax by British stalwart Evan Parker and Dutch reedsman Willem Breuker (before Breuker moved away from free music, his lungs were as powerful as Brötzmann's). The rest of the group consists of drummers Han Bennink (Dutch) and Sven-Åke Johansson (Swedish), Belgian pianist Fred van Hove, and bassists Peter Kowald (German) and Buschi Niebergall (Swiss). Brötzmann leads this octet in a notoriously concentrated dose of the relentless hard blowing so often characteristic of his music. While Brötzmann has played this powerfully on albums since, never again is it with a group of this size playing just as hard with him. The players declare and exercise their right to bellow and wail all they want; they both send up the stereotype of free playing as simply screaming, and unapologetically revel in it. The sound of Machine Gun is just as aggressive and battering as its namesake, blowing apart all that's timid, immovable, or proper with an unrepentant and furious finality. The years have not managed to temper this fiery furnace blast from hell; it's just as relentless and shocking an assault now as it was then. Even stout-hearted listeners will nearly be sent into hiding -- much like standing outside during a violent storm, withstanding this kind of fierce energy is a primal thrill.

Catalog: FMP CD 24 (FMP)
Album Overview on Allmusic
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C.C.C.C. - Rocket Shrine (1997)

| Harsh Noise |

C.C.C.C. is a noise band from Japan, alongside such bands as Merzbow and Incapacitants. The core line up of this band consisted of Hiroshi Hasegawa (also of the bands Astro & Mortal Vision) and former bondage-porn star Mayuko Hino. Hino would occasionally during live shows reprise this element of her past into her performances by engaging in such acts as onstage stripteases. Other members were occasionally and variably brought in for work on singular albums, but had no permanent membership in the band.

Aesthetically, the band, and Mayuko Hino in particular, advocated a very emotive and cathartic approach to noise music as opposed the conceptual and intellectual approaches advocated by many European noise musicians, most notably within the “power electronics” subgenre. Mayuko Hino believes that Noise, when done emotionally rather than intellectually, not only creates more interesting sounds, but reveals much about the personality of the noisemaker. Sonically, C.C.C.C.’s first release, “Cosmic Coincidence Control Center” was much quieter and much less distorted than most “Japanese noise” releases, bordering on being experimental ambient. Later releases, such as “Rocket Shrine” and “Love and Noise”, however, took the psychedelic ambiance and oddball sounds of early C.C.C.C., but amplified the volume and distortion levels to easily be as loud, and harsh as other Japanese noise bands, if not more so. The band’s later releases rank among the more sonically diverse of noise albums, exploring an incredible variety of sonic dissonances, while still maintaining a consistently ear-splitting loudness.

Rocket Shrine is one of C.C.C.C.'s harshest and deepest works. Most of the "noise-wall" stuff around end up being pretty boring and mostly lacking of "moving" or "intensity-changes". That's not the case with C.C.C.C., nor with Rocket Shrine. This is probably the hugest wave of destruction I've ever heard, being side to side with Hijokaidan's Romance, but it still maintains the variety of emotions and sounds found on Psychedelic Noise's stuff. A really good try for people who like really extreme noise. Highlights go for the second and third track!

Catalog: CMDD 00061 (Creativeman Disc.)
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Derek Bailey, Jamaaladeen Tacuma & Calvin Weston - Mirakle (2000)

| Free-Funk | Noise Funk | Free-Jazz |

Harmolodic Noise Funk for the 21st Century. The godfather of improvisation Derek in a freewheeling trio with the legendary Philly rhythm section of Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Calvin Weston, friends for over thirty years and veterans of Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards and various Blood Ulmer projects. Noise has never sounded so in tune, funk has never sounded so fucked up. You’ve never heard a meeting like this before, nor are you likely to again. Intense, fascinating and howlingly funny. Simply one of the bests examples of chaos and passion turned into FUNK music.

Catalog: TZ 7603 (Tzadik)
On Last.fm
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Stjerneheimen - I (2010)

| Stoner Rock | Drone Doom | Doom Metal |

"I" is a 20min EP from the Brazillian Stjerneheimen. Featuring an extremely LOUD and fuzzed bass-guitar doing a droning and repetitive riffage over a handful of 'folkish' instruments, like flutes, horns and strings, and some keyboard accompaniment (don't expect some folk-metal stuff, though. It's too explosive for that, and these instruments work mostly as the background for the Bass onslaught). The first part of the album is loud and heavy, and though the songs are short and have a slow atmosphere, they run fast through the album, one riff after the other, almost non-stoping. On the second part, at the end of the album, we have a slow and smooth bass - which contrasts with the first's strong and loud -, playing some melancholic riffs before vanishing in complete abandonment.

Catalog: VB-17 (Velvet Blue Records)
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Up-Tight - Five Psychedelic Pieces (2004)

| Psychedelic Rock | Space Rock | Noise Rock |

This is Up-Tight's second full-length album. It features more straight-forward compositions than in other releases, and it's much less noisy than their other works. Overall, it's an album of five psychedelic-rock pieces, what is kind of obvious. Still, they manage to create a full "ambience" in here, and the album sounds pretty concise, a thing that they haven't fully achieved in other recordings. "At 2:00AM, I Am Waiting For Someone" is a simple ballad full of reverb and chorus, and "Visions Of Key Of A" is a spacerock-ish song on half its speed that grows into a dizzy improvisation with distant vocals, cymbal rushes, and a characteristic full-of-delay-and-flanges guitar, which is present in the whole album. "Falling In Love" is my favorite in here; a pretty, lo-fi and down-tempo sentimental song. Overall, it's a good album, the songs are either good or fine, although it simply doesn't match the awesomeness of their first album.

Catalog: Static 9 (Static Records)
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Yodaka ( よだか ) - Yodaka (2001)

| Post-Rock | Psychedelic Rock | Electronica |

Yodaka was a short-living Post-Rock band, formed by the guitarist Kashiwa Daisuke - who now has his own solo project. This killer bootleg displays a powerful band mixing the bests elements of Psychedelic rock and Electronica music. Songs that grow from lonely guitar sounds to powerful blasts of electronic+acoustic drums and noisy overdriven guitars shredding, filled with lots of loud synths, in a way that I've rarely seen before. The female voices synths and the acid/dancing beats makes it even more amazing. Too bad it's their only release available, although it's awesome enough to totally put this as one of my favourite Post-Rock albums ever.

Catalog: -
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