Jazz Recommendations – 2016 releases

Trio Repelente – Ao Vivo Pra Ninguém (Self-Produced)

Even while moving at a high rate of speed, Trio Repelente finds a way to create a hypnotic atmosphere.  This vibraphone-bass-drums trio doesn’t develop a melody so much as take a single melodic idea as far as the horizon stretches, but never forget its origins.  It’s why solos mesh seamlessly into their framework no matter how volatile they may grow, and it’s why there isn’t so much space between the pretty moments and the dissonant ones.  All three musicians gets their voices heard and in any number of ways, so it’s just as easy to call this a drummer’s album as it is a bassist’s recording or a vibraphone session… they are all in the spotlight, individually and in unison.  Worth noting that the drummer, Mauricio Takara, is a member of the São Paulo Underground, which has earned plenty of kind words on this site.  And this trio, too, is music from São Paulo, Brazil.

Your album personnel:  Mauricio Takara (drums), Rodrigo Hara (bass) and Victor Vieira-Branco (vibraphone).

No artist site | Listen | Available at:  Bandcamp

Low Kick Collective – II (Self-Produced)

The raw enthusiasm from the Low Kick Collective is pretty damn infectious.  Sax, drums and an electro bayan all combine for this duo into a sonic form of gasoline.  A melodic riff is all they need to launch themselves into space.  Sometimes they hang their hat on layers of repetition and other times the music is at the mercy of sheer randomness.  They slow things down for one track, and while it’s plenty enjoyable and all, the music is at its best when the trio lights a match under it.  And all of it is seriously fun.  Music from St. Petersburg, Russia.

Your album personnel:  Anton Ryazanov (tenor sax, electro bayan, guitar) and Ekaterina Shapovalova (drums).

Artist site | Listen | Available at:  Bandcamp

The Flash! – Siła (Hevhetia)

There’s some punk rock attitude to the modern jazz stylings of The Flash!  The trio hits the gas pedal and takes off, yet each track exudes a thick lyricism that is as catchy as the pace is thrilling.  And fun, very fun.  The kind of music that can knock you over and draw a smile in the same breath.  The trio slows things down on “Smutny Sławek,” and the music gets a little flat, loses that bright electric energy that powered them along on the up-tempo pieces.  In another strange turn, “Kurt Cobain at Disco” utilizes the melody of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to launch into a groove.  It’s odd, but in an amusing way, and definitely rises to the level of fun the trio builds from the very first note of this very fun album.  Music from Krakow, Poland.

Your album personnel:  Sławek Pezda (tenor sax), Kuba Dworak (bass) and Max Olszewski (drums).

Artist site | Listen | Available at:  Bandcamp

Vera, Menares, Lecaros – La Rueda del Tiempo (Discos Pendiente)

Nifty guitar trio session where the feel is nicely laid-back, even when the temperature spikes for a time. Guitarist Nicolás Vera, bassist Pablo Menares and drummer Félix Lecaros switch between originals and covers (Monk, Johnson) on this intimate session, and the sense is always an even mix of the old and the new.  The slower pieces have a dreamy, intoxicating presence that’s pretty appealing, but it’s when the trio lights a fire under a song that the album shines strongest.  Just one of those nice straight-ahead sessions that are a staple of every well-fed music library.  Music from Santiago, Chile.

Your album personnel: Nicolás Vera (guitar), Pablo Menares (double bass) and Félix Lecaros (drums).

Artist site | Listen | Available at: Amazon – eMusic

Josef Leimberg – Astral Projections (World Galaxy)

Nicely updated version of 1970’s jazz-funk fusion.  More electro- than acoustic, more easy-going groove than melodic intensity.  If you were looking for a next-step album from your 1970s Lonnie Liston Smith jazz-funk recordings, this would make a pretty decent option.  The stronger tracks are the ones where the rhythm section does something more than march in place, but even those don’t do anything to prevent this album from being the kind of music for kicking back on a weekend afternoon.  The cover of Miles Davis’s “Lonely Fire” is when I got sold on the album.  The guest vocal on “Echoes of One” clinched it.  Music from L.A.

Your album personnel: No personnel listed

Artist site | Listen | Buy: Bandcamp – Amazon – eMusic

*****

The Nils Berg Cinemascope keeps finding ways to show how large this world is and, yet, how close we are to it.  Three albums ago, with their 2011 debut Popmotion, they improvised over spliced clips of music from YouTube videos.  It was a beguiling concoction of new and found sound, and it united their Swedish modern jazz with music from Japan to Romania to Tamil Nadu to their native Stockholm.  Their 2013 follow-up, Vocals, went about a similar process and a similar concept but with a focus on found song.  Their 2016 release Searching For Amazing Talent From Punjab continues the trio’s evolution of a fascinating concept that keeps revealing new facets for exploration.

The inspiration for the newest album began with a clip of Balwinder Singh Laddi.  Berg was captivated by the man’s singing and traveled to India to meet the musician.  And it was that simple spark that got the third album underway, of two worlds coming together, first in Sweden via the internet and then India via a plane flight and a search.  Music from around the world is threaded through Searching For Amazing Talent From Punjab and woven into the trio’s moody, sometimes solemn and sometimes effusive Nordic jazz.  They don’t edit out the extemporaneous sounds from the video… friends laughing off-screen, the sound of coins being dropped into a cup by passerby, wind chimes from the porch, a car rumbling past, birds whistling overhead… and the effect is to make the breadth of the music more expansive while also providing it the kind of personality to make it seem quite close and intimate.

I highly recommend checking out all three of the recording.  This is a unique, rewarding project that just keeps on giving.

Your album personnel:  Christopher Cantillo (drums), Josef Kallerdahl (bass) and Nils Berg (bass clarinet, tenor sax, computer).

Released on Hoob Records.

Music from the Stockholm, Sweden scene.

Available at:  Amazon | eMusic

And be sure to check out their album Popmotion, which was one of my favorite things from 2011.

Read about it (LINK).

Tell Tale is a response to the soundtrack of HBO show Deadwood.  And the word ‘response’ is key, because the Peggy Lee ensemble Film In Music doesn’t structure their album in a way that represents a parade of scenes, nor does the music have a cinematic ambiance or the cohesion of a soundtrack’s united imagery.  Instead, each piece of Tell Tale stands on its own, a direct interaction with the Deadwood source material that inspired it.  Those interactions don’t carry over from piece to piece, and it’s why the transitions between songs are often jarring and detached, as if walking through a museum where each room contained only one work of art, and none that could be associated with the others.

The result is a different kind of listening experience, where pauses of silence between each track are recommended, and the need to listen to the album in the order presented is not necessarily required.  It would be intriguing to see the effect of listening to each piece immediately after watching its associated Deadwood scene.  Some of the track names are clear lines of communication between album and tv show.  There isn’t much separating the furious build of activity on “An Eyeball for Dan” and the brutality of the scene that informs it.  The underlying intensity of the scene from “A Walk Through Town” is present on the song, as is the blur of activity and sights attributable to any other afternoon in Deadwood, the clash of great danger and the mundane.  And then there’s the bittersweet tone of “Wild Bill” and how it speaks to the heart of what might have been and what was lost.

There is something particularly refreshing about a soundtrack project coming off nothing like an actual soundtrack, and instead honoring the personal interactions that we all have with art… where qualities unique only to ourselves and those shared subconsciously with masses of people we’ve never known all come crashing down together in a series of vaguely identifiable connections, yet deeply seated reactions.

Your album personnel:  Peggy Lee (cello), Kevin Elaschuk (trumpet), Jesse Zubot (violin), Dylan van der Schyff (drums), Torsten Muller (acoustic bass), André Lachance (electric bass), Chris Gestrin (Fender Rhodes) and Ron Samworth (guitar).

Released on Drip Audio.

Listen to another album track on the label’s Soundcloud page.

Music from the Vancouver, BC scene.

Available at:  Amazon | eMusic