Archive for the ‘Cryptogramophone’ Category

Thanks to all who have preordered their copy of this DVD. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have been these past couple weeks. Such a spectacle to watch and hear. Watch the trailer for Stained Radiance.

Today is the official release day. So at days end our celebratory sale on all Nels Cline Cyptogramophone albums will be taken down. Act now and get all of those great records for $7 (MP3s @ 320kbps) or $9 (lossless FLACs).

Be sure to make it out to the record release show a week from today.

Tuesday, 02-02 | Long Beach, CA | DiPiazza
Nels Cline + Norton Wisdom

I also came across a clip of another live performance from this duo the other day…

Awesome.

Guitarist Nels Cline and ar Norton Wisdom, both masters of their medium, joined together last year for an afternoon of sonic and visual improvisation caught on film by Aeght Nign. Armed with his guitar and effects, Cline constructs lush soundscapes brought about by Wisdom’s brush-stroke spontaneity. Wisdom in turn follows Cline’s auditory twists creating and recreating the same canvas.

Two mesmerizing performances are included on the DVD along with special features like the Norton Headcam, and a behind-the-scenes look into the sessions.

Preorder the DVD at our store.

Stained Radiance – Nels Cline & Norton Wisdom from Greenleaf Music.

Also, all Nels Cline albums are on sale for 30% off during the Stained Radiance preorder. Links below.

Thanks to everyone who came out to the BE show at Yoshi’s last night. You can read a review via the Jazz Observer here.

Tonight, Brass Ecstasy hits the Arcata Theatre. Tickets available here. This is one of the final Brass Ecstasy performances of the year and one not to be missed. Check out the Times-Standard concert preview here.

A special thanks to our friends (and Greenleaf subscribers) at the Redwood Jazz Alliance for their help bringing this music to Arcata.

The band hits the Angel City Festival on Sunday. As we mentioned in our email blast earlier this week, we’ll be hanging with our Crypto-friends at our booth in Edison Plaza. Stop by and say hi before or after the show.

Below is an excerpt from Nels Cline’s extended notes on his new record Coward.

“Coward” is meant to be a journey, bookended by minimal drone pieces named after infrequently-blooming flowers, and, in between, taking you on a trip – sometimes a wry, whimsical, or solemn one – through this string of references, of inside jokes, and of tributes to friends, artists, and to pools of feeling that are at once personal and (with any luck) universal, pertaining to love, alienation, things sublime and perverse…

Click HERE to read the full notes.

And be sure to check out Nate Chinen’s review of Coward at nytimes.com.

A few months back, when our friends at Cryptogramophone were blogging in DD’s absence, we posted a preview of the two new Cline brothers albums. This afternoon, we added the first of these new releases — Nels Cline’s, Coward — to our webstore. The album is available in MP3 and FLAC formats.

I’ve been listening to Coward all afternoon today, and I have to say that I am thoroughly enjoying it. The “surprising acoustic sensibility” Crypto mentions in the Press Release is right on. But there are certainly enough electric elements throughout. Each piece is sonically meticulous as I thought it would be, and of course the playing is top-notch. I’m reminded a lot of later John Fahey albums (check out Sea Changes & Coelacanths if you’re unfamiliar). Fahey, like Nels, happens to be one of my favorite guitar players of all time. This title gets my highest recommendation. And I’m sure Alex’s new record, Continuation, will be no different. Updates to follow on the morrow.

Check out samples of Coward by clicking HERE.

Wow, is it over already? Four weeks? Man, it just fleeeew by. Welcome back, dawg! OK, so here’s the skinny on what went down while you were gone (oh, did I mention your bronze-like tan would put George Hamilton to shame?). The furnace guy came and tinkered around in the basement for three hours before realizing he was in the wrong house (the bill is on the large pile of mail on the dining room table). We were quite confused by your complicated TV/DVD/Satellite set up; the annotated list of directions were helpful, but unfortunately we erased all of your Tivoed episodes of “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF” and quite possibly launched missiles in Nebraska. We hosted a small dinner party, marred slightly by the fact that one of the drunken guests used your cake-icing tube for. . .well, we’d rather not get into it. Your dog ran off, (but periodically returns to leave an organic “gift” on the front walk) your pool furniture is fulfulling its destiny by being actually in the pool, and someone severed your sprinkler hose. (We apologize for the smell, but it was here when we moved in. Really.) Oh, and remember Chuck, your crotchety but loveable groundskeeper who was like a member of your extended family and dispensed his homespun wisdom like grampa once did when he bounced you on his knee? He’s dead.

Seriously though, we’d like to thank you peeps at Greenleaf Music for allowing us to move in and blog about our Left Coast scene.

One has to hang on to a sort of skewed sense of humor when one follows jazz and its experimental tendrils here in the SoCal desert (where nothing grows, and the stuff that does has to be gnarled and full of spines to survive). Lately, since approximately 2006, it seems things have been particularly grim as the attention to this music and its accompanying supportive infrastructure has lessened to an all time low drip — it’s as if jazz might blow out like a doused flame if the wind blows too hard. (As we are writing this, we are being surrounded by brush fires. Yay!) This tone was summed up quite well last week by the L.A. Weekly’s lone jazz writer, Brick Wahl, in a preview for a Jesse Sharps show at the Jazz Bakery:

So good to see the great tradition of Leimert Park jazz alive and kicking. Bit of a shame, though, it has to do its lively kicking out in Culver City, a long way from Degnan Avenue. Or that Sharps has to come all the way from Germany to get the ball rolling. Leimert Park is probably this town‚s last living jazz neighborhood. Central Avenue is but a memory brought brilliantly to life once a year at its jazz festival, and the downtown and Little Tokyo scenes exist only in fond memories and some books. The older days are utterly gone, no memory, no history, no names, nothing. But Leimert Park is still here, charming and lovely and full of life. Now the music of Horace Tapscott echoes over at the Bakery while the spirit of Billy Higgins inhabits a too-often-empty World Stage. So sad. Perhaps some of our local politicians whose election posters still grace the walls around there will deign to take notice. Or perhaps not. Jazz is a hard-luck story, no matter who wins elections.

We now move our tentpoles back to Downbeast. We plan to return the favor to the Greenleaf Boys (not to be confused with the obscure 1940s bluegrass duo The Greenblatt Boys) sometime in December/January by inviting Dave & Co. over to Downbeast for some more blogroll-buddy cross-pollination. (Yes. We. Can.)

Downbeast Out! (kiss noise, door shutting)

As I lay down to go to sleep on the night of Tuesday, November 11, for some reason I found my thoughts turning to my first real drum hero and one of my musical life’s biggest influences, Mitch Mitchell. As I lay there, I began a mental survey of his work, from the early recordings with the Jimi Hendrix Experience through Hendrix’s last official album recorded what seemed like a long time later but which was in fact only a few years later, The Cry of Love. My concentrated overview, pondering Mitch’s trademark early style–prodigious technique, distinctive touch, beautiful sound, swinging feel, fire, crisp articulation, and strong musical contributions to Hendrix’s visionary musical innovations–and later work–more slack, somewhat more tired feel, more slack tuning, yet still strongly contributory and irreplaceably integral to the music that Hendrix was then making–triggered indelible memories, powerful associations, deep appreciation, and pure awe. It also caused me to wonder if he still played. I knew he endorsed DW drums, but I had no idea what he was doing. I wondered what he might sound like now, so many years later. I considered his distinction as the only surviving member of the original Jimi Hendrix Experience. I also wondered why on earth I was spending so much time lying there engaged in such a thorough analysis of Mitch Mitchell’s music making and its overwhelming influence on my own life and music as a drummer. Then I fell asleep, forgetting all about it.

I learned the following afternoon that Mitch Mitchell had died. I was stunned. At 62 years of age, he was only ten years older than I. And he was on tour; he was playing. Then I suddenly remembered my thoughts of the previous night. It was chilling. It was also extremely sad. Not only had another of my strongest drumming influences passed out of manifestation, the one who in many ways was the source of the trajectory of all the drummers to follow was gone. My reverie turned to mourning.

My brother Nels and I were eleven years old when we first heard what we immediately, after having eyed the compelling cover of their first album, knew had to be the Jimi Hendrix Experience. We were listening to Top 40 AM radio one afternoon, which was then beginning to experiment with playing album tracks, when the song “Manic Depression” came on. We were stunned, transfixed. We couldn’t even figure out how most of the sounds were even being made–that eerie, wailing guitar, that drum part (a waltz!) with all those cool fills–yet the impact of the music itself was immediate and ultimately transformational. It was so powerful that it was almost like hearing music for the first time. It was a revolution in our midst. We were never the same after that, and we knew it. As soon as we had the necessary dollars saved from our allowance, we went out and purchased the album, Are You Experienced? It was one of our musical life’s most important milestones. Besides the visceral yet other-worldly guitar virtuosity, there was the drumming. It was dazzling, driving, fluid, solid, intense. At the time I didn’t recognize that Mitch’s approach was essentially that of a master jazz drummer playing cutting-edge rock. Just listen to “Third Stone from the Sun”! I had no idea how he was doing what he was doing, but what I did know was that it was what I myself wanted to be able to do.

As instant Hendrix fanatics, we ardently followed all the subsequent recordings and developments. The music certainly doesn’t need to be reviewed at this point, but some of the truly memorable and outstanding examples of Mitch’s drumming that I’d like to mention in this moment are the driving groove that exemplifies the title of the tune on which it is heard, “Fire”; the already mentioned “Third Stone from the Sun,” where Mitch seems to be pushing a crazy cosmic big band with his flurries of swinging accents and free-form waves of toms and snare; the free jazz/noise insanity of “I Don’t Live Today”; the deep pocket-cum-free-against-the-time soling on “If 6 Was 9″ (and where he seems to drop a drumstick in the middle of a furious phrase, ending it midstream); the amazingly swinging, pure jazz brushwork on “Up from the Skies”; the furiously blazing bashing on the otherwise totally silly Noel Redding tune “She’s So Fine”; the glorious flanger-heavy close of “Bold as Love” (which I honestly felt at the time was sort of the most ultimately perfect, heavenly musical moment I’d heard till then; I used to play it over and over); the astounding solo on, of all things, a slow blues (!), certainly one of the most amazing slow blues jams of all time, “Voodoo Chile”; and the slushy, wonderful slow backing for the moving “Angel” from Hendrix’s last album. These are only few standouts in a catalog of consistently stellar performances, as most people already know. Everything Mitch recorded, which sounded so fresh and remarkable at the time it was waxed, still sounds absolutely astounding today. Adding to the astonishment is the fact that when he started making this music he was only 19 years old! I don’t think I ever realized the weight of this until now. It’s almost a Tony Williams scenario! I certainly never sounded anything close to that good when I was that age! Mitch was a phenomenon.

Mitch was my favorite drummer when I was a kid, and his busy, jazz-drenched rock style led to my enthusiasm for drummers charting similar territory who came shortly thereafter: Clive Bunker with Jethro Tull and Michael Giles in the first King Crimson band. Later in my life I realized how this foundation helped lead me straight into the world of jazz drumming that would become my area of endeavor once I was about16 years old (and after Hendrix died). Mitch Mitchell not only set me up for my next major, life-altering drumming encounter to follow, which was my hearing Tony Williams for the first time, but he made my appreciation for every major influence to come possible, from Elvin Jones to Jack De Johnette to Roy Haynes to Sonship Theus to Tony Oxley to Pierre Favre and so on down the line. While my earliest drumming experiences were that of playing Charlie Watts parts to old Rolling Stones records at my friend (and young drum prodigy) Pat Pile’s house, it was Mitch who opened my ears and mind to what drumming could be in the hands of a more complex and flashy master. Mitch and the Hendrix Experience totally changed my life.

So today I remember with deep gratitude, reverence, and love a brilliant artist whom I never met but who profoundly shaped the course of my life as a drummer and musician and who still inspires me now. To me, Mitch Mitchell is not just a fine drummer, not just a big influence on me, he is someone who deservedly resides in the pantheon of the greatest, most important drummers/musicians of all time. Thank you, Mitch. I pray that I may in some way be your continuation.

I’d like to tell you how I met Bennie Maupin. But first let’s go back about 35 years. I had just graduated from high school, and was obsessed with two amazing albums by Herbie Hancock entitled Mwandishi and Crossings. The innovative band on these recordings featured Bennie Maupin on bass clarinet, soprano sax, and flutes, Julian Priester on trombone, Eddie Henderson on trumpet, Buster Williams on bass, Billy Hart on Drums, Patrick Gleeson on synthesizer, and Herbie Hancock on keyboards. When the band came through LA and played at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, I made a pilgrimage every night. Unbeknownst to me, my soon-to-be colleagues Nels and Alex Cline were doing the very same thing. Somewhat later I discovered an ECM album by Bennie Maupin entitled “The Jewel in the Lotus” and I had a similar reaction to that music. I’ve since discovered that TJITL has been an inspiration to a great many musicians I’ve known over the years.

Now let’s fast forward to 2004. My 50th birthday was coming up, and I wanted to play a concert with friends, and perform music that had been especially influential. So, I organized a band to cover Mwandishi and Crossings. As we were getting ready to play, I looked out into the audience and who did I see? None other than the great Bennie Maupin sitting there with a big smile on his face. Talk about a trial by fire! After the gig, Bennie and I spoke briefly, he gave me some music to listen to, and we agreed to have lunch the following week. After listening to Bennie’s music, I asked him to give me a chance to release it into the world with the personal care and attention it deserved. I knew he would have no trouble getting a record deal with any number of labels, but I felt I could do something very special for him by paying attention to the sound of the recordings, the quality of the packaging, and providing the right kind of promotion. Bennie took almost a year to check me out get back to me. I will always be grateful to him for giving me the opportunity to work with him.

Bennie was coming out of a very fertile period of his life, during which he had been practicing, composing, studying, and putting his vast career into context. Here’s a guy who had performed and recorded with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Jack DeJohnette, Eddie Henderson, Andrew Hill, The Headhunters, Marion Brown, and many others. But because he had decided to spend some personal time honing his craft, some people thought that maybe he had disappeared from the scene. Bennie had far from disappeared, but for those few people who thought he had, his first CD for Cryptogramophone called “Penumbra” put him back on the map in a big way. This is an album that Bennie had produced himself, but I like to think that Alex Cline and I assisted in some small way by creating what I think is the most beautiful CD package I’ve seen anywhere on any label. Penumbra features Bennie on a host of woodwind instruments including bass clarinet, tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone and alto flute, as well as piano. Darek Oles creates wonderful textures on the bass, Munyungo Jackson plays percussion, and Michael Stephans plays the drums.

Bennie Maupin has always had a lively career in Europe, and over the years has developed a connection with some wonderfully talented Polish musicians with whom he tours frequently. When Bennie brought me a recording of this band that had been recorded in a basement in Zakopane, Poland, I thought that the music was spectacular, but that the recording didn’t adequately represent the music. Together we hatched a plan to record Bennie’s Polish band in Warsaw, the experience of which was one of the highlights of my life.

The album that came from those Warsaw recording sessions is called “Early Reflections.” It features Bennie on bass clarinet, tenor and soprano saxophones, and alto flute, Michal Tokaj on piano. Michal Baranski on bass, Lukasz Zyta on drums, and Hania Chowaniec-Rybka on vocals on two tracks. Among the many wonderful compositions and improvisations on this CD is a new version of “The Jewel in the Lotus” the song from the original album that had been such a huge influence on my musical life. What an honor it was to be present in the studio when a great artist like Bennie Maupin recapitulates one of his many crowning achievements after 33 years, in a way that is completely different, yet just as fresh and meaningful as the original.

Bennie and I have had our ups and downs. There are some things I wish I could have done better for him. However, it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to assist him in putting his music out into the world. Thank you Bennie for giving me the opportunity to work with you.

Bennie Maupin will be interviewed live by Ben Ratliff on Wednesday, November 12 at the Los Angeles Public Library, as part of the ALOUD lecture series.

I first heard bassist Mark Dresser perform live at the much storied New Music Monday series at the Alligator Lounge in Los Angeles around 1995. He played solo bass, and I was amazed at the sounds he could coax out of his instrument. He had developed entirely new ways to create sounds on the bass that involved placing pickups above the nut and underneath the fingerboard, and he had developed new ways to play his instrument to exploit those new sounds. Of course I had been familiar with Mark through albums by the string trio Arcado, with Mark Feldman and Hank Roberts/Ernst Reisinger and other recordings, but hearing him perform live changed my life. The next time I heard him play in person was at Pilot Studios in NYC, while producing Nels Cline’s first Cryptogramophone CD called “The Inkling.” The album featured Nels on guitar, Mark on bass, Billy Mintz on drums, and Zeena Parkins on acoustic and electric harp. It was then that I learned what a great person Mark is, and how generous he is as a musician. Since that time, Mark has appeared on five other Crypto CDs including “Sonomondo” with Frances-Marie Uitti, his own two recordings as a leader “Aquifer” and “Time Changes,” “Pomegranate” by Steuart Liebig, and “Big Picture” with Trio M (Myra Melford, Mark Dresser, and Matt Wilson).

Mark sent a demo copy of “Sonomondo” to me shortly after The Inkling sessions. I had never heard of Frances Marie-Uitti before, and as a string player I was particularly skeptical of the idea of playing the cello with two bows at the same time. However, when I finally heard the amazing sounds she made, and how well they blended with Mark’s own innovative techniques, I was completely sold. The title “Sonomondo,” which means Sound World, just about sums it up. These amazing musicians create as much sound as an entire string quartet, and they have an amazing intuitive hookup. As a string player, this album completely blew my mind.

And let’s talk about Mark’s compositions for a moment. Mark’s music comes well out of the tradition, and evinces both harmonic and melodic post-bop sophistication. But to really understand Mark’s music is to realize that he’s a rhythmic monster. Not only does he lay it down in a serious way as a player, but he’s figured out ways to extend rhythmic concepts analogous to ways musicians have been extending jazz harmony for years. We’re not just talking about playing around the barline here. We’re talking about playing around with playing around the barline. Mark’s compositions sound completely natural, yet when you dig deeper, they’re each like a Rubik’s cube of time. Everything fits together precisely, but in totally unexpected ways.

Mark’s two other CDs as a leader, “Aquifer” and “Time Changes” document his ongoing relationship with pianist Denman Maroney, another incredible composer/improviser who has discovered new and interesting ways to make sounds on his instrument. “Aquifer” is a trio recording featuring Swiss flutist Matthias Ziegler, “Time Changes” is a trio recording with drummer Michael Sarin, but also features the amazing singer Alexandra Montano who tragically passed away two years ago. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Alexandra’s work, Aperitivo from Time Changes is an excellent place to start. Below you’ll find links to pieces from “Sonomondo,” “Aquifer,” and “Time Changes.” “The Inkling,” “Pomegranate,” and “Big Picture” will be featured on future entries about Nels Cline’s and Myra Melford’s music on Cryptogramophone.

Mark Dresser is a phenomenon. After 30 years of paying his dues on the Downtown scene, he’s now professor of bass at UC San Diego, having taken over the chair of his former teacher Bert Turetsky. Mark now continues his international career from his new home in San Diego.

Time Changes by Mark Dresser and Denman Maroney
Mark Dresser – bass
Denman Maroney – hyperpiano
Michael Sarin – drums, percussion
Alexandra Montano – voice

Aperitivo from Time Changes

Aquifer by Mark Dresser
Mark Dresser – contrabass
Denman Maroney – hyperpiano
Matthias Ziegler – electro-acoustic flutes

Modern Pine from Aquifer

Sonomondo by Mark Dresser and Frances-Marie Uitti

Big night next Sunday (Nov. 16) at the Jazz Bakery: The Gathering, a multi-racial, multi-generational ensemble representing over 40 years of L.A. jazz history, will stage a two-set performance celebrating the release of its new CD The Roots and Branches of LA Jazz. Here’s a short list of players who will be signifyin’: Dwight Trible (vocals), Phil Ranelin (trombone), Michael Session (alto sax), Kamasi Washington (tenor sax), Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (viola), Roberto Miranda (bass), Nick Rosen (bass), Brandon Coleman (piano), Kharon Harrison (drums), and J.J. Kabasa (African drums). Led by reedman Jesse Sharps, this amazing line up will be featuring music from the CD as well as many new pieces, including some based on Eddie Harris’ Intervallistic Concept. (Go here for our archived Downbeast interview with Mr. Sharps.) This is a once-in-a-lifetime concert — and one hell of a way to celebrate the country we awoke to on November 5.

And, lest we forget: Jimmy Carl Black, Miriam Makeba, and the Mars Phoenix Lander — Rest in Tempo.