Vincent Touchard is a French jazz drummer and composer, and brings his quintet formula to make chamber jazz on Classe moyenne. Here, the usual piano, double bass, saxophone, and drums are joined by a cello, while two core members also play clarinet and Wurlitzer piano, and an oboe, clarinet, and bassoon trio is added to the band on three tracks to create a real woodwinds quartet vibe. Classe moyenne is a very relaxed and beautiful jazz album. It’s rather impressive how touching the compositions and playing on the album can be, while staying relatively minimalistic in nature. Throughout more … Read more
Tag Archives: jazz
Mammal Hands – Shadow Work
It has barely been a year and a half since Mammal Hands‘ album Floa was released – hint, we liked it –, yet, the British modern jazz trio is back with Shadow Work. Nearing fifty minutes in length, the album is, once again, a marvel of jazz music. Melodic and carefully crafted, their third release is a joy to behear. The piano and drums and saxophone trio is master at crafting memorable melodies on poignant progressions, with a firm grasp on the elusive art of tension and release, and a broad curiosity that leads to them incorporating sounds … Read more
EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: Patrick Shiroishi – “The Screams of a Father’s Tears”
Japanese-American saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, whom we’ve come to spect and respect for his involvement with some of the best and craziest music acts out there – like Upsilon Acrux, Corima, Sewing Circle, and Nakata, to name a few –, is going to release new music under a his solo moniker with the album Tulean Dispatch. The project deals with the Tule Lake internment camp, where his Japanese grandparents were placed during World War II. The album not only reflects on these past events but draws parallels to what is happening today in the world and the USA. It’s a … Read more
Special Providence – Will
The Hungarian jazz fusion metal quartet Special Providence has got me hooked since their album Essence of Change. Their newest work, Will, is an all-around improvement over the former, though, and to tell you this was unexpected without sounding like I’m discrediting the band is difficult, but it’s just to show how impressive I thought Essence of Change was. Yet, Will is even more so. The four talented Magyars put their chops on display in all of the ten songs on the album, by offering tremendous solos, odd-timed riffs with many a rhythmic complexity, and all that with … Read more
Brandon Seabrook – Needle Driver
Needle Driver is the latest experiment of Brooklyn musician Brandon Seabrook. The hard-to-describe EP seamlessly bridges contemporary classical music, experimental jazz, and mathcore into a nasty instrumental tapestry. The trio even includes some microtonal intervals, spotted in the song “Venwhorerisin'”. The five compositions are too quickly gone, but they provide an endless amount of entertainment while they last: uncommon time signatures, odd harmonies, complex and exhausting melodies, as well as a knack for deranged structures that somehow hold themselves together. Needle Driver goes left and right, up and down, forwards and backwards, and I’m sure it also goes wild … Read more