If you haven’t come across the Portuguese Clean Feed label yet, that only means that you are not the fan of the creative and improvised music enough, … but it is never too late in life to fall in love, isn’t it? Kickstart your new year by embracing the first wave of Clean Feed releases. Once again, THEY take pride in highlighting a diverse array of talents from several corners of the world. Once you get hooked you will always be back, which is what I wish you all during this upcoming year, and all those coming after ,too.
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Jim Baker/Steve Hunt/Jakob Heinemann “Horizon Scanners”
Jim Baker | Steve Hunt | Jakob Heinemann
Running the gamut between daring twelve-tone interplay, nuanced lyricism and extra-terrestrial synth manipulation, Horizon Scanners announces the arrival of a captivating new Chicagoan piano trio, one steeped in the Windy City’s illustrious jazz history, but determined to write its own distinctive chapter. Steve Hunt (drums and percussion) and Jim Baker (piano and ARP 2600 synth) were both formative players in what would become the talent incubator of Chicago’s vibrant free-jazz and improvised-music circuit; Hunt notably serving as an original member of the legendary Hal Russell NRG Ensemble, Baker doing time with the house band at Fred Anderson’s renowned Velvet Lounge club. More recently, the pair have performed alongside, among others, Mars Williams, Junius Paul, Dave Rempis, Charles Rumback and Rafael Toral. Joining Hunt and Baker on Horizon Scanners is the livewire Jakob Heinemann (double-bass), a newcomer to the scene whose list of collaborators is already inked with vaunted names such as Roscoe Mitchell, Tomeka Reid and Tim Daisy. Upholding their home city’s well-honed reputation for sonic exploration, this exceptional trio steers for pyretic waters bubbling with vitality, invention and wonder, seeking out the limits of possibility while negotiating a myriad dazzling ways to get there. >> Listen <<
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Giuseppe Doronzo/Andy Moor/Frank Rosaly “Futuro Ancestrale”
Giuseppe Doronzo | Andy Moor | Frank Rosaly
Temporal and spatial tyrannies, cultural conventions and deep-rooted idioms, all dissolve in a beguiling trans-dimensional flux during the four post-Gurdjieffian spirituals to be found on Futuro Ancestrale, an album documenting the exhilaratingly ambitious first encounter of three master musical mages operating at the apex of their creativity. Recorded during their debut performance at Amsterdam’s Bimhuis in June 2022, it finds baritone saxophonist, and bandleader, Giuseppe Doronzo, guitarist Andy Moor and drummer Frank Rosaly summoning-up a succession of gateways between epochs and topographies, the trio infiltrating diverse ancient cultures, charging traditional Ethiopian, Lesotho and Persian music with snarly punkish brio and granular post-rock textures, employing unorthodox approaches to modern instruments and contemporary takes to those from a bygone age. >> Listen <<
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André Roligheten tenor saxophone | Thomas Johansson trumpet | Oscar Grönberg piano | Jon Rune Strøm double bass | Tollef Østvang drums and percussion
Scandinavian powerhouse Friends & Neighbors make an auspicious return with Circles, their sixth full-length release, brimming – as you might expect from an outfit borrowing its moniker from a lesser-known Ornette Coleman classic – with dexterous, hard-edged improvisations, unapologetically taking influence from the fearless New Thing movement of the 1960s and early 70s. But Friends & Neighbors’ bold mandate has always extended beyond the realms of mere homage. Releases such as No Beat Policy (Øra Fonogram, 2011), What’s Wrong? (Clean Feed, 2016) and The Earth Is # (Clean Feed, 2021) testify to the band’s remarkable propensity for reshaping the seismic innovations of Archie Shepp, John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, to instigate incendiary and decidedly contemporary admixtures bristling with vital energy and invention, brokering a robust accordance between reverence and insurgency >> Listen <<
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Thomas Johansson trumpet/composer (solo on 1, 4, duo on 3) | Jon Øystein Rosland tenor saxophone (duo on 3) | Guttorm Guttormsen alto saxophone | André Kassen soprano saxophone (solo on 2, 5) | Kristoffer Alberts baritone and tenor saxophone (solo on 1, 3, 4) | Line Bjørnør Rosland clarinets | Finn Arne Dahl Hanssen trumpet (solo on 2) | Magne Rutle trombone | Guro Kvåle trombone (solo on 3, 5) | Åsgeir Grong bass trombone | Rune Klakegg electric organ (solo on 5) | Ola Høyer double bass (intro, solo on 3) | Jan Olav Renvåg double bass | Dag Erik Knedal Andersen drums (intro, solo on 4) | Audun Kleive drums
High-flying Norwegian trumpeter and composer Thomas Johansson, much-lauded for his spellbinding work with, among others, Friends & Neighbors and Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra, brings together two of his other formidable ensembles – premier third-stream troupe Scheen Jazzorkester and avant-garde party-starters, Cortex – for a scintillating showcase of big-band bravura. Recorded live in the winter of 2022 at Norway’s old Hamar Teater hall, the five dynamic cuts on Frameworks have their origins in a commission from the Jazzorkester, keen to follow-up on the successes of their previous Johansson-helmed long-player, As We See It (Clean Feed, 2019). >> Listen <<
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Signe Emmeluth alto and tenor saxophones | Ingebrigt Håker Flaten double bass (Minimoog on ‘Pseudoscience’) | Andreas Wildhagen drums | Jonas Cambien piano and Ace Tone Top 5 organ (soprano saxophone on ‘Pseudoscience’) Guest: Guro Kvåle trombone on ‘Once Low Now High’ and ‘Good Frenemy’
Maca Conu is the dazzling new band led by Belgian-born, Oslo-residing pianist, composer and improviser Jonas Cambien, an outfit whose eponymous new release clamours like an exploding kunstkammer of curiosities, where runaway orchestrinas and impish automata cavort and gambol in gloriously frisky frissons. With its origins in a commission for the 2021 edition of Norway’s Motvind festival, the album also heralds the recorded debut of a starry Scandinavian ensemble, featuring Cambien’s long-time associate, drummer Andreas Wildhagen, low-end power-house, double-bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flatan and Danish rising-star saxophonist Signe Emmeluth. >> Listen <<
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Pedro Branco piano | João Sousa drums | João Hasselberg double-bass | Hernâni Faustino double-bass | Tony Malaby tenor saxophone
Abiding friends and serial collaborators Pedro Branco and João Sousa scale an enchanting set of melodic, nostalgia-fuelled summits on Another State of Rhythm, their third long-player issued under the Old Mountain sobriquet. This time the infectious duo invited two bass players, Hernani Faustino and João Hasselberg and legendary Tony Malaby on tenor saxophone. The result is an absorbing collection, coolly scaling alluring heights, captivating senses and stealing hearts with its sensitivity, constituting an apogee of poise and restraint in its graceful, subtle, risk-taking play.
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Rebeka Rusjan Zajc piano
With her extraordinary debut album, Prelude, young Slovenian pianist Rebeka Rusjan Zajc (now residing in Amsterdam), announces herself as a precious new talent, already forging her own distinctive art language, navigating the bountiful margins between non-idiomatic improvisation, jazz and classical music. >> Listen <<
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Joana Sá “A Body as Listening”
Joana Sá piano, electronics & others
Part of a broader, fragmentary project composed by several autonomous but complementary outputs such as the (expanded) book ‘a body as listening – resonant cartography of music (im)materialities’ and the virtual installation www.abodyaslistening.com, the solo performance ‘a body as listening’ and the lecture-performance ‘Are you there? – resonant cartography of music (im)materialities’, this is composer-pianist Joana Sá’s first solo record since ‘Elogio da Desordem / In praise of disorder’ (2013), as well as the concluding opus of a trilogy that began with ‘through this looking glass’ (2010). >> Listen <<
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enjoy!