Some wonderful news arrived today to share with all the music lovers and for those with a taste for the classical music jazzy re – arrangements in particular. If you remember the review of the Stark Liennemann Transcedence Chopin vol.II and III CD review I wrote and published some 18 months back on my review board ,as well as in #HifiCritics magazine pages, here is another wonderful project coming. The Picture at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky.
08
Aug
[ September 2018 release from MoonJune Records: Soft Machine – Hidden Details ]
releases: September 8, 2018
Hidden Details is a new studio album of Soft Machine, recorded at the late great Jon Hiseman’s Temple Studio in Surrey, England, last December 2017, and it will be released in September 2018 on MoonJune Records (North America; on CD and HD Download), on John Etheridge’s Dyan Records (UK/Europe on CD, and iTunes), and on Vivid Sounds (Japan), exactly 50 years since the release of the band’s 1968 debut album The Soft Machine. Limited and highly collectable vinyl edition of only 200 coloured vinyl (orange, blue and tour edition orange & blue marbled) will be released on the Dutch label Tonefloat, on September 8, 2018.
02
Aug
[ August 2018 release from HUBRO – MOSKUS – Mirakler ]
International release 17.08.18
In the Moskus universe there may be no such thing as a finished product, as everything remains permanently in flux and subject to further adaption and change. Even as it is articulated, a thought or musical phrase is already being reconsidered or evolving into something else. This is contingent music, hyper-alert to nuance and environment, changing like temperature or the weather just as the dynamic of the trio shifts its emphasis when roles are exchanged or the lead swapped from one player to another.
26
Jul
[ July 2018 release from HUBRO – SKADEDYR- Musikk! ]
Norwegian release: 27.04.2018
– LP available May 11
International release: 27 July 2018
It’s a tough task going for transcendence straight from the off, but that is what Skadedyr’s new album does, almost immediately summoning up a mood of ecstatic abandon whose wailing guitar and keyboard drones, ululating voice and rattling percussion, bring to mind the cosmic spirit of Alice Coltrane and Carlos Santana, or the deep spiritual jazz of Pharoah Sanders at its most cathartic. That the opening (whose governing mood is to be picked up again in a later sequence) is then followed by a weird deconstructed interlude of percussion, parping tuba, free-improv glissandi, oompah-band musical jokes and ’noise’ might appear frustrating, but this is to penetrate to the heart of what Skadedyr are about.
02
Jul
[ July 2018 release from HUBRO – Hilde Marie Holsen- Lazuli]
International release 13.07.18
Acclaimed trumpeter/soundscaper Hilde Marie Holsen follows up her critical hit mini-album debut, ‘Ask’, with the dark and mysterious ‘Lazuli’, a suite of four compositions inspired by visual art and named after minerals used to colour paint.
Hilde Marie Holsen’s ‘Lazuli’ is an almost shockingly complete musical statement. It’s as if an intense dialogue between the processes of composition and improvisation, and the interplay of sound and music, has led to the creation of experimental and often challenging work that nevertheless comes across as absolutely fully-formed; as inevitable, even.
07
Jun
[ June 2018 release from ODIN – Espen Berg Trio – Bølge , 8th of June 2018 ]
Norwegian release 29.03.2018
International release 08.06.18
A bigger breakthrough
The jazz trio format is tried and tested and has become one of the basic ensemble formats of modern jazz. Here is a trio that has its feet planted firmly within the tradition, but still offers something unique to the listener. The Espen Berg Trio made its mark with the group’s first album, “Mønster”, in 2015. The trio was referred to as “the biggest and most important musical discovery in the first half of 2016” by Jazz Japan, and they have toured extensively in Japan, where they have also signed a recording contract. Now the trio is back, with a striking and elegant new album that very possibly will be an even bigger breakthrough for the trio. This is a group that is positively overflowing with talent and musical enthusiasm.
05
Jun
[ June 2018 release from GRAPPA – Ola Kvernberg: Steamdome , 8th of June 2018 ]
Norwegian release 29.03.2018
International release 08.06.18
Three years after releasing the masterpiece The Mechanical Fair, Ola Kvernberg returns with a new magnificent, imaginative, rhythmic deluge of an album: Steamdome. The title of Kvernberg’s latest project was not chosen at random. Steamdome presents thoroughly percussive music. It lunges brutally ahead like a runaway train. As enthusiastic, surrealistic and swelling as Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns.
01
Jun
[ June 2018 release from HUBRO – Splashgirl – Sixth Sense]
Norwegian release 16.04.2018
International release 01.06.18
Immersive electro-acoustic trio Splashgirl (Andreas Stensland Lowe, keyboards; Jo Berger Myhre, bass/guitar/electronics; Andreas Lonmo Knudsrod, drums/percussion) was the first act to sign to the Hubro label, with the group’s second album as a unit, ‘Arbor’, marking the label’s debut in 2009. Since then, each subsequent release has deepened and strengthened the developing Splashgirl sound, from ‘Pressure’ (2011) and ‘’Field Day Rituals’ (2013) to ‘Hibernation’ (2015).
29
May
[ April 2018 re-issue from ODIN – Svein Finnerud Trio – Plasic Sun, 1st of June 2018 ]
Realise: 1st June 2018
A Norwegian Avant-Garde Classic.
Svein Finnerud Trio was one of the strongest voices in the Norwegian avant-garde of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s. Unknown outside the country, the trio pioneered forms of musical expression that later found an international audience through the ECM albums of Jan Garbarek, Arild Andersen, and Terje Rypdal. In this context, Plastic Sun is a statement as essential as any other of the period. Now finally available in a remastered edition on CD and in a 180g audiophile LP pressing.
21
May
[ Jazzpress concert review: Ken Vandenmark and Paal Nilssen Love DUO – 30th of May, Green Door Store – Brighton ]
20.05.2018 The Green Door
Vandermark and Nilssen – Love have both long way behind together, as well as they do separately. I am following both musicians for over two decades now and I am constantly knocked out by their creativity and vitality, not even mention master class craftsmanship they both do represent. As it always is a case with top quality improvised music it is not a most fashionable one, therefore not easy to find neither on the shop’s shelves or the streaming services, to even to get wind of.