Andrew Krasilnikov, Bloody Belly Comb Jelly
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
3M ago
  From Russian Jazz saxophonist and composer Andrew Krasilnikov comes BLOODY BELLY COMB JELlY  (Rainy Days Records Rainy 018CD)--a remarkable record with a title not easily digested but in the end refers to a very luminous genus of jellyfish newly discovered in the depths of the oceans. Krasilnikov plays soprano and c-melody saxophone, and writes the fascinating intricacy of the some seven compositions in part reflecting time spent at Berklee College, Boston sessions and New York Apple Core Moments before returning to Moscow, and creating this exciting large band offering among othe ..read more
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Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio, Jet Black
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
3M ago
  For many years pianist Satoko Fujii has been one of a handful of new avant improv jazz pianists who lead the field as the major influences, the major innovators on their instrument. That is saying something as the number of talented jazz pianists today is quite high in my estimation and to my appreciation. Ms, Fujii over the years has been extraordinarily productive, with hundreds of CDs released of several hundred performances in solo and many varied instrumentations of all kinds. Right now we have an especially compelling CD out of Fujii and her Tokyo Trio in a riveting set entitled ..read more
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Brew, Heat (1998-99), Between Reflections (2019), Miya Masaoka, Reggie Workman, Gerry Hemingway
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
4M ago
  When it comes to Brew, I am guilty of not previously being aware of them as a threesome. Yet I have been gladly aware of kotoist Miya Masaoka for some time, and of course i have followed happily the bass, bandleading and musical direction of Reggie Workman for many years and so too of drummer Gerry Hemingway. But I still say after studying the music that the whole in the presence of this double CD Heat (1999) and Between Reflections (2019)  (Clean Feed CF642) is greater  in the sense that the three invent a largeness that I did not quite expect of either of the three singul ..read more
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Kevin Sun, The Depths of Memory
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
6M ago
  You are lucky when there is a new artist, when a new artist emerges with a fine tuned concept and a talent to realize it. Or at least I feel lucky when encountering such a thing. This is happening with Chinese native New York jazz tenorman-composer Kevin Sun and his double album The Depths of Memory  (Endectomorph Music EMM 015). Creative arpeggiations, chordal sequences, harmonic-melodic progressivity,  and sculpturally alive lines enable free expressions to thrive with Sun's tenor, in creational overdrive and compositional profundity, Dano Saul on piano in an exceptional ..read more
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Charlie Apicella & Iron City Meet The Griots Speak, Destiny Calling
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
6M ago
  Nowadays you might find all kinds of combinations on the Jazz scene and much of the time there is good ground broken, productive music made. I feel that way about the meeting of guitarist Charlie Apicella and his trio Iron City with the avant Afro-American Avant foursome of The Griots Speak on the album Destiny Calling (Origin Arts OA2 22214). It is a combination that works completely thanks to the big ears and musical attitudes of all concerned. So  Charlie holds forth soulfully on guitar  loosely enough to set up a rootedness to the Avant freedom surrounding his organist Br ..read more
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M'lumbo, The Summer of Endless Levitation
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
9M ago
  M'lumbo has been a band I always seem to gravitate towards. I've covered a good number of their albums on these pages. Now here is a new one and it is different, spacy with a kind of Neo-African soundscape that rolls a little differently than the heavier Neo-Psychedelic Jazz-Rock of some of the earlier efforts. To me here listening  it is a cool thing, all of it. So you note I start logically with the title of the album, The Summer of Endless Levitation (Hell Yeah, LP or Digital). So where to begin? If you go over to the BandCamp page that is devoted to the new album you will ..read more
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ANNA, Intentions, Progressive and Cosmic Ambient Electronics for the Soul
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
9M ago
  ANNA is a DJ from Portugal, born in Brazil. Her new (second) album Intentions (Mercury CD) provides you with a sort of progressive avant ambience that lets one float inside a universe one would love to call one's own. And indeed the artist provides us with a meditation technique by which to hear this music which ultimately gives you a way to take this album unto yourself. It is a mesmerizing Post-Minimal Radical Tonality that may be totally laid back but is never the least bit banal in a New Age flatulence, not at all, in fact quite the opposite. The cosmic wrap envelopes you but then ..read more
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Denny Zeitlin, Solo Piano, Crazy Rhythm: Exploring George Gershwin
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
10M ago
Ever since the early '60s pianist Denny Zeitlin has excelled as an original improvisational voice that has all the harmonic nuance of a Bill Evans but too all of a later tonality and line abstraction of the New Thing dispensation beyond what is exemplified in Paul Bley, etc., along with an electric acumen that is as orchestral as it is all-encompassing. Today's offering has nothing to do with that third and all to do with his pianoforte prowess and identity, his original stance in regards to a set of standards by Gershwin, namely his solo piano adventure Crazy Rhythm: Exploring George G ..read more
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Yumi Ito, YSLA
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
10M ago
  Singer-Songwriter Yumi Ito happily sent me her new album and hey, it sounds so good. It is called YSLA  (ENJA yeb7831). I am taken by her intonationally impressive, gifted, stylistically rangy and ultra-musical voice, which may remind you slightly and nicely of Byork or Imogen Heap or sometimes even Edie Brickell only more sophisticated but not in any obvious way. She can scat wonderfully well in a contemporary zone, What else? The Milk Eyed Mender, that artist, Joanna Newso? Maybe, but just as an affine so to speak, perhaps not a sister per se, but most emphatically herself ..read more
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Vaster than Empires, Three Days
Gapplegate Music Review
by Grego Applegate Edwards
10M ago
  Every day moves forward the presence of time, of history, of where we have been and then might it turn be. Today that needle moves decidedly forward with the Avant Improv trio Vaster Than Empires and their recent CD Three Days (New Focus Recordings PAN 28). It is a full album of intelligent, extended techniques invention that brings us forward in the experimental language of abstracted Modernism with sound explorations and noise-pitch dialogues for violin (Erica Dicker), percussion (Allen Otte) and sound artist composer-improviser (Paul Schuette). This ensemble formed in the course of ..read more
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