ANTI-HOUSE

ARCANUM

SIBANYE (WE ARE ONE)

Human Feel have been together 30 years now, with no personnel changes in almost as long. Chris Speed, Andrew D'Angelo, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Jim Black had been developing individual and collective vocabularies in this very outfit, which went on to epitomize the '90s downtown scene. Through it all Human Feel has carried on, and whenever they reconvene they have new musical stories to tell, and old ways of relating, of honing musical structures that depend on precision in the details yet leave much to be determined in performance. Now Human Feel present 'Gold' 12 years after their last album. The fusion of various musical idioms and the subtle play of calculation and spontaneity provide a highly individual musical language. Jim Black says, "We were joking recently we only make an album every 10 years now... The past four years we've been getting together more often to work on new material, and to record when schedules allow. We had an amazing European tour in November 2017. The band just gets better. We believe more than ever that the four of us making music together is a necessity, and we intend to keep doing it wherever and whenever we can."

OUTDOORS

PALINDROME 1 2002

Ingrid Laubrock's credentials as an ambitious, skillful composer of intricate yet visceral works for small ensembles is well established - not least on the evidence of her excellent, much-admired Intakt recordings. Whether writing for conventionally constituted assemblages like her quintet Anti-House, or for a more unusual complement, like the mix of tuba, koto, electronics, and more that she convened two years ago for Serpentines, Laubrock has demonstrated a formidable capacity for writing music of intricacy, integrity, and broad appeal. The critic Steve Smith writes in the liner notes: "The present recording, recorded in a studio by an ensemble of first-call freelancers led by two ideally sympathetic conductors, Eric Wubbels and Taylor Ho Bynum, provides eloquent evidence of what Laubrock has achieved. Both of her orchestral pieces - Vogelfrei, with it's variegated textures, animated rhythms, swooping vocals, and inexorable momentum; and Contemporary Chaos Practices, where four instantly distinguishable soloists (Mary Halvorson, Davis, Wooley, and Laubrock herself) retain their individuality while negotiating a brilliantly rendered aural landscape - serve notice of an estimable composer who has something to say, and knows exactly how to say it."

All in their twenties, these four young men are currently at the top tip of the Swiss jazz scene. District Five has taken time off after their debut album, the antithesis of short-term project culture. Now, with Decoy, they do justice to the album's title, throwing us a seductive bait. The aim behind the album is to transcend conventional jazz and offer a statement; it was to sound different from the experience of District Five live, using the possibilities of studio recording to mine the wealth of electronic-based sounds the quartet hears around them. Whether flowing calmly along or sweeping weightlessly through the expanses of ambient soundscapes, whether the concentrated energy of free improvisation shatters the song structure or eruptive clusters of sound and hard-edged grooves emphasise the physical aspects of the music, in the club-friendly anthem 'Maths', the multi-layered sound art of District Five is compellingly direct and builds up a hypnotic momentum.

VOID COORDINATES

G�nter Baby Sommer is at the height of his musical career. After 'Song for Kommeno' and his Solo masterpiece 'Dedications' he presents at his 75th birthday a duo recording with German trumpet player Till Br�nner. The listeners will notice quite quickly how relaxed Till Br�nner and Baby Sommer correspond throughout the chosen musical material. We experience the meeting of two musicians who have found a common language despite their personal distinctness; who do not need to prove anything to anybody. That is why their very first ever recording is fed by a basic calmness. Had Baby's Party not been chosen to become this album's title, the last piece - the Duke's 'In a Sentimental Mood' - would have made an equally well fitting title. Not in the sense of a yearning retrospection but - according to the two musicians' natural disposition - in the sense of an invincible preview of what is ahead of them.

LAVAMAN

At any given time in the past few decades, saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, bassist Christian Weber and drummer Michael Griener have been members of genre-defining trios across Europe and the US, proving just how vital jazz is today in it's historical form as well as in free playing styles. In the trio Ellery Eskelin, Christian Weber and Michael Griener play free music and traditional jazz. They do not melt down the playing styles, but alternate, contrast and deepen them. With the new album The Pearls they present the second studio record after their critically acclaimed release "Sensation of Tone". Ellery Eskelin writes in the liner notes: "In jazz we talk about playing time and playing free. Playing time usually means expressing a steady pulse and playing free usually means not adhering to a steady pulse. Either way there is still the sensation of movement, time. In making this recording I was struck by the ways in which time can simultaneously be so exacting, so malleable and so multi-dimensional. In these performances you'll hear free improvisations (with no preconceived forms or steady time pulse) as well as renditions of classic compositions from an earlier musical form directly addressing time, Ragtime."

ASTEROIDEA

ANTI-HOUSE STRONG PLACE

WIE DIE ZEIT HINTER MIR HER

ODE

Christoph Irniger, a prodigious stylist with a warm sound, presents the third album with his band Pilgrim on Intakt Records. With "Crosswinds" the saxophonist who relishes adventure and surprise delivers a cultivated studio album. Multi-layered, subtle and melodically entangled, the eight pieces radiate a wondrous, atmospheric tranquility. A highly nuanced music with a magical sound. Peter Margasak writes in the liner notes: "Crosswinds - this new, gorgeously considered, but luxuriantly open new recording by tenor saxophonist Christoph Irniger's Pilgrim - is palpably more relaxed on the surface than the quintet's previous albums, yet beneath that veneer of calm is intensely focused and rigorous interplay as well as a level of risk-taking. Irniger and his bandmates have developed a richly contemporary sound that melds ideas from some of the most harmonically advanced thinkers in the US with a distinctly European flavor heard most explicitly".

CARELESS LOVE

ERR GUITAR

LONDON DUOS & TRIOS

PORTRAITS

WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE DO

QATTARA

Ulrich Gumpert is known for his interesting a fun jazz compositions. Gumpert, a German jazz musician, shows his strength on the piano along with the other fabulous musicians in his quartet: Jurg Wickihalder on saxophone, Jan Roder on bass, and Michael Griener on drums. On this new album, the Ulrich Gumpert Quartet plays many of Gumpert's compositions as well as works by Wickihalder, Griener, and Roder. Berg Noglik says of the quartet, They make progress in bringing the swing back to free jazz.

FREE MANDELA