Steve Coleman began playing music just days before his 14th birthday and nowadays, 43 years later, Steve Coleman’s music it’s still fresh and he’s still hungry to explore magical-mystery places, unrevealed paths and dimensions, he’s still searching for the unheard and unconventional.
And many of his incredible musical adventures are still available for free download on his official site, at the download section (including some of those albums I had falling in love with more then two decades ago as “Rhythm People”, “Black Science”, “Drop Kick”,”The Tao of Mad Phat”or “Anatomy Of A Groove”). Really cool, but don’t you ever forget, artists need our full support to be able to deliver unconditional art in a world of conditional and conditioning. Read more Steve Coleman & the Five Elements – Functional Arrhythmias (2013)
avant-garde
Trilok Gurtu – Spellbound (2013)
Trilok Gurtu is an Indian percussionist and composer, he was born born in Mumbai, India on 30 October 1951 and his work blending traditional Indian music with jazz fusion, world music and many other different genres.
Trilok Gurtu has collaborated with many artists, including Terje Rypdal, Gary Moore, John McLaughlin, Jan Garbarek, Joe Zawinul, Bill Laswell, Maria João & Mário Laginha, and Robert Miles.
Gurtu began playing western drum kit in the 1970s, and developed interest in jazz. In the 1970s, he played with Charlie Mariano, John Tchicai, Terje Rypdal, and Don Cherry.
In the 1980s, Gurtu played with Swiss drummer Charly Antolini, bassists Jonas Hellborg and with John McLaughlin in McLaughlin’s trio, and performed at least one concert opening for Miles Davis.
“Spellbound” is an expression of Trilok Gurtu’s great admiration for the man and musician Don Cherry, but also have some moments with a strong Miles Davis flavor.
Although the album starts with a 33-second improvisation in a duo with Cherry on trumpet and Trilok Gurtu, “Spellbound” contain no other recordings with Don Cherry. Read more Trilok Gurtu – Spellbound (2013)
Panzanellas – Fagiano Unrequited Love (2013)
A little bit of color, life and madness from Firenze, Italy. Panzanellas is an experimental free jazz project formed by saxophonist Francesco Li Puma (the bass player of Atomik Clocks), guitarist Stefano Spataro (of Hysm? Duo) and drummers Marco Ruggiero (of Atomik Clocks), respectively Mattia Betti (of Umanzuki).
Build around the free rides and adventurous melodies of the saxophone, this is a journey of exploration and tripping in a Coltrane flavoured, gloomy, sometimes weird, but throughout expressive world of experimental/avant-garde music. Not for everybody, not for the the average or occasional music consumers, but for those who have ear for free music and border-less explorations.
Can grab it even for free (“name your price”), can share it, but most of all, listen it and enjoy it! Read more Panzanellas – Fagiano Unrequited Love (2013)
No Sun in San Francisco – Principles & particles (2013)
Very dark, very raw, technical and merciless, No Sun in San Francisco aren’t an American band, but a Swiss one and most of their debut album was recorded far away from the sunlight, down in an anti-nuclear shelter lost somewhere in Switzerland’s countryside. Without hanging tags, their sounds like a sick mixture of Neurosis, Isis, Converge, Cult of Luna and Meshuggah.
This new post-everything, but metal rooter scene it’s growing pretty fast, getting bigger and the Swiss scene seems to be one of the strongest. Impossible to label them, to define a genre, No Sun in San Francisco get inspired from the raw and contorted black metal butcheries up to complex and technical extreme metal, and form psychedelic and progressive flavors to shogazer contemplations. Unpolished, furious grinding to the ground passages are followed by quiet, still dark, but strangely beautiful, calm passages only to explode again with killer riffs and blood spitting deadly vocals. Read more No Sun in San Francisco – Principles & particles (2013)
EarthBound – The Tales of EarthBound (2013)
EarthBound, known in Japan as Mother, is a role-playing video game series created by Shigesato Itoi for Nintendo. The series started in 1989 with the Japan-only release of Mother (planned to be released in North America as “Earth Bound”) for the Famicom, and was then followed up by a sequel, released in North America as EarthBound for the Super NES in 1995, and followed up again 12 years later with the Japan only release of Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. Itoi stated in an interview that the name “Mother” was greatly influenced by the John Lennon song “Mother”.
About the EarthBound trio it was damn difficult to dig out useful informations, although I find them on Facebook, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and YouTube. It seems they are an Australian band and probably “The Tales of EarthBound” it’s their debut album, as they declare, “a conceptual journey through a mystical musical land called Cleftopia.” Actually, this is a simultaneously familiar and refreshing adventure around several very famous and recognizable rock themes with a great combination of rock, funk, jazz and blues elements. Incredible talented musicians, great instrumentalists. All of them.
Joe Jeremiah – Keys, Jon “Oshy” Ooi – Drums and Jonathan “Menjeed” Mengede – Bass manage to twist in and out and back again some great themes and tied up together several different songs and at the bottom line it’s sound brand new, fresh and their own. Some things were out of my knowledge, I wasn’t able to identify precisely the source, but almost every passage sounded familiar. I’m still thinking of “Simple Bloom” and its tango flavoured aroma. Read more EarthBound – The Tales of EarthBound (2013)
Terra Tenebrosa – The Purging (2013)
Dark metal could not get darker and further into the hidden and tenebrous conscience and sub-conscience of the sick and twisted human soul and mind.
“The Purging” continues where the critically acclaimed and Manifest Award nominated debut album, “The Tunnels” left off in 2011. Eventually this is going more wicked and gloomy that its predecessor.
Terra Tenebrosa it’s definitively one of the most experimental and most bold metal acts of Sweden, but also one of the most interesting avant-garde acts that pushing the envelope and widening the horizon. Not an easy listening, not really friendly and definitively not for everybody, but once you get into the atmosphere of it, reveals unexpected dimensions and colors. Read more Terra Tenebrosa – The Purging (2013)
Miranda – Asylum: Brain Check After Dinner (2013)
If you’re into the wildest Sonic Youth like rock experiments and generally, into borderless, adventurous, noisy and raw, garage rooted rock with additional contorted electronic layers, Miranda is exactly the kind of “girl” you’re looking for. Really “kinky” stuff for your ears.
Miranda is a three piece band from the south of Italy (calabria and Puglia), but they relocated in Florence, Italy, since 1999. Piero Carafa playes bass, Giuseppe Caputo guitar, voice, synth and sampler, while Nicola Villani drum, electr. drum and synth.
During the several years of activity they’ve run different musical directions. Miranda’s artistic vision has been described “radical and broadminded, disaggregated and oblique, their attitude mocking and alienated” (Blowup Magazine 2006).
They’ve released 2 albums on fromScratch (Inside the whale, 2003, and Rectal exploration 2006) and a split CD with the Canadian band Creeping Nobodies. Defined “one of the most interesting Italian underground bands” (Rumore Magazine, nov. ’07) they’re becoming a cult band of the no wave scene, thanks to their incendiary shows and to their personal and uncompromising research constantly carried on. Read more Miranda – Asylum: Brain Check After Dinner (2013)
ZEUS! – Opera (2013)
Luca Cavina (Calibro 35, Craxi, Incident on South Street) : distorted Bass and Vocals and Paolo Mongardi (Fuzz Orchestra, Ronin, FulKanelli, ex-Jennifer Gentle) : distorted Drums, started this project in October 2010, aiming at “using the minimum in order to get the maximum and is: not metal, not punk, not math, not noise, not prog, absolutely not jazz-core, neither post-whatever” – as they firmly declared.
Althrough this is a quite rough and tumultous adventure out of most people’s musical and lyrical comfort zone, this is definitively a genuine and creative act of art, something actually (and unfortunately) damn rare these days. Read more ZEUS! – Opera (2013)
Vuyvr – Eiskalt (2013)
Über brutality – total aggression. But it feels good and sounds murderous. Raw, unpolished, furious and totally grinding into the ground type of black metal with well determined roots back to the traditional Nordic sound, but simultaneously looking boldly into the future and exploring yet virgin outer limits of the genre. Vuyvr are the new Swiss challengers and they are definitively the most devilish offspring of some glorious predecessors as Hellhammer, Celtic Frost, Samael or Coroner.
My favorite butcheries are “War Of 100 000 Centuries”, “Idolatry”, “Dead Trees Are Wandering At” and the epic “The Wyvern”. Read more Vuyvr – Eiskalt (2013)
How to Destroy Angels – Welcome Oblivion (2013)
Traveling with Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Mariqueen Maandig and Rob Sheridan again. The long anticipated debut album finally it’s here and we’ve got 13 steps to go on, 13 levels of exploration, 13 ways to drowning and surfacing back to the light. Eventually.
About this Reznor’s post Nine Inch Nails project I wrote in details last year when they released their second EP entitled “An OMen”, so, if you’re interested in the full story of the bang, go back an read it HERE. Although, not really surprisingly, “An Omen” made it to my list of favorite releases of 2012 and it was definitively one of the most interesting musical experiments of the last year, a bold and ingenious method to leave the past behind, but staying true to themselves and digging into the wilderness and unknown of the future. Read more How to Destroy Angels – Welcome Oblivion (2013)
