Tim Berne was born in Syracuse, New York in 1954. Twenty years later Berne encountered a saxophonist who was selling his alto, and bought it on impulse. “There was just something about the sound of the saxophone that got to me,” he says. Berne moved to New York in 1974 and began issuing his own albums on his own Empire label in 1979. Over the next five years he would record and distribute five albums under his own name which included such musicians as Ed Schuller, Olu Dara, Paul Motian, John Carter, Glenn Ferris and Bill Frisell. Following two recordings for the Italian Soul Note label, Berne recorded Fulton Street Maul and Sanctified Dreams for Columbia Records. In the late 1990s Berne founded Screwgun Records, which has released his own recordings.
Berne played in band such as: Bloodcount with Michael Formanek, Chris Speed, Jim Black, Marc Ducret; Caos Totale with Mark Dresser, Steve Swell, Bobby Previte, Herb Robertson, Marc Ducret, Django Bates; Big Satan with Tom Rainey, Marc Ducret; Hard Cell with Tom Rainey, Craig Taborn; Science Friction with Tom Rainey, Craig Taborn, Marc Ducret; Paraphrase with Tom Rainey, Drew Gress; Miniature with Joey Baron, Hank Roberts;Buffalo Collision with Hank Roberts, Ethan Iverson, Dave King and BBC Trio with Nels Cline, Jim Black. Beyond his recordings as a bandleader, Berne has recorded and/or performed with guitarist Bill Frisell, avant-garde composer/sax player John Zorn, violinist Mat Maneri, guitarist David Torn, cellist Hank Roberts, trumpet player Herb Robertson, the ARTE Quartett and as a member of the cooperative trio Miniature. Read more Tim Berne – Insomnia (2011)
jazz
Fluxious – Why So Serious (2011)
Formed in 2009 at Geneva, Switzerland, Fluxious bring to the surface an intense blending of rock and metal with jazz elements, it’s more heavy than jazz, but still at the border of fusion and to make things a little bit exciting, guitarist Germain, bass player Guillaume and drummer Maxence put to the microphone a girl called Joana. “Why So Serious” is dynamic, heavy and kind of complex material, still it’s not bearish, it flows alright, hard rock moments are shifted by heavy riffings or melodious choruses, and Joana singing in the style and manner of Sandra Nasić (Guano Apes). 12 songs, good tempo and rhythm, some interesting turns and a few good themes, in short words this is “Why So Serious” about. Read more Fluxious – Why So Serious (2011)
Laika – Nebula (2011)
“Born in Paris of an Ivory Coast father and a Moroccan-Spanish mother, Laïka was raised mainly by women (her grandmother, mother, and aunt) in a Moroccan Jewish family. She leans towards her maternal Sephardic culture, open to different styles of music in the Mediterranean.” (MySpace) And as Malcom McLaren has sung: “Jazz is Paris, and Paris is jazz”, not quite surprisingly, Laïka got her inspiration from artists as Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae, Shirley Horn, Nina Simone and Abbey Lincoln. She collaborated with Sixun, Julien Lourau, Steve Williams, Antoine Roney, Michael Bowie, David El Malek, Richard Galliano, Toot Thielemans, Robert Glasper, Gregory Hutchinson, Peter Martin, Daryl Hall, Vince Benedetti and Claude Bolling’s big band. Laïka has also taken to the stage of theaters in a different guise, quite seriously and played in Claude Lelouch’s film “Hasards ou Coïncidences”. Leader of her quintet, Laïka bring back to us some of the shining and the perfume of the classic jazz, this “Nebula” taste like a good old record from the 40s. Read more Laika – Nebula (2011)
Alex Skolnick Trio – Veritas (2011)
This is a vibrating, soulful, jazz-rock fusion album. I admit, I didn’t follow Skolnick’s career for long-long time. Back at the end of the 80s, beginning of the 90s, I loved Testament, but I never was a fan of the so-called guitar heroes. In 1993, after 10 years thrashing, he left Testament and he joined briefly Savatage, the Stu Hamm band, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, made a guest appearance on Lamb of God’s “Ashes of the Wake” album. Skolnick fronted several projects in the Bay Area during the mid to late 1990s, such as Alex Skolnick and the Skol-tones, Exhibit-A and Skol-Patrol and also recorded two albums with Attention Deficit, a 3-piece featuring Tim Alexander from Primus.
Relocated to New York, began devoting all of his energies to jazz, enrolling in the jazz program at The New School and earned a BfA (class of 2001). At the New School where Alex Skolnick Trio was born. Their first recording, “Goodbye To Romance:Standards For A New Generation†(2002 US, 2004 UK and Europe) brought together the worlds of metal and traditional jazz in an unprecedented blend. ‘Goodbye To Romance…’ reached the top 30 on the US jazz radio charts. Read more Alex Skolnick Trio – Veritas (2011)
Kodjabashia And Foltin – Penelope X (2011)
Nikola Kodjabashia is a London based Macedonian composer, audio artist, producer, electronic wizard, conductor, pianist and virtual instrumentalist. He studied with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Anatol Vieru, György Kurtág, and Rolf Gehlhaar and he’s the composer of two critically acclaimed albums “The Most of Now” from 2008 and “Reveries of the Solitary Walker” released in 2004. He has scored and conducted music for numerous plays, TV productions & films, and he is a Musical Director and co-founder of The Diesel Orchestra and Meta4 ensemble. Foltin, far as I know, is one of the most important Macedonian bands. Additional contribution for this release comes from the drummer Goce Stevkovsk. Well, “Penelope X” is an exciting, colorful material where jazz and ethno (world) elements grows together and blooming into a powerful, expressive musical experience. Macedonian, gypsy and Klezmer reflexions are merged into jazz and contemporary music constructions, the result once again something particular and very alive. Read more Kodjabashia And Foltin – Penelope X (2011)
John Zorn – Nova Express (2011)
Zorn’s first release for 2011, another piece of the puzzle from his colorful, restless, dynamic and sometimes moody musical world. “Nova Express” is a very intense work where most of Zorn’s previous explorations comes to unite. It contains the depths of the Interzone conspiracy, the lyricism of Zorn’s classical works, the clear-obscure notes of Naked City and the virtuosity showed on the Masada songbooks. It’s an avant-garde journey where jazz and contemporary music collide in the most intense and vibrating way its possible. Dark, gloomy passages are nicely colored with subtle jazz interventions or expressive explosions of improvisations. “Nova Express” is a groovy and exciting collection of modern chamber music filled with beautiful details and dramatic passions, another borderless intercourse in the mystical and vibrating world of Zorn where every single note is worth at least a picture and together opens the window to another universe of deep shadows and bright lights, its the pure dancing poetry of a forgotten ancient world or just the shapes of things to come. This record have an incredible groove, the abstract trips and the sharp cuts of intense passages are overlapping and shifting each other incredibly fluently in a perfect balance and tempo. Read more John Zorn – Nova Express (2011)
Mathias Eick – Skala (2011)
Mathias Eick is a Norwegian jazz musician, his main instrument is the trumpet, but he also plays double bass, vibraphone, piano and guitar. He has performed with several famous music groups and musicians, Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Jaga Jazzist, Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, Jacob Young, Iro Haarla, Motif, Trygve Seim, Jan Gunnar Hoff Group, Audun Kleive, Morten Abel, Bertine Zetlitz, Thomas Dybdahl, Julius Winger, Manu Katché and Lars Horntveths, etc.
Eick has a long and colorful list of influences: Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Kenny Wheeler, Thomasz Stanko, Chet Baker, Arve Henriksen, Nils Petter Molv..r, Jon Hassel, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Bill Frisell, Jan Garbarek, Jon Christensen, Jaco Pastorius, Joni Mitchell, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Keith Jarret, J.S. Bach, Police, Sting, ECM, Chick Corea, Elvis Costello, Burt Bacharach, Metallica, Flaming Lips, Steely Dan, Rufus Wainwright and his music sounds like a nice blending of Miles Davis and Jan Garbarek. Read more Mathias Eick – Skala (2011)
The Dark Sides of the Moon
“The Dark Side of the Moon” was a milestone, not only in the career of Pink Floyd, but in the history of the music and not at least, source for inspiration for many musicians since its release. There’s many tribute, cover and reinterpretations of “The Dark Side of the Moon” and I gathered here a few of the most intriguing and interesting of these releases.
Released on 10 March 1973, “The Dark Side of the Moon” is the eighth studio album by Pink Floyd and it was the record that moved, back or forward – it’s a matter of point of view – the English band from the closed circle of fans to the mainstream. “The Dark Side of the Moon” is a concept album that explore the themes of conflict, greed, the passage of time and mental illness, the latter partly inspired by Syd Barrett’s deteriorating mental state, but it lacks the extended instrumental excursions that characterized their work following the departure in 1968 of founding member, principal composer and lyricist Barrett. The album was recorded in two sessions in 1972 and 1973 at the legendary Abbey Road Studios in London. The group used some of the most advanced recording techniques of the time, including multitrack recording and tape loops. Analogue synthesizers were given prominence in several tracks, and a series of recorded interviews with staff and band personnel provided the source material for a range of philosophical quotations used throughout. Engineer Alan Parsons was directly responsible for some of the most notable sonic aspects of the album, including the non-lexical performance of Clare Torry. Read more The Dark Sides of the Moon
Rafael Toral – Space Elements Vol. III (2011)
Toral plays experimental electronic instruments like electrode oscillator, modified MS-2 pocket amplifier feedback, glove-controlled computer bass sinewaves, filtered feedback circuit, modified MT-10 portable amplifier, modulated noise, modular synthesizer and tamtam. Sometimes it sounds like R2D2 are talking to you. Strongly interested in phrasing, he calls his style “post-free jazz electronic musicâ€, described as “a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peersâ€. His music actually it’s kind of abstract, but interesting, you never really know what to expect in the next moment. And some of these experiments are quit exciting. The music is not congested, it’s airy, Toral know to use the silence and he’s colored it with interesting noises and all sort of elements to create atmosphere without being overwhelming. Read more Rafael Toral – Space Elements Vol. III (2011)
Contemporary Noise Sextet – Ghostwriter’s Joke (2011)
This is a vibrating, colorful, sometimes film like, but in the next moment explosively intense jazz album from Poland. The Kapsa brothers, who earlier formed the legendary emo-hardcore band called Something Like Elvis, established originally the Contemporary Noise Quintet transformed afterwards into Sextet. Their debut album called “Pig Inside The Gentleman” was released in the autumn of 2006. The variety of sounds does not allow pigeonholing their music style unambiguously. Smooth and hard elements crossing over in a dense texture of colorful elements, it’s like kind of film music without movie and jazz music without being quit jazz, but still, very classy tunes and elements are perfectly built in into the improvising and sometimes quit jazz-rock fusion taste like music. There’s actually no “noise” in their music, but definitively this is absolutely contemporary, breathing and alive music with exciting turns, moods and charming pulse. Read more Contemporary Noise Sextet – Ghostwriter’s Joke (2011)
