A source for news on music that is challenging, interesting, different, progressive, introspective, or just plain weird
Interviews with artists and other interesting people
Source: The New School Collaboratory.
I primarily identify as a violist. Because it has a relatively limited repertoire, it almost demands that you find your own voice, which is how I found my way carving out a really unique path in improvised music. In terms of my scholarship, I have a funny journey in and out of music – it’s sort of a through-line throughout my life.
Source: Greenleaf Music by Dave Douglas.
Dave visits legendary drummer and composer Andrew Cyrille to talk about how he organizes his music, why he calls Dave “David,” and his recent record Lebroba with Wadada Leo Smith and Bill Frisell. They also discuss his upbringing in a Haitian family in Brooklyn, NY, and his beginnings as a jazz musician. We hear excerpts of Cecil Taylor’s Unit Structures and Conquistador!, which Mr. Cyrille played on in 1966. Humorous and insightful comments ensue.
Source: Heavy Metal Bebop.
Wendy Eisenberg is a jazz guitarist by training who can often be heard playing just about anything but conventional jazz guitar. That includes free improv, art pop, noise and avant-garde punk with radically inventive bands like the now-defunct Birthing Hips and the currently active Editrix. In 2018, during an episode of Jeremiah Cymerman’s excellent 5049 Podcast, Wendy — who uses gender-neutral pronouns — made a passing mention of their love for the Australian death-metal band Portal, and at that point, I knew I wanted to speak to them for Heavy Metal Bebop. We met up in March and delved into Wendy’s vast musical universe. Topics discussed include: how hearing Sonny Sharrock helped expand their musical horizons, why Portal is their favorite band ever, why they feel like an outsider in both jazz and metal, how Birthing Hips flourished within the context of higher education, why they’re not a fan of jazz covers of pop and rock tunes, how their early love for Pantera informs the music of Editrix, what they took away from playing with Curtis Fuller and Earl Klugh, and much more.
Source: Modern Drummer Magazine.
YoshimiO—“Just my name with a circle at the end,” the drummer explains—is a multi-instrumentalist and creative force at the center of a number of extraordinary musical powerhouses in Japanese experimental music. Drummer and MD contributor John Colpitts, who’s had the good fortune to perform with her in the world-famous noise-rock aggregation known as Boredoms, gets to the heart of her art.
Source: Crack Magazine.
Spiegel is an innovator of electronic music. She worked with early sythesisers at Bell Laboratories, created a popular music programming software called Music Mouse (which became a commercial product for Macintosh, Amiga and Atari personal computers), and had her haunting interpretation of Kepler’s Harmony of the Worlds sent into space, as part of the Voyager 1 and 2’s Golden Record project in 1977. But the artist has, until recently, operated in relative obscurity. It was around 2012, when Spiegel’s 1972 song Sediment was included on the Hunger Games soundtrack, that she re-emerged in the public eye.
Source: Improvised Music Company.
Described by Brian Morton as “a musical philosopher… a delightful shape-shifter”, guitarist and composer Han-earl Park is drawn to real-time cyborg configurations in which artifacts and bodies collide. He has performed with some of the finest practitioners of improvised music, leads Sirene 1009 with Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh, and is part of Numbers with Richard Barrett. Together, Park, guitarist Nick Didkovsky and saxophonist Catherine Sikora forge an improvisative space where melody can be melody, noise can be noise, meter can be meter, metal becomes metal, bluegrass turns to bluegrass, jazz transforms into jazz, all there, all necessary without imploding under idiomatic pressures.
Ahead of Eris136199’s performance on Monday 12th August at the Fumbally Stables, Han-Earl told us a bit about his approach to music, unusual inspirations from politics, to cinema to pop music, and the particular collisions which make up the music of Eris136199.
Source: burning ambulance.
Bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma is a legend. He was barely out of high school when guitarist Reggie Lucas recommended him to Ornette Coleman, who hired him for what would become Prime Time. He stayed with Coleman for a dozen years, working with James “Blood” Ulmer and recording albums on his own at the same time. He’s been part of some really amazing records that I love, including Derek Bailey‘s Mirakle, James Carter‘s Layin’ in the Cut, James Brandon Lewis‘s Days of FreeMan, and the Young Philadelphians‘ Live in Tokyo. He also produced the new Last Poets album, Transcending Toxic Times.
In this interview, we talk about a bunch of different aspects of his career, his sound, his style, his upbringing in Philadelphia, and his interest in fashion. In addition to being a musician, Tacuma runs a consignment boutique in Philadelphia called the Redd Carpet Room, where he sells designer clothes he picks up while traveling around the world. This guy is sharp in every possible way, so I really think you’re going to enjoy this conversation a lot. I know I did.
