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Interviews

Jessica Pavone Interview

From Roulette NYC:

Composer/string instrumentalist Jessica Pavone is “one of the busiest young performers on the city’s creative music scene,”. Here at Roulette on Tuesday, November 10th she celebrates the Tzadik release of “Songs of Synastry and Solitude”; a collection of songs for string quartet influenced by an interest in the simple beauty of folk songs, the ghosts of all things lost and Leonard Cohen’s encouragement to live outside this world.

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Categories
Releases

Tzadik To Release Jessica Pavone’s New CD In October

From Improvised Communications:

On October 27th, Tzadik will release violist/composer Jessica Pavone’s Songs of Synastry and Solitude (TZA-CD-7719) as part of the Oracles series, which celebrates “the diversity and creativity of women in experimental music making.” Inspired by the simple beauty of American folk songs, and singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate (Columbia), this recording features 11 of Ms. Pavone’s original compositions for string quartet (violin, viola, cello and double bass) being performed by members of the Toomai String Quintet. The group will celebrate the release of the record on Tuesday, November 10th with a live performance at Roulette in New York.

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Releases

Moraine’s Manifest Density out on Moon June Records

From Moon June Records:

You could describe the output of this towering electric string quartet-plus-drums as “heavy chamber music.” With its several writers and full complement of ace instrumentalists, arrayed in striking combination, Moraine achieves a coherent sound while drawing on forms ranging from math-rock to fractured bebop to Chinese folk music to unleashed, plugged-in power jazz, and more. You have to love a band that lists its influences as Mahavishnu Orchestra, King Crimson, Terje Rypdal, John Abercrombie, Oregon, Art Zoyd, Univers Zero, Dr. Nerve, traditional East Asian music, and hurdy-gurdy music. Particularly one that adds plenty of its own to that diverting mix. At the center of the sound are Dennis Rea’s stellar guitar inventions. The much-praised veteran has deployed fierce, elusive imagination to build on decades of engagement with countless musical styles of multiple regions of the globe. He creates a dynamic, lyrical, enigmatic blend of modern jazz, boundary-pushing rock, experimental music, and world musical traditions. In other contexts – stay tuned for his next MoonJune Records’ release, Views from Chicheng Precipice – his output reflects the three years he spent in the two Chinas, where he was among the first wave of Western creative musicians to venture behind the tattered curtain of the devastating Cultural Revolution. (He is the author, in addition, of the fascinating Live at the Forbidden City: Musical Encounters in China.) On the band’s debut CD Manifest Density, Rea enjoys ideal support from all quarters in what is truly a collaborative endeavor of composition and performance: Ruth Davidson’s cello and Alicia Allen’s violin slash and singe with uncanny unity of purpose and design. Bassist Kevin Millard and drummer Jay Jaskot boast drive and thrust ideally suited to the task. All that begins to explain why Moraine has been embraced by audiences ranging from jazz aficionados to metalheads. The band squalls, sears, soars, and lilts over a novel musical terrain.

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Categories
Reviews

Musique Machine Reviews

Cover of "Watermill"
Cover of Watermill

From Musique Machine:

Teiji ItoWatermill
Watermill is one of the most beautiful, enchanting and approachable long form pieces by noted and past New York based Japanese composer and performer Teiji Ito; taking in his usually love of Native American, Chinese, Tibetan, African, and Japanese traditional music to weave a truly spell-binding, often intricate and compelling piece that stays more in melodic and atmospheric end of his work.

Bastard Noise – Our Earth’s Blood IV
Our Earth’s Blood IV takes the listener on one hell of a sonic journey that seesaws between violence and blacked atmospherics touching down in: Power electronics, noise, brooding ambience, dark electronica,grim cinematic, doom metallic’s and all manner of compelling experimental matter-spreading it’s impressive and varied sonic wares over a whooping 5 disks.

Dusty Mason – Ahab’s Revenge – Hot Tears, Cold Ocean
Dusty Mason is Ben Purscell, a rural Pennsylvanian stone mason by trade, who has recently taken to carving headstones. Ahab’s Revenge – Hot Tears, Cold Ocean is undoubtedly a more refined and cohesive album than his previous work with the Grave Cowboys. Their lone album, Dead Man Shoes includes some fine songs, and listened to in pieces works well enough. In the end, though, it comes across like so many first albums do, as an unfinished work in progress, an artist, or in this case a band, figuring out how to navigate their way through the recording studio. Dusty Mason on his own sounds relaxed away from the confines of the hard-lined clock tick-ery of the studio, having recorded Ahab’s Revenge… at home. With no outside intervention, these recordings are almost like diary entries, personal reminiscences of daily events and thoughts. Not that these songs aren’t well though out or, if you’ll pardon the pun, carefully hewn. It’s just that Dusty’s personality is indelibly imprinted onto each one. It would be easy to lazily file this music under alternative folk or country, and though there’s certainly a little of both folk and country elements, it doesn’t fit neatly into either category. It’s distinctly American music, seen through a dirty lens, slightly out of skew.

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