Europe Jazz Media Chart - December 2021

One is tempted to view KRAAKE as a collaboration of a rapper and a jazz musician. But this does not tell the whole story, because the forces which collide on this album can hardly be captured by using mere catchphrases. One one side there is the emotionally dense lyrical phrasing of the Bernese „Verslischmied“ Basil Anliker, a.k.a. Baze, on the other side there is the instrumental backdrop of the versatile keyboarder Mueller, whose work includes dates with Kaspar von Grüningen, Reto Suhner and many more locally well known jazz musicians. They first caught the audience unawares with their reinterpretation of Baze’s last album „Gott“, no easy feat since already the original material proved to be a sonically and materially impressive experience. There, Mueller managed to expose unheard nuances in Anliker’s lyrics which and this effect is further explored on „KRAAKE“. Baze’s texts tell about fears, loneliness, drugs, but also about friendship, love and the possibility to confront the world in a self-determined way - in short about all that at times renders life difficult but always makes it worth living.

Ill Considered have pursued an underground course, releasing nine raw improvised albums – including a Christmas LP, natch – in three years. With new bassist Liran Donin (Led Bib and his own 1000 Boats project), Liminal Space is a studio leap forward, with the trio’s wild improv now the basis for added arrangements and musicians. Drummer Emre Ramazanoglu’s production simmers down thickly layered arrangements till star guests such as Theon Cross and Sarathy Korwar become mere ingredients in a multitudinous ferment; yet the sense of space is still sharply defined, like claustrophobic dub.

On August 3. and 4. 1964, the Danish pianist Tom Prehn was in the studio in Aarhus with his musical friends Fritz Krogh (ts), Poul Ehlers (b) and Finn Slumstrup (dr) to record two free compositions for, if possible , release on disc. But the record did not come out until now, in 2021. Previously, the recording "Centrifuga" has only been available on reel-to-reel tape, and has for a long been a collector's item for those who have enough time and money for such activities. And the result of two days in the studio is very exciting. These are either four musicians who were very early in their understanding of free improvised music, or they took the chance that this was the future, and went "all in" in the free-flowing improvisations. And what we hear is simply shockingly good. That there should be musicians in Denmark who played this type of jazz already in 1964 is a big surprise, at least for me. This was at a time when the American swing and bop stars began to come to Copenhagen, and what we hear from these four young guys is far ahead of what Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Stuff Smith and the others who played at the clubs around at that time. Prehn's piano playing can be compared to ab early Paul Bley and occasionally with what Cecil Taylor was doing at that time. But I think Taylor was later out with that kind of free improvisation as this quartet performs. But nowadays we have become accustomed to hearing free jazz in a completely different way than we were at the time. Prehn is a creative and exciting pianist, who throws himself into the music without a safety net, and he is well followed by Slumstrup’s great playing on drums, who is listed as the only soloist on the original record cover, and who plays creatively, originally and tough, Poul Ehlers fine and ongoing bass playing are not very different from Jimmy Garrison and, at least, Fritz Krogh's raw tenor saxophone playing, is some of the toughest I can remember hearing, if we disregard the late John Coltrane, Mats Gustafsson, Peter Brötzmann and a couple of others. The fact that this recording has been re-released gives a relatively new picture of what Danish jazz was in the "old days". We can easily take it for granted that Danish jazz was shaped by the many American star musicians who came to the country. But there we have made a solid mistake. For Tom Prehn's quartet was out very early with some of the toughest free jazz we've ever heard from musicians from the North.

With just vocal and bass, the NYC based duo Acute Inflections just plays the bare basics. And to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Bob Marley, it sounds more than enough to catch his unique soul and sound.

Chelsea Carmichael has already carved out a powerful presence on the UK scene, touring alongside other new generation artists Theon Cross and Joe Armon-Jones and as a member of Cassie Kinoshi's SEED Ensemble. This is her debut album produced by Shabaka Hutchings, and available as the first release from his new label Native Rebel Recordings. The album has an outstanding band of guitarist David Okumu, bassist Tom Herbert and drummer Edward Wakili-Hick who all play key roles on the album. Carmichael has said “I feel that the way that I play on this record draws inspiration from the lineage of black music making and the Caribbean diasporas“. You can hear that in the music which is in turns powerful, playful, spiritual and at times beautiful. Adam Sieff wrote in his REVIEW FOR LJN: "Whatever happens, Chelsea Carmichael is surely on her way."

I am a sucker for Bach – especially Johan Sebastian (as I am for Thelonious Sphere Monk). As long as you stay true to the compositions nothing can go completely wrong. But how do you put Bach into a modern jazz context?  Well, together with Rainer Böhm (p) and Patrice Hérald (d) Ilg manages to take advantage of the spots where Bach’s compositions suggest variations and improvisation. They make melodies hidden in Bach’s mathematical constructions lucid without being inferior to the master’s counterpoint and perfect melodic constructions. There are some moving moments of great beauty from this trio.

A wonderful collection of nice melodies and tunes, served by a mastering poly-instrumentist and some Finnish musicians. Linda Fredriksson is no more "the baryton player" of Finland, but now a serious composer.

“This trio used to be a real experience live. This will undoubtedly continue to be the case with this material. Open the gates wide of the jazz clubs. With these three's devotion, any virus threat is scaled back.” (Georges Tonla Briquet)

A joint original music project by Danish bassist Kenneth Dahl Knudsen and Latvian saxophonist Toms Rudzinskis, recorded at the Blackbird Music Studio in Berlin, with a total of 17 musicians from Latvia, Denmark, Germany, Austria, France, Sweden, Ukraine, Russia and the USA, plus a local conductor Malte Schiller. The two musicians met in Berlin and have split their composing responsibilities in half – five pieces each, but in the album they are intertwined as a whole. The scope is wide and so is the music flowing for more than 70 minutes. The album dedicated to the study of the structure of the universe offers a fresh and long breath into the world of big band music. It lacks such records, which do not obscure the responsibilities of tradition, but are looking for new ways of expression. However, this is not an avant-garde and can be well understood by non-melomaniac listeners. Both thematically and sound-wise, the album can be seen as a journey through time, space and consciousness.