Fresh Links: March 14, 2025

Also, Breath Of Air...

The monthly radio show Such Music is hosted by Rihards Endriksons, journalist and artistic director of Latvia’s Skaņu Mežs festival. Such Music is devoted to new works of free improvised music, either previously unheard or created specifically for the show, and is produced in collaboration with Burning Ambulance. This month’s episode is out now, and includes early previews of upcoming albums by renowned improvising pianists Sophie Agnel, Satoko Fujii and Stephen Grew. Recent music by Evan Parker, Laura Cocks and Torche! (not the heavy rock band, but an improvising quintet led by bassist Éric Normand) is also featured. You can listen to the show now on Mixcloud.

Later this year, Burning Ambulance Music will release Mama Killa, the debut album by the trio of Ava Mendoza, gabby fluke-mogul, and Carolina Pérez. It’s a ferocious, cranked-up record that blends country, blues, and psychedelic rock with blast beats and the heaviness of black, death and doom metal. But this isn’t the first album we’ve released with that particular combination of instruments. In 2022, we put out the self-titled debut by Breath Of Air, which featured guitarist Brandon Ross, violinist Charlie Burnham, and the late drummer Warren Benbow.

Burnham and Benbow were both members of James “Blood” Ulmer’s trio Odyssey, a group that combined harmolodic jazz-funk with Black string band music. Ross is best known these days for his membership in the atmospheric power trio Harriet Tubman with bassist Melvin Gibbs and drummer J.T. Lewis, but he’s also played with Henry Threadgill, Cassandra Wilson, and many other folks.

Although these three are brilliant, virtuoso musicians, the five tracks on Breath Of Air are more about atmosphere than shredding. Notes ring out into the air like flashes of light from within a cloud, Ross’s heavily effected guitar countered by Burnham’s almost psychedelic violin, with Benbow playing slow, exploratory free time behind them, dancing on the cymbals and the floor tom and only occasionally striking the snare or kicking the bass drum. This is questing music; in The Wire, Spenser Tomson wrote that it has “space to stretch out and breathe, [Ross’s] wild licks settling into distended counterpoints against Benbow’s angular rumble.” For the Quietus, Peter Margasak said, “Bypassing the structure of compositions, the trio ebbs and flows as one, as rhythms slacken and coalesce, density thickens and thins, and sonic landmarks shuffle, always remaining seductively amorphous.” You should really buy it. (As always, I advise purchasing a physical CD, which comes in a heavy-duty gatefold mini-LP sleeve printed on textured paper and featuring a gorgeous cover photo by I.A. Freeman.)

In January 2023, Ross presented Breath Of Air and two of his other groups, For Living Lovers (a duo with bassist Stomu Takeishi) and Phantom Station (a quintet featuring keyboardist David Virelles, sound designer Hardedge, drummer Eric McPherson, and percussionist Mauro Refosco), in concert at Roulette, in Brooklyn. You can stream the whole show below; Breath Of Air are up first.

And with that… here comes the paywall! Paying subscribers get an interview with Anthony Braxton, an article about deciphering an ancient language, an essay on Spanish-language literary fiction, a piece debunking the idea of colonizing Mars, and more. Everyone else, I’ll see you on Tuesday!