It's Bandcamp Friday! Buy Some Music!
New Leo Records titles by Cecil Taylor, Joëlle Léandre, Anthony Braxton, and more!
It’s the last Bandcamp Friday of 2024. Today, as on the first Friday of most months, the site waives its usual cut of sales revenue and passes all the money on to artists and labels. So if you want to buy yourself some music, today’s an excellent day to do it.
We’ve just put up 20 more titles from the vast Leo Records catalog; here they are.
First and most importantly, the Cecil Taylor albums Live in Bologna and Live in Vienna are now available digitally at full length for the first time ever. They were recorded in 1987 by a band featuring saxophonist Carlos Ward, violinist Leroy Jenkins, bassist William Parker, and drummer Thurman Barker (who doubled on marimba), and the music is amazing. But the original double LPs contained 90 minutes of music, which had to be cut down to 70 minutes for CD. We have put up the full versions of each, mastered from pristine vinyl sources, with the CD edits as bonus tracks. Grab them both (along with companion pieces Tzotzil Mummers Tzotzil and Chinampas, the latter an album of Taylor reciting his poetry) at ceciltaylorleo.bandcamp.com.
We’ve also released several titles by brilliant bassist and composer Joëlle Léandre, including At the Le Mans Jazz Festival, featuring collaborations with a wide range of performers; two live encounters with William Parker, Contrabasses and Live at Dunois; Joëlle Léandre Project, featuring Marilyn Crispell, Carlos Zingaro, Richard Teitelbaum, and Paul Lovens; and Flowing Stream, with Thomas Buckner and Nicole Mitchell. All those can be found at joelleleandreleo.bandcamp.com.
Two new Marilyn Crispell titles are now available: Collaborations, a set of quartet and quintet recordings from 2004 and 2007 respectively; and Piano Duets (Tuned & Detuned Pianos), an encounter with Georg Graewe. Those can be found at marilyncrispell.bandcamp.com.
We’ve added five more Anthony Braxton titles: 4 Improvisations (Duets) 2004, with Walter Frank; Composition 192, with Lauren Newton; Composition No. 247; GTM (Syntax) 2003, with Anne Rhodes; and Triotone, with György Szabados and Vladimir Tarasov. Grab those at anthonybraxtonleo.bandcamp.com.
We’ve got two collaborations between pianist Pandelis Karayorgis and viola player Mat Maneri, Lift & Poise and Disambiguation. We’ve also got Chamber Trio, by guitarist Mark O’Leary, Maneri, and Matthew Shipp. All those can be found at matmanerileo.bandcamp.com.
We’ve also got a couple of fascinating one-offs: the Leo Records 25th Anniversary double live set, featuring Gebhard Ullmann, Aki Takase, Lauren Newton, Paul Lovens and others; and Snakish, a collaboration between Wadada Leo Smith, Walter and Katya Quintus, Miroslav Tadić, and Mark Nauseef.
And finally, we’ve released Zero Sun No Point, a genuinely fascinating avant-garde theater collaboration between Hartmut Geerken and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. It’s impossible to describe this one — you’ve just got to hear it.
On the Burning Ambulance Music side, the latest issue of The Wire included a really nice review of Tungu’s Irrational Thinking of the Subject:
Tungu
Irrational Thinking Of The Subject
Burning Ambulance CD/DL
Tungu is the name under which Ukrainian multi-instrumentalist Sergey Senchuk moonlights away from the metal and hardcore habitats of projects like Keepleer 18 and Abusive Fisherman. Released via Wire contributor Phil Freeman’s Burning Ambulance imprint, Irrational Thinking Of The Subject is his fifth full-length under the alias, and the third to follow a certain discrete and sequential duo exchange approach to collaboration. Here he has cued up 15 self-contained one-on-ones with a formidable cohort of improvisers, some hitherto unfamiliar to this writer. A few others are fairly high-profile while a few more are veritable grandees, especially those from the UK free improv world, with notable turns by Lawrence Casserley, Phil Durrant and Phil Minton.
The discernibility of who’s playing what waxes and wanes across the collection. The most high contrast pieces tend to feature acoustic instrumentation, most commonly strings and reeds. In these, the border with Senchuk’s simmering electronics is clear — the opening track “Acquaintance” where the splintery pluck of guitarist Noël Akchoté is gracefully unencumbered is a good example. Likewise, the particularly memorable “Zawameki”, which counts among the album highlights, gives saxophonist Ayumi Ishito ample room without shrinking from or tiptoeing around her.
Other, still compelling, moments can get more turbid and tonal. See the subaquatic sonics of “Exploration Of The Inexplicable” with hydrophone recordings by Pak Yan Lau. While “Everything Is A Nail” with Wayne Grim, one of the album’s more sedate moments, albeit in a kind of glowering way, borders on a low-key post-industrial ambient register.
There are also field recordings, found sound and the sounding of contingent noninstrumental objects, as on “Prickling Under The Eyelids” (featuring Emilia Wysocka on two 12-channel mixing boards) which volleys bristling noise, the aluminium crackle of what is almost certainly an empty can, tapped and twisted. It’s further emphasised by Senchuk’s restless, skipping metronomy, somewhere between textural and percussive but more like a kind of responsive punctuation than either.
James Gormley
Irrational Thinking Of The Subject is available now digitally and on CD, and I highly recommend buying the physical version, which comes in a heavy-duty gatefold mini-LP sleeve printed on textured paper, with a beautiful cover design by I.A. Freeman.
We’re also currently offering a sale on all three volumes of the Polarity series by saxophonist Ivo Perelman and trumpeter Nate Wooley — three CDs for $35 plus shipping. They’re some of our best-reviewed releases, and again, the physical versions are absolutely the way to go.
That’s it for now. See you next week, when we’ll discuss the return of John Zorn’s skronkcore power trio, Painkiller.