M&T@L - M&T@L (ALTER-NATIV 2016)

M&T@L – Du Jazz et du Métal en Fusion

Formé à la sortie de l’album « The Way Things Go » de Laurent David (sélectionné pour l’aide à l’autoproduction de la SACEM, sorti sur le label www.alter-nativ.fr) le trio composé de Maxime Zampieri, Thomas Puybasset et Laurent David s’est alors imposé comme la formule la plus « puissante » des différentes formations testées pour l’exploration du projet sur scène.

De ces expériences est né M&T@L (Maxime & Thomas @ Laurent).

M&T@L est un power trio, sans guitare.

Influencée par les processus de composition et imprégnée des codes du « Metal », la musique se joue fort, s’improvise, se crée à trois, sature, explose ou se calme pour mieux alimenter la créativité du groupe…

Laurent David, bassiste, Participe à la tournée mondiale de Guillaume Perret & Electric Epic. Il joue avec M&T@L et Jean-Michel Kajdan... Il travaille 4 ans avec Ibrahim Maalouf avec lequel il enre- gistre l’album "Illusions" et "Alice aux pays des merveilles " avec Oxmo Puccino. Il sort « The way things go » en 2013, « Is it me you’re talking about » en 2002, 5 albums avec TRIAS et fonde le label à but non lucratif alter-nativ. Il se produit également sur scène ou en studio avec Yael Naim (New Soul, 2 ans de tournée), Dick Annegarn, A. Hoenig, D. Linx, M. Chedid, Eric Legnini, S. Belmondo, D. Lockwood, A. Hervé, JP. Como...

Maxime Zampieri, batteur, lauréat du Drummers meeting de Koblenz, joue dans le Magic Malik Orchestra depuis sa création suite à une tournée avec Julien Lourau et se produit également avec Yodelice (victoire de la musique) , Steve Coleman, Sixun, Ntoumos, Piers Faccini, Ibrahim Maalouf, Malia, Matthieu Boggaerts, Yom, Ornette…

Thomas Puybasset, saxophoniste, emporte le prix de la défense en 2008 avec "Waga" ainsi qu'un prix de composition en 2009. Inspiré par de nombreux voyages à travers le monde à la recherche des musiques et musiciens traditionnels, il se produit avec Gabriel Puentes, Diego Maroto, Francisco Leo de Larrea, Manuel Rocheman, Louis Sclavis, Dennis Collin, Tony Balester, Patrice Caratini, Madou Diabaté, Toumani Diabaté…

Face A

Face B

Neil Cowley Trio - Spacebound Apes (Hide Inside Records 2016)

A childhood classical prodigy turned chill-out producer, jazz musician and collaborator with the likes of Adele, studio wunderkind Neil Cowley has also found time to keep a solo career going. With this, his sixth album, he's really pulled out all the stops in an attempt to attract generation ADD. To say this unabashed concept album comes with added bells and whistles is putting it mildly... 

'Spacebound Apes' is... (deep breath): an album, an interactive website, a deluxe illustrated music book and a months-long Tumblr diary. Inspired by the Arthur C Clarke story The City and the Stars, it tells the story of Lincoln, an intelligent chimpanzee who flies into space and must face his fears. It seems a shame that nowadays, many artists don't feel that releasing music on its own is enough. In 2016's crowded, attention-deficient marketplace, Cowley may be right. But, if we push all that other stuff to one side, is this album strong enough on its own terms? 

It essentially works in two modes. There are several ambient/classical pieces, with delicate piano and occasional dubsteppy touches, which signal the involvement of Brian Eno collaborator Leo Abrahams (guitar and FX). The likes of symphonic opener Weightless, and the hymnal, delicate Grace, feature simple emotive chords echoing in empty space. This approach effectively portrays a vast echoing void onto which Lincoln - and every astronaut - projects his hopes and fears.

Most of the other tracks are more upbeat, jazzier and more fully orchestrated. The likes of Governance and the noirish spy film vibe of album highlight The Sharks of Competition feature hookier melodies, a faster tempo and create a feeling of conflict. Maybe Lincoln isn't as alone as he first thought... Elsewhere, a sense of artificial lifeforms pervades the synth-strafed Garden of Love, while swelling strings and distant tom-toms make the alarmingly titled Death of Amygdala the most filmic track of all. 

Some pieces - such as Hubris Major and Echo Nebula - are less memorable, but overall this is a melodically accessible, emotive work. However, it would be a more engaging listen if the music captured more of the quirky humour evident behind the album's concept. You long to hear what The Orb's space-obsessed Alex Paterson, for instance, would have done with the concept. 

As it is, 'Spacebound Apes' is a nice, spacey listen - but it's not out of this world.

Weightless

Hubris Major

Governance

The City and the Stars

Grace

Echo Nebula

The Sharks of Competition

Duty to the Last

Garden of Love

Death Amygdala

The Return of Lincoln

Neil Cowley - piano

Rex Horan - bass

Evan Jenkins - drums

Nat Birchall - Creation / Guiding Spirit / Akhenaten (2016) 3 CD

The music of Nat Birchall joins with a long-flowing conversation in jazz. His chosen tongue is that of the spiritualised musical discourse whose vital source can be found in the sacred testaments of John Coltrane, and which was channelled most directly by his fellow travellers Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and his wife Alice. Many others followed where Coltrane led, giving voice in music to the esoteric renewal of the soul and mind that lent spiritual strength to the black counterculture, and complemented the political radicalism of the late 1960s and 1970s.

This rich vein of spirit music has rarely been tapped by British jazz musicians, and Birchall is one of the few to have been drawn to it with the conviction of heart that it demands. For these are the sonic and spiritual spaces where the colossi of an earlier age declaimed and confessed with sacrificial passion, from within the flames of revolution. 

Ultimately, it has been the sonic pathways offered by jazz that have provided Birchall with the clearest way to channel the resonances of the higher heights, wherefrom timeless musical messages might be revealed. 'It seems to me that's it's the most direct way of tuning in to this higher source. That music seems to me to display this connection to whatever this higher source, this higher energy, might be. It seems to connect to it the most, more than other music. You can hear it in other musics to a certain degree sometimes, but this seems to be almost purely of that nature. That's what really motivates me the most.'

All music is a spiritual communion - it is a talking in tongues, a present conversation with the past and the future, a dance with technology, a branch held out to a stranger. It speaks to the old and the young in a language that is beyond language, it expresses and elicits emotion and thought at once, it is both bodily and mental, noise and silence, intention and accident: it is the dissolution of opposites, the fleeting noise made eternal prayer, the transubstantiation of spirit into sound.

Music is the expression of unity, in which difference is both accepted and resolved, and from which a mended world might be born. To make music is, as Roland Kirk observed, to talk with the spirits. We are lucky that the music of Nat Birchall allows us to hear the sounds of their world once more.

Akhenaten (2016)

Guiding Spirit (2016)

Creation (2016)

Nat Birchall Website

Randy Kaye Quintet (feat. Enrico Rava) - Brooklyn 1967 May 24th (Tears for a Year Gone By) [PHILOLOGY 2016] 2 CD

Un documento di valore storico assoluto: non si può definire in altro modo il doppio CD che la Philology pubblica a nome del batterista Randy Kaye, entrato negli annali del jazz soprattutto grazie alla sua lunga collaborazione con un polistrumentista avventuroso come Jimmy Giuffre.

Nato nel 1947 e scomparso il 2008, Kaye suonò anche con il clarinettista Perry Robinson e il contrabbassista David Izenzon, con i quali costituì lo Uni Trio, con il vibrafonista Bobby Naughton, la vocalist Sheila Jordan e poi con i francesi André Jaume e Remi Charmasson. Durante una jam ebbe pure l’occasione di suonare accanto a Jimi Hendrix. L’album si intitola “Brooklyn 1967, May 24th: Tears For A Year Gone By” e vede riunito attorno a Kaye un notevole gruppo formato da Enrico Rava, all’epoca attivissimo sulla scena jazzistica newyorkese più innovativa, alla tromba, dal sassofonista Joel Peskin (che si ascolta anche al clarinetto basso), dal pianista inglese Peter Lemer e dal contrabbassista Steven Tintweiss (collaboratore di Abert Ayler e di altri uomini del free jazz).

I nastri delle registrazioni date alle stampe dalla Philology sono rimasti chiusi in una cassetto per decenni e riportate alla luce grazie al figlio di Randy Kaye, Justin: ora tutti possono finalmente ascoltare una musica dinamica, intensa, specchio di un periodo storico in cui il jazz era una musica in costante evoluzione, viva e pulsante. Note di copertina di Enrico Rava!! 90 minuti di musica su 2 cd.

Disc 1

01. Apricot Lady (feat. Enrico Rava) 13:54

02. Pretty Sweet (feat. Enrico Rava) 15:45

03. Tears for a Year Gone By (feat. Enrico Rava) 13:56

Disc 2

01. Laughter (feat. Enrico Rava) 13:34

02. What Little Girls Are Made Of (feat. Enrico Rava) 17:53

03. To Angel with Love (feat. Enrico Rava) 9:41

Randy Kaye, drums

Steven Tintweiss, bass

Peter Lerner, piano

Joel Peskin, tenor sax & bass clarinet

Enrico Rava, trumpet

Pretty Sweet

Maria Chiara Argirò - The Fall Dance (ODRADEK RECORDS 2016)

(click)

Maria Chiara Argirò Website

Stories On Walls - Chicago's Original Jazz joints

Chicago in the 1950s was an exciting showcase for jazz. All kinds of jazz – from the swinging grandeur of Duke Ellington to the soaring vocals of Sarah Vaughan and the ground-breaking experimentation of Miles Davis.

The wave of musical talent that swept through the Windy City was simply breathtaking, and the music poured out of clubs, ballrooms, hotel lounges and restaurants. The joints were truly jumping. These smoky dives were almost as legendary as the players – the Blue Note, the Sutherland Lounge, the Trianon Ballroom and many more.

Musicians would form strong emotional attachments to some of these great jazz clubs. When the bandleader Count Basie returned to the city in 1960 and discovered the legendary Blue Note had closed its doors permanently, he said it felt like a death in the family.

The photographer Ted Williams haunted all these hotbeds of jazz during their heyday, from the late Forties to the early Sixties, and captured all the big names at work and at play. These photographs are priceless documents of that time, and they’re also stunning works of art, cool black-and-white icons with their own everlasting glamour and fascinating details.

And now you have the chance to own these photographs for the first time.

About Ted Williams

Most of Ted Williams’ archive, comprising both original negatives and photographs has never been published, printed, or seen before – until now. His jazz photography has been widely celebrated for the way in which it takes viewers on a heartfelt journey into both the on- and off-stage lives of touring, hardworking, and often legendary, jazz musicians.

Williams’ photographs capture the focus, the energy and the delight of jazz artists, and he photographed virtually every major name in jazz and blues: Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Sarah Vaughan, Thelonius Monk, Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis and Charlie Parker.

Williams’ work emanated an intimacy and spontaneity towards his subjects and it’s in that dynamic where the honesty and truth of his photos is to be found. William’ longer-term ambition had been that the general public would get to see his images in exhibition settings. In this way, Ted believed that the photographs would offer some illumination on mid twentieth century African-American culture.

Ted died in 2009, but he remains a figurehead for African American photographers and in the history of American photography. He has left behind a dazzling photographic odyssey through the world of jazz.

* Taken from a piece written by James Clarke

Launched in November 2016, Stories on Walls is the world’s first true online gallery experience bringing extraordinary, affordable exhibitions to fans by way of an advanced mini-documentary exhibition platform.

The site is home to a growing number of photo-documentaries telling the stories behind extraordinary images found in rare archives and unusual back catalogues.

Stories on Walls print promise to customers’ means that every print comes with the

following:

• A signed certificate of authenticity with a uniquely numbered hologram

• A printed copy of the narrative that accompanied it in the exhibition

• Individual colour-management onto Hahnemühle Photo Rag fine art paper as a high-res print

• A choice of 3 tasteful framing options, wooden, black or white

• Carefully wrapped and tracked, we ship quickly and safely

• Worldwide shipping and FREE shipping within the UK

Stories On Walls can be found online at storiesonwalls.com or on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest with the handle @Storiesonwalls

Stories On Wall Website

EXTENDED! 30%. Off. Everything.

EXTENDED! 30%. Off. Everything.

Because of the amazing respons we've got on the Black Friday discount we decided to extend the discount on our website during the whole weekend! So you can still buy the greatest albums today with a 30% discount on challengerecords.com! Order your holiday presents this weekend with this special discount. 

* The discount is available on selected labels

Challenge Classics

Challenge Records

Challenge Jazz

CuGate Classics

Double Moon Records

Buzz

Retrieval

Between the Lines

V-Flow

Daybreak

Andrey Klemm Productions

Timeless Jazz Legacy

A Records

JJ-Tracks

PineHill

Van Dyck Records

Supertracks Records

Drukplaten

Fineline

SunnyMoon Records

Antoine Marchand

Happy Holiday Season!