Darius Jones - Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) November 5, 2021 Northern Spy Records

Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation) harnesses the gamut of raw, unadulterated emotions — suppressed feelings that we’ve all been allowed to “feel” again in the wake of a global pandemic. Born out of a live performance in fall 2019, during the last stop of his tour in Portland, OR, saxophonist Darius Jones renders a solo effort that evokes sadness, rage, and confusion, all the while still holding for glimmers of hope for the future.

With four of its five tracks on Alchemy, Jones selects compositions from artists who are not just unapologetically Black but also notably ones that he regards as “world builders.” From Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and Roscoe Mitchell right up through the present with Georgia Anne Muldrow, Alchemy draws immeasurable strength from each of these artists who dared to envision and create an entire universe unto themselves, on their terms.

“I want to capture a moment in time, to crystallize the beginning of something at the end of something else,” says Jones. Separated and now divorced from his partner of 10 years, Alchemy balances the emotional heft of closure with the simple act of standing alone. Each track unearths a deep and profound vulnerability in every solo performance that isn’t just personal but also delves into the macro-level divisiveness of our current political climate.

With “Figure No. 2,” Jones offers us a modern-day version of the blues. Courtesy of Muldrow, her refrain encapsulates the vast breadth of the Black experience in America, transforming our deep-seated pain into our beauty and armor of resilience. Jones also proudly rests on the shoulders of Coleman and Mitchell, two of this music’s known improvisers who often stood alone in this music’s ever-changing landscape. He pays homage to Mitchell with “Noonah,” which in the late 1970s was initially met with jeers from an audience, that is, until his 21+ minute long version overtook them.

Alchemy uncovers a duality of what it means to be alone, especially resonant in today’s climate of social distancing. In one turn, we were all forced to put life as we knew it on hold — to simply be still and deal with our emotional realities unencumbered by the distractions of life. But at another turn, Jones taps into an unknown power of his lone voice, finding a newfound strength and enthusiasm that will carry him — and its listeners — beyond the uncertainty and doubt of not knowing. 

1. Figure No. 2

2. Sadness

3. Beautiful Love

4. Nonaah

5. Love in Outer Space

Track 1 composed by Georgia Anne Muldrow, Epistrophik Peach Publishing, BMI; Track 2 composed by Ornette Coleman, Phrase Text Music, ASCAP; Track 3 composed by Victor Young, Wayne King, Egbert Van Alstyne, Haven Gillespie Music Publishing CO, Warner Bros INC (Warner Bros Music DIV), ASCAP; Track 4 composed by Roscoe Mitchell, Art Ensemble of Chicago Publishing CO. ASCAP; (excerpt from a version in 1976 at festival in Willisau, Switzerland); Track 5 composed by Sun Ra, Enterplanetary Koncepts, BMI

Produced by Darius Jones

Recorded by Darius Jones at Holocene, Portland, OR on Oct. 18th, 2019

Mixed and Mastered by David Torn at Cell Labs East

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Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog - Hope (June 25, 2021 Northern Spy Records)

When these recording sessions began in the last week of May 2020, I hadn’t left my house to go anywhere other than the grocery store in over two months. I hadn’t taken a cab or subway. I’d lost several friends to COVID-19, and was afraid I’d also lose more thanks to the non-response of our would-be dictator/“president”, whose deliberate embrace of untruth fed tens of thousands of lives to the pandemic, and also reduced what little hope was left for avoiding global warming catastrophe.

I hadn’t seen my partner since February (our plans to fly to each other’s countries shut down) and it would be July before we finally got together. Our difficulties were nothing compared with others. When me and fellow Ceramic Dogs Ches and Shahzad figured out a way to record, we entered the studio separately, sat in separate, isolated rooms from which we couldn’t see each other, communicating through mics and headphones. We were careful to wash our hands: one of us has respiratory issues, so fuck-ups could’ve been bad. We wound up with two record’s worth of material, some released on Bandcamp in October on the EP What I Did on My Long Vacation, and the majority of the music here on this full CD-length recording.

If/when people look back on these times, maybe they’ll seem unreal... foreign, alien: the way I, as a child in the 1960’s, looked at the faded footage of the 1930’s as impossibly ancient, even though the family members who had survived those newsreels sat next to me at breakfast. In fact, my 9 year old self was closer to the burning of the Reichstag than we are now to the release of Nevermind.

Anyway, when we went into the studio, I thought we’d come up with something that spoke to our times… a message in a bottle to our equally shipwrecked (imaginary) listeners. But once we started, it was so much fun to jam that we forgot the disasters outside. So instead, we “spoke” to each other. And to other times that we couldn’t yet see: like the day, 5 months later, when people all over Brooklyn would dance in the streets for joy.

It’s almost December now. Things are shutting down again, and I’m quarantined in Europe writing liner notes for a record that will be released in the new year--once more, speaking to another time… perhaps a future? M Ribot

1. B-Flat Ontology

2. Nickelodeon

3. Wanna

4. The Activist

5. Bertha The Cool

6. They Met In The Middle

7. The Long Goodbye

8. Maple Leaf Rage

9. Wear Your Love Like Heaven

Ceramic Dog are:

Marc Ribot: guitars, vocals

Shahzad Ismaily: bass, keyboards, backing vocals

Ches Smith: drums, percussion, electronics, backing vocals

with Guests:

Darius Jones: alto sax (6,7)

Rubin Khodeli: cello (8)

Gyda Valtysdottir: cello (8)

Syd Straw: background vocals (3)

Mixed by Randall Dunn at Aleph Recording Company, Brooklyn, NY

Engineered by Shahzad Ismaily at Figure 8 Recordings, Brooklyn, NY

Except (8) Engineered by Shahzad Ismaily & Philip Weinrobe at Figure 8 Recordings

Mastering by Gregory Obis at Chicago Mastering Service

Creative Direction by Bryan Abdul Collins

Management: Mary Ho / Noise Inc

All Lyrics & Music by Marc Ribot (Knockwurst Music, ASCAP)

Except (2) (4) (5) (6) Music by Marc Ribot, Shahzad Ismaily (Wazir & Malika Music), Ches Smith (Preposterous Bee Music, BMI), And (9) by Donovan Leitch (Peer International Corp)

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Jason Stein's Locksmith Isidore - After Caroline (NORTHERN SPY RECORDS 2018)

Jason Stein is a ubiquitous presence on the world class Chicago improvised music scene and beyond. He’s a staunch force with a monogamous passion for his instrument of choice, the darkly sonorous and notoriously difficult bass clarinet. It’s a testament to Stein’s consummate musicianship and versatility that he plays an indispensable role in a raft of über creative outfits including but not limited to, Mike Reed’s Flesh and Bone, Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society, drummer Quin Kirchner’s Group, James Falzone’s Renga Ensemble, The Charles Rumback Quintet, Kyle Bruckmann’s Wrack, The Russ Johnson Quartet and an electronics fed collective with drummer Chad Taylor and pianist Paul Giallorenzo, Hearts and Minds. But Stein thrives as a leader also, as witnessed by his critically-acclaimed recent quartet release. However, no other aggregation he works with has quite the road legs, perspective, and intimacy of Locksmith Isidore, his long running trio with bassist Jason Roebke and drummer Mike Pride. Of late, this decade old unit has toured arenas throughout the US opening for comedy star Amy Schumer, who happens to be Stein’s kid sister. Presenting avant jazz in such massive venues as Madison Square Garden and LA’s Forum has cemented Locksmith Isidore’s very special bond, which is more than apparent on their fourth album After Caroline.

Stein’s cohorts in Locksmith Isidore are similarly versatile in their playing and experience. New York based drummer Mike Pride’s sock-it-to-ya beats have pushed countless bands. He’s worked with iconoclasts Anthony Braxton and John Zorn, and formatively, hardcore punks Millions of Dead Cops. He’s key to the drive of the locksmith, as is bass ace Jason Roebke. As one of the Chicago scene’s most versatile and in-demand players, Roebke’s sound is at home in all sorts of improvisational music, from the super abstract to swinging jazz. 

After Caroline displays all this versatility, and then some. The title derives from the fact that Stein’s paternal grandmother Caroline—wife to the locksmith Isidore—passed away the day the album was recorded. The lovely “You Taught Me How To Love”, which features a tensile contrabass solo from Roebke and skippy brushwork from Pride, is a paean to Caroline. This open hearted ballad demonstrates that despite Stein’s hi-energy capabilities elsewhere, he is at base a tempered melodist. With that said, After Caroline opens in a more expressionistic and churning mode on the improv manifesto “As Many Chances As You Need,” during which the three improvisers forcefully negotiate the squirrelly 19/8 time signature. Though he’s no doubler or dilettante—perhaps because of that—Stein comes at you on his clarinet as if it were a tenor saxophone, and in white-hot, paintstripping moments, his sound recalls the exultant fury of Pharaoh Sanders or Albert Ayler.

Walden’s Thing” is written for Detroit saxist/bandleader Donald Walden, with whom Stein studied at the University of Michigan. Stein wryly explains of the tune: “as a strict bebop linguist, Donald would have hated it, but with a smile, which makes me happy.” On another tune, “Eckhardt Park,” Stein pays tribute to his west loop woodshed in Chicago during a time when he could be seen serenading the traffic in front of the Dan Ryan Expressway. He’d hop the fence near his home and strengthen his sound, playing his way AND the highway. Pride’s mallets are particularly pugnacious on “Walden’s Thing” and the abstract tone poem “Ida Like,” which was inspired by Stein’s late great aunt and his four-year-old daughter who share the same name. Roebke’s arco shavings, assorted creaks, strums and pings are a whole other trick bag from his broad willowy swing. The atmospheric concoction conjures Ida, Alice-in-Wonderland-like, picking a lock herself. “Sternum” is further fodder for the textural ingenuity of the trio. Stein lays in back with muted, quizzical longtones, flutter tonguing like a surreptitious rattler, as drum and bass hatch an ominously intriguing soundscape. 

Stein alone is a pioneering force, pushing the vocabulary for his chosen horn way beyond the norm. Yet he’s heard to finest effect in this trio of quicksilver like-minds who know best how to goad, shape and angle his vision.

1. As Many Chances As You Need 04:18

2. Eckart Park 06:20

3. Ida Like 05:08

4. 26-2 04:06

5. Sternum 05:24

6. Walden's Thing 07:03

7. You Taught Me How To Love 06:04

8. We Gone 04:36

All compositions by Jason Stein except "Sternum" by Jason Stein, Jason Roebke, Mike Pride and "26-2" by John Coltrane

Recorded July 15 and 16, 2017 at Electrical Audio, Chicago, IL by Nick Broste

Mixed by Nick Broste

Mastering for digital and vinyl by Scott Hull at Masterdisk

Photograph by Amy Schumer

Bobby Kapp & Matthew Shipp - Cactus (2016) NORTHERN SPY RECORDS

Releases September 16, 2016

NORTHERN SPY RECORDS

present

Bobby Kapp & Matthew Shipp - Cactus (2016)

In Valerie Wilmer’s important socio-political history of the jazz vanguard As Serious As Your Life (Serpent’s Tail Press, 1977), the chapter on pianist Cecil Taylor is subtitled “Eighty-Eight Tuned Drums.” Textually this reference advances the role of the piano in free music as percussive in large part, especially as the chordal and melodic directions taken after Ornette Coleman in the late 1950s often appeared to circumvent the more fixed tonalities of the keyboard. Drummers and pianists have been one core team in this music, going back to the forbears and scions of the modern-jazz era — Buddy Rich and Nat Cole; Art Blakey and Herbie Nichols or Thelonious Monk; Denis Charles, Sunny Murray and Andrew Cyrille with Taylor — whether the pianist may work percussively or sculpt the music temporally and melodically. 

Drummer Bobby Kapp (b. Robert Kaplan on April 11, 1942 in Perth Amboy, NJ) and pianist Matthew Shipp (b. December 7, 1960 in Wilmington, DE) are a team that has only recently come together, though their affinity for one another is natural and rewarding. Cactus is their first duo recording, a spontaneous set coming on the heels of 2015’s Themes 4 Transmutation, the latter waxed under the drummer’s leadership and featuring Shipp, reedist Ras Moshe and bassist Tyler Mitchell. While the cognoscenti may be aware of Kapp’s name as a firebrand in the mid-60s New York free music underground, he didn’t record as a leader back then. In recent years, after relocating to Mexico, he’s co-led the standards-rooted Fine Wine Trio with pianist Richard Wyands and bassist Gene Perla, and reunited with alto saxophonist Noah Howard before the latter’s untimely passing. 

Kapp’s restless energy and streetwise lyricism, yen for the blues and supple templates for unfettered expression took him from New Jersey and Staten Island to Berklee College of Music, where he studied with Alan Dawson, and then Lower Manhattan. There, he played and recorded with alto saxophonists Marion Brown and Noah Howard, pianist Dave Burrell and tenor saxophonists Leandro ‘Gato’ Barbieri and Pharaoh Sanders before eventually settling in an artist’s colony in San Miguel de Allende. Kapp’s sideman recordings in the 1960s are scant, comprising two full LP appearances (Barbieri’s In Search of the Mystery and Howard’s At Judson Hall, both on ESP), two individual LP halves (Brown’s watershed Three for Shepp on Impulse! and Burrell’s High on Douglas), and film footage of Brown’s trio was captured in 1967 by Henry English, but all of this work presents a rolling, massive and fleet economy somewhere between Elvin Jones and Shelly Manne. 

His more recent outings have been somewhat under the radar, but the aspects that entice—a sure, tempestuous detail—are toned with age, experience and fidelity. 

Shipp’s piano is the perfect foil for Kapp’s dryly doled-out metric inventions, his sinewy but factual movements through erudite melody, resonant stomps and granular sideways gestures creating fields and objects through which the drummer’s open, supple brushwork and woody rolls float, undercut and weave. Shipp has worked with a wide range of individual, creative drummers—including Newman Taylor Baker, Whit Dickey, Guillermo E. Brown, Susie Ibarra, Marc Edwards and Steve McCall—and says of Kapp that “Bobby is a marvel as he combines the best of old school drumming with a real feel for pulse and breaking the circle that exists in the avant-garde. However, he can open the beat up in a way where you can flow with the wave and never lose the line. His touch is really refined and that adds to the beauty of his sound. 

I am always looking for ways to make my comping deeper and working with someone who has played with all the people he has deepens my thing. Also, the sound he gets off the cymbals has a resonance that is beyond deep—it’s like swimming in pure vibration.” On Cactus, nine spiny and flowering dialogic arms are presented in gorgeous sound, creating a language that stems from bebop, free improvisation and classicism but are of the present and specific to these two musicians. Rigorous, spontaneous play that feels this good is something to hold onto. 
– Clifford Allen 

“Practically without parallel — Matthew Shipp is the connection between the past, present and future for jazzheads of all ages.” - Downbeat 


“...In the 1960’s, Bobby was a seminal figure in the so-called new music movement in NYC, recording with Gato Barbieri, Archie Shepp, Noah Howard and others.” - Ron J. Pelletier

1. Overture

2. Before 04:26

3. During

4. Money

5. Cactus

6. After

7. Good Wood

8. Snow Storm Coming

9. The 3rd Sound

Matthew Shipp, piano

Bobby Kapp, drums

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Before