From nu-jazz to free jazz

2021 was a banner year for jazz releases, an artistically fluid field where personal musical paths increasingly cross paths with different genres. In this special feature we present 24 albums – beyond the jazz albums already reviewed last year – spread across four macro-sections you can navigate according to your tastes: "Between modernity and classicism" gathers albums in which the jazz tradition meets the innovation brought by veteran figures (William Parker, Archie Shepp, Wadada Leo Smith) and new protagonists (James Brandon Lewis, Matthew Shipp, Joshua Abrams, Jihye Lee, Jason Moran); "nu jazz, Medi-jazz" offers some significant fusions developing along seemingly opposite lines – hybridization with electronic music, especially in its Idm guise, and dialogue with local traditions, above all from the areas bordering the Mediterranean to the south and east; "experimental, free jazz" explores the freest forms derived chiefly from free jazz and art music, where the line-ups on offer create unprecedented musical shapes and tonal colours; "jazz-rock and avant-garde" presents some of the best cross-pollinations between rock genres (psychedelia, post-rock) and jazz, with phenomenal guitarists such as Bill Orcutt, Ava Mendoza, Gordon Grdina, David Grubbs and Ryley Walker.

Between modernity and classicism

William Parker – "Painters Winter" (AUM Fidelity)

How do you pick just one album from a single year in the prolific career of a veteran like William Parker? His double bass — dynamic, inventive, sharp-witted and intellectual in every test — gives shape to a way of thinking, expressing a kind of ratio on genres, idioms and practices not only of jazz and improvisation, but of Black American music at large, in a manner that is as plural as it is vital. Parker-credited albums from the late Seventies to today number well over a hundred and fifty, not counting collaborations. He's one of the most important bassists in the history of jazz, and also, in the best tradition of his culture, an activist, a writer and an educator within the New York scene.
On "Painters Winter", which conceptually picks up the thread from "Painter's Spring" (Thirsty Ear, 2000) — again a Parker trio with longtime collaborators Daniel Carter (alto sax, tenor sax, trumpet, flute and clarinet) and Hamid Drake (percussion) — we take a journey through the substance of jazz, which stretches and amplifies itself by gathering and dissolving be-bop and cool cells and phrases, along with elements of classical and African music. "Painters Winter" is defined by a rich timbral palette, by a diaphragm-like dynamic range and by the tangible visionary quality of a tight, organic trio, with Parker also contributing on trombonium and shakuhachi. An album overflowing with expressiveness and mystery. (Maria Teresa Soldani)

James Brandon Lewis Red Lily Quintet – "Jesup Wagon" (TAO Forms)
Lewis's tenor sax opens the album solo, like the opening shot of one of Spike Lee's vintage films. Post-bop steeped in spiritual and blues melodicism, driven by a rhythm section made up of two of contemporary jazz's most significant voices from different generations, William Parker on double bass and Chad Taylor on drums. Rounding out the quintet are Kirk Knuffke on cornet and Chris Hoffman on cello (also a collaborator of Yoko Ono, Marc Ribot and Marianne Faithfull). The album is a spiritual, inspired tribute to George Washington Carver — scientist, teacher, musician, painter and writer — and is a concept steeped in African American history and culture, including that of jazz, with cover art drawn from one of the intellectual's own works. The tribute also blends with the New York-based saxophonist's personal biography — much like Matana Roberts's "Coin Coin" series — since Carver was invoked repeatedly by Lewis's mother, from childhood on, as a model of emancipation through education.
From the opening "Jesup Wagon" onward, the album traces a path through its subject's thought, insight and humanity, flowing dense and dynamic, giving off a unique emotion and intensity — the dialogue between sax and cornet on "Arachis", shattered and scattered by the rhythm section, is superb — confirming Lewis's stature as one of the most important figures in contemporary jazz. The oblique "Chemurgy" closes things out, a tribute glimpsed through the prism of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman", from the landmark "The Shape Of Jazz To Come" (Atlantic, 1959). One of the best releases of 2021. (Maria Teresa Soldani). 

Jason Moran & Archie Shepp – "Let My People Go" (Archie Ball)
It only takes the eight minutes of the opening "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child", an emblematic spiritual from the American folk songbook, to melt in the face of the saxophone of jazz and Black-culture veteran Archie Shepp — just think of the masterpiece "Attica Blues" (Impulse!, 1972) — and the piano of Jason Moran, who has stood alongside Cassandra Wilson and Wayne Shorter. Slowing down, stretching out and letting go are the key words of the duo's formula in creating an album that is pure mood, emotion and exaltation of melody, the fruit of two sessions recorded a year apart, one in Paris and the other in Mannheim. It's a meeting between two different generations of jazz: the history of the genre with Shepp, a giant among giants in his past, including John Coltrane, and the present with Moran, born almost forty years later.
"Let My People Go" pays tribute to pivotal figures such as Duke Ellington and his longtime collaborator Billy Strayhorn, Thelonious Monk and Coltrane himself, an open path punctuated by spirituals (halfway through we also find "Go Down Moses") into which Moran himself steps ("He Cares"). Shepp retraces a history he lived through, with his own voice and his own emotionally engaged sax, bringing Moran along with him, performing freely and meeting him on equal footing. It can only close with another classic of classics, "Round Midnight", fixing the coordinates of a music that is profoundly and spiritually African American. (Maria Teresa Soldani)

Wadada Leo Smith's Great Lakes Quartet – "The Chicago Symphonies" (TUM)
Wadada Leo Smith turned eighty in December 2021, crowning a career now spanning five decades with a series of four concerts alongside his Great Lakes Quartet, titled "The Chicago Symphonies". It's a mammoth work, running roughly 170 minutes of music, divided into "Sapphire Symphony", "Pearl Symphony", "Gold Symphony" and "Diamond Symphony". Wadada's is a bold journey along the border between jazz and the avant-garde, ambitious and probably conceived with a larger ensemble in mind. The work draws inspiration from Don Cherry's album "Symphony For Improvisers" (Blue Note, 1967) and combines improvisation, free jazz and avant-garde sonorities. "Sapphire Symphony" is the most majestic and solemn of the four, while "Pearl Symphony" reaches truly glacial peaks. But across nearly three hours of music, Wadada has plenty of sensations to offer. For fans of the less conventional side of jazz. (Valerio D'Onofrio)

Jihye Lee Orchestra – "Daring Mind" (Motéma)
From her native Korea to New York, with all the difficulties and hurdles that such a move entails. But also the smiles, the joys, the stubbornness, the courage. It's precisely to the daring of the mind — and of all the minds that decide to put themselves on the line — that composer and bandleader Jihye Lee dedicates her Motéma debut, four years after her brilliant self-produced first outing "April". Four extremely full years, during which the composer also received the BMI Charlie Parker Composition Prize, packed with experiences and new arrangements that, across the nine tracks of "Daring Mind", betray a wealth of inspiration and a finely honed command of her trusted orchestral forces.
The essence of the Big Apple and its chaotic atmosphere is expressed here in full force, with passages of real emotional weight. Big-band call-and-response not lacking in a certain gleeful swagger ("Relentless Mind"), rhythmic vamps built up into nervous, swinging nocturnes ("Unshakable Mind"), melodic ease with a folk grain ("Revived Mind"): Lee's imagination is unstoppable, coordinating soloists and band with a fascinating narrative touch, exploring every possibility with ideas that very quickly break free of any conventional big-band conception. Memory and elaboration intertwine with vivid curiosity, in an album that stands as an excellent manifesto of love for jazz and its orchestral offshoots. Overwhelming vitality. (Vassilios Karagiannis)

Matthew Shipp – "Code Breaker" (TAO Forms)
For fans of jazz piano, here's "Code Breaker" from Matthew Shipp, his third solo album in just two years, one of the leading figures of the New York improv scene: a compositional skill and instrumental style that are extremely eclectic, sitting somewhere between free jazz, avant-jazz and post-bop, paying homage to a lineage running from Duke Ellington and Cecil Taylor to Keith Jarrett. It's a set of compositions that immerse the listener in a flow where the jazz standard is deconstructed, laying bare the tools of composition and thus Shipp's own musical thinking, with a left hand that moves in surprising ways to sketch out personal harmonic geometries.
Within a single track we find passages more in line with jazz tradition, even swing, that crumble into the avant-garde ("Code Swing", "Stomp To The Gallery"), amid bittersweet melodies, oblique movements ("Spiderweb", "Green Man") and clusters of notes forming molecular aggregates ("Raygun"), all handled with an ease that lies entirely in its creator's hands. The overflowing flow of the compositions crystallizes in the almost minimalist expanse of "Suspended", from which the restless final triptych takes off. Closing things out is the perfect synthesis of "The Tunnel", which ideally reconnects with the opening "Codebreaker". (Maria Teresa Soldani)

James Brandon Lewis Quartet – "Code Of Being" (Intakt)
Among the most celebrated saxophonists of the newest generation, James Brandon Lewis stands out for his self-awareness and sense of his own place in history, as well as for the conceptual rigor behind each of his works. A self-appointed but entirely legitimate heir to John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, Lewis has, with his quartet — Chad Taylor (drums), Aruán Ortiz (piano) and Brad Jones (bass) — systematized what he calls "Molecular Systematic Music", a compositional approach that fuses music theory and molecular biology. Following on from the debut "Molecular" (Intakt, 2020), "Code Of Being" is a tapestry of much greater scope, a good hour long, in which a late-Coltrane spirituality embraces a marked leaning toward melody and pathos (the dramatically structured title track), alternating languid nocturnal atmospheres ("Every Atom Glows", inspired by the painting of the same name by Norman Lewis), thick grooves (the pairing of "Per 4"/"Per 5") and improvisation that never spirals out of control. The sprawling "Where Is Hela" is an excellent compendium in itself: a tautly wound introduction, sax phrasing over a backdrop of drums stirring like an incoming storm; a more rhythmic central section, open ground for Ortiz's virtuosic, Latin-inflected pianism; and an ending, entrusted once again to Lewis, that recovers the original theme before the house lights go out one by one and our man is left alone to meditate center stage. Formally intricate yet emotionally crystal-clear, "Code Of Being" is another chapter of extraordinary value in an artistic path that grows ever more personal. (Francesco Pandini)

Joshua Abrams Natural Information Society with Evan Parker – "descension" (Out of Our Constrictions)
Getting moving again, overcoming the static reality of recent times — for Joshua Abrams it's time to move from simulation to reality, a bit of magic the musician entrusts to a new chapter with his Natural Information Society ensemble. The first act is reclaiming those spaces suited to lyrical flights and free-form tapestries, by now a tried-and-tested, ever-expanding language for the musician and his many mutations. And it's precisely this renewed urge to explore and push into new territory that is the strength of "Descension (Out Of Our Constrictions)", an album born on the stage of London's Café Oto, which sees the quartet lineup — Lisa Alvarado, Jason Stein, Mikel Patrick Avery and Joshua Abrams himself — joined by legendary English saxophonist Evan Parker, a perfect interpreter of this new album's most flexible, warped sonorities.
"Descension (Out Of Our Constrictions)" is yet another creative synthesis from Joshua Abrams, an album that still finds its beating heart in the city of Chicago, and its lifeblood in the interplay with African music, psychedelia, free jazz and post-rock, generating yet more magic. The album offers a single sixty-five-minute composition split into four chapters: conceived as a tribute to George Floyd, the project unfolds through intense spiritual-jazz modulations, ethnic elements (the sintir or guimbri, an instrument typical of the Gnawa people), ritual rhythmic patterns, psychedelic trance states and minimalism. A steady groove and an obsessive, nimbly slow-motion rhythmic pulse welcome intricate, masterful interlocking instrumental parts, whose developments have much in common with the creative frenzy of free jazz and the earliest stirrings of techno. Each of the four chapters evolves, building and rising to a mystical ecstasy that enchants and seduces without ever flagging or losing inspiration. "Descension (Out Of Our Constrictions)" is like a beating heart whose pulse breathes further life into the contemporary jazz scene. (Gianfranco Marmoro)

Nu jazz, Medi-jazz

Nils Petter Molvær – "Stitches" (Modern Recordings)
Future jazz is Nils Petter Molvær, and Nils Petter Molvær is future jazz. The blend of electric jazz, ambient and Idm-style electronica is the Norwegian trumpeter's specialty; active since the Nineties, he arrives with "Stitches" at his thirtieth album. Joined for the occasion by guitarist Johan Lindström, drummer Erland Dahlen and bassist Jo Berger Myhre, Molvær delivers with "Stitches" one of the most successful summations of his art, uniting both his more abstract, atmospheric side and the jazz-rock saturation that fueled his masterpiece "Hamada" (2009).
The propulsive "Framework 1", "Angels Ahead" and "Nearly Invisible Stitches" are, for fans of electronic and progressive rock, among the most accessible tracks the musician has made in his long career, while still being thoroughly representative of his art. The mixing and mastering collaboration with fellow Norwegians Jan Bang and Helge Sten (Supersilent) adds further dimension to a sound already brimming with allure and tension. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Richard Barbieri – “Under A Spell” (Kscope)
The Japan and Porcupine Tree keyboardist, for decades a master at crafting enveloping and mystery-laden sonic worlds, is joined here by a truly stellar cast. On trumpet is Luca Calabrese (previously with Isildurs Bane, Italian Instabile Orchestra, Ske), on vocals — sparingly used — Steve Hogarth of Marillion, and on bass a fretless legend like Percy Jones (Brand X, David Sylvian, Suzanne Vega, Brian Eno).
The heavyweight roster of guests shouldn't distract from the main point, though: “Under A Spell” is essentially a solo record, built through overdubs and sampling in the home studio Richard Barbieri turned into his refuge at the height of the pandemic. The result of this patient work is a bewitching strain of nu jazz, halfway between pure contemporaneity and echoes of the Materiali Sonori label, where the keyboardist's acoustic and electronic textures sketch out landscapes later populated by the timbral presence of the many guests. Magical, to say the least. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Jaubi – “Nafs At Peace” (Astigmatic)
A joint venture between Polish label Astigmatic Records, Pakistani outfit Jaubi from Lahore, and acclaimed London-based horn player Tenderlonious (Keleketla!, Ruby Rushton, EABS), “Nafs At Peace” carves out a previously nonexistent territory somewhere between nu jazz, traditional Hindustani music, fusion, and the spiritual jazz wanderings that have lately come back into favor with musicians, audiences and critics alike. The instrumental lineup pairs local sounds (tabla, sarangi) with staples of European jazz (guitar, flute, sax, drums) and a remarkable arsenal of keyboards, chief among them the unusual Clavinet-Pianet Duo, used to add bite to the swaggering “Insia” and lend a liquid feel to the opening “Seek Refuge”. The tracks blend smooth inflections with rougher passages, largely thanks to the use of the sarangi's bowed strings. Not every episode is equally engaging, but when the Euro-Indo-urban groove locks in, the results seem to justify the enthusiasm with which the project has been greeted by outlets far and wide. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Nubiyan Twist – “Freedom Fables” (Strut)
With three albums under their belt, British outfit Nubiyan Twist are by now an institution of jazz's most cross-pollinated wing. Their kaleidoscopic songs seamlessly blend nu jazz and Latin rhythms, afrobeat and hip-hop, nu soul and wonky bounce. It's a mix that feels at once urban and reaching toward distant traditions, fizzy and sinuous, yet miles away from any postcard-exotic cliché. This plurality of influences comes through in the contributions of numerous guests, each one given room to color the band's formula with fresh sounds. Versatile vocalist Cherise Adams-Burnett, saxophonist and jazz-rapper Soweto Kinch, and Ghanaian highlife legend Pat Thomas are just some of the names who take turns across the nine chameleonic tracks of a record that's as elegant as it is surprising and festive. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Naïssam Jalal & Rhythms Of Resistance – “Un Autre Monde” (Les couleurs du son)
What if the eastern Mediterranean sounded nothing like the images so often used to portray it in the media, and instead recalled... King Crimson? The music of French-Syrian flautist and composer Naïssam Jalal starts from entirely different premises — the tradition of her homeland, classical training, a love of funk and hip-hop — yet lands on strikingly similar musical shores. The twelve lengthy tracks of this double album (which includes a live orchestral disc) move between stretches of calm and moments of turmoil, building enveloping soundscapes through the constant recombination of rhythmic/melodic cells, often built on compound meters and polyrhythms. Transverse flute and ney, voice, sax, double bass, guitar, cello, percussion and drums chase one another along orbits that are sometimes level and sometimes decidedly oblique, giving shape to music that is both mesmerizing and full of revelations. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Sarāb – “Arwāḥ Ḥurra” (Matrisse Productions)
It's hard to tell in the music of Sarāb where jazz ends and metal, traditional music, or progressive rock begin. Having already made a name for themselves with their 2019 debut, the French sextet with Syrian roots push their stylistic contamination even deeper on this second album: doom/zeuhl and Arabic pop, avant-sludge and fusion, Middle Eastern instrumentation and electronic effects. More than the sheer wealth of ingredients, though, what's most striking is the character of the blend, which avoids both the muddled-stew effect and postcard exoticism, giving rise instead to an organic sound, rich in dynamics and often thoroughly gripping. Credit goes above all to the versatility of the members, who trade off between styles and instruments, and to the excellent synergy between two standout performers: singer Climène Zarkan and trombonist Robinson Khoury. The two combine remarkable technique (mastering the microtonal inflections typical of southern Mediterranean music) with excellent expressive qualities, and together with the other four members bring to life twelve kaleidoscopic tracks that will surely captivate fans of Tigran Hamasyan and other Mediterranean jazz-rock projects. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Experimental, free jazz

Henry Threadgill Zooid – “Poof” (Pi)
For more than forty years, Henry Threadgill has been unanimously recognized as an innovator in jazz. The New York Times called him “the most important jazz composer of his generation”. For the American musician, born in 1944, counterpoint is the key to composing music that leaves performers free. Just like his wonderful quintet Zooid, active for over twenty years: Liberty Ellman on guitar, Christopher Hoffman on cello, Jose Davila on bass tuba, and Elliot Humberto Kavee on drums. “Poof” is their latest album: five tracks spanning thirty-eight minutes of experimentation between jazz improvisation and chamber music. Cello and saxophone converse on the opening “Come And Go”. Ellman's guitar shows off all its elegance on the title track, “Poof”. The fractured funk that characterizes Threadgill's music is diluted into liquid grooves barely hinted at by tuba and drums. “My only hope is that [the listener] will have a reaction, and the reaction doesn't have to be positive,” says Threadgill. “It could be negative. It's good […if the music] makes you think about something”. (Roberto Mandolini)

Patrick Shiroishi – “Hidemi” (American Dreams)
“Hidemi”, the latest work by Los Angeles saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi and among the finest of last year, bears the marks of a heartfelt, painful tribute right from its title. Hidemi was the name of the musician's grandfather, interned — along with his wife and 120,000 other Japanese-Americans — in the concentration camps the US opened along the Pacific coast after Pearl Harbor. Recorded in solitude and built from layers of saxophones of every kind, the nine tracks that make up the album evoke the wounds of a traumatic experience alongside the quiet moments of everyday life that never fail to surface even in History's darkest corners.
Melodic and moving, “Hidemi” greets the listener with the trumpeting sax blasts of “Beachside Lonelyhearts”, which conjure a ship docking in port, or perhaps just the memory of a homecoming, a moment before the piece morphs into a nimble neoclassical dance, the perfect black-and-white soundtrack for those shattered yet resilient lives. Between driving bass riffs over which alto flourishes trill — in the manner of a more poetic, less muscular Stetson — “Hidemi” storms the sky on closing track “The Long Bright Dark”. In an unforgettable catharsis, Shiroishi's voice intones a line in Japanese: “Is this the end of the storm?”. And it's there, in the chilling explosion that follows, that the whole meaning of a work condenses — one that inherits a people's legacy, gifts it a testament full of grace, and at the same time points the way for those who come after. (Francesco Pandini)

Rempis Percussion Quartet – “Sud Des Alpes” (Aerophonic)
Released in April, “Sud Des Alpes” documents a live recording from March 30, 2019 at Geneva's AMR, part of the European tour with which the Rempis Percussion Quartet — saxophonist Dave Rempis, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and drummers Tim Daisy and Frank Rosaly — celebrated their first fifteen years together. That these radical improvisers possess irony and lightness alongside talent and stellar technique is clear from the titles given to the three pieces on the program: “There's A Jam On The Line”, “Evacuation” and “Late Arrival” all refer to the train mishap that delayed the start of that evening's concert — though it ended up reverberating positively on everything that followed onstage. In a whirlwind of ideas that make the instruments clash with one another while retaining a surprising collective melodic identity, “Sud Des Alpes” stays excellent throughout, with several high points: the furious close of the first jam; the rereading of the Art Ensemble Of Chicago classic “Odwalla” that leads into the maelstrom of the second, with a remarkable drum solo — for two — right at its center; the lyricism of the saxophone blowing alone at the close of the third, a delicacy blatantly at odds with the ferocity of the attack. A fixed point in an enviable career from which to set off on new paths, “Sud Des Alpes” shows a Quartet still intent on sinking its teeth into free jazz without easy concessions to autopilot. (Francesco Pandini)

Mind Maintenance – “Mind Maintenance” (Drag City)
In psychology, flow is a mental state in which a person becomes completely absorbed in a rewarding, meaningful activity. That's probably a good starting point for talking about “Mind Maintenance” by Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor, two pillars of Chicago's jazz scene who, in one form or another, have been collaborating since the mid-Nineties. Here, it's the whole rather than the individual tracks that matters: forty-five minutes of dialogue between guimbri, mbira and nothing else, improvised music born of the raga's circularity and an interplay honed over decades — a search for stability and peace in an age that offers little of either.
Strings and metal vibrate in unison, lending physicality and a sense of space to an instrumentation that's genuinely spare and yet, in most cases, seems to need nothing else. The choice of guimbri and mbira, for that matter, couldn't be more fitting: the way they're built, their tendency toward lateral jangle and buzz, makes them feel like conduits to somewhere else rather than mere means. Not an album for those who live only for landmark records, this “Mind Maintenance” is instead an almost tactile experience that will appeal to anyone who, when listening, asks to be immersed in the purity of the moment. (Francesco Pandini)

Underflow – “Instant Opaque Evening” (Blue Chopstick)
The second outing arrives from a trio of improvisation stars who move beyond jazz's pillars of Hercules into full-on avant-garde territory: Rob Mazurek (cornet, flute, percussion, electronics and voice), David Grubbs (guitar and voice) and Mats Gustafsson (baritone sax, flute, electronics), already collaborators on prior mutual ventures (including two Gastr Del Sol albums). Born from a 2020 European tour, the album is ninety minutes of performed music that is synesthetic and multisensory, swinging between chaos and release, sighs, cries and restless embryonic notes that resist domestication, morphing into electrified fanfares (the aptly named “Instant Opaque Evening” chief among them), at times strident chants (“Planks”), cowbells and mantras (“A This Eternity”), electronic and flute-borne wails (“Sound Of A Wet Leather Ball”).
Particularly striking are the post-rock-tinged dialogue between Grubbs's guitar and the horns of Mazurek and Gustafsson on “Self Portait As Interference Pattern” and the ritualistic requiem of “Not At My Funeral”. The album also features reinterpretations of three songs by Grubbs the songwriter: “Gethsemani Night”, “An Optimist Declines” and “Cooler Side Of The Pillow”. “Instant Opaque Evening” is an adventure in composition as tangible, malleable matter in every gesture that becomes sound, and joins with other gestures/sounds. It's an event that happens and invites you into its folds, that tells you about an evening and defines your evening. (Maria Teresa Soldani)

Jazz-rock and avant-garde

William Parker – “Mayan Space Station” (Aum Fidelity)
Just a month after “Painters Winter”, Parker puts together another trio of double bass, drums and electric guitar. The result is one of the most surprising albums not just of 2021 but of jazz-rock as a whole. Ava Mendoza's electric guitar (Unnatural Ways) is downright possessed, and drags the rhythm section of Parker and Gerald Cleaver (Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Matthew Shipp) between free jazz and avant-rock, between the scorching psychedelia of the Grateful Dead and the Afrofuturist funk of Funkadelic.
Parker lays down the coordinates with clarity and solidity, over which Cleaver embroiders original, flowering drum figures on top of a mighty groove, while Mendoza moves in astonishing fashion across the fretboard, weaving dense, oblique, distorted patterns across different tonal and timbral regimes. With the interstellar journey of “Mayan Space Station”, the Bolivian guitarist stakes her place in the firmament of the instrument's greats alongside Sonny Sharrock, Fred Frith, Marc Ribot, Nels Cline and Bill Orcutt. As poet Parker writes in the album's liner notes: “Cymbals gongs and strings navigating through space/ we enter into the earth's atmosphere”. (Maria Teresa Soldani)

Monobody – “Comma” (Sooper)
Recording since 2015, Chicago's Monobody play with imagination and skill one of the least cool genres imaginable: a kaleidoscopic mix of math and jazz-rock, nodding both to the post-rock of fellow Chicagoans Tortoise (albeit in a far more acrobatic guise) and to the booming melodicism of the best late-Seventies fusion (perhaps in its flashiest Japanese offshoots). It's a synthesis not suited to every palate: besides a taste for instrumental tangles and dizzying time signatures, it also requires some tolerance for the cloying smoothness that, alongside sporadic Canterbury-style inflections, seasons the busy interplay of guitar, bass, keyboards and drums. “Comma” is the quintet's third full-length and musically their densest; for a more relaxed, emotionally transparent approach, its 2021 predecessor “Raytracing” is at least equally recommended, incorporating soft/loud dynamics and remarkably effective nu jazz devices. (Marco Sgrignoli)

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt – “Made Out Of Sound” (Palilalia)
A liquid sound that feels like it could go on forever. Chris Corsano and Bill Orcutt have the synergy of twin brothers: they lock into each other's thoughts instantly. “Made Out Of Sound” is among the finest spiritual jazz records (or not-jazz, if you prefer) of 2021. Under half an hour of music split into seven tracks that flow into one another like ocean waves. The opening is dizzying, and the melancholy tones of the ex-Harry Pussy man's six strings find shelter in Corsano's forceful drumming, which builds a genuine waveguide for Orcutt's improvisations. The guitar is free to follow both blues pentatonics and free-jazz dissonance, chasing the drums' ever-shifting improvisations and grooves.
The album was recorded remotely, with Orcutt improvising over tracks recorded by Corsano: “I overdubbed two guitar tracks. I'd listen to the drums a couple of times, pick a tuning, then improvise a part, thinking of the first track as support and the second as the 'lead'. I watched the waveforms as I recorded, so I could see when a crescendo was coming or when to let it drop”. If you're looking for comparisons, you'll have to dig back in time, all the way to the little-known masterpiece “Ask The Ages” by Sonny Sharrock and Elvin Jones. (Roberto Mandolini)

Gordon Grdina & Jim Black – “Martian Kitties” (Astral Spirits)
An eclectic, unruly duo capable of ranging from the most canonical jazz cadences to noise, passing through the avant-garde, without shying away from echoes of alternative rock, grunge and math-rock (“Buggy Whip”). Independent by choice, Grdina is active in Vancouver with numerous ensembles such as Loose Acoustic, Haram, Nomad Trio and Sangha, and boasts collaborations with Marc Ribot, Matthew Shipp, Gary Peacock and Paul Motian.
On “Martian Kitties” he pushes his highly personal path with guitar and oud, between rock, jazz and Persian music, to every possible extreme of excess, thanks to the explosive synergy with drummer Jim Black (AlasNoAxis, Pachora, Tim Berne's Bloodcount and Dave Douglas' Tiny Bell Trio), who conjures up unprecedented polyrhythms influenced by Balkan tradition. Roughly forty minutes of total improvisation immortalized across thirteen distinct sonic tableaux. An album of imaginative Arab jazz-rock, where Jerusalem In My Heart gets roughed up by Zs with an alchemy as potent as that between Patrick Higgins and Greg Fox. Austin's Astral Spirits label once again bets on research and the avant-garde, releasing a surprising album for lovers of free-jazz, progressive and experimental rock. (Maria Teresa Soldani)

David Grubbs & Ryley Walker – “A Tap On The Shoulder” (Husky Pants)
Collaborations between very different musicians often yield interesting results. “A Tap On The Shoulder” is no exception, an unusual meeting between former Gastr Del Sol member David Grubbs and folk singer-songwriter Ryley Walker, one of the finest of the new generation. The record sounds exactly as one might imagine a union between Grubbs' band's experimental post-rock and Walker's guitar in improv mode. Something magical binds Grubbs' geometric precision with Walker's folk sensibility, here in a thoroughly experimental guise.
Improvisation dominates especially on the long “Uglification” (13 minutes), a journey of sounds and effects leading to abstract, refined landscapes, and on the desert-like “Pump Fake On The Death Rattle”. The guitar surfaces on the title track in minimal, almost ambient-guitar-like tones, while on “The Madman From Massachusetts In An Empty” – seven minutes largely made up of psychedelic distortion – the amplification rises, bringing us into territory more suited to Walker's sprawling live shows. Suited to those comfortable in territory that can't be pigeonholed into any single macro-genre, be it jazz, rock or avant-garde. An LP of pure, boundless improvisation. (Valerio D'Onofrio)

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