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James Meger
Sick Boss: Businessless
by Chris May
This bracing sophomore album from Vancouver's improvising sextet Sick Boss resonates with the beyond-genre territory of the late Jaimie Branch's Fly Or Die quartet. At a surface level there is the shared use of trumpet and cello, but deeper than that, Businessless embraces the riot grrrl abandon so beloved of Branch. Echoes of Fly Or Die often crop up: the brief melodic motif of opener “Useless Genius 1" is something Branch might have written, as are episodes on other tracks, ...
read moreMatt Choboter's Hypnopompia: Sleep Inertia
by Doug Collette
In keeping with its title, these eight tracks of just over fifty-minutes comprise a waking/sleeping dreamscape where conscious thoughts crystallize. then turn amorphous in an engrossing cyclical pattern. The fourteen or so minutes of the two-part “Converging Diverging" elucidate the most literal instrumental explication of the concept: replete with far too much ornate detail to fit the description of free jazz, the musicianship nevertheless radiates an abiding spontaneity with all instrumental commentary and elaboration/embellishment from around the quintet.Canadian ...
read moreDaniel Hersog Jazz Orchestra: Night Devoid of Stars
by Jerome Wilson
Daniel Hersog is a Canadian trumpet player and composer, here presenting his first big band album, a set of sweeping and progressive orchestral jazz which reflects the current state of the world with shifting moods of unease and cautious optimism. Hersog has a expansive style of writing that draws as much from classical music as jazz. His compositions here are written to feature two main soloists, tenor saxophonist Noah Preminger and pianist Frank Carlberg, much as Gil Evans ...
read moreDaniel Hersog Jazz Orchestra: Night Devoid of Stars
by Jack Bowers
Daniel Hersog is the latest arrival in a long-running parade of world-class jazz composer-arrangers from Canada, albeit not in the image of Rob McConnell, Phil Nimmons or Rick Wilkins but more akin to some of his mentors including (but not limited to) John Hollenbeck, Ken Schaphorst and Dave Holland. Night Devoid of Stars (named for a premise by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.), Hersog's debut recording as leader of his Jazz Orchestra, consists of half a dozen of his original ...
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Little Bell
From: Gran KasaBy James Meger
Cloud Break
From: Night Devoid of StarsBy James Meger
