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Spinifex

Spinifex explores the contrast between extremely tight irregular structures and extensive free improvisations. With its fearsomely explosive combination of musicians, Spinifex is all about compelling grooves, strong dynamics and challenging improvisations. 

Named after a tough Australian species of grass, Spinifex may at first sound like a combination of jazzcore, math-metal and other typically Western contemporary music. However, beneath the surface the listener will discover ancient cyclical rhythms of Turkish and Indian origin.

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Festivals Talking

Moers Festival Interviews: Spinifex

Read "Moers Festival Interviews: Spinifex" reviewed by Martin Longley


Spinifex will make an extremely welcome return to the Moers Festival in early June 2022. This heavily international group specialises in a collective meshing, combining the precision of composed themes with ample leeway for crashing over the barriers, splattering down onto a grassy field of wild improvisatory freedom. Heavy activity over a decade's span makes this stance so staunch with experience that any perversions of the agreed form can be confidently executed in the knowledge that Spinifex always knows where ...

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Album Review

Spinifex: Beats The Plague

Read "Beats The Plague" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Finally, a band of brothers retaliates against the coronavirus. The scientists and the anti-vax antipodes have had their day. Time for some partisan guerrilla action. Okay, maybe just a pipe dream, but these nine tracks by the Amsterdam based Spinifex deliver a much needed counterattack to this diabolical infective agent. Recorded in June of 2021, Beats The Plague is the band's seventh release. It follows Soufifex (TryTone, 2019) where the band looked East for inspiration from Sufi music. ...

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Album Review

Spinifex: Soufifex

Read "Soufifex" reviewed by Vitalijus Gailius


The Amsterdam-based sextet Spinifex—well known for their passion to cross stylistic borders, tight irregular structures and robust improvisational eruptions—still continue their journey through different musical traditions. On their fifth full-length album, Soufifex, the ensemble flee the European musical tradition and turn their faces to the Oriental world, i.e. to the Sufi, mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God, a musical heritage which is ...

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Album Review

Spinifex: Hipsters Gone Ballistic

Read "Hipsters Gone Ballistic" reviewed by Vincenzo Roggero


Basso elettrico e chitarra elettrica acchiappano da subito con spietata inesorabilità, con la violenza del rock più aggressivo e la capacità di infiltrarsi e stravolgere le trame musicali attraverso la sensibilità e la prontezza del jazz. Poi i fiati, magmatici e cristallini, imprevedibili e sarcastici, laceranti come un urlo nella notte, inquietanti come una ninna nanna in un film dell'orrore. E la batteria a menar fendenti, a sostenere ritmi impossibili, a catapultare in luoghi improbabili chiunque pensi a un segnale, ...

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Album Review

Spinifex: Hipsters Gone Ballistic

Read "Hipsters Gone Ballistic" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni


The Amsterdam-based group Spinifex--named after a tough Australian species of grass--is a modular collective of Dutch musicians. The Spinifex quintet that released its debut, the aptly titled Hipsters Gone Ballistic, is a part of a collective that includes the Spinifex Orchestra (that released its debut Triodia back in 2008 on Karnatic Lab Records), Spinifex Tuba Band and Spinifex Indian Spin. The quintet distills elements from all the above mentioned outfits, contrasting extremely tight, irregular structures and ...

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Eyal Hareuveni, allaboutjazz, february 2014:”… contrasting extremely tight, irregular structures and rhythms with explosive free improvisations and disciplined math- metal precision with playful Indian Karnatic rhythmic elements. All selections are played with sheer abandon and joyful passion, from the first second to the last one. All compositions feature restless shifts and complex dynamics as well as the highly collaborative and versatile interplay of this well-rehearsed quintet… the most impressive piece is an inspired, uplifting cover of Karnatic composer and singer Papanasam Sivan, ‘Sre Valli Devasenapathe, that sounds like a spin on their fellow countrymen The Ex’s Ethiopian covers. No doubt, the hipsters went on a wild ride.”

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