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7
Album Review

The Thing: Again

Read "Again" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Wait for it. Wait. At some point during a performance or recording by the trio known as The Thing, the band attempts to rip your face off, beginning with your ears. It's been that way since they were founded in 2000. The Swedish/Norwegian free jazz/garage band have become a kind of jazz/punk royalty, cutting huge swaths into jazz conventions without ignoring jazz traditions. Yeah, their apparent contradictory nature is part of the attraction. Again is their 20th release, ...

2
Live Review

French Connections - The Jazzdor Experience

Read "French Connections - The Jazzdor Experience" reviewed by Henning Bolte


Jazzdor is a French festival with two annual editions. The main part is held in the Strasbourg area (France) in November and the other one in Berlin (Germany) in June. Both editions present a considerable number of bilateral and multilateral collaborations; an essential part of the festival's philosophy and policy. The Strasbourg festival is the older part and home of the organization. The Strasbourg festival covers two weeks in November, collaborating with the neighboring German city of Offenburg ...

9
Album Review

The Thing: Boot!

Read "Boot!" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Somebody should inform the members of the Scandinavian free jazz trio The Thing they are not rock stars. I repeat, somebody tell saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, you are not lizard kings. The release of Boot!, their sixth studio album since forming in 1999, is a follow-up to the widely celebrated session The Cherry Thing (Smalltown Supersound, 2012) with Neneh Cherry. The band has also collaborated with the likes of Thurston Moore, ...

163
Live Review

The Thing, London, October 4, 2011

Read "The Thing, London, October 4, 2011" reviewed by John Sharpe


The ThingCafe Oto,London, UKOctober 4, 2011 Back in London for the second time in under a year, The Thing held court in north London to a Cafe Oto rammed with a gratifyingly young crowd. When the Scandinavian trio, comprising the Norwegian rhythm pairing of drummer Paal Nilssen-Love and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, in consort with Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, started out back in 2000, their book contained mainly tunes by trumpeter Don Cherry (hence the ...

522
Album Review

The Thing: Bag It!

Read "Bag It!" reviewed by Andrey Henkin


One of the most appealing facets of The Thing-- saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love--is the visceral experience of seeing them play live. Huddled closely on stage, wearing matching Ruby's BBQ of Austin t-shirts, dripping with sweat and manhandling their instruments, the trio is one of the modern wonders of avant-garde jazz. The band, with Gustafsson solely on tenor instead of the expected baritone, headlined a bill at Brooklyn's Zebulon last month ...

380
Album Review

The Thing: Action Jazz

Read "Action Jazz" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni


The Scandinavian trio known as The Thing--Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and two Norwegians, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love--seems to be rewriting the definition of its brand of brutal jazz. After being compared to Peter Brötzmann's early trios, being called a power jazz trio, and being compared to garage rock, The Thing has settled on the term Action Jazz to describe this delicious hell of a noise.

Action Jazz, recorded in Stockholm in December 2005, is the fourth ...

286
Multiple Reviews

The Thing: Live At Blå / Mats Gustafsson: Catapult

Read "The Thing: Live At Blå / Mats Gustafsson: Catapult" reviewed by Andrey Henkin


Last summer, this reviewer was first exposed to the Scandinavian group The Thing in the best possible way; he was run over by them. The trio, Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love (both Norwegian), played a brutal set at the Oslo club Blå as part of that city's Jazz Festival. Blå, Oslo's answer to Tonic, is The Thing's homebase and a new record documents a performance from there in June 2003. ...

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1

Recording

Al Ross & The Planets Release Smooth Jazz Single, 'All The Things We Started'

Al Ross & The Planets Release Smooth Jazz Single, 'All The Things We Started'

Source: Prime Mover Media

Al Ross and the Planets today service their latest single, “All the Things We Started," to smooth jazz radio. The track appears on the London band's second album, Blue Crystal, which was released in North America by MVD Entertainment on September 10. The new single follows the success of “Faith," a previous track released in July that has enjoyed UK airplay from influential deejays Cerys Matthews at BBC Radio Two and Janice Long at BBC Radio Wales, plus additional exposure ...

Performance / Tour

Jazz this week: The Thing, Denise Thimes, Charlie Hunter, Victor Wooten Trio, and more

Jazz this week: The Thing, Denise Thimes, Charlie Hunter, Victor Wooten Trio, and more

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

This week's calendar of live jazz and creative music in St. Louis features several stellar singers; the local debut of an esteemed free jazz trio; some straight-up bebop; funky sounds from New Orleans, California, and beyond; and more. Let's go to the highlights... Wednesday, March 21 Singer Brian Owens will performs for the first of two nights at Jazz at the Bistro, revisiting some of the jazz material he did earlier in his career, with backing from pianist Adam Maness' ...

1

Video / DVD

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on The Thing

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on The Thing

Source: St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman

Today, let's check out some videos featuring The Thing, who will be in St. Louis later this month for a show presented by New Music Circle on Thursday, March 22 at Off Broadway. With an energetic, extroverted style that's sometimes been called “Action Jazz" (after their 2006 album of the same name), saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten draw as much inspiration from punk rock and various world musics as they do from the jazz ...

3

Video / DVD

Popular TV Talk Show Host And Singer Oleg Frish Celebrates 20th Anniversary In Media With New Single & Video "The Things We Did Last Summer, From "Duets With My American Idols"

Popular TV Talk Show Host And Singer Oleg Frish Celebrates 20th Anniversary In Media With New Single & Video "The Things We Did Last Summer, From "Duets With My American Idols"

Source: Miles High Productions

Oleg Frish, the acclaimed New York based radio and talk show host and singer/performer is celebrating his 20th Anniversary in media this year. Since moving from Russia to New York to premiere his weekly talk show on Russian Television International (RTVi) he has interviewed over 2,000 music stars, celebrities, and many of his personal American idols including; the late James Brown, B.B. King and Donna Summer, Connie Francis, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Kenny G, to name just a few. Frish is ...

1

Video / DVD

The Things We Did Last Summer

The Things We Did Last Summer

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers

Yesterday I couldn't get The Things We Did Last Summer out of my head. The song was written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne for Frank Sinatra, who recorded it in 1946 for Columbia under the direction of Alex Stordahl. Here's Sinatra's original followed by seven terrfic versions...   Here's Fats Navarro in 1949, a rare ballad for the trumpeter, who would die seven months after this live recording...   Here's a group led by Sahib Shihab in 1957, with ...

Radio

"When Swing Was The Thing" This Week On Riverwalk Jazz

"When Swing Was The Thing" This Week On Riverwalk Jazz

Source: Don Mopsick

This week on Riverwalk Jazz, we time-travel back to 1930s Manhattan to hear what the Swing Era was like from the perspective of a young fan, thanks to the teenage diaries of Bob Inman collected in his Swing Era Scrapbook published by Scarecrow Press. Special guest, San Francisco actor Darren Bridgett joins us with excerpts from Bob Inman’s diaries. The program is distributed in the US by Public Radio International, on Sirius/XM satellite radio and can be streamed on-demand from ...

16

Recording

Neneh Cherry & The Thing Collaborate And Release The Cherry Thing, Out June 19 On Smalltown Supersound

Neneh Cherry & The Thing Collaborate And Release The Cherry Thing, Out June 19 On Smalltown Supersound

Source: Pitch Perfect PR

Neneh Cherry and jazz trio The Thing met for the first time at a recording session in London in the fall of 2010. It clicked right away as they all shared an open, free approach to the music. The high energy of The Thing's playing found a fitting counterpart in Neneh's intense style. After a performance at Strand, Stockholm in March 2011, they decided to continue the collaboration resulting in their forthcoming, self-titled album, The Cherry Thing, out June 19 ...

134

Event

Celebration of Fred Smith's Birthday with Travel Through the History of Jazz: Part 2-- The Jazz Age: Swing is the Thing

Celebration of Fred Smith's Birthday with Travel Through the History of Jazz: Part 2-- The Jazz Age: Swing is the Thing

Source: Premik Russell Tubbs

Fred Smith is an icon of our times. He has amassed an incredible wealth of experience as a performing musician and jazz historian. To celebrate Fred's birthday is a celebration of Fred's life. To experience Fred Smith is but a gift! Jazz historian Clarence Irving, multi-instrumentalist Premik Russell Tubbs and many others will be on board to help make this celebration one that is fitting for Fred's 76th birthday...guaranteed to be a night you will remember for years to come. ...

137

Video / DVD

Brubeck, Desmond, Mulligan: All the Things

Brubeck, Desmond, Mulligan: All the Things

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey

The counterpoint that Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond generated in the early-to-mid 1950s leads many serious listeners to consider the period the creative height of their partnership. For all the success of their later work, including “Take Five," after the late fifties counterpoint was a less frequent, less concentrated part of their work. There were exceptions, even after the Brubeck quartet disbanded in 1969. One came during a brief stage when the temporarily reconstituted quartet featured Gerry Mulligan as the ...

168

Performance / Tour

The Thing: The Great Scandinavian Power Trio US/Canadian Tour - May 2009

The Thing: The Great Scandinavian Power Trio US/Canadian Tour - May 2009

Source: All About Jazz

By Lloyd Peterson Only once in a great while does a group of musicians come along with an inherent discipline that dares to question the realm between the known and the unknown. Mats Gustafsson, Ingebrigt Haker-Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love of the Scandinavian Power Trio, “The Thing," provide a language so determined in its musical complexity, boundaries literally and figuratively disappear. This doesn't mean that these brilliant musicians do not respect what came before them, far from it. What it means ...

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Again

Trost Records
2018

buy

Boot!

The Thing Records
2013

buy

Bag It!

Smalltown Superjazzz
2009

buy

Action Jazz

Smalltown Supersound
2006

buy

Garage

Smalltown Supersound
2004

buy

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