contemporary

A sublime cerebral jazz mix for your Mind, by our collaborator Cenk Akyol. This is a seamless B&W trumpet jazz with some ethnic stylings, feat. Erik Truffaz, Herbie Mann, Brad Mehldau, Chris Botti, Dhaffer Youssef, Nguyen Le. & others.

Strong contender for the best album of the year In the Country’s “Whiteout” is transcendal music at its best. Norwegian trios third album on Rune Grammofon is a one-of-a-kind mixture of contemporary jazz (or post-jazz) progressive music and classical composition.

One of the most advanced new generation jazz composer/players is undoubtedly NYC’s Steve Lehman. In fact he can easily be singled out as the most exciting in recent years. His newest album Travail, Transformation and Flow on Pi Records continues to explore the idiosyncratic Lehman sound familiar from 2007’s “On Meaning“, with 8 people this time.

Polish artist Michael Jacaszek makes cinematic electroacoustic music. It is sad and totally b&w as if watching a post-WWII movie set among the ruins of war. Yet beautiful string arrangements from violinist Stefan Wesolowski and cellist Ania Smiszek-Wesolowska alongside Maja Sieminska’s choral work add an ethereal mystical beauty to the gloomy clickbeats.

Sophomore mix in the Classic & Modern series by Cenk Akyol. The tracklist should make your mouths water, where else would you see, Pete Namlook, Claude Debussy, Handel, Morricone, Bartok, Ielasi and Porn Sword Tobacco mixed. Must get this if you’re into contemporary classical and noise, microsound and ambient soundscapes.

Oy! Back from what seems to be the last vacation of this summer. Let’s end the one week drought with one of the best albums of 2008, from the powerhouse sextet of the downtown scene (which I’ve been holding back since April).

I’m a huge fan of Michigan’s Nomo, No.7 on my last.fm after a total of ~110K listens, which means something. I’ve been listening to their new one Ghost Rock for a month or so and it’s simply another amazing album under their belt. I first heard the term Post Fela Afrobeat while reading reviews of their previous album “New Tones” on the net.

Can’t remember where I read about Steve Lehman’s 2007 effort, might be on Allaboutjazz or Downtown, but I was intrigued to see this 28 year old (same age as me!) saxophonist named on top of best album charts. So I hunted down his “On Meaning” album on Pi Recordings.