trio

Two albums that I’ve been procrastinating over for a few months, Vijay Iyer’s Historicity and Ben Allison’s Think Free has been topping nearly all the noteworthy jazz lists. Historicity is the effort of a piano trio with Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums, but it’s not a standard piano jazz album.

Back to our usual programme, here’s a review I promised you before our holiday break, the new effort by Marc Ribot’s power trio Ceramic Dog, “Party Intellectuals” out on Pi Recordings.

Marc Ribot going wild with Yezriel, a bluesy song off his new album on Tzadik with a powerful riff on the wonderful Book of Angels and Mr. Scofield covering Rolling Stones’ unforgettable single Satisfaction.

We’ve been slacking on posting avantjazz for a while since I haven’t found anything notable to listen these days (care to help? comment pls.) so here’s 2006’s Action Jazz by Mats Gustafsson’s The Thingon Smalltown Supersound.

I was searching for videos of the NYC avant jazz rock power trio Rashanim on the net for some time to no avail. A few days ago I saw that they announced a live video on their myspace page. Quickly checking it revealed not one but 4 complete Rashanim pieces played live at Bowery Poetry Club!!.

Rashanim is guitarist Jon Madof, bassist Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz (who was also playing the upright bass on the awesome Filmworks XVIII CD by Zorn this year.) and drummer Mathias Kunzli. They’re a highly electric and rocking trio unlike some of their Tzadik buddies, that’s why they were given the chance to do the 5th Masada Anniversary title : Masada Rock, where I first heard their name.

Hailing from Animal Collective’s record label Paw Tracks who also hosts artists like Ariel Pink and Terrestrial Tones, First Nation has been THE band of August for me.

Played beautifully by Jamie Saft on Piano, Greg Cohen (Masada, Ornette Coleman) on bass and Ben Perowsky (Uri Caine, John Scofield) on drums, the Tzadik label has been giving Jewish music a revamp through the last few years.