Universal Indians with Joe McPhee, Skullduggery

The teaming of avant titan Joe McPhee with the trio Universal Indians was an inspired idea that bears excellent fruit in the live 2014 Antwerp recording Skullduggery (Clean Feed 328). It is music with some of that classic "new thing" exuberance. It is music that Albert Ayler would have loved to be a part of!

McPhee is on saxes and pocket trumpet, John Dikeman on saxes. The two form an imposing front line with some beautifully in-your-face avant testifying. Jon Rune Strom on acoustic bass has a huge presence in the music both in the solo realm and in the ensemble. Totlef Ostvong's drumming is chargingly extroverted and always interesting.

The vehicles are collective compositions with some thematic guideposts now and again that may well be spontaneous but all the better for all that.

Both McPhee and Dikeman are in fine solo form and work in tandem together particularly well. It is great to hear Joe stretch out in flat-out free context. Truly this is a kinetic four-way blow out, infectiously forward moving and ecstatically satisfying for those who move on the free-way of uninhibited expression.

A fabulously out set! Need I say more?

Giuseppi Logan, ...and They Were Cool

When an artist is off the radar as long as Giuseppi Logan was, it is understandable if his comeback is subject to a certain amount of fits and starts. That has been the case to my ears but in his new one ...and They Were Cool (Improvising Beings 16) he is firmly in his zone. Giuseppi fronts a quartet for this one in a program of freely spinning improvisations. There's Giuseppi on alto and piano, Jessica Lurie on flute and alto, Larry Roland on bass and Ed Pettersen on electric guitar.

Now certainly Maestro Logan has never been known as a high-velocity technician and he is not that here. But he is most certainly back to full form as a free thinking, original sounding avant reedest. And his bandmates complement him contrastingly and appropriately, Jessica as an excellent front-line reedest who stylistic remains very much herself yet meshes nicely with Logan, Ed Pettersen as a very stimulating electric presence that still maintains a group balance while he brings his own line and texture weaving to the table, and Larry Roland in a nearly classically free role of foundation builder and expansion creator.

This is a new, reconstructed Giuseppi that nevertheless reminds us why he was interesting in the first place. He is brashly out in a starkly affective way here and his bandmates do much to further his vision. New-thing-ologists, take note.