Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut's Incendiary "Allemansratten"

From time to time I've been taking a look at Ayler Records' Download Only releases, which form a rather considerable body of work. Today we consider Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut's Allemansratten (Ayler Download 045).

This is a free-blowing date with Mike Fortune on drums, Mr. Shurdut on electric guitar and the three-horn lineup of Blaise Siwula, Ras Moshe and Nick Gianni (with Gianni also playing some Mandolin). It was recorded in the summer of 2005 at Fortune in Brooklyn, NY.

Jeffrey has been quite prolific in recent years with CD-ROM releases of free music. One might dub him the Eddie Condon of free jazz, in the sense that his guitar work on the date at hand is more felt than heard, and his principal role here is as organizer and facilitator.

There's a motif in seven that starts things off. From there the music centers around the free-blowing, collective improvising of the three saxophonists and the post-Sunny-Murray drumming of Mr. Fortune, for the most part.

What's nice about this one is the inspired saxophony. Each player has a distinct sound and attack, and they work together in classically free ways.

In the end I felt the exhilaration of the energy surge such impassioned free playing can bring. I also was left with the desire to hear more! This is a nice one if you like the free blowout. It goes for $10. See the Ayler link on this site.

Ras Moshe, Avant Reedman of Note

Ras Moshe is one of those artists on the New York avant jazz scene who should be heard by anyone interested in the music. He plays tenor, soprano, flute and bass clarinet with fire and musical intelligence. I suppose you could say he is post-Trane in his outlook. That only means that late Coltrane forms one of the starting points for the directions he moves in. He has a number of albums out, but today I only want to call attention to the interesting assortment of video clips of Ras in performance that you can experience on You Tube. For a start, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r99VF4E23l8. You'll find Ras in a number of worthy contexts, from duos to fairly large groups.

He's a player that needs to be recorded more often. Go over to You Tube and you'll hear why. We'll come back to his music in later posts. In the meantime give his music a listen.