Kasper Tom 5, Ost Bingo Skruer

Kasper Tom? That's Kasper Tom Christiansen, talented Danish drummer and composer. The Kasper Tom 5 and their Ost Bingo Skruer (Barefoot Records) is the first album to enjoy major distribution. It is a good one. It is a formidable lineup with Rudi Mahall, bass clarinet, Tomasz Dabrowski, trumpet, Petter Hängsel, trombone, Jens Mikkel Madsen, bass, and of course Kasper Tom.

You may know Rudi Mahall via his fine work with pianist Aki Takahashi. The others you may not know so well. They put together, thanks in part to Tom's arrangements/compositions, a tightly knit horn section with bass and drums of a well-healed but hard-edged sort.

Everyone can solo with imagination and does. But the collective interplay between the horns and the horns versus the rhythm has pronounced excitement going for it. If you remember some of the massed horn improvs in Ornette Coleman's landmark Free Jazz album, this may sometimes remind you of that--partially because Rudi's bass clarinet with the brass has that sound, but of course these are the notes of the present, so it's something for the now we are in.

The compositions/arrangements catapult this one to a high ranking in my mind. They are the extra push that make repeated listens to the album pay off.

The Kasper Tom 5 are up there as one of my favorite new Euro-avant outfits these days. This album is one place where you will hear why.

Tarfala Trio, "Syzygy": Live in Belgium, 2009

The Tarfala Trio is a hot avant trio commodity. It's Mats Gustafsson, tenor and alto fluteophone (?), Barry Guy, acoustic bass, and Raymond Strid on drums. You might well know Matt via his association with Brotzmann's Chicago Tentet. He is a blazing gamer and has big ears to shout or whisper as needed. Barry Guy is one of the premier new jazz bassists, of course, and can solo or play ensemble with his very own sound and inventive genius. Raymond Strid plays a damned fine set of drums and adds a great deal to the trio's dynamic.

They were fortunately caught live in Belgium for a date in 2009 when they were particularly inspired. The set has come out on two vinyl LPs and a bonus six-inch disk as Syzygy (New Business NBLP 35/36).

Far be it for me to tell you what to do or think. I do suggest however that you check this one out if you can. It's a limited edition of 600 records. And it's to me one of the more creative and satisfying reed-bass-drum avant trio recordings of the year. Gustaffson flames and finesses; Guy throttles, tumbles and bows through the session with energy and musical reflexivity. Strid gives the sound leverage and drama with some well placed period-punctuating, thrashing and slapdashing.

This is one for the record-books (collection)! They are hot and give it all they've got. Trust me, it's a goodie!

Jazz Gawronski Plays Jaruzelski's Dream

A free alto-bass-drums trio comes out of a Venice-ian studio with Jaruzelski's Dream (Clean Feed 211). And what is the result? A long, most energetic set of improvisations with rock, swing and freetime flow. Franceso Cusa makes an impact with his energy drumming. Stefano Senni plies his bass with a sure sense of phrase and form. Piero Bittolo Bon often falls into repetitive phrases played with heat. That's what it is about. Mr. Bon's alto has insistency, consistency and focused variational persistency. It is his sense of structure that structures the freedom.

Now how he does that may lead some people to search for the emergency fire exit. But I suspect those sorts of people would not care for this music in any event.

It is singular, determined and overt in its overall thrust. It burns the candle at both ends and everywhere in the middle. It worries and exhausts melodic phrases and then just as willfully abandons them to move on to something new. And that's what saves the music from itself, as it were. It harps on something and then moves on, never overstaying its welcome like an overly emphatic conversatonalist at a cocktail clatch. Bon makes his point emphatically and moves on to the next station of party goers before he makes himself a bore. That's good.

This is music of interest. It is not typical of the free things out there right now. And it is controversial in how it goes about its freedom. Hey, why not shake things up a bit?