Angles 9, Disappeared behind the sun

The band Angles 9 shows you immediately that they are taking no prisoners on their album Disappearance Behind the Sun (Clean Feed 405). Martin Kuchen, whose compositions for this nine-tet (a near big band) make for a most refreshing avant jazz offering, takes a tenor solo of a blazingly incandescent kind and then we jump right into the compositional essence of this music.

Martin is on alto and tenor, along with a very committed and effective group: Zethson on piano, Stahl on vibes, Broo on trumpet, Kajfes on cornet, Aleklint on trombone, Hegdal on baritone, Berthling on double bass, and Werlin on drums. The band has great character and plays the compositional elements with a zest and verve that bring the smoking fire of this music in full aural view. Collective improvisation, melodic abstractions and riff underpinning meld together for some wildly ecstatic jazz. Solos are peppered throughout in excellent ways. And as you listen you know that this is the music of right now, modern in its determination to go beyond, filled with soulful exuberance and downright lucid musical outbursts of brilliance.

Five compositions distinguish themselves with a band that steps forward to realize it all with a perfect zeal. Kuchen's music stands out rather unforgettably as a new something, related to what has gone before in the advanced avant echelons. Maybe you recognize a debt to George Russell in its layering of multiple lines and extroverted collectives and solos atop riffs. A debt but absolutely fresh and new for all that.

This is one hell of a set from a talented band and the sure compositional forms and substance of Martin Kuchen's enormous talent.

This album is just terrific and I cannot recommend it more highly. It points I hope to much more from Martin, for this is extraordinary!

Trespass Trio, Bruder Beda, Kuchen-Zanussi-Strid

Today, a look at an attractive release from the Trespass Trio, Bruder Beda (Clean Feed 251). It is named after (and centers around) the Jewish WWI hero, priest and minister who was persecuted and martyred by the Nazis.

Fittingly the music has a serious, sober, commemorative cast. Other than one collective improvisation, these are Martin Kuchen compositions, who plays alto and baritone. Per Zanussi is on double bass, Raymond Strid on drums.

The music is free, compositional, structured, passionate, anguished, moving. Much of the music in in a minor tonality, in keeping with the theme. On alto and baritone Martin is quite convincing and the rhythm team brings an intensity of focus to the session in keeping with Kuchen's own musical commitment.

It is one of the most distinctively alive avant trio disks to come out this year to my mind. This is music of intensity, of tenderness, rage and transcendence.

Angles 8, By Way of Deception, Live in Ljubljana

Today, the second of two Clean Feed Live at Ljubljana Jazz Festival disks covered this week (Monday I covered one by Igor Lumpert's Trio). The Swedish large ensemble Angles 8 steps forward for their lively set Angles of Deception (Clean Feed 256).

Martin Kuchen's compositions, direction, and alto sax are what is primarily motoring this band, and they come across especially here with a kind of joyful Afro-riffing that shows the positive influence of Ornette, Sun Ra, the "ethnic" side of Don Cherry and the buoyancy of Pierre Dorge's New Jungle Orchestra.

It's Martin and seven other well-healed musicians from Europe (trombone, trumpet, baritone-soprano, alto, vibes, piano, bass and drums) igniting five of Kuchen's pieces in a very lively manner.

All the front liners can solo and do so freely and sometimes collectively, while riffs and counterlines take off and rock the house.

It's a first-rate band doing first-rate music. Afro-free jazz on fire! Be sure and get an earful of this one. It's quite excellent, really. Encore!

Angles' "Epileptical West" for Some Significant Ensemble Jazz

Angles and their recent Epileptical West (Clean Feed 182) live record exemplify what a fully realized ensemble vision can do for the new music scene. Angles at this juncture is a six-man outfit. Altoist Martin Kuchen wrote the pieces in this set. The band as a whole crafted the arrangements. That band includes Mattias Stahl on vibes, Magnus Broo, trumpet, Mats Aleklint, trombone, Kjell Nordeson, drums, and Johan Berthling on the acoustic bass.

This is joyously boisterous music. The ensemble plays with a kind of boundless enthusiasm that one all-to-seldom hears today. Listen to "Pygmi" and its adaptation of the pygmy vocal style to the ensemble. It's a freely articulated full-throttle groove with convincing solos by the horns. It has that classic Art Ensemble/Archie Shepp/Sunny Murray inspired abandon, and it is not untypical of what you get on this fine release.

And like the ensembles/artists mentioned above, they can take on something like a kind of funk and transform it entirely into a freely conjoined blastout. Each of the horns gives out with strong solos, the vibraphonist is a centrifugal-centripetal force in keeping the music spinning (while also doing interesting solo work himself) and drummer Nordeson keep the spirit-level elevated with over-the-top bashing. Berthling's bass solidly pins down the bottom of the sound.

It is ultimately the sheer power of the band as ensemble that puts this recording into orbit.

Here's a band I would go see with a feeling of happy expectation. I can't always say that. The recording translates perfectly well the sort of energy a live outing quite obviously brings out in the band. Wow. What a nice thing this band is! Highly recommended.