Slift
Stoner rock/stoner metal is not for everyone. Most of the time, it’s not for me. I don’t smoke weed, for one thing. So the music’s essential qualities — slow to mid-paced fuzz riffs, throbbing beats,...
View ArticleUriah Heep
If the name Uriah Heep rings a bell for you at all, it’s almost certainly for one song: “Easy Livin’,” from their fourth album, 1972’s Demons and Wizards. And that’s a great song, but they’ve made 21...
View ArticleDave Liebman
Below are some excerpts from an interview with saxophonist Dave Liebman. I had planned to include him in the “fusion season” of the BA podcast last year, but the recording wasn’t good enough, and...
View ArticleMuslimgauze
Does anyone remember Muslimgauze? It was the creative outlet of Bryn Jones, a man from England who was basically a human assembly line, extruding close to 100 albums’ worth of material over the course...
View ArticleNyrkkitappelu
Back in December of 2016, I traveled to Helsinki, Finland to cover the annual We Jazz Festival for the New York City Jazz Record. The festival was a blast; shows were held in unorthodox venues like a...
View ArticleMatthew Shipp In 2003
I’ve been friends with Matthew Shipp for almost 25 years. I’d already been listening to his music for a year or two before we met for the first time at the Vision Festival in 1998, where I saw him...
View ArticleFire Into Music
I see a lot of people talking about seeing live music lately. Excited posts about festival lineups (Big Ears, which was this past weekend, has been the big one, but there are others, too), bitter...
View ArticleShizuka
Shizuka were a Japanese band, named for lead vocalist and songwriter Shizuka Miura. The core lineup also included her husband, guitarist Maki Miura, who was also in Les Rallizes Dénudés and...
View ArticleRichard Davis
Richard Davis turned 93 last week. He was born in Chicago on April 15, 1930, and studied under the legendary Captain Walter Dyett at DuSable High School. He got his first big professional break...
View ArticleWillie Jones III
In the introduction to his 1985 book Rhythm-a-Ning, Gary Giddins writes, “When we talk about a renaissance in jazz, we are talking about a wealth of interesting music, not a broad-scaled awakening of...
View ArticleAir Raid
At least once a week, I scan Bandcamp’s front page, searching for new jazz and metal releases. As one might expect, the decision to listen is often based on cover art. (Jazz artists: GET BETTER COVER...
View ArticleHoly Tongue
Mark Stewart died last month at 62. I didn’t know much about him — for example, I was shocked to learn that he was 6’6”. I owned one of his albums, Metatron, when I was in high school. I bought it...
View ArticleRuth Anderson & Annea Lockwood
Ruth Anderson was born in Kalispell in 1928, the daughter of a forester with the Montana State Forestry Division. She went to the University of Washington, earning a bachelor’s degree in flute...
View ArticleBernt Rosengren
Swedish saxophonist Bernt Rosengren died last week at 85. Born on Christmas Eve 1937, he was one of the most important figures in Nordic jazz. As this Göteborgs-Posten obituary points out, he won the...
View ArticleAnna Thorvaldsdottir
I’m kind of astonished to realize I’ve been listening to composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music for almost a decade. I first heard her work in 2015, when she released two albums within 12 months....
View ArticleDissonant Death Metal
I’ve been listening to metal for 40 years. I don’t know how I first heard their music, I think I saw the video for “Heading Out to the Highway” from Point of Entry at the home of a friend who had...
View ArticleThe Brotz & The Gnawa
What does religious music mean to the unbeliever? I’ve spent a significant portion of my life considering this question, and speaking only for myself, the answer varies. I was raised Roman Catholic,...
View ArticleCavalera
I’ve been a fan of Max Cavalera’s music for 30 years, off and on. I saw Sepultura in 1993 or maybe 1994 at the Newark, NJ shithole Studio One; they were touring in support of their then-new album...
View ArticleLockjaw
A few years ago, I read a book that absolutely spun my head around. Soul Jazz: Jazz in the Black Community, 1945-1975 was written and self-published by Bob Porter, who was a legend in the jazz...
View ArticleNeil Young
I am not a diehard Neil Young fan. His catalog is much too deep and expansive for me to spend my finite mortal lifespan wading through it all, but when he cranks up his electric guitar, he hits my...
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