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Stephen Haynes
Photo: Rob Miller Trumpeter and cornet player Stephen Haynes will release his new album Pomegranate next month, on New Atlantis. (Pre-order it from the label physically or on Bandcamp.) The album...
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Roy Campbell
Trumpeter Roy Campbell, who died in January 2014, was a fantastic musician who bridged the gap between hard bop intensity and free jazz exploration. He could play seemingly any note on the horn,...
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JD Allen Trio
The return of the JD Allen Trio—their new album, Graffiti, is out this week; get it from Amazon—is very good news. Saxophonist Allen, bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston last appeared...
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Sonny Rollins
It’s strange, the way a brief moment in a long career—a detour, even—can become the object of intense focus after the fact. An album that isn’t seen as a landmark, or a triumph, when it’s first...
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Midyear Jazz Report
2015 is half over, and so far it’s been a pretty impressive year for jazz. Here are 20 titles released between January and June that are worth listeners’ attention. Most of them venture closer to...
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George Duke
George Duke had the kind of career nobody gets to have anymore. His discography spans highly complex progressive rock, jazz fusion, R&B and funk, Brazilian music, and combinations of all of the...
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Robert Sabin
Bassist/composer Robert Sabin‘s new album Humanity Part II, out Tuesday, features a 10-piece band that includes trumpeters Matt Holman and Dan Urness, saxophonists Aaron Irwin and Jason Rigby,...
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Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody
How should extremity in metal be defined? Decibel magazine uses the winking tagline “extremely extreme,” and devotes the majority of its coverage to a fairly narrow slice of the genre—basically, black...
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Dirty Movies
No matter how many times critics describe a movie as drawing us into its world, it will never be literally true. Watching someone else chop their way through a jungle, or wade through a swamp, does not...
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Lamb of God
In June 2012, Lamb of God vocalist D. Randall Blythe was arrested in the Czech city of Prague and charged with murder. During a performance there just over two years earlier, in May 2010, Blythe had...
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Grift
The Swedish art-metal group Grift will release their first full-length album, Syner, later this year on the Nordvis label. This follows a 2013 EP, Fyra Elegier (Four Elegies) and a 2014 split single...
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William Parker
Bassist/composer William Parker has a new three-CD box, For Those Who Are, Still, out next week on AUM Fidelity. (Buy it straight from the label for $30, or $50 for a copy signed by Parker.) It...
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Myrkur
Myrkur is the project of Danish singer-songwriter Amalie Bruun. Her work blends folk, post-rock, and black metal into a swirling, foglike sound that prioritizes none of these elements, but manages to...
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Darius Jones
Photo: Kholood Eid The fifth album in alto saxophonist and composer Darius Jones‘ continuing Man’ish Boy saga, Le bébé de Brigitte (Lost in Translation), will be released tomorrow. (Buy it from the...
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Hate Eternal
Hate Eternal‘s sixth album, Infernus, is out today. (Buy it from Amazon.) It represents change for the band, on several fronts. First and foremost, it’s their debut for Season of Mist, following three...
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Banda De Los Muertos
Banda de los Muertos is a group formed by saxophonist/clarinet player Oscar Noriega and trombonist/arranger Jacob Garchik to play the Mexican brass band music known as banda. It’s a highly traditional...
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Dead Neanderthals
Photo: Elza Zijlstra Dutch sax-drums duo Dead Neanderthals will release their latest album, Worship the Sun, on September 11 through Relative Pitch Records. The two-track disc showcases some changes to...
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Anna Thorvaldsdottir
Composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir has released two albums in the last 12 months, both of great potential interest to fans of adventurous music, whether they start from a classical, metal, or even...
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Sabbath Assembly
When percussionist David Christian and vocalist Jex Thoth formed Sabbath Assembly in 2009, the project had an explicit mission – to re-arrange and record hymns written by and for the Process Church of...
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Eighth Blackbird
The contemporary music group eighth blackbird (lowercase spelling deliberate) has been active for nearly 20 years, performing and commissioning work by composers including Steve Reich, Frederic...
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