Marius Neset - Birds (Edition)

Once you've got over your violent desire to kill drama students from looking at the artwork this is a great album. Modern jazz stuff.

Found it via a great article in The Quietus. A column all about jazz - http://thequietus.com/articles/14092-complete-communion-jazz-reviews-2

This is how they described the Marius Neset album:-

You can always expect the unexpected with Scandinavian composers. 27-year-old saxist and composer Marius Neset has been hailed "the most talented Norwegian saxophonist since Jan Garbarek in the 1960s", but Neset’s compositions range from the chattering density of Frank Zappa circa Hot Rats to the melodic hypnotism of Steve Reich. Birds is a wild, symphonic and metamorphic recording.

Don't have enough jazzbo knowledge to declare how accurate that description is but it piqued my interest and it was definitely worth it. Been playing this fairly regularly for the past month or so now.

I'd highly recommend checking out the rest of that Quietus column because it's a goldmine of great tips.

Nohome - s/t (Trost)

Caspar Brotzmann Massaker reborn!! It's Caspar Brotzmann and friends making a Massaker-esque racket in Berlin last year. If you loved the Caspar Brotzmann Massaker albums then you won't be disappointed. You've probably already got it or have at least pressed play before this paragraph has even ended.

For the uninitiated you're in for a treat. Well, as long as you like harsh experimental guitars blasting at full volume. Caspar Brotzmann is the son of notorious free jazz sax blaster Peter Brotzmann and the apple didn't fall very far from the tree.

Think 80s Sonic Youth at their wildest but more, well just more....

If stuff like The Dead C, Skullflower, Fushitsusha, Swans etc takes you're fancy then you have to check them out. He could teach black metal bands more than a thing or two about outright savage guitar playing.

He was incredible when he played Cafe Oto a while back. Fingers crossed he comes back soon.

Daniel Rosenboom - Book Of Omens

This is jazz metal with the emphasis heavily on the jazz. This Rosenboom bloke is a proper jazz bloke (a trumpeter). Watched some live videos and it's all expensive shirts and mineral water and designer glasses. No bad thing in my book. Just trying to make sure you don't think it's some kind of Naked City style long haired skronk-athon.

Imagine the jazz songs Candiria did but with Meshuggah levels of technicality played by real jazz folk. It's weird because some of the guitar playing gets pretty brtual and dissonant but it still all sounds quite smooth. You know how Sonny Sharrock just starts randomly battering his guitar in the middle of Herbie Mann stuff? A bit like that but a tech-metal version.

Oh, and it's not tech-metal in a jaw dropping WTF widdlemageddon Behold The Arctopus type way. You could probably get away with playing it in a fancy restaurant. Well, for a while. The clientele would soon be ordering their steak ultra-rare and eating it bare handed and smearing blood over themselves before demanding a human sacrifice for dessert.