Friday, January 28th, 2005 ... 3:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

Not that listeners would care, but I'm finally back to full strength after a tough bout with the flu, the worst cold/flu I've gotten in maybe 20 years. Ugh. Seemed only appropriate to bring out the Karen Mantler track to celebrate.

Stanford Baseball will be stealing the last 75 minutes of my time slot for 4 or 5 weeks starting today ... but today's game got rained out. Ah, kismet!

Format:
ARTIST -- "TRACK TITLE" -- ALBUM TITLE (LABEL, YEAR)

? Karen Mantler and Her Cat Arnold -- "The Flu" -- Get the Flu (Watt, 1990)

* Lou Grassi Quartet -- "Avanti Galoppi" -- Avanti Galoppi (CIMP, 2004)

* Michael Khoury, Jason Shearer, Benjamin Hall -- "Motive 10" -- Braille (Public Eyesore, 2004)

* Big Satan (Tim Berne, Marc Ducret, Tom Rainey) -- "Geez" -- Souls Saved Hear (Thirsty Ear, 2004)

* Tim Berne -- "Twisted/Straight Jacket" [excerpt] -- The Shell Game (Thirsty Ear, 2001)

* Yeah No -- "Camper Giorno" -- Swell Henry (Squealer, 2004)

Lots of great "downtown" scenesters under one roof: Chris Speed, Jim Black, Cuong Vu, Skuli Sversson, and guests. These are like instrumental rock pieces, and mellow ones at that -- atmospheric, chill-out beats with a soulful sense of harmony. Wouldn't be out of place with the indie crowd (how cool would it be to get these guys in at SXSW!?)

* CKW Trio -- "Alex in Wonderland" -- The Is (Black Hat, 2004)

* Martin Tetreault and Otomo Yoshihide -- "Lyon No. 1" -- 1. Grrr (Ambiances Magnetiques, 2004)

Modular Set -- "How Thinking Goes Wrong" [excerpt of parts 1 and 2] -- Modular Set (Bum Trouble, 2000)

* Ben Schwendener and Uwe Steinmetz -- "June 13th" -- Apfelschaun (Gravity, 2003)

Sam Rivers -- "Turquoise" -- Hues (ABC, 1975)

* ECFA Trio -- "Faruq's Tone Row" -- Die Faden (Pecan Crazy, 2004)

Sax-violin-drums trio from the Austin, Texas, area. The CD alternates between nicely paced free-jazz jams and more serious, chamber-music-sounding jams. Lots of improvising in either case. This particular track, one of the active jazzy ones, was inspired by Faruq Z. Bey. So, I followed it up with one of Faruq's most recent tracks.

Faruq Z. Bey -- "The Call" -- Auzar: Live at CMU Park Library Auditorium (Entropy Stereo, 2004)

* Kali Z. Fasteau with Bobby Few, piano -- "Riding the Crests" -- Making Waves (Flying Note, 2004)

Another great album of home-recorded free-jazz from multi-instrumentalist Fasteau. On this disk she's teamed up with either Kidd Jordan's power-punch tenor sax or Bobby Few's grand, rolling piano. And on a couple tracks, all three combine with other musicians for a nice little jam.

! Dave Alvin -- "Black Haired Girl" -- Ashgrove (Yep Roc, 2004)

Oh, what the heck. Dave's playing at the Great American Music Hall tomorrow night, and he got a cool writeup in the San Francisco Bay Guardian this week.

* Rudresh Mahanthappa -- "English" -- Mother Tongue (Pi Recordings, 2004)

* Triage -- "2187" -- American Mythology (Okka Disk, 2004)

* Sonore (Mats Gustafsson, Peter Brotzmann, Ken Vandermark) -- "Blessed Assurance, Uninsured" -- No One Ever Works Alone (Okka Disk, 2004)

* James Finn Trio -- "Walking with Angels" -- V/A: CIMPosium Volume 14 (CIMP, 2004)

* Axolotl -- [Untitled Track 3] -- Axolotl (Psych-o-Path, 2004)

Local noise band that got a front-page writeup this week in SF Weekly.

* Matthew Shipp -- "Blood 2 the Brain" -- Harmony and Abyss (Thirsty Ear, 2004)

* Matt Davignon -- "Track 8" -- Music at 1/4 Speed (Edgetone, 2003)

A cool "noise" idea: drones consisting of super-slowed-down elements of what were originally pop songs. Lots of "ugly" sounds on the disks, but a few tracks -- this one, f'r instance -- have their ambient/mellow side.

Vijay Iyer -- "Trident" -- Architextures (Asian Improv/Red Giant, 1998)

* Gold Sparkle Trio with Ken Vandermark -- "Architexture #12" -- Brooklyn Cantos (Squealer, 2004)

* = Item in KZSU rotation
! = Pop anomaly
? = Item not in KZSU library

-- Go back to Memory Select playlists.
-- Bay Area free/improv music calendar: http://www.bayimproviser.com.