Friday, September 15, 2006 ... 3:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. ... KZSU, 90.1 FM

Extra hour due to the sports schedule, which is nice because I'll be gone next Friday (taking the kids to Disneyland) (no, that's hardly my ideal vacation, but we might as well let them experience it while they're still excited about it; I'm lobbying heavily for LEGOLAND next year).

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

* Harry Miller's Isipingo -- "Which Way Now" -- Which Way Now (Cuneiform, 2006)

An offshoot of Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath (briefly noted here), but without McGregor and with bassist Miller at the helm. Same idea: Long-form jams full of joy and abandon.

Previously noted here. This track is a straight-out rock piece, with a couple of pauses for avant-style noodling.

A tribute to Pee Wee Russell, the '30s clarinetist, led by Lepage, who brings in various guest clarinetists to help him out. The CD has a swingy, old-time jazz feel throughout, with some modern touches. This is one of the more straight-swing tracks.

Released on Marco Eneidi's Botticelli label just before he left the Bay Area for an opportunity to work in Vienna. Marco always bemoaned the situation out here, and seemed to have some difficult luck as well (liner notes in one CD describe a tussel with a theater owner over the distribution of gate money, for instance). Hope he's doing well. I last played this CD on-air when I devoted half a show to Marco's music -- details here.

Nice improv session with Chris Brown (piano, electronics), Biggi Vinkeloe (sax), and Donald Robinson (drums) -- Brown and Robinson are local, and Vinkeloe, from Sweden, has passed through the area a few times, so she almost counts as local. This particular track lives up to its name, starting off quietly and blossoming into a robust improv jam. Elsewhere on the CD, "Don's Dream" features lots of Donald Robinson's deft, subtle drum rolls, one of the elements that makes his playing such a rich experience.

Fun, fast composition packed into a short but sweet (4.5 minutes) package. I always grab a few extra CDs from the library to toss into the show as the mood fits; this keeps me from leaning too much on what's in rotation (thus keeping every show from sounding alike). Ellery's stuff is a staple of that "library grab," but I don't always find the time to squeeze a track in there. Tim Berne is the other staple, of course.

Deceptively sweet jazz-guitar album. The first half is pretty and pastoral, with both acoustic and electric tracks, and it even gets boring IMHO. Later, though, come the more complex compositions, and the sinister nearly-prog-rock guitar lines. It never gets harsh, but it's certainly a deeper, more cerebral type of "guitar mellow." It's as if McCann sucked you in with four tracks of easy, comfortable stuff, then flicks the switch to bring in the harder stuff, only you don't notice because it's still in that gentle jazz-guitar style. Sort of. Maybe I'm just not hearing the right elements in those first few tracks.

* Joelle Leandre -- "Meeting One" -- At the Le Mans Jazz Festival (Leo Records, 2006)

With Maggi Nichols (vocals) and Irene Schweitzer (piano) accompanying the living-legend bassist. Previously noted here; this time, though, I played the entire 25-minute piece, which comes to an interesting closing with Nichols speaking entire sentences in French (sorry, I'm too rusty to translate) and Schweitzer dabbling on piano. Very nice stuff. This was the last week in rotation for this 2-CD set, and I do like to give air time to complete long tracks at some point in each CD's rotation time.

Solo piano piece, dynamic and pecking. Sounds like lots of fun to play, as DJ Chizzy noted in his KZSU review of the CD. The piece does go through waves of "obvious" tonality, the kinds of sentimental chords you get in pop music, actually. But it's full of what sound like demanding virtuoso twists. Ziporyn, by the way, is well known for his work with Bang on a Can.

A treat of a re-release: The only (I think) album led by Thelonious Monk's bassist. True to its word, the album brings in some sounds of Africa (an oud -- guitar-like instrument -- as the lead on this piece, for example) and puts them in a then-contemporary jazz context. Not at all alien to the music of the time, the album stays in very safe spaces while giving listeners a taste of the exotic, and pumping out some nice swinging jazz along the way. This one is a straight upbeat blues that just happens to have a long oud solo.

This inadvertently kicked off what became an all-oud set. I was searching our database for "oud" stuff, trying to recall the name of an ECM artist who plays oud, and came up with a couple of other ideas that grabbed my attention more.

Ah, how could I forget this one? Momin, on drums and percussion, uses violin and bass on most tracks, but bassist Shanir Ezra Blumenkrantz pulls out the oud for a couple of songs. There's a solo oud piece that's quite exotic; I considered that one but went instead for the full trio playing this pretty, floating tune. Ravish sent us this CD for airplay early in 2005, and it got some good attention given its mix of jazz and "world music" ideas. A little bit more info here.

So ended the oud set. Time to get into something weirder...

* Heernt -- "Quick Groove Rolling" -- Locked in a Basement (Razdaz, 2006)

Youthful-sounding downtown NYC trio that's maybe too hip for their own good. Tracks are packed with samples and some dance electronica ideas, but pushing that aside, you can hear that they've got decent chops, clever ideas, and lots of promise for doing interesting things with jazz. I'd like to hear them dig deeper into those ideas and succumb less to the easy repetition that the hipster electronica world prefers.

Previously noted here.

Previously mentioned here; this particular track starts with a violin solo and dissolves into a swirling, dark group improv -- lots of energy and a sinister tone that contrasts the chamber-music politeness felt earlier in the album. Nice stuff.

By request, as David Bug IM'ed me during the show. (I don't intentionally leave IM on during the show; other DJs use it continually, so if it's on, I'll suddenly receive a random IM from a listener. It's nice, but because I have to use IM in my day job, the app is tied to residual memories of irritation and interruptions.)

Vinny, of course, is a big part of the southern California free-jazz scene. Everybody should own at least one of the records on his Nine Winds label; this particular disk is some straight-up free jazz with a band that includes Bobby Bradford (trumpet, from one of Ornette Coleman's bands).

Previously noted here. This track is particularly intense and free, and it gets into a thundering guitar freak-out by Bruce Eisenbeil. Excellent.

From Bernstein, the trumpeter who brought you Sex Mob (see above). This time he's taking on some old-time jazz bits, and some R&B ("Signed, Sealed, Delivered") in an old-time jazz vein. This particular track starts off with a cute guitar (mandolin?) line accompanied by electric guitar and bass, a nice folky/bluesy vibe. Eventually, it builds up into some nice big horn lines, big and exciting.

Previously noted here.

Sam Rivers -- "Torch" -- Waves (Tomato, 1978)

Great free-jazz session led by Rivers, who at age 85 is still kicking. The recent issue of Signal to Noise includes a photo of Rivers at the Vision Festival in New York, and he still looks spry and lively. We need to celebrate the old cats who are still with us, instead of waiting until they're gone to enjoy their music. This was another nice vinyl find in our library; it's since been reissued on CD and isn't that hard to find.

Myles and John Raskin of ROVA have a project called "Music + One," which involves players improvising against a taped segment of someone else's improvising. It's an improv duet, but with half of the normal interaction disconnected. Cool idea, and it's got shades of the random improv shuffling on Jean Derome's Le Magasin de Tissu.

They've put out a CD related to the project, featuring 20-some examples of the taped solo improvisations for musicians to play against. The CD release party, including some performers working with the CD, was happening this coming weekend, and I wanted to promote it. Except. .... I'd taken the "Music + One" CD home to review, and forgot to bring it back. D'oh! So, I tossed on a track of Myles' solo guitar playing as a second-best example of what the project is about. I'm an idiot.

Previously noted here.

Big, dramatic stuff from the live 2-CD set of Caine's Mahler project. This track is big and stomping; the one following it, which I'll have to play another time, features the spritely springtime pleasantness of Caine's straight-jazz piano.

I wrestled with whether to put this one in rotation, as it's got an awfully soft, loungy sound. Not the kind of pigeonhole I'd like KZSU to be put in, and we certainly don't want to be receiving more of this kind of stuff. But in deference to Delmark's taste, which is more reliable than my own, and the fact that these guys are a fixture at the Green Mill, one of Chicago's best known jazz clubs, I gave it a shot, and even a spin, as you can see. Still -- the Green Mill, while I've never visited it, is familiar to far too many tourist types, never a good sign (think Knitting Factory today versus the mid-'80s). I'll take the Velvet Lounge instead, any day -- and I've discovered just this week that they've recently re-opened the place! Wonderful news -- I can't wait to get back to Chicago.

* = 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.