I think I have written here before about how I consider the duo of Seymour Wright and Sebastian Lexer to be the nearest thing we have, besides of course the Prévost/Tilbury duo, to a continuation of the spirit, sound and approach of AMM. All of the elements are there. They have each spent more than a decade working weekly with Eddie Prévost at the London improvisation workshop. Lexer studied with John Tilbury. Both have played relatively recently with Keith Rowe, and Wright is currently working on a written history/evaluation of the early years of AMM. Crucially though, besides these links they just play with the feel of AMM running through their music. This isn’t to say that the duo do not have their own voices or have arrived where they are at only because of the above mentioned factors, and I have no doubt that much of the continuum of the AMM spirit I hear in their work is a figment of my overactive imagination, but certainly there is something there, and something very wonderful. Continue reading →

A bit of an unusual post tonight. I have spent the evening over at Julie’s, and so have got home too late to write a CD review, but instead I am am going to post my brief liner notes from a CD that fell through my letterbox this morning. Nie is an album by Axel Dörner, Ernesto Rodrigues and Christine Abdelnour Sehnaoui on the Creative Sources label. I was asked, a good few months ago if I would write liner notes for the disc, which at the time I hadn’t even heard, but after listening and enjoying it a lot I wrote a couple of paragraphs that touché don my own personal attachments to the abstract forms in improvised music but (I hope) worked quite well to describe the album itself. I had actually forgotten all about this until it arrived today (Thanks Ernesto!) and I thought it would be nice, given that it is a kind of review, but also a whimsically personal little piece to post it here. So, caveats upfront, these words are I guess part of the promotion for this release, so bear that in mind. (Its a really good album though!) Continue reading →

Well its almost a week since I last wrote a CD review, so I had better do one this evening. In truth, after the weekend’s musical excesses (about twenty live sets in four days) I have been a little burned out, but have found the energy and time this evening to return to a CD I started listening too a week or more back. The things I do for you dear readers…

Tonight’s CD then is another release on the Entr’acte label, this time a solo release by the German trumpeter Birgit Ulher named Hochdruckzone. The title would seem to translate to High Pressure Zone. Ulher has been exploring the potential of the trumpet for many years now, producing some interesting albums along the way. For this new solo release she seems to push things on a little further technically, bringing in new ideas about how to extend her instrument on further and making this a more interesting release than just another solo trumpet improv album. Continue reading →