Jason Stein / Marilyn Crispell / Damon Smith / Adam Shead â Live At The Hungry Brain (Trost)
Photo by Mike Borella / Avant Music News
Live At The Hungry Brain is the second record to result from a brief, felicitous convergence of two complex musical entities. Bass clarinetist Jason Stein, drummer Adam Shead (both from Chicago), and double bassist Damon Smith (from St. Louis) have been a tight working band for several years. Blessed by relative proximity and fired by a determination to develop their trialogue, they are a 21st century rarity â an American free improvisation ensemble with a robust regional touring schedule.
Pianist Marilyn Crispell is a long-standing, singular figure who operates in the post-Coltrane musical continuum, to borrow a term that comes from one of her key collaborators, Anthony Braxton. Besides her membership in Braxtonâs celebrate quartet with Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway, she has worked extensively as both an associate and a leader with Reggie Workman, Barry Guy, Paul Motian and Joe Lovano. Sheâs recently been recognized with a Mellon Foundation grant, the Instant Award in Improvised Music, and an NEA Jazz Master Fellowship. Now in her late 70s, she could easily settle for victory laps at high-level festivals, but instead has continued her practice of playing with younger musicians and ensembles. Sheâs the perfect candidate for a musical date with Smith, a powerful instrumentalist with a long-standing practice of engaging with inspirational elders including Peter Kowald, Wolfgang Fuchs, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Kaiser.
The trio and Crispell convened for a weekend in the middle of June 2023 to play a concert at the celebrated titular venue, followed by a day in the studio. That session yielded the CD spi-raling horn, which was released in 2024 on Sheadâs Irritable Mystic label. Live At The Hungry Brain was issued on LP by the Austrian Trost label late in 2025, but given the current needlessly chaotic state of international commerce between the USA and the rest of the world, prior to winterâs end 2026 American purchasers could not lay hands on a disc if they didnât know a member of the band.
While spi-raling horn presented the four musicians deeply mining discreet ideas, Live At The Hungry Brain captures the developmental arc of the ensemble in action. Its first track, âA Borderless Event,â unfolds over nearly 34 minutes, which wrap around the LP but come as a single file in the digital format; the second, âBone Eaten Up By Breathing,â lasts 15:42. It begins with a quietly intense exchange between bass and drums, which is quickly sharpened by short, ascending bass clarinet phrases and centered by a few strategic piano notes. From that point, the changes come quickly, but never with undue haste. The four musicians eschew the foreground/background default of jazz, instead concentrating on collective generations of energy, harmony and shape which are varied by contractions in density as one or more players drops out and the others multiply the complexity of their playing; some of the most exciting moments are duo exchanges that range from clashes of jagged sound masses to hushed dalliances in lyrical territory. Crispellâs rich chords and dizzying runs canât help but change the trioâs sound, but she is a canny guest, balancing assertiveness with suggestive enhancement. Shead and Smith are a fountain of dynamic, aerated sound, by turns bursting, prodding and subliminal. And Stein sounds just great in this setting, freed of the role constraints that distill his playing in Natural Information Society and able to draw support from Crispellâs voluminous harmonic contributions. His intricate exhortations balance the turbulent romanticism of Crispellâs playing; this splendid performance engages the heart as well as the brain.
The music plays on through the end of the most disastrous summer in living memory, with Maui on fire and Arizona broiled beneath a heat dome and Vermont swept away in a 100- maybe 500-year flood. And hereâs the kicker: next year will likely be worse. Still by force of habit, we continue on with the daily grind, cooking and mowing lawns and going to shows and listening to records. This monthâs haul includes avant-black metal, turntablism, bass-forward jazz, jolting punk and music made in collaboration with our robot overlords. Contributors this time include Jonathan Shaw, Bill Meyer, Jim Marks, Jennifer Kelly, Tim Clarke and Bryon Hayes.
In past thinking and writing about this tri-continental, avant-garde, jazz and black metal project (whose name translates to Sleepwalker), your faithful reviewer has made concerted efforts to set aside any references to John Zornâs Naked City ensemble. This time around, for the projectâs Skopophoboexoskelett, such efforts face real challenge holding Naked City tracks like âSaigon Pickup,â âPunk China Dollâ or âRazorwireâ at any sort of distance. The atmospherics on Sleepwalkerâs new LP explode with unpredictable noise, then emanate a patina of Noir-ish style and sleaze, especially the excellent final track âThe Bad Luck That Saved You from Worse Luck.â Itâs murky like a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, sexy like a stiletto heel dotted with droplets of blood, compelling like those cinematic moments at which Humphrey Bogart (as Philip Marlowe or Glenn Griffin) would grin his mean and tight grin, presaging antic, joyful violence. In spite of that violence, Skopophoboexoskelett may be Sleepwalkerâs most listenable record. That could be a good or a bad thing, depending on how much you enjoyed being subsumed in the volatile chaos of their earlier records.
Jonathan Shaw
Agnel / Lanz / Vatcher â Animals (Klanggalerie)
Animals by AGNEL LANZ VATCHER
While the ability of great improvisers to make music out immediate company, available space, and their own personal resources might amaze a listener, after a while, that might become a bit routine. Perhaps that is why French pianist Sophie Agnel and American-born, Netherlands-based drummer Michael Vatcher have sought out the company of turntablist Joke Lanz, AKA Sudden Infant. Lanzâs aesthetics have grown out of punk, noise and actionism. But, being a man of a certain age, heâs been doing what he does for a long time, too, so his onslaught of well-timed body noises, electronic squiggles and good old-fashioned scratching further confounds by evading being confounding. Construction, destruction, mutual disregard and scrupulous attunement all come into play across this albumâs 13 short-for-improv episodes of absurd grace. Never mind breaking this stuff down, the players are already doing that even as they make it up.
Bill Meyer
Vicente Archer Trio â Short Stories (Cellar Music Group)
Short Stories by Vicente Archer
Reviewing a release by the Bruce Barth Trio last year, I mentioned wanting to hear more of double bassist Vicente Archer, and my wishes have been answered. Short Stories, with Gerald Clayton on piano and Bill Stewart on drums, demonstrates Archerâs strengths as a musician and composer. The tunes are generally mid-tempo, mid-length, and with a kind of timeless post-bop feel. Three were written by Archer (âBye Nashvilleâ deserves to become a standard), two by Stewart, and one each by Clayton, Jeremy Pelt, Nicholas Payton and Pat Metheny.
An advantage of bassist-led piano trios is that the piano is usually not allowed to dominate the sound, and Clayton plays his role just right here, taking the occasional solo, as on the bluesy âRound Comes Round,â but giving the others plenty of space. The set includes a brooding solo piece for bass, âLighthouse,â a playful duo featuring just Archer and Stewart, âIt Takes Two to Know One,â and Stewart sitting out while Clayton and Archer recreate âMessage to a Friendâ by Metheny and Charlie Haden. Short Stories makes clear why Archer has appeared on 50 or more recordings over the past 25 years and makes the case for him as a band leader.
Jim Marks
BEEF â BEEF (Feel It)
BEEF by BEEF
BEEF jolts hard on the four-four, their songs a continuous up-and-down battery of guitar slashes, bass thunks and relentless, manic drums. There is nothing fancy or florid or even fluid about these songs. They rain down like punches, though thereâs undeniable glee in the violence. Maybe itâs because the drummer, Takoda Hortenberry, is the main singer and songwriter that the songs take on such a percussive air. Heâs not in it by himself, though. His wife Ally pounds the keyboards with equal force, while guitarist Sam Richardson (who also runs Feel It Records) keeps the riffs super short and super explosive. Whatever the secret, this is punk rock that slaps hard and makes you like it. âI know you want it! BEEF coming,â shouts Hortenberry in the closer, âI Want BEEF,â and the thing is, you do.
Jennifer Kelly
Jaap Blonk / Damon Smith / Ra Kalam Bob Moses â Rune Kitchen (Balance Point Acoustics)
Rune Kitchen by Jaap Blonk / Damon Smith / Ra Kalam Bob Moses
Titles can tell you things, and in this case, the words on the front clue you to the lack of words in the music. Texts have their place in Jaap Blonkâs concrete poetry, but this session is improvisation most pure. It went down in a town near St. Louis during a transitional moment; bassist Damon Smith was ending one short tour with Blonk, and about to begin another with (now Memphis-based) veteran drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses. Perhaps inspired by anticipation, Smith and Moses lock right in, playing briskly evolving sound configurations that bristle with forthright gesture and woody texture and even confronting the vocalist with swinging, time-keeping grooves near the end. Derek Bailey once opined that there are players, and then there are artists, and Blonkâs extension of century-deep Dada actions has often seemed to put him in the latter camp. But he also has a skilled improviserâs ability to detect prevailing winds and respond with strategic counter-huffs; in the company of two men playing their asses off, he follows suit. Unburdened by pages, he digs deep into the rudiments, growling like a fever dream of throat singing, muttering strings of phonemes, and uttering proclamations that sound so important, he had to invent a new language to convey them.
Bill Meyer
Cloudland Canyon â S-T (Medical)
Cloudland Canyon (MR-091) by Cloudland Canyon
Cloudland Canyonâs Kip Uhlhorn has long favored the non-organic end of the psychedelic experience, with long, wigged out experiments in synth tone like 2008âs âKrautwerkâ from Lie in Light or the squiggly fogs of âpinklight/versionâ from 2011âs Fin Eaves. Â For this self-titled album, number four in the Cloudland discography, he engages even more deeply with the machine by tapping AI as a collaborator. The result is blippy, buoyant, denatured dance anthems, like âInternet Dreamsâ and âCircuit City,â which sound like the mathematical average of 100 other synth popiscles. Still even robots hit the mark occasionally, and âFuture Perfect (Bad Decision)â is a woozy, blurred rainbow of psych pop longing, not unlike the work of another recent Uhlhorn collaborator, Sonic Boom.
Jennifer Kelly
Annie Hart â Weight of a Wave (Uninhabitable Mansions)
The Weight of a Wave by Annie Hart
Annie Hart has made four solo albums since her days in Au Revoir Simone, an all-female Brooklyn synth pop trio beloved of David Lynch, but she hasnât moved too far away. Weight of a Wave floats flickery synth tones over rackety drums, splitting the difference between bedroom pop and strobe lit dance. âBoy You Got Me Goodâ does the classic girl-group trick of lacing sweet cooing melodies with the bitter taste of arsenic. âCrowded Cloudâ rides synthesizer overload like a Pat Benatar anthem, then cuts back to the antsy minimum of drum machine and whispered chants. Yet though the soft-focus, gentle bop sonics havenât changed much from Hartâs Au Revoir Simone days, time does its work on the mood. âNothing Makes Me Happy Anymoreâ layers shadowy doubled vocals over a wheedling Casio riff, as Hart enumerates the people sheâs loved in various ways whose phone calls no longer suffice to cheer her up
Jennifer Kelly
Holy Wave â Five of Cups (Suicide Squeeze)
Five of Cups by HOLY WAVE
Austin, Texas quartet Holy Wave have been at it for over a decade now and Five of Cups is their sixth full-length. The band mines a similar seam to Work and Non-Work-eraBroadcast: droning organs, motorik drums heavy on the ride cymbal, spaced-out vocals, jangly guitars. Though thereâs nothing inherently off-putting about this 42-minute record, the songs feel listless compared to previous efforts such as Freaks of Nurture. The performances are tight, the production is three-dimensional and the arrangements are woozy and trippy, but it sounds like the last couple of years have knocked the wind out of Holy Waveâs sails. There are some bright moments in the track list, such as the dubby grooves and female vocals of âThe Darkest Timeline,â plus late highlight âNothing in the Dark,â which is a dead ringer for early Tame Impala.
Tim Clarke
Koeosaeme â Beige (Orange Milk)
Beige by koeosaeme
With Beige, sound artist Ryu Yoshizawa throttles down his usual breakneck blipscapes in favor of expressive phrasing and varied tempos. The serial Orange Milk resident allows his compositions to breathe, to hang back and to interject when necessary. His palette remains obviously synthetic: the strings are a touch too sweet, the reeds slightly nasally. Yoshizawa coalesces these inhuman tones into lush dreamscapes, embedded with only the subtlest hint of crackling glitch. He leverages the dynamics of modern classical and musique concrète to achieve a sense of movement and surprise. Coughs, harrumphs and whispers interject at random, but Yoshizawa uses these human elements sparingly. Instead, he relies on the lushness of his (synthetic) instrumentation to set the mood. At times he lets things get a little corny, such as when a Kenny G-like sax periodically slithers into focus, but for the most part Yoshizawaâs futuristic fusion is beguiling. Unlike its neutrally hued namesake, Beige is far from boring. Â
Bryon Hayes
Molly Ringworm â Despicable (Self-released)
This Molly Ringworm comes from Austin, TX, and seeks to do for hardcore what Jane Pain has done for black metal (careful with this link). Yikes. Despicableâssongs land somewhere between energizing provocation and snotty gross-out, with the occasional nods to street punk and sludge. Thereâs another punky Molly Ringworm â an indie-twee outfit from Jersey whose music is more compatible with the 1980s cinema of John Hughes, with which actress Molly Ringwald will forever be associated. I prefer this band, with their snarling, trashy anti-aesthetic and their nasty sonic sensibility (which may put you in the mind of Ringwaldâs work in Cindy Shermanâs Office Killer). So goes culture. I had a high school girlfriend in the mid-1980s who looked a lot like the actress, and she (the girlfriend) would spit with all the imperiousness and venom that only a 17 year old can summon, âOh great, another movie with Molly Ring-worm.â Sorry, folks â doesnât matter to me if youâre filthy, fractious Texas guttersnipes or ironical white kids from New Jersey. Susie E. from Berks County, PA, gets dibs on the name âMolly Ringworm,â now and forever.
Jonathan Shaw
Matt Robidoux â Music For Aluminum Corn (Crash Symbols)
music for aluminum corn by matt robidoux
Mills College may be shuttered, but its students carry on. Matt Robidoux combines symbolic and social action with accessible invention on Music For Aluminum Corn. The title derives from an instrument that the Mills graduate devised in homage to an early Buchla synthesizer that was kept at Mills. Essentially, they wired up an aluminum casting of two corn cobs to make a touch and movement-activated electronic instrument, and then called upon their fellow graduates to help him take it for a drive. A string quartet, a reed ensemble and the other instruments in Robidouxâs studio round out the sound palette, which is applied to a series of themes which, depending on their arrangement, sound like 1970s TV show themes, syndrum exotica and texture-oriented investigations. Robidouxâs electronic instrument proves more versatile than its novelty packaging might success, and the assembled crew play with a commitment to the endeavor that signals this heartening piece of news; while Mills College isnât around anymore, the artistic community it fostered caries on.
Bill MeyerÂ
Spiral Joy Band â Elvehjem (Feeding Tube)
Elvehjem by Spiral Joy Band
Without Saturn, you got no rings, right? Itâs easy to see Spiral Joy Band as a similarly orbital entity, forever existing in relation to its parent band, Pelt. But, just as all those hunks of space rock would feel equally substantial if your rocket ship hit them whilst circling a planet or floating on their own through the galaxy, Spiral Joy Band has demonstrated on the recent archival recordings culled from its Wisconsin sojourn in the early 2010s, it has been its own thing, and that thing is pretty solid. Elvehjem is another album-length excerpt from Patrick Best, Mikel Dimmick and Troy Schaferâs trove of basement jams, and on this one, they assert an identity separate from Pelt. Sure, thereâs plenty of long bell and gong tones, but thereâs also some guitar and amp activity thatâll singe your whiskers with sheer crackle action.
Bill Meyer
Heleen Van Haegenborgh â Squaring The Circle (El Negocito)
Squaring the Circle by Heleen Van Haegenborgh
Sometimes, awareness of an artistâs inspiration will help you grasp their work. With Squaring The Circle, thatâll only get you so far. Squaring The Circle is Belgian composer Heleen Van Haegenborghâs response to Johan De Widleâs Pi â Fugue pour les survivants, a graphic piece representing the number pi which is extended each year by its maker. While the mathematic foundation of this CD-length pieceâs contents are hard to discern, their sounds just might give you a glimpse into the infinite. Performed by the composer and GAME, a percussion quartet, it combines the reverberant tones of drums, vibraphones, bells and other strikable metal objects with close-up, voltage-derived zaps. Even coming out of a home hi-fi, it creates a sense of ever-expanding space.
Joe Morris/Damon Smith â Gusts Against Particles (Open Systems)
Gusts Against Particles by Joe Morris / Damon Smith
What makes an improvisation good? Students ask that question, and teachers fumble for answers. The world is the proverbial oyster where this superficially naĂŻve but all-important binary construction is concerned. Listening? Form and category? Intention? Technique? Rapport, Environment or some combination? This discâs annotator, the superb guitarist Henry Kaiser, might point to some balance of freedom and discipline, and for the moment, especially regarding this meeting of guitarist Joe Morris and bassist Damon Smith, that seems as good a path toward the golden mean as any.
An opening chord from Morris is answered by Smith, with instantaneous telepathy, by a two-note idea that makes the whole sound like some kind of James Brown funky break, but just as quickly, itâs abandoned. So much for category and form, but thereâs a load of discipline behind the cultural bait and switch, whatever the trials and tribulations of intention might entail. The exchange is breathtaking in its rapid fluency, almost as mesmerizing as the moment 14 seconds into âMomentum Redoublingâ where the duo comes to rest on what my European-trained ears insist on calling a third, with Smithâs arco floating as Morrisâ whistle-clean guitar tone resonates and fades.
Then, thereâs the answer, that indefinable series of spaces where one element leads to another with something like frank inexorability. Kaiser really does get to the heart of the matter. The musicianâs language is intuitive, and the excitement comes when listening necessitates an on-the-toes approach to the point where guesswork and resolution join forces, where forms create themselves. Those are the best moments. The contrapuntal territory inhabited by much of the music does nothing to pave the way for âEqualization Staggeringââs rough and rowdy timbral intrigue. Initial articulation births low-register harmonies that donât so much define as emerge, any implication only half-audible in the varied sonic density, but thatâs only a part of the story. Like the Buddhaâs raised flower, everything expands in significance, sympathetic vibrations and the artifacts of strings against bow and fingers opening doors to the patient perceiver. Every tremolo and fragmentation during the first minute and 42 seconds can be traced back to the initial tiny big bang. Is Morris bowing?
The wonder of it all resides in what it would be useless, and ultimately misleading, to call spontaneity. Total immersion might be closer, the ever-present juxtaposition of pasts in the ever-present of harmonious conflict. Howâs that for a binary in search of disillusion?
Tanja Feichtmair/ Damon Smith/ Gino Robair â The Shrilling of Frogs (Balance Point Acoustics)
Recordings are by their very nature an imperfect medium for historical measure. As fixed points in time they can only illustrate development by comparison. Connections and inferences made by these means are bound to leave out information and so conclusions must be qualified. The Shrilling of Frogs is one such connective dot, rescued and refurbished from bassist Damon Smithâs tape cache in a fortuitous moment when it literally in his words, âfell out of a box.â
Itâs evocative of time in his career when he was deeply embedded in the improvised music community of Oakland, California. Percussionist Gino Robair was a regular confrere. Austrian reedist Tanja Feichtmair was presumably visiting. The trio booked some studio time and improvised thirteen pieces of music. English translations from the work of Austrian author Ingeborg Bachman served as track titles. Weasel Walter took a crack at mastering the session and improved on the already impressive original acoustics that retain every tweak, torque and twist alongside even the quietest creak or murmur.
Much of the music embodies a three-way conversation. Smith and Robair overlap in their exploitation of bowed surfaces. Bass strings vibrate from applied bow while cymbal edges sing with application scraped and rubbed objects. Feichtmair often gets remarkably close to these sonorities by altering her embouchure and constricting exhalation of breath. Tones and drones of varying lengths layer and elide to create undulating waves of striated sound. Similarities to European Free Improvisation past and then-present are arguable, but the trio works studiously within their own cul de sac without feeling derivative or repetitive.
Smith is careful to note the age and circumstances of the recording, but doesnât attach any other firm ascriptions other than to bemusedly reflect that itâs rare to find such an aurally-immaculate artifact. That summation ends up an insightful analogue to the music, which is indicative of a specific place and time, but not necessarily representative of anything beyond that specificity. Taken on those refreshingly open-ended terms, itâs an hour-exactly, well spent.
