Category: Album Reviews

September 22, 2020 / Album Reviews - Archive

AGAINST EMPIRE (MOD Reloaded/Redeye Worldwide) 8.5/10 Can music itself be wise, or just the people who create it? Can it perhaps impart wisdom? Certainly some profundity is layered into this album’s compositions, choice of players, improvising and production, so that, while being breathtakingly innovative, it also feels mysteriously ancient. Ever…

September 18, 2020 / Album Reviews - Archive

MORE THAN ANYTHING (Orenda) 8/10 You hear the intensity of the initial impetus: these nine compositions all relate to the love, loss and grief felt by the trombonist and composer Jon Hatamiya across nine years while supporting his mother as cancer sapped away her life. Even the unusual instrumentation plays…

September 8, 2020 / Album Reviews - Archive

THE ICE SIREN (Parade Light) 9/10 “Red roses turn to black. It’s strange how fast they die,” sings Miles Griffith as the protagonist in this modern-day variant on Orpheus and Euridice, the sheer audacity of which is as exhilarating as the music is often chilling. For five years the man…