Category: Album Reviews

September 6, 2019 / Album Reviews - Archive

TRANSIENTS VOLUME 1 (AK) 9/10 You can hear pianist Andrea Keller scraping the irrelevances from her art like unwanted skin. Always a fine composer, she has honed and polished these pieces with a crystal clarity about each sound-world and the direction the improvising should take. Musings is a robust framework…

September 1, 2019 / Album Reviews - Archive

CLASSIC CABARET RARITIES (Rouseabout) 7.5/10 Had his music not done the job, Astride Bruant’s immortality was assured by Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters famously depicting the singer-songwriter in black hat and scarlet scarf. A third of this album focuses on Paris circa 1880-1900, featuring Bruant’s scowling view of a corrupted world. Robyn Archer’s…

August 30, 2019 / Album Reviews - Archive

IN THE ORBIT OF RA (Strut/Planet) 8/10 The Sun Ra canon is an intergalactic gold mine that keeps on giving. Some live recordings and B-sides are for completists only, but this double-album (which first appeared in 2014) is a must. Setting it apart from the plethora of compilations is the…