Review: Jesse Dulman Quartet Live at Downtown Music Gallery, April 29, 2018

Guest Writer: Vanessa Vargas The DMG 27th Anniversary Series of Sonic Celebrations continued on the evening of April 29th with the Jesse Dulman Quartet. Located in Chinatown, the Downtown Music Gallery is a long-running and internationally known record store. Playfully coined during the concert as “the only avant-garde jazz store still on the planet,” it

Review: Billington/Shippy/Wyche

Drummer Ben Baker Billington and guitarists Mark Shippy and Daniel Wyche unite for their first recording: a 47-minute, ripping, hypnotic improvisation in three parts, released last year on Austin-based record label and multimedia imprint, Astral Spirits. Billington, Shippy, and Wyche are all heavy-hitters in Chicago experimental and DIY music. Billington drums with ONO, the Industrial

Playlist for the Week of May 7, 2018

Corima (Andrea Calderon, Paco Casanova, Patrick Shiroishi, Ryan Kamiyamazaki, Sergio Sanchez Ravelo) – Amaterasu (Soleil Zeuhl, 2018) Pharoah Sanders Quintet – self-titled (ESP-Disk’, 1965) [vinyl] Weasel Walter, Henry Kaiser, Damon Smith – Plane Crash (ugExplode, 2009) Quin Kirchner – The Other Side of Time (Astral Spirits, 2018) [double vinyl] Weasel Walter – A Pound of Flesh (self-released, 2017) [disc

Review: Viv Corringham and Nicola Hein Live at Outskirts, May 6, 2018

The remarkable aesthetic resonance of British vocalist Viv Corringham and German guitarist Nicola Hein was on display at the Outskirts series in East New York on Sunday night, May 6. The two quickly calibrated to each other in this freely improvised piece. They opened with percussive vocal clicks and low, faintly rumbling guitar. Corringham worked

Playlist for Week of April 30, 2018

Alessandro Cortini – Avanti (Point of Departure, 2017) [vinyl] Roscoe Mitchell Solo – Live at the Muhle Hunziken (Cecma, 1987) [vinyl] Keir Neuringer & Matthew Wright – Speak Cities (Spectral Motif, 2017) A Pride of Lions (Daunik Lazro, Joe McPhee, Joshua Abrams, Guillaume Seguron, Chad Taylor) – self-titled (Bride Sessions, 2018) Havard Volden & Carlo Costa – In the

We Have Voice Collective Releases Manifesto Demanding Safer Workplaces in the Performing Arts

As part of the groundswell of activism that has emerged from the #MeToo movement, the We Have Voice Collective–an organization composed of fourteen female and non-binary artists–has issued a code of conduct demanding zero tolerance of harassment of any kind in the performing arts. The collective is composed of artists who represent a diverse array

Playlist for the Week of April 23, 2018

Spectral – Empty Castles (Aerophonic, 2018) Sandy Ewen & Weasel Walter – Idiomatic (self-released, 2018) Sonic Youth-I.C.P.-The Ex – self-titled (In the Fishtank, 2002) [vinyl] Mirrors (Peter Kowald & Damon Smith) – Broken but No Dust (Balance Point Acoustics, 2001) [cassette] Meridian Trio – Triangulum (Clean Feed, 2017) Robbie Basho – Live in Forli, Italy 1982 (ESP-Disk’, 2018) Miles Davis

Review: Sons of Kemet – Your Queen is a Reptile

Take One “I don’t know if I should hug or slap the shit out of you.” My now deceased stepfather once said this to me after he picked me up from the local precinct after being arrested my one and only time. This message rings in my head quite often in my adult life, and

Playlist for the Week of April 9, 2018

Patrick Shiroishi – Black Sun Sutra (Weird Cry, 2013) [cassette] Matthew Shipp Quartet – Sonic Fiction (ESP-Disk’, 2018) John Coltrane – Within and Without Miles: Live 1960 (Doxy, 2016) [vinyl] Anthony Braxton Solo – Live at Moers Festival (Moers, 1974) [vinyl] Bill Dixon Orchestra – Intents and Purposes (RCA, 1967) [vinyl] Burmese – 撚樣 (Rock Is Hell, 2011) [vinyl] Weasel Walter