Cuneiform Records AUGUST 2022 Newsletter

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Cuneiform Records                       AUGUST 2022 NEWSLETTER: New Releases & Concerts  view this email online on laptop/computer:  click menu links & jump to topic on mobile: scroll down   ~~~~~~ NEW RELEASES: AUGUST 2022  COMING OUT AUGUST 12, 2022 IN DIGITAL FORMAT ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS KEN FIELD & ALIENO deBOOTES – ALIEN FIELD Saxophonist Ken Field and electronic musician Alieno deBootes collaborate across oceans to  create a mesmerizing album of ambient, electronic, and minimalist jazz music COMING OUT AUGUST 26, 2022 ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS ROGER CLARK MILLER – EIGHT DREAM INTERPRETATIONS FOR SOLO ELECTRIC GUITAR ENSEMBLE Mission of Burma guitarist & Anvil (Alloy) Orchestra member Roger Miller commands a powerful, one-man orchestra live/ in real time (see video) with an arsenal of electric guitars, pedals and loops ~~~~~ OUT NOW! RELEASED JULY 29, 2022 ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS JANEL LEPPIN  – ENSEMBLE VOLCANIC ASH Washington DC based composer & cellist Janel Leppin bridges jazz and classical music with her Ensemble Volcanic Ash, which releases its debut album ~~~~~~ RELEASED JUNE 24, 2022 ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS BUBBLEMATH  – TURF ASCENSION Progrock ascends to lyrical perfection and compositional precision via Minneapolis' band Bubblemath. A meme series announcing their release culminates with a video classic ~~~~~~ SNEEK PEAKS!  SEPTEMBER 2022 COMING OUT SEPTEMBER 16, 2022 IN DIGITAL FORMAT ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS FOURTH WORLD QUARTET – GRAND BLAND VAPID RAPIDS Michigan's cutting-edge piano & reeds ensemble explore a world of polyrhythms and 20th Century classical techniques for their 1975 finale   ~~~~~~ COMING OUT SEPTEMBER 30, 2022 ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS THUMBSCREW – MULTICOLORED MIDNIGHT All-star collaborative jazz trio of Michael Formanek (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums) and Mary Halvorson (guitar) celebrate their 10th Anniversary with a new release rich with new colors and directions ~~~~~~ CUNEIFORM ARTISTS ON TOUR:   LIVE CONCERTS & TOURS ~~~~~~ A WORLD OF  MUSICAL ADVENTURE  WITH CUNEIFORM RECORDS ONLINE: • Explore Cuneiform Records'  SOCIAL MEDIA;  BANDCAMP PAGE; YouTube Channel • Purchase music from100s of labels at WAYSIDE MUSIC, our sister store estab.1980 • Missed seeing a Cuneiform Newsletter? Access prior issues at cuneiformrecord.blogspot.com/  • Find a broken or incorrect link or etc in this eblast? Tell us & we'll fix it! ~~~~~~ CUNEIFORM RECORDS AUGUST 2022 RELEASES .          COMING OUT  AUGUST 12, 2022 ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS KEN FIELD & ALIENO deBOOTES ALIEN FIELD Bio information: KEN FIELD & ALIENO deBOOTES Title:  ALIEN FIELD Format: DIGITAL [CD version available via WAYSIDE MUSIC & BANDCAMP] Label: Cuneiform Records Catalog #: Cuneiform Rune 3359 FILE UNDER: ELECTRONIC / AMBIENT / MINIMALIST JAZZ   Sending electronic files across the Atlantic Ocean while the pandemic blocked physical travel, saxophonist KEN FIELD and electronic musician ALIENO deBOOTES (aka Alessandro Pizzin) create ALIEN FIELD, an album of music with, in Alieno's words, "the spatiality of the ocean and the ever-changing movement of the surface of the water"  Sometimes unusual circumstances create perfect conditions for long-considered but never materialized collaborations. This distanced virtual meeting between Ken Field and Alieno deBootes (aka Alessandro Pizzin) is such an example. The rich and intimate interplay between the warm acoustic woodwinds of the American saxophonist and the icy keyboard and synthetic atmospheres of the Italian experimenter belies the circumstances of the recording process. The music is layered within narrative contexts which, while telling many different stories, maintain a style that appears unique and original, straddling pure improvisation and rigorous composition.   listen/share on Soundcloud: "The Garden" from KEN FIELD & ALIENO deBOOTES' ALIEN FIELD   CREDITS: Ken Field:  saxophones, flutes Alieno deBootes:  keyboards, creative mixing, role management with Alessandro Monti - occasional electric bass on “A new cosmo” Matteo Bertolini - soundscapes on “Izar” and “A new cosmo” Domenico Meggiato - some electric bass on “Krunsch” Franco Moruzzi - extra drums on “Krunsch” Recorded during spring 2021 at AGW Studio, Venice, Italy and in Truro, Massachusetts, USA Mixed early summer 2021 at AGW Studio by Alessandro Pizzin Mastering by Erdem Helvacioglu, New York City & Istanbul Cover layout & design by Alessandro Rigato - PHOEM Design Digital release produced by Cuneiform & Alien Field CD release produced by Ken Field & Alieno deBootes   Ken Field: "I first heard the music of Alieno deBootes (aka Alessandro Pizzin) about 20 years ago, and quickly fell in love with his wonderful solo work. We stayed in touch over many years, and we finally met in person when I had an opportunity to travel from my home in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA) to Venice, Italy.  I was thrilled when he contacted me during the pandemic, in March 2021, and invited me to collaborate on this project. We worked independently, sending files back and forth, and I recorded my material using my laptop-based home studio. " Over the course of the next half-year we made the music you hear on ALIEN FIELD. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I've enjoyed creating it!"    Alieno deBootes: "As a longtime fan of the Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, after listening to Ken Field's first solo album Subterranea (back in 1991), I soon imagined that I wished to invite him to collaborate with me, since his sound on saxophones and flute seem to me to have such a particular, special and original voice. The opportunity to collaborate came during the 2020 pandemic, when I theorized the possibility of working remotely, imagining our meeting halfway between Venice, Italy and Cambridge, Massachusetts." Obviously, this meeting - if real - would have geographically occurred in the middle of the ocean and this further led me to imagine that our music should have the spatiality of the ocean and the ever-changing movement of the surface of the water.""                       pre-order Alien Field by Ken Field & Alieno deBootes                                                     on Bandcamp:                                ARTIST BIO INFORMATION KEN FIELD   Ken Field is a saxophonist, flautist, percussionist, and composer.  Since 1988 he has been a member of the internationally acclaimed electrified modern music ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, with whom he has recorded eight albums, including 6 released on Cuneiform Records.  Field also leads the Revolutionary Snake Ensemble, an experimental and improvisational brass band with recordings on Innova and Cuneiform. Field is also an award-winning composer of music for animation, film, and dance. His music is heard regularly on the popular internationally-broadcast children’s television program Sesame Street, in collaboration with his late wife, animator Karen Aqua. His soundtrack work has been broadcast on HBO, the Movie Channel, the Sundance Channel, and PBS. Field's extensive discography includes 9 solo albums released on OODiscs, Innova, Ravello, Sublingual and other labels; 8 recordings with Birdsongs of the Mesozoic; 4 albums by his Revolutionary Snake Ensemble; and a Dig Big Saxophone Quartet album. Ken Field is an Applied Microphone Technology Endorser and a Vandoren Performing Artist, and uses Vandoren reeds and mouthpieces for performance and recording. www.appliedmicrophone.com - www.vandoren.com For more information, see:  https://kenfield.org   ~ ~ ~ ALIENO deBOOTES (ALESSANDRO PIZZIN) Born in 1959 on the Venetian mainland to Italian and half-Austrian parents, Alessandro Pizzin (aka Alieno deBootes) has always had a close relationship with music thanks to the passion shared between parents and siblings - themselves musicians at various levels. Since his first significant musical experiences, his curiosity towards the possible frontiers of sound has been the guiding light of his approach to the art of sound. His research path has always evolved in the awareness of the infinite combinations in which sounds and noises can be organized to create new and ever changing creative sonic illusions. Hence his self-definition of "soundician". Starting from the early eighties with his experimental pop band RUINS he recorded various albums often performing in art galleries multimedial events. Since then he also has been a founding member of other musical projects like HEX, HAKKAH, GRAMPUS, WIND PROJECT and, more recently, THE BOOTES TRIO. From the second half of the '90s onwards he dedicated himself to the work of independent producer, varying amongst all musical genres, from pop to experimental music, continuing in the perspective of collaborating with his expertise to offer creative opportunities to equally interested and curious musicians. Nowadays, under his nickname Alieno deBootes, he is mainly focused on recovering archival material while simultaneously recording new compositions to showcase his past and present creative dimension. A highly prolific musician, deBootes' discography includes 19 solo albums released primarily by Nuova Explora; 19 albums with Ruins, released on various labels; 3 albums with HAKKAH; 3 albums with Wind / Wind Collectors; and an album each with Microculture and with Anticlimacus Ensemble & Alchemy Quartet. For more info, see deBootes' Bandcamp page: https://alessandropizzin.bandcamp.com   ~ ~ ~ return to top COMING OUT  AUGUST 26, 2022 ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS ROGER CLARK MILLER EIGHT DREAM INTERPRETATIONS FOR SOLO ELECTRIC GUITAR ENSEMBLE Bio information: ROGER CLARK MILLER Title:  EIGHT DREAM INTERPRETATONS FOR SOLO ELECTRIC GUITAR ENSEMBLE Format: CD  / VINYL / DIGITAL Label: Cuneiform Records Catalog #: Cuneiform Rune  493 FILE UNDER: ROCK / CLASSICAL / /  COMPOSITION / IMPROVISATION       "Less a recital than a musical minefield... Miller is a man in constant motion, a one-man symphony." – Boston Globe   listen/share on Soundcloud: "Dream Interpretation #17" from Roger Clark Miller's Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble  ROGER CLARK MILLER is best known for being the guitarist in MISSION OF BURMA, where he expanded the vocabulary of rock guitar playing by incorporating elements of free jazz and 20th Century classical music. After subsequent decades spent widening the scope of contemporary piano, exploring looping's universe and continually experimenting with guitar, Miller launches his SOLO ELECTRIC GUITAR ENSEMBLE. "Dream Interpretation #17" from the album Eight Dream Interpretations For Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble by Roger Clark Miller In his debut Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble album,    EIGHT DREAM INTERPRETATIONS FOR SOLO ELECTRIC GUITAR ENSEMBLE, released on Cuneiform Records, Miller expands the vocabulary of solo guitar in new directions and dimensions, using guitars, pedals & loops to command, in real time,  an orchestra both of and beyond the realm of rock.   Roger Miller's active involvement with loops began in 1979 when he asked Martin Swope to apply live multitracked tape looping to his Mission of Burma song "New Disco." Time got bent inside-out, transformed. Who knows who was doing what, or even when they did it? Looping is pivotal to his current record, Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble, released on Cuneiform Records. In the fall of 1983, after Mission of Burma folded the first time, he discovered the Electro-Harmonix 16-second Digital Delay which was an early innovative looping device. He applied this unit, along with guitar effects and prepared piano techniques, to his Yamaha CP-70 electric baby grand piano which had strings and electronic pick-ups. The concerts played in this set-up were solo, but with the variously layered loops sounded like an ensemble. When he began conceptualizing his "Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble" in 2018, that previous set-up was the model. He now uses three lap-steel guitars on stands, two of them loaded with alligator clips or bolts, the other to a post-Glenn Branca full unison E. Using bass and tenor guitar strings, his previous prepared piano ideas fit into more portable guitars, resulting in percussive grooves, bass-lines, and similarities to the Chinese Ch'in. Looping technology has advanced considerably since 1983, and the new Boomerang III Looper presents much greater options for composing, layering, and altering sounds. Combined with new guitar stomp-boxes, many in stereo, the sound palette is enveloping.     To contextualize his interest in these sounds, Miller turned to the Dream Interpretation technique he developed in 1975. By tightly following and translating a specific dream into music, a new type of structure was available: organic and personal, yet universal. Once he gave in to the essentially surrealistic/psychedelic nature of dreams, the type of guitar sounds he was interested in now had an appropriate context. Dream logic is not day-to-day logic, and the music follows this deeper unconscious thread. While the sounds produced are sometimes dizzying, they are always physical and made in real time. In performance, Miller sits in his cockpit, able to reach all four guitars and a plethora of pedals from one position. It requires intense concentration to play these compositions, but they could not have occurred any other way.   The vocabulary for electric guitars now has a new front. We're proud to announce its debut on Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble, the first-ever recorded release by Miller's new Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble.    ~ ~ ~ pre-order Roger Clark Miller's Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble on  Bandcamp CREDITS for EIGHT DREAM INTERPRETATIONS FOR SOLO ELECTRIC GUITAR ENSEMBLE    Roger C. Miller: Custom Stratocaster 6-string; three Rogue lap-steels (on legs), two prepared,  one tuned unison E; multiple foot-pedals/sound-altering devices; Boomerang III Looper.     BIO INFO: ROGER CLARK MILLER Roger Miller is a guitarist, pianist, bassist, composer, singer, percussionist and occasional cornet player. He has been a band leader since 1967. His recordings have appeared on Matador, Fire, Ace of Hearts, SST, New Alliance, Forced Exposure, Cuneiform Records, Atavistic, Feeding Tube, World in Sound, Sublingual and Fun World. He has toured nationally since 1979 and internationally since 1998. Miller's career officially began in 1979 when he co-founded the influential post-punk band Mission of Burma on guitar and vocals. Widely acclaimed and tremendously popular, Mission of Burma has a chapter in the bible of indie rock history, Our Band Could be Your Life and is featured in a documentary, "Not a Photograph," which was listed in Huffington Post's 18 must-watch documentaries. In 1983, Burma folded due to Miller contracting tinnitus. Turning his main focus to piano, Miller formed Birdsongs of the Mesozoic on piano in 1981 and continued in it until 1988. Birdsongs of the Mesozoic blended minimalism, classical, and rock; releasing recordings on Ace of Hearts and Cuneiform Records, and continuing under Erik Lindgren's leadership after Miller's departure. Alongside Birdsongs, Miller simultaneously pursued another keyboard project: from 1983-1989 he also focused on his Maximum Electric Piano work, which utilized prepared piano and loops. He released numerous records as leader with these and other projects from 1989 until 1998, on guitar or keyboards, all very different from each other. "Miller is doing for the electric piano what Hendrix did for the guitar, creating a new vocabulary of electronic noises...  Miller's songs have jolts in all the right places." – New York Times   In 1998, Miller joined the Alloy Orchestra on keyboards, which he remains in today, touring widely. Renamed as The Anvil Orchestra, the ensemble is the premier ensemble performing live music to silent films; film critic Roger Ebert asserts that "Alloy Orchestra is the best in the world at accompanying silent film". Miller's musical activities further intensified with the new millenium. In 2002-2015,  Mission of Burma reformed to high acclaim, and Roger split his touring time between Burma and Alloy. During this time, he also composed numerous soundtracks for documentary films, four of which premiered at Sundance. In 2010, he began again composing chamber music; his compositions have been performed at New England Conservatory, Tufts University and elsewhere, continuing to the present. In addition, he expanded his music to art installations;  his first, "Transmuting the Prosaic", showed at the Brattleboro Art Museum in 2020.  Miller is currently working on a series of "Dream Interpretations" for his new looping-based guitar music project, "Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble;" the project's debut album, Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble,  is scheduled for release on Cuneiform Records in August 2022.      "A 21st Century mind trapped in a 20th Century body, Miller's white light/white heat 88s were like a cross between John Cale, Jimi Hendrix and John Cage." –  LA Weekly       return to top OUT NOW! RELEASED JULY 29, 2022 ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS: JANEL LEPPIN ENSEMBLE VOLCANIC ASH Bio information: JANEL LEPPIN Title: ENSEMBLE VOLCANIC ASH  Format: CD  / DIGITAL Label: Cuneiform Records Catalog #: Cuneiform Rune  499 File Under: : JAZZ / CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL / CHAMBER JAZZ / IMPROVISATION        listen/share on Soundcloud: "Woven Forest / She Had Synesthesia" from Janel Leppin's Ensemble Volcanic Ash Virtuoso cellist and composer JANEL LEPPIN finds joy and fellowship with her  ENSEMBLE VOLCANIC ASH, an extraordinary Washington DC-based ensemble that bridges jazz and classical, combining highly detailed composition and improvisation   Out of the ashes, something strange and beautiful is born. Emanating from the capacious imagination of Janel Leppin, Ensemble Volcanic Ash materialized after years of incubation on Washington D.C.’s verdant new music, jazz and improvised music scenes. The group’s eponymous debut album on Cuneiform Records captures Leppin’s highly personal vision, a stylistically polymorphous sound that The Washington Post aptly describes as “embodying all the complexity and grace of human cooperation — that intuitive, empathetic, semi-telepathic teamwork thing that helps set us apart as a species.”   A composer and cellist who’s honed a singular synthesis of composition, orchestration and improvisation, Leppin is best known as half of the experimental duo Janel and Anthony, which she co-leads with her husband guitarist Anthony Pirog. With the chamber-jazz Ensemble Volcanic Ash she steps forward as a bandleader in her own right, delivering a gorgeous debut brimming with singular musicians. The seven-piece group melds an illustrious array of D.C. talent into a glimmering expressive organism that surges, expands, ebbs and dances in multiple directions at once.    The powerhouse cast gets plenty of opportunities to shine, but it’s Leppin’s compositions that define the group in radiant, Technicolor splendor. Elegant and raw, persuasively logical and thrumming with emotion, her lapidary themes take shape with exquisite detail. Like with jazz’s most consequent composers, Leppin’s writing flows from the idiosyncratic voices in her ensemble, players who imbue every passage with their irrepressible personalities. As an instrumental voice she’s the first among equals, laying down expansive emotional parameters with each striking solo and cello-forward passage.    On an instrument with only a handful of defining improvisers Leppin makes a forceful case for herself as one of jazz’s most original cellists. Which isn’t to say she dominates the proceedings. She creates alluring lines for Pirog, tenor saxophonist Brian Settles, alto saxophonist Sarah Hughes, harpist Kim Sator, and the commanding rhythm section tandem of bassist Luke Stewart and drummer Larry Ferguson, who all shape the music profoundly and often erase the distinction between soloist and accompanist.    "This work is a braiding together of over 32 years of classical and jazz study on thecello with more than 20 years performing in Washington D.C.,” Leppin says. “It is a distinct place to learn and try new things. I've worked with some of these musicians for well over a decade and I think it shows in the music."   Describing Ensemble Volcanic Ash’s music as cinematic is accurate, but also misleading as it’s rare indeed to find a film these days marked by such unbridled creativity and incandescent characterizations. The brief, through-composed opening track “Children of the Water” sets the scene, with its portentous theme packing tremendous emotion and drama into a minute and a half. On “Woven Forest,” Leppin’s burly cello seizes the foreground, propelled by an insistent groove. As the horns step forward, counter melodies churn behind them until the ensemble reaches a clearing, opening up space for Pirog’s guitar solo.    Many of Leppin’s tunes unfurl in two or three movements, like the mini-suite “She Had Synesthesia,” which inspires some of Leppin’s most earthy, physically imposing cello work on an extended exchange with Pirog. “I Pose,” the only track on the album with keyboards, features two main sections that suggest very different spectral encounters. The tune opens with a spaciously celestial section and builds to an incantatory cello-driven climax evoking mystery and transcendence.     In much the same way that Leppin effectively deploys contrasting passages, the album’s sequencing flows with its own internal logic. The concise, through-composed “Her Hand is His Score” feels like a moment of calm before plunging into the insistent introspection of “Silvia’s Path.” The punning title refers to the renowned poet Sylvia Plath, and the piece opens and closes with incantatory lines of minimalism. The album’s centerpiece is the nine-minute “Volcano’s Song,” a sinuous melody that rides on Stewart’s bass line. Solos by Settles and Pirog quietly torque the tension while maintaining the same tempo and hushed dynamic. Like the ensemble itself, the title comes from Leppin’s experience on a plane flight diverted during the 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano after a long European tour, but the piece was inspired by her love of John Zorn’s Masada. “I play those beautiful pieces to this day,” she says.   She pays direct tribute to another source of inspiration, Alice Coltrane, with “A Palace for Alice,” a piece suspended on Sator’s harp ostinato (beautifully doubled by Pirog’s guitar). It’s a gossamer melody carried by Hughes’ cottony alto that feels like a dispatch from Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda. Leppin closes the album with the first song she ever composed, “Leaving the Woods,” which she first recorded on the 2012 Janel & Anthony album, Where is Home (Cuneiform Records). Once again, Stewart’s bass takes the lead, maintaining a centered emotional presence as the cello and Hughes’ alto sax spiral around each other. Unsentimental but full of ache, it’s a backward glance of a tune with a melancholic melody.   If “Leaving the Woods” makes the transplantation process sound wrenching it’s partly because she’s so deeply rooted. Leppin hails from the D.C. metropolitan area where she earned a degree in cello performance from George Mason University (with minors in world music and dance). While studying the Western classical tradition, she plunged into DC’s thriving punk and hardcore scene in the 1990s. Later in college she began composing and improvising with Pirog. The pair have played hundreds of shows together worldwide and recorded several critically hailed albums as Janel and Anthony. She’s also collaborated extensively in recent years with composer and renegade pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, including curating, arranging and playing on 2020’s The Heart Sutra (Editions Mego Ideologic Organ).    In many ways, Ensemble Volcanic Ash’s expanded sonic palette and vast textural resources unleashed Leppin as both a composer and a player. “It freed me up,” she said. “Having Luke Stewart in the band gave me the chance to step out more comping-wise. I could be in the midrange a bit more and solo more often. With that kind of support I found I could play more assertively like my favorite cellists, Abdul Wadud and Pablo Casals. It was a big evolution to let go of playing the role of bassist in the group.”    Leppin is also a celebrated textile artist who transforms her onstage outfits into chromatically extravagant woven creations (the album includes Leppin’s woven portraits of each Volcanic Ash musician as well as her shimmering cover art). Comet Ping Pong, the Black Cat, and the 9:30 Club have presented solo exhibitions of her weavings. She created album covers for Des Demonas’s Cure for Love, Anthony Pirog's Pocket Poem (Cuneiform Records), and Susan Alcorn's The Heart Sutra. In form, content and spirit, there are many parallels between her fabric art and her music. Just listen and take a look.      Ensemble Volcanic Ash credits: ● Janel Leppin : Cello, Korg Polyphonic Ensemble ● Luke Stewart : Bass ● Kim Sator : Harp ● Sarah Hughes : Alto Saxophone ● Brian Settles : Tenor Saxophone ● Anthony Pirog : Guitar ● Larry Ferguson : Drums   https://janelleppin.com/   listen to/ buy Ensemble Volcanic Ash on Bandcamp: “On a really good night, it only takes seven people on a stage to make you feel impossibly hopeful for the other 7.8 billion or so on Earth. Like on Saturday night at Rhizome, where Janel Leppin’s Ensemble Volcanic Ash created a 30-minute jazzlike surge that embodied all the complexity and grace of human cooperation — that intuitive, empathetic, semi-telepathic teamwork thing that helps set us apart as a species.”    –  The Washington Post return to top   OUT NOW !! released JUNE 24, 2022: ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS BUBBLEMATH TURF ASCENSION Bio information: BUBBLEMATH Title: TURF ASCENSION  Format: CD  / DIGITAL Label: Cuneiform Records Catalog #: Cuneiform Rune 488 FILE UNDER: ROCK / PROGRESSIVE ROCK        listen/share on Soundcloud: "Everything" from Bubblemath's Turf Ascension   credits: Blake Albinson : Guitar  Jay Burritt : Bass Kai Esbensen : Keyboards, vocals James Flagg : Drums, vocals Jonathan G. Smith : Vocals, guitar Video Announcement for Bubblemath - Turf Ascension "This is a nightmare! Dynamic song structures! Unpredictable chord changes! Time signatures that never stop! Songs that are simultaneously incomprehensible and yet infuriatingly catchy at the same time. Like pop songs swallowed by a black hole. The pretentious, festering black hole of progressive rock itself."   Bubblemath Perfectionists Produce Insanely Correct Masterpiece; It’s The Finest Prog You’ll Ever Read!     Bubblemath’s new album, Turf Ascension, is the finest progressive-rock album you’re ever going to read. This is not to short-change the music on this four-song, 49-minute collection of shifting time signatures, swirling vocal harmonies, interstellar guitars, and rippling keyboard flourishes.   Hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bubblemath’s Blake Albinson, Jay Burritt, Kai Esbensen, James Flagg, and Jonathan G. Smith have taken full advantage of their hometown’s long winter nights to hone a singular style that’s at once thrilling, enthralling, and technically demanding.  Not just winter nights, in fact, but entire years. Although the members of Bubblemath joined forces well over two decades ago, Turf Ascension is only their third full-length, with a 15-year gap falling between their 2002 debut, Such Fine Particles of the Universe, and 2017’s Edit Peptide, their first for the Cuneiform Records imprint.     Asked why such a gap, keyboard player and chief lyricist Esbensen blames “happenstance” “Our first record, Such Fine Particles of the Universe, we started recording it in 1999, and we took two years to get that out,” he explains. “We were all like, ‘That took two years! That was way too long. Let’s not make that mistake again.’ So we immediately went into the studio and started recording Edit Peptide.”   The band’s obsessive attention to detail almost immediately sabotaged the chance of meeting any reasonable deadline. Once the initial budget was drained, the band members realized they had essentially paid to equip their engineer’s studio. Why not do the same for themselves? Microphones, a ProTools setup, and soundproofing were quickly obtained.   “But the punishment clause for owning your own equipment is that now you have it, there’s no longer any deadline spurring you along. No money that you will continue to owe, and no other bands coming into the space to kick you out,” says Esbensen with a rueful laugh. “So the perfectionism of Bubblemath crept in pretty quickly, and we just took forever to get our takes and arrangements just exactly, perfectly, insanely correct.”   The band’s hard-won knowledge enabled it to produce Turf Ascension in a comparatively fast-paced five years. Actually listening to the record, however, is a decidedly more luxurious experience. “With this record, we really allowed ourselves to develop themes,” Esbensen contends. “If you listen to our first record, or even Edit Peptide, it’s like we have this mantra of, ‘Why repeat something four times if you can get away with only three?’ That kind of thing. ‘Why give the listener a chance to get bored? Switch it up! Keep it going!’   “It was A.D.D. kind of stuff,” he continues. “And with Turf Ascension, we were like, ‘Well, what if we just lingered on stuff longer, and built out the themes?’ Before, we would have gone, ‘Well, we can’t, in case it gets boring.’ But here the followup question was, ‘Okay, well, what if we just work really hard to not make it boring?’ Switching up the themes quickly in order to hold listener interest is obviously our comfort zone. But in that regard it’s almost a crutch - sort of like having chocolate in a dessert is kind of a crutch. A chocolate dessert is pretty easy to make successful. But what if you had to create a dessert with cucumber and pomegranate? How do you make that good? You have to be really mindful and deliberate, if that’s not your culinary wheelhouse. So it was a fun challenge to let the themes evolve and flow in a way that we really haven’t ever done before.”       It’s tempting to call Esbensen’s lyrics the icing on this cucumber-pomegranate cake, and the idiom is not as clichéd as it might seem. While it may be easy to assume that Bubblemath’s music exists to illustrate its words, the reality is a little different. In fact, Esbensen’s detailed plot lines and well-considered meditations on existence come at the very end of the songwriting process, after the song structures and vocal melodies are already in place.   With the 17-minute, 57-second epic “Surface Tension”, for example, what reads like a science fiction novella emerged from Esbensen’s spur-of-the-moment playfulness.   “It was actually kind of a lucky break,” he says. “We had the vocal melodies already written, as we do, and one of the first things that I do when I’m writing lyrics is to fit nonsense words into the melody lines so I can feel out where the syllables should go and where the rhymes should fall. And the very first nonsense lyric I put in was, ‘In the wall of a bathroom, down the hall from the math room.’ That made me laugh, and so I started thinking what that could be about. And from there I pictured a high school, and a mysterious government computer system clicking away in the walls, with its grand purpose poised and ready for action. And then, meanwhile, the name ‘Bubblemath’ is a reference to the physics of surface tension. So once I decided to have this school burrowing into a secret underground human-race-preservation facility, I was kind of delighted that ‘Surface Tension’ could be the name of the song, given our protagonists’ longing to ascend from their bunker-compound back to the surface.”   The album title Turf Ascension, in turn, grew out of a spoonerism concocted by guitarist Albinson. It also gives a clue as to how Bubblemath operates: every aspect of the band is interconnected.   While claustrophobia, paranoia, and fear for the future are explicit in “Surface Tension”, variations on those themes underpin the other three songs on Turf Ascension. “All songs deal with ascending one kind of turf or another, whether it is literal dirt turf or figurative conceptual turf,” says Esbensen. In the song  “Decrypted”, it’s both: a dead apple tree refuses to admit defeat or even acknowledge its own death, and this anomaly opens the door, inviting the listener on a quest to decipher the mysteries of DNA. But the song can also be interpreted as referring to the onslaught of misinformation we all have to wade through, as well as to the persistence of life in the face of impossible odds.   “Everything”, meanwhile, posits that the entire universe is a simulation, a concept Esbensen traces back to the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom’s 2003 essay, “Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”       “I had read that, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a fun concept for a song,’” he says. “It’s existential ennui meets meta-science plausibility. Questioning the bounds of what we know, as those very bounds subsume themselves. And it kind of goes back to the day-to-day gripes and grievances that people have, and the cortisol that people pointlessly expend being bothered by who gets food stamps and who looked at you funny when you were buying coffee that one time. It’s about how, ultimately, everything is probably fairly petty in the grand scheme. It’s like, ‘You’re worried about gas prices when the whole thing is a hologram? Choose your battles wisely, ya know?’”   On the subject of battles, more pressing existential worries are reflected in “Refuse”, a critique of unchecked weapons technology, and the contentious geopolitical border conflicts that drive it. Something that has never been more relevant than it is today.   Esbensen deflects the notion that he has a hotline to the zeitgeist, or that Bubblemath’s extra-musical mandate is to inject social commentary into the often apolitical world of progressive rock.    “Really, I just wanted to make sure that the lyrics were as good as the music,” he explains. “In so much of the music that I love, the lyrics come across like they were just kind of chucked in as an afterthought. I can roll with that for the most part, but the more I like a song’s music, the sadder I get when the lyrics don’t measure up. So I just want to make sure that the lyrics for Bubblemath deserve the music of Bubblemath.”   Nonetheless, the keyboardist is willing to counsel those perplexed by confusing times.   “Question stuff, but keep tabs on yourself,” he says. “Pay attention to what you’re questioning, as well as what you’re not questioning. And pay attention to why. Learn your biases. Self-deception is a real problem, so employ methodologies to mitigate self-deception as much as you can. You can’t eliminate it completely, but it’s important to understand that about oneself, and to be really mindful and aware of it.”   Sage advice. And nothing would help this process of self-discovery along more than the high-energy, hyper-intelligent, and tuneful tracks on Bubblemath’s Turf Ascension. Listen to / Buy Turf Ascension on BANDCAMP return to top SNEAK PEEKS!  COMING OUT IN SEPTEMBER 2022 ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS .          SNEAK PEEK! COMING OUT SEPTEMBER 16, 2022 IN DIGITAL FORMAT ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS: FOURTH WORLD QUARTET GRAND BLAND VAPID RAPIDS Bio information: FOURTH WORLD QUARTET Title:  GRAND BLAND VAPID RAPIDS Format: DIGITAL / STREAMIG Label: Cuneiform Records Catalog #: Cuneiform Rune 3360 FILE UNDER: CLASSICAL / POST-CLASSICAL   Michigan's Mid-'70s Cutting-Edge Piano with Reeds Ensemble –the FOURTH WORLD QUARTET – Explore a World of Polyrhythms and 20th Century Classical Techniques on their Final Recording     listen/share on Soundcloud: "Batt Masterdon" from FOURTH WORLD QUARTET'S GRAND BLND VAPID RAPIDS The Fourth World Quartet formed in February 1975 at Thomas Jefferson College. Roger Miller, the original pianist, left the group in April. By the end of that month, Denman Maroney, who taught composition for the remaining member's – Benjamin and Laurence Miller and Jack Waterstone – suggested joining the band as their new pianist. The members were thrilled.  Denman was an undergraduate student from 1967-71 at Williams College. There he spent time at Bennington, where Bill Dixon and Jimmy Garrison filled his head with Coltrane, Ayler, Coleman, Taylor, etc. From 1972-74, Denman attended Cal. Arts, where Jim Tenney, Mort Subotnick, Lucky Mosco, and Ingram Marshall filled his head with Ives, Joplin, Messiaen, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Varèse, etc.  Thanks to CalArts teacher John Bergamo, Denman got a job teaching at Thomas Jefferson College. There, Denman and choreographer Beverly Brown taught a course called Sound & Movement where this new Fourth World Quartet was collaborating for the class. Both band and dance students worked together, forging ahead with free improvisation on a regular basis. The Fourth World Quartet performed at a TJC Music Performance and a house party in Ann Arbor in April, and again at Grand Valley State College Graduation Picnic in June 1975. At the end of the school year, Denman was offered the same teaching position at Thomas Jefferson College with less pay and thus he left for New York City. Laurence, Benjamin and Jack continued composing and trying material out with other ensembles that never quite took shape until early 1976 when their efforts dissolved. Previous aspects of the earlier version of the band (see 1975, released on Cuneiform Records), which included psychedelic guitar, changed when the newly reformed quartet focused further on 20th Century techniques along with Denman's exploration in using advanced polyrhythms. Here is the Fourth World Quartet's final document: Grand Bland Vapid Rapids. CREDITS: Denman Maroney: piano, conductor on #1 and #8, composer Benjamin R. Miller: alto saxophone, electric guitar on #9, composer Laurence B. Miller: bass clarinette, composer Jack Waterstone: alto and tenor saxophone, composer Recorded June 4, 1975 in “The Den” at Thomas Jefferson College, Allendale, Michigan except 1, 5, 6, 8 & 10 recorded June 5, 1975 at the Grand Valley State College Graduation Picnic. Recording engineer Rick Scott on a Braun tape recorder. A big thanks for Dan Gunning in assisting with digitization of master tapes. Mastered by Ian Beabout, ShedSounds Studio. ~ ~ ~ return to top SNEAK PEEK! COMING OUT SEPTEMBER 30, 2022 ON CUNEIFORM RECORDS: THUMBSCREW MULTICOLORED MIDNIGHT Bio information: THUMBSCREW Title:  MULTICOLORED MIDNIGHT Format: DIGITAL / CD / VINYL Label: Cuneiform Records Catalog #: Cuneiform Rune 485 FILE UNDER: JAZZ   The Core of a Spiraling Musical Universe, the All-Star Collective Trio  THUMBSCREW  Marks a Spectacularly Vivid Decade  by Adding New Instrumental Hues on  MULTICOLORED MIDNIGHT,  featuring Bassist MICHAEL FORMANEK,  Drummer/Vibraphonist TOMAS FUJIWARA  and Guitarist MARY HALVORSON.   listen/share on Soundcloud: "Survival Fetish" from THUMBSCREW's MULTICOLORED MIDNIGHT   At the center of a spiraling musical universe, Thumbscrew is like a reverse black hole radiating brilliant constellations of overlapping ensembles. The all-star trio is at the core, and they’re marking their 10th year as a collective endeavor – 2022 – looking ahead to new sonic territory rather than taking stock of a prodigiously creative decade. Celebrating this anniversary, Multicolored Midnight, the group’s seventh album for Cuneiform Records, is slated for release September ?, 2022. It features bassist Michael Formanek, drummer/vibraphonist Tomas Fujiwara, and guitarist Mary Halvorson on a set of 11 original pieces that oscillate between detailed composition, unbridled improvisation, and every gradation in between. It’s another step on an extraordinary journey by three of jazz’s most dauntless and resourceful artists.   The focus that each player brings to Thumbscrew and the dense web of experience they share is part of what makes the ensemble so extraordinary. Thumbscrew’s ongoing evolution is powered by a super-charged matrix of relationships, as all of the players also lead critically acclaimed bands built on the trio’s thrumming creative synergy. Beyond their work as a trio they’re the foundation for Formanek’s Ensemble Kolossus, the hair-raising and ridiculously talent-laden large ensemble that released its 2016 debut on ECM The Distance. Formanek joined Halvorson on Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up’s third release, the critically hailed 2015 album After All Is Said (482 Music). And Halvorson’s Thumbscrew bandmates are the foundation of her song-based band Code Girl. For Halvorson, Thumbscrew has become an invaluable creative foundation. “It’s one of my favorite rhythm sections to be a part of, the power and energy and everything we create together,” she said. “At this point, all of us have used this rhythm section as leaders.”    Multicolored Midnight features music that Thumbscrew honed during a three-week residency at City of Asylum, a Pittsburgh program founded as a refuge for writers in exile. Since expanding its purview to include musicians, City of Asylum has become the fourth wheel powering Thumbscrew’s all-terrain evolution as the triumvirate fully utilizes the sequestration to generate and refine new pieces. Three of Thumbscrew’s prior albums had also been generated at City of Asylum. Multicolored Midnight grew out of the group’s fourth residency in August of 2021, which provided a welcome respite from the sudden and unnerving isolation imposed by the pandemic.     If there was an agenda for Multicolored Midnight, it centered on fully incorporating Fujiwara’s vibraphone work into the mix, a bright hue that surfaced briefly on Thumbscrew’s 2020 celebration of Anthony Braxton’s 75th birthday, The Anthony Braxton Project. Marking a decade doesn’t have quite the same panache as a diamond jubilee, “but we do feel like it’s a big deal,” Formanek said. “That’s a lot of time for a cooperative band, and the residencies are a big part of what’s allowed us to dive in deeper and keep creating new music.”   The album opens with the tightly constructed “I'm A Senator!,” one of five tunes that Formanek contributed to the project. It’s a wicked little groove that features some sharp Halvorson chordal work sandwiching her vertiginous bottom-falling-out single note runs. The bassist built “Shit Changes” on Fujiwara’s vibes ostinato, which feeds the mysterious, slowly blossoming melody. Mutations occur but the bloom is hardy. Formanek draws on many sources when it comes to titling his tunes, often settling on a word or phrase that has little direct connection to the piece. And then there’s “Fidgety,” which captures an anxious, unsettled mood from the opening bass solo, which Formanek bends and contours with some deft electronic processing. It’s his first use of electronics on double bass in Thumbscrew, adding another sonic resource to the growing palette. He’s at his most tuneful on “Capsicum Annuum,” a song-like tune that builds to a brief thrashing passage before the trio returns to the alluring melody. The intriguing line references the forward-and-backward phrase ideas that Formanek has explored elsewhere in a series of palindromic tunes.   Fujiwara brought three tunes to the program, including “Song For Mr. Humphries,” a tribute to Pittsburgh drum maestro Roger Humphries, the well-traveled veteran who played on Horace Silver’s 1965 classic Song For My Father. Propelled by a quirky, vaulting bassline, the tune grows more intricate and less rhythmically stable as it progresses. It isn’t based on anything that Humphries plays. Rather, it’s a thank you for his generosity and ongoing contributions to the music. He actually lives a few blocks from City of Asylum and on Thumbscrew’s first residency City of Asylum co-founders Diane Samuels and Henry Reese made a point of mentioning him. “He still plays around town all the time,” Fujiwara said. “We went and checked him out and his feel and sound is amazing, so classic and specific. Every time I go to Pittsburgh I hear him play and I go to his house for a lesson and a hang.”   The pandemic experience doesn’t surface directly on the album often, though Fujiwara’s “Future Reruns and Nostalgia” evokes the prickly, surreal suspension of time that marked the first months of sheltering in place. The chiming notes on the vibes that open the piece seem to toll for all of us as Formanek’s squally arco bass work ratchets up the pressure. The melody ascends and hangs in the air. Halvorson also contributed three pieces to Multicolored Midnight, including the title track, a stuttery tune with an almost folk-song like theme driven by her strummed chords. An improviser and composer of dry and poker-faced wit, she builds a repeating figure into the angular melody that was inspired by the sound of a skipping LP. On “Swirling Lives” she creates an almost chamber jazz setting for Fujiwara’s vibes. There’s a melodic line running through the tune that’s carried by all three players at different points and as the pace accelerates to a sprint the chamber piece takes on the feel of a frantic game of hide and seek. Playful, mischievous and insistently present tense, this is music that illuminates each moment’s vast possibilities.   An album laden with fully realized connections and reflections, Multicolored Midnight also provides tantalizing hints regarding Thumbscrew’s future explorations. Integrating new textures, sounds and concepts, Thumbscrew has turned into an essential all-terrain vehicle for three of improvised music’s most venturesome artists. After a decade of coaxing and inspiring each other, the trio’s musical universe just keeps expanding, and Multicolored Midnight sheds dazzling light on where they’ll be heading next. CREDITS FOR MULTICOLORED MIDNIGHT   Michael Formanek – Double Bass and Electronics.                                 Compositions for Tracks 1, 4, 5, 8 & 10 Tomas Fujiwara – Drums and Vibraphone.                              Compositions for Tracks 2, 7 & 11 Mary Halvorson – Guitar.  Compositions for Tracks 3, 6 & 9   Recorded September 2–3, 2021 at The Bunker Studio, Brooklyn, New York by Aaron Nevezie. Mixed by Aaron Nevezie. Mastered by Alex DeTurk. Produced by Thumbscrew. Band photos by Brian Cohen.   THUMBSCREW BIO INFORMATION thumbscrew.net - www.facebook.com/thumbscrev - twitter.com/ithumbscrew www.cuneiformrecords.com/bandshtml/thumbscrew.html Thumbscrew’s first gig as a collective trio was on March 11, 2012.  Since then, the all-star trio has been in high demand for performances at jazz and New Music festivals worldwide.  They have played at such North American festivals as the Vancouver Jazz Festival, Monterrey Jazz Festival, Atlanta Jazz Festival, Philadelphia whatever Jazz Festival, and the wildly popular beyond-genre Big Ears Festival.  Thumbscrew has also played numerous festivals overseas, touring Europe and the Middle East.  In addition, they’ve played at and/or served residencies at numerous high-profile venues worldwide, including the Village Vanguard (NYC), Walker Arts Center (Minneapolis), Blues Alley (Washington DC), and many more. Featuring the trio’s masterful and near-intuitive interplay, consummate level of skill, distinctive compositions, and joy de vivre onstage, Thumbscrew’s live shows have become legendary, instilling audiences with awe and generating positive reviews in the music press. Thumbscrew’s recorded music has likewise received worldwide acclaim. Counting its newest release, Multicolored Midnight, the band has released seven albums since 2014, all on Cuneiform Records. These albums received an impressive amount of press worldwide, including numerous 4-star reviews and/or spotlights in DownBeat and other jazz magazines, in addition to being named in numerous Best Jazz Albums of Year lists globally.  In addition, the Thumbscrew trio and its individual members have been cited in various Best of Year lists for Musicians, Rising Star Artists, and Rising Star Ensembles.   At age 10, Thumbscrew has compiled an impressive, rock-solid legacy. The stellar artists of this unique cooperative look forward to building further on this strong foundation, launching new sonic journeys for Thumbscrew as well as utilizing the trio as the rhythmic heart in many of their individual large ensembles.     TOMAS FUJIWARA             more info: www.tomasfujiwara.com / www.facebook.com/tomas.fujiwara / twitter.com/TomasFujiwara Based in Brooklyn, Fujiwara has also earned renown as a composer and bandleader who performs and records with some of the most exciting musicians of the current generation. He’s been described by Point of Departure as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming.” He leads and composes for a number of ensembles, including Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double (with Halvorson, Taylor Ho Bynum, Ralph Alessi, Brandon Seabrook, and Gerald Cleaver), and Tomas Fujiwara’s 7 Poets Trio (with Patricia Brennan and Tomeka Reid), which released its eponymous debut in 2019 on the Rogue Art label. Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up (with Halvorson, Jonathan Finlayson, and Brian Settles) released three albums on the 482 label, including Actionspeak (2010, with bassist Danton Boller), The Air Is Different (2012, with bassist Trevor Dunn), and After All Is Said (2015, with Formanek). He’s also released Variable Bets (2014, Relative Pitch) featuring the Tomas Fujiwara Trio with Ralph Alessi and Brandon Seabrook. His collaborative duo with Taylor Ho Bynum has released three albums, True Events (2007, 482 Music), Stepwise (2010, NotTwo Records), and Through Foundation (2014, self-released).   Fujiwara engages in a diversity of creative work with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Matana Roberts, Joe Morris, Nicole Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Tomeka Reid, Amir ElSaffar, Benoit Delbecq, and many others. In 2021, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer, and premiered two suites of new music as part of his Roulette Residency: “You Don’t Have to Try” (with Meshell Ndegeocello) and “Shizuko,” a suite dedicated to his grandmother, featuring Taylor Ho Bynum, Tomeka Reid, Rafiq Bhatia, and Davi Vieira. In a New York Times profile, the paper described Fujiwara’s expansive musical parameters, noting that he “works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint…A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope.”    MARY HALVORSON                       more info:  www.maryhalvorson.com / www.facebook.com/maryhalvorsonmusic Based like Fujiwara in Brooklyn, Halvorson has been described by JazzTimes as “a singular talent,” and by the Wall Street Journal as “one of the most exciting and original guitarists in jazz—or otherwise.” In recent DownBeat Critics Polls Halvorson has been celebrated as Guitarist, Rising Star Jazz artist, and Rising Star Composer of the year, and in 2019 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. One of New York City’s most in-demand guitarists, over the past decade Halvorson has worked with such diverse musicians as Tim Berne, Taylor Ho Bynum, John Dieterich, Trevor Dunn, Bill Frisell, Ingrid Laubrock, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey, Jessica Pavone, Tomeka Reid, Marc Ribot and John Zorn. She’s released a series of critically acclaimed albums on the Firehouse 12 label, starting with 2008’s Dragon’s Head, her trio debut featuring bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith. The group expanded to a quintet with trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson and alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon on 2010’s Saturn Sings and 2012’s Bending Bridges, a septet with tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and trombonist Jacob Garchik on 2014’s Illusionary Sea, and finally an octet with pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn on 2016’s Away With You. Her acclaimed 2018 and 2020 albums with her band Code Girl, which feature her original lyrics based around poetic forms, deployed a rhythm section of Formanek and Fujiwara. Most recently she released a double debut on Nonesuch with the interlocking pair of records Amaryllis and Belladonna. The former features a new sextet with Fujiwara, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, bassist Nick Dunston, trombonist Jacob Garchik, and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill (augmented by the Mivos string quartet on the album’s second side). On Belladonna, Halvorson wrote solely for guitar and Mivos. MICHAEL FORMANEK        more info: www.michaelformanek.com/ www.facebook.com/michaelformanekgroups   //  twitter.com/michaelformanek Halvorson and Fujiwara first connected with Formanek when he subbed in Bynum’s band in 2011, and the chemistry was so readily apparent they immediately started looking into performance opportunities as a trio. He’s been described as “a bold and unclassifiable bassist and composer,” while The New York Times has noted that his music is always “graceful in its subversions, often even sumptuous.” Whether it’s for a small band or a large ensemble, he creates modern jazz that is earthy yet atmospheric, always alive with dark-hued melody and bone-deep rhythms, rich in dynamic possibility and the sound of surprise. Even with decades of experience to his credit – he got his start as a Bay Area teenager playing with the likes of Joe Henderson and Tony Williams – Formanek has made some of his keenest creative leaps in recent years, documented on a sequence of justly lauded recordings.   Formanek’s three ECM albums as a leader each scored rare five-star reviews in DownBeat. These included two discs – Small Places (2012) and The Rub and Spare Change (2010) – featuring a powerhouse quartet with saxophonist Tim Berne, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver; the third was a magnificent record – The Distance (2016) – that showcased his compositions for an all-star big band, playfully dubbed Ensemble Kolossus. Formanek’s first album for the Intakt label, Time Like This (2018), saw him leading his new Elusion Quartet with saxophonist Tony Malaby, pianist Kris Davis and drummer Ches Smith to “soul-stirring” effect, according to All About Jazz. In 2019, the Swiss label Intakt Records released Formanek’s Even Better by his Very Practical Trio featuring Halvorson and altoist Tim Berne. He recently launched his own label, Circular File Records, with Were We Where We Were by the Michael Formanek Drome Trio with Chet Doxas and Vinnie Sperrazza.   Born in San Francisco in 1958, Formanek has performed in myriad contexts over the decades, including with masters from Gerry Mulligan and Stan Getz to Freddie Hubbard and Fred Hersch. Among his peers, the bassist has collaborated closely with Tim Berne, making a duo album with the saxophonist (Ornery People) and performing extensively in Berne’s iconic Bloodcount band in the ’90s. Formanek also released a solo LP – Am I Bothering You? – via Berne’s Screwgun label in 1998. Formanek’s early recordings as a leader included a string of quartet and septet releases for Enja from 1990 to 1996. As a sideman, he has recorded with Uri Caine, Dave Burrell, Jane Ira Bloom, Gary Thomas, Jack Walrath, Harold Danko, Lee Konitz, Freddie Redd, Art Pepper, Chet Baker and even Elvis Costello, along with appearing on albums by frequent partners such as Halvorson and Fujiwara, Berne, Malaby, multi-reedist Marty Ehrlich, trumpeter Dave Ballou, saxophonist Ellery Eskelin, drummer Devin Gray and pianist Angelica Sanchez. From 2001 to 2018, Formanek taught jazz bass and jazz history and directed large and small ensembles at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Currently based in the New York metropolitan area, he continues to teach, mainly giving workshops and masterclasses in universities and music schools worldwide.  ~ ~ ~ return to top CUNEIFORM ARTISTS ON TOUR 2022 CALENDAR IMPORTANT COVID REMINDER: In an evolving COVID-19 world, these dates are ALL tentative. Please check with venues, close to the concert date, to confirm. We're ecstatic that live concerts are resuming in many locales, and look forward to music venues and concert halls opening worldwide, when health and safety measures allow. See also the Tours Page at Cuneiform Records. CHEER-ACCIDENT "Cheer-Accident are the quintessential Chicago post-rock band that, sadly, you may have never heard of. Too bad. They've been exploring head-scratching, creatively fucked-up time signatures and sideways guitar shenanigans for 20 years now, leaving a pronounced influence on the Windy City's art-rock scene. Their playful musical approach is a ripe aesthetic of absurdist humor." – Pitchfork August 5 - Seaprog - The Crocodile - 2501 First Ave - Seattle, WA August 11 - Healer - 3631 East Raymond St - Indianapolis, IN August 12 - The Pilot Light - 106 East Jackson Ave - Knoxville, TN August 13 - The Wormhole - 2307 Bull St - Savannah, GA August 15 - Rhizome - 6950 Maple St, NW - Washington, DC August 16 - Shadowbox Studio - 2200 Dominion St - Durham, NC August 17 -  Southgate House - 111 E 6th St - Newport, KY "...one of the most impressive concerts I saw was the Dragon Drop/Cheer Accident/Free Salamander Exhibit show in Indianapolis. ...Cheer Accident...had just released their 18th studio album, Putting Off Death... To put it simply, Cheer Accident blew me away... The music was innovative and powerful and brave and everything I’d hoped it would be."- Proglodytes   Listen to & buy  Chicago XX, Putting Off Death,          No Ifs, Ands or Dogs, Fear Draws Misfortune              DESERTION TRIO “[Desertion Trio] hits the sweet spot between Neil Young's exploratory Crazy Horse jams and a spaghetti western soundtrack." – NPR  Philly's Desertion Trio (Nick Millevoi / Johnny DeBlase / Jason Nazary) celebrate Numbers Maker – their 3rd album and 1st disc on Cuneiform – with a show at Baltimore's legendary progressive showcase, Orion Sound Studios October 1 - Orion Sound Showcase Series - 2903 Whittington Ave, Suite C - Baltimore MD 21230 - [YES! Orion is BACK!] Listen to & buy: Numbers Maker     GHOST RHYTHMS "The music here walks a wide loop around Soft Machine and Magma, Univers Zero and Henry Cow, Miles Davis and Miriodor, Van Der Graaf Generator and Art Zoyd. It's impeccably assembled and played, while freely indulging the more insane aspects of progressive rock, avant-garde chamber music, and electric jazz....Despite the musical sophistication and adventure on Live at Yoshiwara, this music is extremely accessible to a wide swathe of listeners. Its release signals the magnificent arrival of Ghost Rhythms on American shores. Get it now." – AllMusic _______________________________ September 3 - Festival Constellations - Jazz à la Villette Off - Parc de la Villette - Paris, France October 1 - Freakshow ArtRock Festival - Galerie 03 e.V. - Lindleinstr.8 - 97080 Würzburg, Germany   Listen to & buy:  Spectral Music  //  Live at Yoshiwara        THE GREAT HARRY HILLMAN The exuberant Swiss jazz/ pop/ beyond group - named after the American triple-Gold Medal winner at the 1904 Summer Olympics - are one of the most active groups on the European festival and club circuit, top-notch live performers ceaselessly honing their skills. October 27 - Tango Brücke - Einbeck, Germany October 30 - JazzFestival Wurzburg - Wurzburg, Germany December 2 -  Hombis Salon - Zürich, Switzerland December 3 - Jazzclub Villingen - Villengen, Germany December 4 - Jazzverein - Aachen, Germany Listen to & buy: Tilt HENRY KAISER Grammy winner Henry Kaiser is widely recognized as one of the most creative and innovative guitarists, improvisers, and producers in the fields of rock, jazz, world, and contemporary experimental musics. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– THE HENRY KAISER MONTHLY SOLO SERIES, presented exclusively on the CUNEIFORM RECORDS YouTube Channel  When Covid pandemic lockdowns began in 2020, Henry Kaiser began curating & presenting a weekly series of pre-recorded music videos exclusively on Cuneiform's YouTube Channel for music lovers isolating at home. These "live" concerts are taped beforehand and not streamed - Henry discusses the process in a Guitar Moderne interview, "The New "Live"".  Many videos in the series depict duets and larger bands, despite the program being called the "Henry Kaiser Weekly Solo Series".  While many depict new or recent performances, other videos in this series are vintage footage of performances not available elsewhere (The Valentines' 1994 concert in the Fukuoka Dome). After lockdowns began to lift In April 2021, the series celebrated its one-year anniversary and converted to a monthly format, which continues!  All 52 videos from the Henry Kaiser's Weekly Series and everything in the current Monthly Series are archived & available on Cuneiform's YouTube Channel.  We invite you to visit Cuneiform Record's YouTube Channel to see the videos that Henry presents on the first of every month. The June 1. 2022 video is Henry Kaiser Monthly Solo # 15 : Zappa + Hank Williams + Howlin’ Wolf + Froggy the Gremlin. Besides his work as a musician, Kaiser is also a scientific diver and underwater videographer in the U.S. Antarctic program. Several of his Solo Series videos on the Cuneiform channel feature Henry's stunning underwater videography in addition to his guitar playing, as in this stunning video from May 2020:  HENRY KAISER : Cuneiform Weekly Solo #2 : Under The Ice Again . Because all videos are archived on our YouTube site, you can watch anything in the series at any time.   Listen to & buy: Albums by Henry Kaiser & Friends  on Cuneiform A Love Supreme Electric [Vinny Golia / John Hanrahan / Henry Kaiser / Wayne Peet / Mike Watt]: A Love Supreme Electric: A Love Supreme and Meditations  Yo Miles!: Henry Kaiser & Wadada Leo Smith: Sky Garden & Upriver     Five Times Surprise [Henry Kaiser / Anthony Pirog / Tracy Silverman / Jeff Sipe / Andy West]:  Five Times Surprise Henry Kaiser & Ray Russell:  The Celestial Squid Henry Kaiser: Lemon Fish Tweezer; Fred Frith & Henry Kaiser: Friends & Enemies     Healing Force [Vinny Golia • Aurora Josephson • Henry Kaiser • Mike Keneally • Joe Morris • Damon Smith • Weasel Walter]: Healing Force:  The Songs of Albert Ayler                       V.A.: 156 Strings: Nineteen Totally Original Acoustic Guitarists LED BIB “This is the sound of a band having fun… like a hot chainsaw through butter." — The Wire "You’ll be hard pressed to keep the lid on this explosive tour de force of ensemble intelligence" – The Independent "One of the UK’s most adventurous groups" – Jazzwise Described as “a lean, mean, improv-rocking jazz machine” by Time Out, Led Bib’s ability to blend groove, improvisation, thrash and everything in-between means that live shows by these UK 2014 Mercury Prize nominees have become renowned for carrying along their audiences with an infectious energy.   ________________________________ November 20 - London Jazz Festival - The Vortex - London, UK   Listen to & buy: The Good Egg, The People in Your Neighbourhood, Bring Your Own,Sensible Shoes             ROGER CLARK MILLER “Less a recital than a musical minefield... Miller is a man in constant motion, a one-man symphony." – Boston Globe Roger Clark Miller (Mission of Burma; Alloy Orchestra; Birdsongs of Mesozoic) celebrates Cuneiform Records' release of Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble with a series of concerts presenting that music in New England.  ________________________________ September 30 - Brattleboro Art Museum - Brattleboro, VT October 8 - The Lillypad - Cambrdige, MA December 2 - 3S Artspace - Portsmouth, NH Listen to & pre-order: Eight Dream Interpretations for Electric Guitar Ensemble            THE ED PALERMO BIG BAND "Twenty-first century big-band music doesn’t get more exciting and impressive than this." – Jazz Times An astounding 18 piece jazz ensemble of five woodwind players, four trumpeters, three trombonists, two keyboardists, guitar, violin, bass and drums, led by arranger, composer & saxophonist Ed Palermo, one of America's most singular arrangers who draws on jazz, pop and rock tunes for his top-notch band. There are a number of ensembles performing the music of Frank Zappa, one of the greatest American composers of the 20th century, but no one does it with the ease, skill and originality that Ed and his band do! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The ED PALERMO BIG BAND returns to the live stage! ~~~~ August 6 - The Falcon - 1348 Rte 9W - Marlboro, NY 12542 August 29 - Iridium - 1650 Broadway (at 51st St) - NYC, NY September 3 - The Falcon - 1348 Rte 9W - Marlboro, NY 12542 September 26 - Iridium - 1650 Broadway (at 51st St) - NYC, NY October 24 - Iridium - 1650 Broadway (at 51st St) - NYC, NY October 29 - The Falcon - 1348 Rte 9W - Marlboro, NY 12542 December 17 - The Falcon - 1348 Rte 9W - Marlboro, NY 12542   Listen to & buy: Ed Palermo Big Band albums on Cuneiform: The Adventures of Zoyd Zundgren;  The Great Un-American Songbook Vols. 1&2;  One Child Left Behind;  Oh No! Not Jazz!!;  Eddy Loves Frank;  Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance                   RICHARD PINHAS One of France's major experimental musicians and a key figure in the development of electronic rock, guitarist and electronic musician Richard Pinhas will perform in 2021 in France and beyond in various groupings. _______________________________ November 19 - Just Drop In Records - FarGo Village -  Far Gosford Street, - Coventry, UK November 21 - Cafe Oto - 18-22 Ashwin St - London E8, UK     Listen to & buy releases by Richard Pinhas & friends on Cuneiform: Process and Reality,  Desolation Row,  Metatron,  Metal/Crystal,  Tranzition,  Event & Repetitions                 Richard Pinhas & Oren Ambarchi: Tikkun   Richard Pinhas & Merzbow:   Keio Line / Rhizome / Paris 2008           Schizotrope (Richard Pinhas & Maurice Dantec):  The Life & Death of Marie Zorn   RAY RUSSELL "Like contemporaries Sonny Sharrock and Terje Rypdal, Russell makes it sound as if the guitar is not enough, as if he's reaching for something wilder, something that can't be contained within the 6 string cage" - Jim O'Rourke _____________________________ August 15 - 606 Club - 90 Lots Rd - London, SW 10, UK   Listen to & buy: Ray Russell: Fluid Architecture;  Secret Asylum; Goodbye Svengali       Ray Russell & Henry Kaiser: The Celestial Squid        “Russell isn’t merely a fine jazz player, but a truly original music thinker and an improvisational force to be reckoned with.” – All Music Guide SCHNELLERTOLLERMEIER "The Best Music of 2015: A Banner Year for the Bold: …here are a dozen albums released in 2015 that I savored repeatedly for their musicality, clarity of statement and courage. …“X” by Schnellertollermeier marries brutality to avant-garde rock and jazz. A classic power trio from Switzerland, the band plays with punk fury and dazzling technical dexterity to create booming, bone-rattling music that stalks, confronts and astonishes.” –The Wall Street Journal Schnellertollermeier's clear-cut approach burns itself into one's memory; audiences who have seen the trio (bassist Andi Schnellmann/ guitarist ManuelTroller / percussionist David Meier) live describe their music as “stunning”, “minimalist”, “brutal”, “decisive”, “monumental”, “angry”, “controlled”, “captivating” or “radical”.  Simply fantastic. _____________________________ August 6 - Festival i de Marktgass - Marktgasse 33 - Bremgarten, Switzerland September 2 - Facciamo La Corte - Via Alla Selva 5 - Muzzano, Switzerland September 4 - Jazz Festival Willisau - Vorstadt 21 - Willisau, Switzerland Listen to & buy: 5, Rights, X                 THUMBSCREW Thumbscrew is the all-star collaborative trio of Mary Halvorson (guitar), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), and Michael Formanek (acoustic bass). Thumbscrew's critically acclaimed albums, all on Cuneiform Records, have appeared on Best of Year lists worldwide. Thumbscrew perform  frequently at festivals and served numerous residencies at art centers and prominent venues in the US and abroad. I September 2022, in celebration of their 10th Anniversary, Thumbscrew wlll release their 7th album on Cuneiform Records: Multicolored Midnight. “Made up of three highly distinctive voices in the world of jazz and avant-garde music, Thumbscrew should probably collapse under the weight of its own star power but Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Mary Halvorson (electric guitar) and Michael Formanek (acoustic bass) are just too aware of the potential of this supertrio to let that happen.”  – Something Else! ________________________________ 2022 is THUMBSCREW's 10th Anniversary year!  Celebrate with them as they release a new recording – Multicolor Midnight – on Cuneiform in September, tour Europe in October, and celebrate with record release shows in NY  U.S.A. September 24 - tba - East Hampton, NY EUROPEAN TOUR: OCTOBER October 14 - Handelsbeurs Concertzaal - Kouter 29 - Gent, Belgium October 16 - tba - Skopje, Macedonia October 19 - JazzClub Singen - Singen, Germany October 21 - Controtempo - Cormons, Italy October 22 - Jazz Club Ferrara - Ferrara, Italy U.S.A. November - tentative US Midwest tour November 11 - Jazz Gallery - 1160 Broadway (at 27th St), 5th Floor - NYC, NY [record release show!] November 12 - Jazz Gallery - 1160 Broadway (at 27th St), 5th Floor - NYC, NY [record release show!] Listen to & buy:  Never Is Enough, The Anthony Braxton Project,  .    Ours, Theirs,       Convallaria, Thumbscrew         To set up press and radio interviews with Cuneiform Artists while on tour or at home, please contact: promo@cuneiformrecords.com return to top Thank you for supporting live music as venues open and festivals resume, while continuing to  enjoy music when home via ACTIVITIES ONLINE !   –AUGUST 2022 – In Ukraine, the War rages on, destroying homes and lives. It's mid-Summer here in the Northern hemisphere, and for most, the world has reopened socially.  Sunshine and warm summer rains nourish the natural world, which is bursting in full bloom, gardens packed with dense vegetation.  Beautiful weather,  ebbs in the pandemic and milder variants, and high vaccination rates lure us outside and into the streets and inside clubs to hear music.  But not everyone is so lucky.  In many places here and abroad,  raging fires and catastrophic floods stoked by Climate Change claim homes and lives.  The Pandemic continues to flare unexpectedly worldwide, like an underground fire in the forest.  And War rages in Ukraine, whose citizens hide underground while Russian bombs destroy their homes, livelihoods, and towns.   Wherever you are globally or politically, please practice kindness to humanity, to mankind, in these tumultuous and troubling times.  Remember that Nature can help shield and solace our troubled hearts  in times of illness or war or political turmoil.  And also:  know that Music can make a positive difference in our lives, and help us survive psychologically and spiritually in evolving and uncertain times.  *** For those of us fortunate to see live music in this season: please remember to always check with the venue to make sure a concert is happening. Unexpected Covid surges can cause last-minute closures. Besides cautiously seeing live music, we'll continue to also enjoy music at home, and we hope that you also continue to enjoy recorded music on your technology of choice.  You can explore tracks from nearly 500 recordings released by Cuneiform Records since 1984 on cuneiformrecords.com, our website, or on our Bandcamp, SoundCloud or YouTube sites, and also watch recordings of recent and vintage concerts that we regularly post on YouTube.  Cuneiform Records has a treasure chest of interesting music to serve as soundtrack, inspiration and solace during these evolving and challenging times. We have a mammoth catalogue of releases by some of avant music's most esteemed icons as well as young rising stars, available for purchase at the Cuneiform Records Bandcamp store and at one of our sister companies, Wayside Music. Your CD and LP purchases support indie musicians, indie labels, and small businesses.  • Discover new music on Cuneiform Records' BANDCAMP PAGE :  support our artists & our indie label by purchasing music.   • Visit our internet store, WaysideMusic.com (established 1980!), to purchase  music from ALL your favorite labels!  We also have a ton of FREE entertainment for your enjoyment on several online platforms:   • Enjoy hours on Cuneiform Records' YouTube CHANNEL:  free music videos, videos of live shows, & samples from 400+ adventurous releases!   And we've expanded our video content during the pandemic, most notably with an ongoing video series curated  and produced by guitarist Henry Kaiser.  • Enjoy and share samples of music by releases of countless Cuneiform artists on the Cuneiform Records' SoundCloud Site. • Visit & Like & Follow our Facebook PAGE for Cuneiform Records. • Join our Facebook GROUP: Fans of Cuneiform Records. • Follow @CuneiformRecord onTwitter • Visit the CuneiformRecords.com official WEBSITE for extensive information on the artists and recordings on our label,  upcoming concerts & much more. • Media professionals: find music to LICENSE from Cuneiform for movies, ads etc via our sister site TheMusicOutpost.com. • Were you forwarded this email from a friend?  If so, make sure you sign up for the Cuneiform NEWSLETTER to  get this monthly newsletter in your email box, in addition to receiving notices for Cuneiform's weekly "$5 Friday" offers – Cuneiform selects a special album from its archive each weekend,  to be sold in download format via Bandcamp, that weekend only,  for $5. • Cuneiform Records announces all of its releases - physical (CD, LP) and digital formats - in its monthly newsletter.  Newsletters contain in-depth info on each release.  If you missed seeing an issue, Newsletters are archived on the Cuneiform Blogspot. WE  LOOK FORWARD TO  SPENDING SUMMER 2022 WITH ALL OF YOU, ONLINE!   Cuneiform Records' Monthly Newsletter is compiled by Joyce [Nalewajk] Feigenbaum, The Music Outpost–Publicity Cuneiform YouTube Cuneiform Website Facebook FanGroup Facebook Page Cuneiform Twitter Cuneiform SoundCloud Cuneiform Bandcamp Instagram Email Cuneiform return to top Copyright © *|CURRENT_YEAR|* Cuneiform Records, All rights reserved.   Washington, DC // Silver Spring, MD Our mailing address is: Cuneiform Records P.O. Box 8427 Silver Spring, MD 20907 Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Was this email forwarded to you from a friend? Subscribe to the Cuneiform Records Newsletter. Read this email online   return to top