Albums Selection

I first came across the music of the bass clarinetist Jeff Anderle several years ago owing to his ensembles Splinter Reeds, a west coast reed quintet which focuses on contemporary composition, and Sqwonk, a San Francisco-based bass clarinet duo which remains rooted in the classical tradition while drawing upon everything from free improvisation to heavy metal to klezmer, the...

The first song on Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings by the duo of Mary Halvorson and Ambrose Akinmusire sounds like it could be the last. Akinmusire initiates a bugle call on his trumpet, a funereal albeit slightly smeared air which retains more than a vestige of martial clarity while sounding decidedly crestfallen. As he reaches a lofty and stirring peak...

Domingos Aleixo has been releasing music since his early teens, with Carregando a Vida Atrás das Costas under his alias Puto Tito in 2019 capturing a slew of that old SoundCloud material before he returned to the Lisbon bastion Príncipe a couple of years later with the romantic taster Não Sou Perfeito as he now began to forge a...