Though the Danish multi-instrumentalist Robin Taylor has made a name for himself as a prolific and innovative composer in the progressive rock and jazz-rock fusion realms, many may not be aware of his considerable abilities as a free improvising musician. His free-jazz alter-ego manifests itself most frequently in a musical aggregation he’s called Taylor’s Free Universe, a band comprised of musicians who tend also to be involved in his various prog and fusion efforts.As one might expect, Taylor’

Prior to the 21st Century, Merle Haggard's name did not come up all too often when discussing modern jazz - or jazz of any kind, for that matter. Along with everything else, this seems to have changed. Pretend It's The End Of The World is the product of saxophonist Bryan Murray's quest to bring the name 'Merle Haggard' to the lips of Brooks-Brothers-wearing be-boppers, finger-snapping hipsters, and poetry-reciting beatniks the world over. The tongue-in-cheekiness of the whole concept is fleshed

The word 'fusion' is a pretty good descriptor of a style of music only when you know what sorts of music are being fused. I suppose that one could describe Mercury Falls' impressive debut CD, Quadrangle, as 'fusion' – but that would only be 1/10th of the story (if that!). In today's increasingly chopped-up and micro-pigeonholed landscape of music sub-sub-sub genres, it is well-nigh impossible to describe the Bay Area-based quartet's music without resorting to terms that most jazz fans will not k

Faced with the prospect of listening to an entire CD of improvised voice-and-percussion duos, I was initially a bit put-off and placed Scarnoduo into the 'back-burner' stack. But the CD's lovely packaging, of all things, made me curious. Once I got it into my CD player, the sheer inventiveness, broad humor, and technical excellence of Blastula quickly won me over. Scarnoduo is certainly one of the year’s very best avant-garde releases, and another feather in the cap for the consistently great Am

ElectroAcoustic Silence, also known as EASilence, is a collaborative effort involving an Italian jazz quartet and Japanese electronic musician Taketo Gohara. Though Gohara is credited with ‘sound design’ on the CD’s packaging, his contributions to Flatime hearken back to the synthesized swoops, sweeps, boops, and beeps I first heard from artists such as Pat Gleeson on Herbie Hancock’s early 70s LPs, or perhaps to the electronic palette of musique concrete as formulated by Pierre Schaffer and Pie