Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog, Connection, Yellowbird ***1/2

For a gutsy, punky, uncompromising listen look no further than Connection. Two years on from Hope and five from the questioning Are You Still Here guests with guitar icon Marc Ribot's trio of bassist-keyboardist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches …

Published: 2 Jul 2023. Updated: 10 months.

For a gutsy, punky, uncompromising listen look no further than Connection. Two years on from Hope and five from the questioning Are You Still Here guests with guitar icon Marc Ribot's trio of bassist-keyboardist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith include saxophonist James Brandon Lewis whose Eye of I shook us up wonderfully this year and keyboardist Anthony Coleman. Snake Oil reedist Oscar Noriega (he and Smith were on the excellent You've Been Watching Me) also is on Connection, the title track of which is streaming. As a sidenote if you enjoyed Love in Exile this year you will be understandably attuned to the role of Ismaily here in the Ayler loving Ribot's latest. Includes striking Ribot originals and a cover of Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz's 1950s song 'That's Entertainment' that Ribot sings with gusto in a feverish Iggy like snarl. Gripping from the get go listen as he cranks into A clown with his pants falling down/Or the dance that's a dream of romance.

The Lewis features to gravitate to are 'Heart Attack' and particularly the storming meisterwerk here that is 'Swan' with its squally droney Ribot slashes of spraypaint attack and a gravity forcefield that is Lewis' visceral apocalyptic trademark. Ramped up Connection never lets up and shakes off all available cobwebs that may be clinging to your tattered clothing dear jazzhead. Pick up these replacement threads of a new sonic wardrobe when the album is out on Friday.

Ceramic Dog, l-r: Shahzad Ismaily, Ches Smith, Marc Ribot, photo: via Big Fish. The band are playing this week on the continent with dates including Belgium tomorrow night, Copenhagen on Tuesday, Portugal on Thursday and Friday, Poland on Saturday with the tour continuing the following week - for venue details mosey here

Tags: Reviews

John Hadfield, Drum of Stories, In a Circle Records ***1/2

Often disappointed by cover artwork on albums? Fear not that isn't an off putting factor in this case. Gaze upon Reineke Hollander's cover of Drum of Stories, the main image that looks like an old manuscript overlaid by tiny fragments of bright, …

Published: 1 Jul 2023. Updated: 10 months.

Next post

Often disappointed by cover artwork on albums?

Fear not that isn't an off putting factor in this case. Gaze upon Reineke Hollander's cover of Drum of Stories, the main image that looks like an old manuscript overlaid by tiny fragments of bright, intense, beacon like colours that rain down as if the page has become a windowpane glistening like a waterfall. Because the image certainly is against the odds a good encouragement to turn the page and actually listen. Swimming on an ocean of sound where nearly everything else sinks without a trace the image is a message in a bottle and an antidote to being turned off by ubiquitous imagery flashed in front of us all the time in a modern age.

Drum of Stories recorded last summer in a studio in the western French city of Poitiers comes alive with colour metaphorically speaking in an intense battle of feverish drumming against piano and a pristine guitar backdrop on 'Tower of Liars' after a swooning Ry Cooder-esque woozy opening, the second of 7 pieces that inhabit a prog jazz sphere and the polyrhythmical 'Spells' contains some of the main business here in terms of a journey into a trance like fusion universe touched upon featuring the guitar of Mahan Mirarab.

The voice of Greta Thunberg crops up on 'Map of the Future' not at all jarringly. Shaped around a core trio of US drummer John Hadfield, French pianist Grégory Privat best known for his work with Lars Danielsson and Canadian bassist Chris Jennings heard this year on Nguyên Lê's brilliant Silk and Sand and who leads off 'Paul Motion's Diary' [sic], the title track most of all is pretty dazzling. Guests also include clarinettist Kinan Azmeh. Best of these is saxophonist Ron Blake and his beefy contribution on the feelgood 'Stolen from the 10th Arrondissement' that is another strong suit of an unpretentious eco-conscious stylistically voracious record as are Hadfield's compositions that cover a lot of terrain so imaginatively.