all sorts of jazz, improv or else - hot off the press

The music on Ataraxia Trio's second offering "Nights Enter" (after their first "Ts’íibil Cháaltun" from 2016) is unlike anything else in Dennis González’ substantial discography. The confluence of organic and electronic elements is seamless, and the swirling blend of textures has a dreamlike quality. Derek Rogers’ shimmering electronic beds contrast with the earthiness of Jagath Lakpriya’s percussion and the muscularity of Drew Phelps' deep song. Jess Garland’s harp adds dazzling points of light, and Dennis proves himself once again to be a master of melody – a trait he shares with the greatest jazz musicians.
On "Nights Enter", Ataraxia and friends provide a healing balm for troubled times.
( from Ken Shimamoto's liner notes )

As a saxophonist, Baptiste Boiron has been navigating between jazz and contemporary music. He has performed with many improvisers as much as he has interpreted the scores of famous composers.
As a composer for this recording, he offers a superposition of ostinatos and proposals, as much as polyphonic abundance and the multiplication of modes of play, conventional or alternative. This diversity is only matched by the multiplicity of writing processes, testifying to a long experience in the classical and contemporary field. These processes are relayed here by his two fellow musicians who, in addition to spaces left to their initiatives as improvisers, have contributed to the completion of the scores in which the boundary between the premeditated and the ‘impromptu’ blurs.
The repertoire – all originals, except for three titles – is dedicated to various artists (musicians or not, "who helped me build myself" says the composer) whose names are only delivered to our perspicacity in the form of anagrams. They say something more about this music where the narrative qualities and emotion show through beautiful instrumental and compositional techniques.

Sylvaine Hélary’s new quartet explores a more electric branch of her work as a composer, creating here heady melodies, romantic sizzles, amplified rhythmic hordes and waves of misty ritornelles. Each piece thus collected, like timeless portraits of imaginary characters and situations, leaves in its wake the traces of a captivating soundtrack. The legacy of ancient legends (Henry Cow, Robert Wyatt, Arto Lindsay, Stereolab) rubs shoulders with the emergence of a world of astonishing dimensions, where the outlines of a singular soundscape are drawn, reflecting various and complementary expressions of the four musical personalities involved who express themselves with joyful freedom. Acting as a bridge between the very English "Canterbury" scene, contemporary jazz and experimental pop, this group produces the sound of a life in scintillating and phosphorescent colors, a refreshing and bewitching "Glowing Life" promising bright futures.