All sorts of jazz, free jazz and improv. Never for money, always for love.
Derek Bailey and Evan Parker pioneered free improvisation in the 60s by
doing away with idiomatic trappings, but since then the free-improv vocabulary
has become just as restrictive as the conventions of mainstream jazz.
The members of north European quartet the Electrics represent an emerging
international community of musicians who reject all fixed notions of genre.
Recorded in Stockholm last year, the group's excellent new Live at Glenn
Miller Cafe (Ayler) was improvised on the spot, but the players aren't afraid
to swing, deliver straight-ahead melodies, or bump up against one another
to explore extreme harmonies.
Driven by explosive Swedish drummer Raymond Strid – best known as a
member of Gush with reedist Mats Gustafsson and pianist Sten Standell –
the Electrics can play free jazz with the fiery intensity of 60s icons like
Albert Ayler and Peter Brötzmann, but they're not all about blowing
down the house.
German trumpeter Axel Dörner, one of the instrument's most versatile
practitioners, can veer from postbop phrasing to splashes of unpitched breath;
on the disc he employs one of his trademark tricks, making his horn sound
like a car engine turning over. He and Swedish reedist Sture Ericson shadow
each other like seasoned beboppers, while Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Håker
Flaten (now based in Chicago) both grounds and propels the music.
Order our CDs directly using