Z z z z z z . . .

Mmm . . . fell asleep on the couch with an #Ambient mix on earbuds . . . [lights out!]
;- D

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Hitting the BIG time (@ last!) ;- D

Honored to be included here . . . especially when I see who else was chosen!

Congrats @AmbientLndscape Your blog has been selected as one of the Top 15 Ambient Music Blogs on the web by @_feedspot https://t.co/hKoaRyDKYS

— Feedspot Blog Reader (@Feedspot_Blog) August 31, 2018

elements _ hybrid

This is a project that I’ve been compiling in my head since this past Spring; a Jazz, Ether/Euro-Jazz, Classical mashup . . . with a hard, Belgian finish – combining ECM artists w/the eclectic world of the Avant-Garde.

Inspired by the Thomas Strønen release, Lucas.
Happy listening!  / 94:18

Download

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01 Biosphere & Deathprod – Muses-C (edit)
02 A Winged Victory for the Sullen – Metro, Pt. 3
03 Nadia Sirota & Liam Byrne – Letter EE
04 Triosk – Lazyboat
05 Jan Jelinek – Moiré [Strings]
06 Thomas Strønen/Time is a Blind Guide – Fugitive Places
07 Miles Davis – L’Assassinat De Carala
08 Lynne Arriale – I Hear a Rhapsody
09 Jan Garbarek – Desolate Mountains II
10 Thomas Strønen/Time is a Blind Guide – Tension
11 Nadia Sirota & Liam Byrne – Letter RR
12 Andy Sheppard Quartet – They Came from the North
13 Bob Holroyd – Woven
14 Jan Jelinek – Do Dekor
15 Sun Ra – New Day
16 Brian Groder – Water Prayer
17 Wynton Marsalis – Think Of One
18 Machine Mass feat. Dave Liebman – Centipede
19 The Wrong Object – Saturn

2018 12k Tee

It's here . . . the new @12k_label tee!
Anyone spotting me wearing this in Newport, RI (probably on Thames St) this weekend will get a private link to my latest #Ambient or #EtherJazz mix
(your choice)!
😃😉 pic.twitter.com/JorLCZqavy

— Ambient Landscape (@AmbientLndscape) August 22, 2018

All About Jazz

From now to 2019 . . . our output falls into the Jazz/Ether Jazz category 41.2% of the mixological time.

And, in the beginning . . . (cover from “the interview”) – grab your copy before they’re gone!
;- )

[<satire>]

elements_unknown

Music can transport us, via motionless transportation, to places heretofore unknown.
And thus began this mix project & elements edition – a meandering blended mixture of Ether & Jazz.

Cover image painstakingly commissioned by “the artiste” via Paper by Fifty-Three.
76:46

01 Graham Dunning & Dirk Serries – Live at De Singer (excerpt)
02 Marconi Union – Abandoned remix (excerpt)
03 Hely – Josyne
04 Charlie Watts, Jim Keltner & Mick Jagger – Tony Williams
05 Jack DeJohnette, Matt Garrison & Ravi Coltrane – Lydia
06 Colin Vallon – Goodbye
07 Charles Mingus – Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
08 Wolfert Brederode Trio – Terminal
09 Dominique Pifarély Quartet – Le peuple effacé (pt. 1)
10 Trio 3 – Suite for T; I (Slimm)
11 Triosk – I am a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake
12 David Virelles – Aberisún y Aberiñán
13 David Fiuczynski & Rufus Cappadocia  – Gaida
14 Dominique Vantomme feat. Tony Levin – Odin’s Wig

Leonardo Pavkovic: Nothing is Ordinary

Who’s to say that music has to be the most important thing in your life? Who says that? For our generation, music was important; for me, most certainly. But maybe music is not supposed to be the most important thing.

More than any other person, Leonardo Pavkovic has made me write some crazy shit.

Pavkovic is the primal force behind the joyously eclectic MoonJune Records, which he established in 2001. “Established” may not be the right word: “I am truly an unusual and rules breaking call-it-record-company with a ‘label’ identity despite the fact that as a person and as a ‘label’ I go out of any categorization and labeling of what I do,” he confided before our interview. “I am a stubborn Don Quixotesque romantic warrior and one-man-band army wearing many hats.”

MoonJune’s mission statement:  The ongoing goal of MoonJune is to support music that transcends stylistic pigeon-holing, but operates within an evolutionary progressive musical continuum that explores boundaries of jazz, rock, avant, ethno, the unknown and anything in between.

Pavkovic was born in Bosnia in the former Yugoslavia in 1962. He was raised in southern Italy and studied Portuguese and Brazilian literature at the University of Bari (Italy) and Afro-Portuguese History and Literature at the University of Luanda (Angola, Africa) en route to becoming fluent in six languages. Before MoonJune, he translated artistic and scientific literature from/to Italian, Portuguese and Serbo-Croatian, and published two volumes of original poetry. Pavkovic established MoonJune Management and Booking, now MoonJune Music, in 2000, copping its name from “Moon in June,” a Robert Wyatt tune on the third album by Soft Machine, one of his numerous prog-rock-jazz-fusion inspirations.

MoonJune Records is only part of Pavkovic’s impressive music business reach. As a booking agent, he has coordinated more than 2,000 concerts in more than 50 countries worldwide. Even though MoonJune Records consumes a great deal of his energy and time, he still does not consider it his “main business”; instead, it’s just one more chapter in his lifelong diary of musical surprises.

MoonJune Music is the musical equivalent of Forrest Gump’s proverbial box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get: An improvisational jazz-rock quintet built around guitar, trumpet, and bass clarinet, named for a North Korean dictator and the martial arts style instructed by Grandmaster “Iron” Kim (Iron Kim Style, 2010); jazz-rock ensemble fusion led by Israel’s version of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen (Breaking the Cycle, Marbin, 2011); or ancient Indonesian temple ritual music and traditional gamelan percussion employed as rhythmic loops upon which jazz players can solo almost forever (Demi Masa, simakDialog, 2009), to name just a few of its far-reaching flavors.

Consequently, MoonJune Record reviews seriously stretch a writer’s analytic and descriptive faculties, not to mention ears—this writer’s, at least.

In late 2017, Pavkovic assembled the twenty-five track compilation It Must Be Jazz to celebrate the label’s fourth-place finish in DownBeat‘s annual “Best Jazz Label” poll (up from seventh place in 2016) and released it as a free digital download to thank the label’s fans. Its title track was jointly composed by guitarist Allan Holdsworth, keyboardist Alan Pasqua, bassist Jimmy Haslip and drummer Chad Wackerman for Blues for Tony, their 2010 ensemble tribute to powerhouse jazz-rock drummer Tony Williams who passed away in 1997. This high-voltage piece of electric jazz-rock fusion was born from sentiment and experience: Holdsworth replaced John McLaughlin for a year as the Tony Williams Lifetime guitarist, and both Holdsworth and Pasqua were members of The New Tony Williams Lifetime.

This Might Be Jazz opens just as majestically, with the title track to Indonesian pianist Dwiki Dharmawan’s landmark Pasar Klewer, regarded one of the top jazz albums of 2016. Dharmawan’s playing, especially when accompanied by just bass and drums, sounds absolutely ferocious as it splatters chords and rhythms all over the ivories, mixing up mainstream, free and avant-garde jazz piano. “Indonesia is the place of ‘ultimate diversity,'” the pianist explained upon Pasar Klewer‘s release. “Here, the urban cultures accelerate the ‘acculturation’ process, which generates changes in cultural patterns and creates new forms of musical expression. Pasar Klewer is the answer to my search for ‘the difference,’ and also a valuable answer to our modern crises and urban uprooting. The album’s distinctive sound originates from an ancient Gamelan tonal system called Salendro, known in the Karawitan traditional music of the Sundanese, Javanese and Balinese.”

Pavkovic’s uncompromising and knowledgeable devotion to music has earned in return the same affection from MoonJune’s musicians. “Leonardo’s perspective on music has served to encourage and inspire musicians throughout Indonesia to create the music on a higher level,” explains Ligro guitarist Agam Hamzah. “MoonJune Records has been great in its impact, helping to orchestrate so many positive changes for the benefit of the Indonesian music scene and its artists. Being associated with Leonardo and MoonJune Records as a musician and as a friend is an honor and a privilege.”

“Like its namesake orb, MoonJune steadily casts its light across a commercially ravaged musical landscape without ever capitulating to the market, a rare paragon of musical virtue in ever more culturally bankrupt times,” suggests guitarist Dennis Rea (Moraine, Iron Kim Style, Zhongyu).

“Because his vision and erudition know no physical or mental boundaries, MoonJune might seem an oddity founded by a starry-eyed idealist, a rather utopian proposition in our increasingly prefab musical world,” muses guitarist Michel Delville (The Wrong Object, Machine Mass, DouBt). “But, to me, MoonJune is not just a record label pushing out alternative music. It feels more like a family of like-minded musicians keen to explore new grounds while collaborating with each other and engaging in a dialogue between the past and the present.”

How enthusiastic is Pavkovic about music and MoonJune? After we finalized the following 12,000 word interview, he mused, “It’s a bit LONG, but I have so much to say and what I said is only 1.75% of what I would be able to say.” Leonardo Pavkovic exemplifies a profoundly personal yet widely public relationship with music. It’s hard to imagine how the future of this music could be in more caring, capable hands than his.

All About Jazz: Where’s the best place to begin the MoonJune story?

Leonardo Pavkovic: When I first started the label, I had no background in the music business whatsoever. After I moved from Italy to New York City in August 1990, I met the renowned Brazilian graphic artist and photographer Fernando Natalici, who created the legendary “Studio T” graphic design studio in the mid ’70s. Studio T was almost a cult phenomenon in downtown Manhattan. Fernando himself was a living encyclopedia of virtually everything that happened in the New York music scene during the 1970’s and ’80’s, and soon we became inseparable friends. (Later, I became his business partner). Studio T was known for its large clientele in the city’s music business community, so I was always in the company of great musicians, concert promoters, and record labels owners and executives, from majors and from independents.

In the early 2000s, I was briefly involved with the NYC-based label Jazz Magnet Records through a jazz publicist and music industry veteran, the legendary Jim Eigo. This experience was both inspiring and beneficial. Motivated by that experience, I decided to start my own record label and released my first album, a live recording of the legendary saxophonist Elton Dean, who I’d known since the mid ’80’s, while I was living in Italy. Two other live albums of young Italian progressive rock bands quickly followed: Finisterre’s Storybook and D.F.A.’s Work In Progress Live.

Full Interview:
https://www.allaboutjazz.com/leonardo-pavkovic-nothing-is-ordinary-leonardo-pavkovic-by-chris-m-slawecki.php

It Must Be Jazz, a MoonJune Records sampler

25 Jazz & Beyond Jazz tunes from 25 artists from 25 different albums released on MoonJune Records between 2011-2017.
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Featuring 86 international musicians from different parts of the world:
Abel Pabon, Alan Pasqua, Alex Maguire,Allan Holdsworth, Amy Tata, Aris Daryono, Asaf Sirkis, Beledo, Bill Jones, Bob Mintzer, Bojan Ivkovic, Boris Savoldelli, Branko Trijic, Chad Wackerman, Charles Hayward, Ciro Riccardi,Damien Polard,Dave Carpenter, David Binney, Dave Liebman, Demas Narawangsa, Dennis Rea, Derek Di Peri, Desal Sembada, Dewa Budjana, Diki Suwarjiki, Domenico Angarano, Dusan Jevtovic, Dwiki Dharmawan, Elton Dean, Endang Ramdan, Frank Harrison, Fred Baker, Fred Delplancq, Gary Husband, Gilad Atzmon, Hugh Hopper, Hul Hul, Indro Hardjodikoro, Izaak Mills, Jason Smith, Jay Jaskot, Jean-Paul Estievenart, Jenny Bliss, Jimmy Haslip, Jimmy Johnson, John Etheridge, John Marshall, Jonathan Joseph, Larry Goldings, Laurent Delchambre, Lincoln Goines, Marcello Giannini, Marco Bardoscia, Mark Fletcher, Mark Wingfield, Markus Reuter, Michel Delville, Miroslav Tovirac, Othello Molineaux, Pedja Milutinovic, Pete Lemer, Peter Erskine, Peter Sebastian, Phil Miller, Pietro Santangelo, Raffaele Casarano, Riccardo Villari, Riza Arshad, Robert Thomas, Jr., Roy Babbington, Rudy Zulkarnaen, Ryan Berg, Salvatore Rainone, Simon Fintch, Simon Picard, Steve Franklin, Tali Atzmonn, Tesla Manaf, Thaddaeus Brophy, Theo Travis, Tohpati, Tony Bianco, Vasil Hadzimanov, Xavi Reija, Yaron Stavi.

MoonJune Records is the universal “go to” label for the exploring curious listener of progressive music with a heavy accent to Jazz and beyond Jazz. The alchemy of jazz, rock,avant-garde, fusion and world ethno future mixed here music knows no bounds. Take a sonic test drive and sample the music. Journey worldwide hearing the compositions,virtuosity, passions, excitements, and subtlety of the music of the legends and newer musicians back from London and Canterbury then jump to Belgium, Italy, Indonesia, Serbia, Germany, Israel, Japan, Spain, Uruguay, Canada, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago, and more. There is an implicit trust in the MoonJune brand that has created an alternative soundtrack for the listeners as well as the musicians themselves that continually cross pollinate and collaborate. Listen and come into the MoonJune Universe.

– Mark Redlefsen, music journalist.

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Released December 4, 2017
Dedicated to Allan Holdsworth, Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, Riza Arshad, Dave Carpenter. (R.I.P.)

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Martina Lussi – Selected Ambient

On the LP Selected Ambient, Martina Lussi brings together a collection of sound material from her practice to date. The material oscillates between electroacoustic composition, sound art, and live performance. The pieces are named after precious gemstones, all of which are traditionally ascribed with special powers. In using these names, the artist seems to refer to the esoteric roots of the genre invoked by the LP’s title. The compositions, however, resist the genre’s characteristically naïve re-enchantment of the world and distrust holistic esotericism’s promise of healing and restoration. Instead, they are defined much more by an interest in affective uncertainties. The gemstones don’t speak, and they don’t convey the mythical forces ascribed to them—rather, they rest in their own materiality. They don’t want to affect or influence—they simply want to exist as witnesses of/to the ultimately incommensurable reality that lives beyond our own horizon.

“Sodalith” is characterized by a melancholy sensibility; the piece is carried by a boundless synthetic surface over which a guitar melody swirls. At first, “Citrin” seems to want to unravel into orbiting, meditative qualities, but in the second part, the mood collects in the peculiarity somewhere between sustained calm and frequently disrupted rave euphoria. “Achat,” which borrows most clearly from the electroacoustic tradition, develops relatively late and unexpectedly into a subtle techno track that then repeatedly interrupts the very momentum it has engendered. Lastly, “Opal,” which was originally written for Lussi’s installation “Composition for a Circle,” writhes in seemingly stochastic contortions that lightly shake the centripetal dynamic of the piece.

In these four compositions as in other works, Lussi creates a sound world in which circling correlations raise more questions than they answer—in contrast to esotericism, which insists on imbuing its material with meaning. Lussi therefore facilitates a listening experience that refers to ambient at its best and most radical: her music represents neither a dissolution of the self in complete uncertainty nor a contemplative internal landscape, but rather a tremulous hovering over the border between the two.

Martina Lussi lives and works in Lucerne. She holds a Master of Arts in Contemporary Arts Practice. In 2014, Lussi’s debut EP, “Komposition O08”, was released on Präsens Editionen. Lussi has performed work between the disciplines of sound art and music performance at places like LUFF (Lausanne Underground Filmfestival) or the festival Oto Nove Swiss at London’s Cafe Oto.
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Released November 20, 2017
Mastered by Lawrence English
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Awase, by Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin

Looking forward to the 5.04.18 release of this . . .
#MoreRonin!
_____________________________________________________________

‘Awase‘, a term from martial arts, means “moving together” in the sense of matching energies, a fitting metaphor for the dynamic precision, tessellated grooves and balletic minimalism of Nik Bartsch’s Ronin.

Six years have passed since the last release from the Swiss group (though Nik Bartsch did release ‘Continuum’ with his group Mobile on ECM in 2016). In the interim, trimmed from quintet to quartet size and with new bassist Thomy Jordi fully integrated, Ronin has become a subtly different band.

The pianist/composer speaks of a new-found freedom and flexibility in the approach to the material, with “greater transparency, more interaction, more joy in every performance”. The freedom here extends to revisiting early Bartsch modules alongside new compositions including, for the first time on a Ronin record, a piece by reedman Sha.

After “Modul 60,” the reflective and tranquil opener to Awase, from pianist Nik Bärtsch’s groove-metric quartet Ronin, “Modul 58” comes at you with such an insistence and power that it leaves you, after its persistent eighteen minutes, catching your breath, marveling at how you went from zero to mach 10 in the blink of an eye.

Bärtsch describes the music of Ronin as “Zen Funk” or “Ritual Groove Music” and, as evidenced on previous thrillers including 2002’s Randori (Ronin Rhythm Records), ’08’s Holon (ECM Records), and ’12’s Ronin Live (ECM), the keyboardist’s in no way pulling our legs or playing with our heads.

Play with our heads the music does, though, in a dizzying, grand way, employing simple patterns unconcerned with downbeats or expectations and mantra-like modules (or “Moduls,” as Bärtsch chooses to title his works) of sheer minimalist groove that expand, contract and expand again at the whim and will of both composer and players.

Positioned, as it is, after the maelstrom of “Modul 58, Sha’s “A,” is a languid, darkly hypnotic work, its theme offered up repetitively as the band interprets each go ’round in shifting, intrinsic ways. “A” also serves as an oasis from the growing dance of “Modul 36,” a flowing, firing-on-all-cylinders rave that, if you weren’t familiar with the vision of Ronin, you might suspect was out of reach for this brainy quartet.

Ditto “Modul 34,” with Rast holding a hard rock ‘n’ roll center as Bärtsch goes unhinged. It is a tune that blends rock and jazz with a stunning ease seldom found since the fusion heyday of the mid-’70s. “Modul 59,” after the fashion of the opener, takes us out quietly, with Bärtsch and company knowing full well that we need the time to recover from the rush.
~All About Jazz

Awase was recorded at Studios La Buissonne in the south of France in October 2017 and produced by Manfred Eicher. It is released on CD and on a double LP (180g vinyl) with a free download code.

Personnel:
Nik Bartsch (piano)
Sha (bass clarinet, alto saxophone)
Thomy Jordi (bass)
Kaspar Rast (drums)