OPV014 : Pierre Vervloesem / Artiste Belge

Pic by Pierre Vervloesem 

OPV014 : Pierre Vervloesem / Artiste Belge

52nd album from Pierre Vervloesem ( Flat Eart Society, Orchestra Exotica, X-Legged-Sally…) and his 23rd solo in 28 years!!! (see all his albums on Off here and here!).

Pierre spent 2 months, 7/7 and almost 16/24 editing, mixing, playing a lot of guitars and basses, keys and noises, spices and magic for what he calls ‘ His best ever played and produced ‘ album.

The album is a follow up of his ‘ Not Even Close’ one, only this time he plays a lot of guitars and not only synths.

The results is the album ‘Artiste Belge’ which is a versatile mix of Vervloesemesque guitars, basses, funky keyboards, heavy programmed drums and crazy percussions, experimental avant pop and even re recordings of his first ever solo track ‘Phillip!

Take your time to listen as there are so many little variations in each songs that you’ll need at least ten hearings before enjoying those 13 amazing compositions and the monstrous work in mixing the album! Enjoy!

The album itself has 13 tracks while the digital version comes with 5 extra bonuses!

The racks on the digital version are also slightly different mixes from the cd album.

Lee Henderson in Big Beautiful Noise magazine:

"On Vervloesem's planet, there is always space for growth, new germination of experimental seeds, and permission to invent as one sees fit. THAT HE DOES!  This new solo is packed with all sorts of technical goodies, and a mindset far above the clouds. 13 tracks of anything can happen. The album is all instrumental, as fans might expect, but remember no one can predict until it is released. 

With hermetic mind control, Vervloesem played, recorded, mixed, and mastered this imaginative hurtle of libertine document. All in a selfless act, so his true fans could partake of more brilliance by the one of a kind inventor. If you think I am laying it on heavy, just buy the album and take a listen, but pay close attention, and keep a focus on what is going on at all times. This is music from a sordid think tank of checkered bickering between melody lines, prickly notes across a set of measures, often invading the sanity of the norm (and normal), finally throwing pale hands up in the air with surrender, in the acknowledgement that Mr V. will have his way, no matter what. RECOMMENDED."

enjoy 2 videos, directed and edited by Pierre himself!

Olé Hop!:

Fet:

Physical and digital release on the 29th of March 2019.

Track listing:

1: A Great Composition

2: Olé Hop!

3: Tango Tango

4: Fet

5: Onze à Table

6: Le Mulet

7: Fish Eye

8: Statut de Point Artis

9: Über-Mensch Tango

10: Stravinsky & Hutch

11: Phillip

12: Oui mais…, Non

13: Another Reich

Digital bonuses:

14: Almost Chinese

15: Angor De Prinzmetal

16: Canicule mon cul

17: Removal

18: The Void

CD is a 200 copies limited edition!

Price

World shipping €14,00 EUR

And in Bandcamp:

A new Spotify playlist for you to enjoy: Jazz on Off!

Cover art by Al.

Here it is for you to enjoy this week-end and all the moments you will feel like it!

Some of the best Jazz tunes from the Off catalogue! 28 titles for a bit more than 2 hours of music!
Just click on the player and enjoy!

ODG100 : Ghost Cities / Joyhunter

Cover art by Regina Zhelezniakova

ODG100 : Ghost Cities / Joyhunter


Debut album of Mykola Lebed for his solo-project Ghost Cities. 

Mykola is a part of the no-jazz trio H.Soror (see the exciting ODG064), performs with the Ukrainian Improvisers Orchestra and collaborates with a wide range of bands, making him a well known figure in the local Ukrainian scene.

His debut live album "Joyhunter" is a musical journey through layers of personality, through disorders and polarity of mind. 
Always using his powerful sax playing but this time adding a lot of effects and electronics. This gives us a mix of jazz, noise, drones, kraut and ambient.

"Taking the full improvisation as a language, and public performance as one-way ticket to the depth of myself - I've got this piece of sound that truly represents me. However, it was recorded at the very start of my "delirium" and it took more than a year to understand all the things I was trying to tell through music at that moment."
All music was recorded during a live performance at the Mezzanine Club in Kyiv and was spontaneous improvisations.

Mykola in action!

Mykola Lebed - sax, electronics 
Ing Var - live mixing and effects
Sasha Galianov - mastering 
Dmitriy Kachan - editing

Art by Regina Zhelezniakova

Digital release on the 8th of March 2019.

Track listing:

1: Eyes Open
2: Deeper, Deeper
3: Taming the Beast
4: Shoot the Sun
5: Concrete Heartbeat

ODG096-OUI085 : Ben Sluijs Quartet / Seasounds

ODG096-OUI085 : Ben Sluijs Quartet / Seasounds

Another reissue from the Ben Sluijs Quartet ( see also OCD039, ODG086 and ODG095) originally released in 2001 on the W.E.R.F. label, Seasounds was recorded live at the famous little Brussels jazz club 'Le Travers' days before it closed.  

Except for one standard composition 'My Foolish Heart' from Chet Baker, the five remaining songs are from Ben Sluijs, typically composed in his 'bop' style of that time. A pure pleasure!

‘Dit kwartet is intussen heel hecht geworden met vloeiende stokwisselingen en een bijzonder zwierig samenspel. ....Dit kwartet mag dan wel veel idiomen tegelijk omarmen, het doet dat altijd met inzicht, overgave en stillistische verfijning.’ (D.Wijnants)

Originally released as W.E.R.F. 024.

Digital release on the 1st of March 2019.

Track listing:

1: Zin-Zen

2: My Foolish Heart

3: Tikidanke

4:Sleep

5: Seasounds

6: Daydreaming

And on Bandcamp:

OCD043 : The Wrong Object / Into the Herd

Cover art by Marc Atkins

OCD043 : The Wrong Object / Into the Herd

Zachary Nathanson: "Listening to their new album, I almost get the feeling that Michel Delville, who launched the band back in 2002, hasn’t forgotten his roots. The Wrong Object are still going strong and they’re showing no sign of stopping... From the moment you listen to the opening title-track and Mango Juice, you can tell that Michel channels the styles of Brian Godding (Blossom Toes, Magma). From Pierre’s wah-wah bass introduction, you can tell that the band are going straight back into the Egyptian’s tombs of Emehntehtt-Re to see where the missing clues are hidden. The snarling tones that Delville brings into the opening composition is almost a revelation on what secrets the Egyptian king has hidden from every historian buff ..."

Pete Pardo: "Easily an early contender for jazz-rock album of 2019, _Into the Herd_ is a musical joy from a supremely talented band at the height of their powers"

Duncan Heining, Jazzwise: "Suppose you've a friend, who thinks jazz-rock an aberration and fusion noodling its inevitable nadir. Here's what you do. Strap them to a chair, put The Wrong Object on at full volume and leave them a few hours. If by then they still don't get it, find another friend."

Barry Cleveland, Guitar Player: "Belgium’s The Wrong Object is brimming with artful compositions and quirky guitar work. Originally a Zappa tribute band, guitarist Michel Delville and his colorful cohorts have pushed the quintet’s music far beyond homage status, into an oeuvre combining structural complexity with emotional authenticity, much as their mentor’s music did."

Kev Rowland (NZ), Rog Archives: "It is as if Frank Zappa and Robert Fripp have pulled together a band so they can explore not only their own musical stylings but also combine it with the Canterbury Movement and then thrown in avant garde jazz and even some RIO just for the hell of it. After 15 years of an existence marked by extensive touring, recording and numerous collaborations with international jazz and rock luminaries (Elton Dean, Harry Beckett, Annie Whitehead, Alex Maguire, Stanley Jason Zappa, Ed Mann, Robin Verheyen), The Wrong Object continues to push boundaries and blend different musical styles in a way which is both invigorating and exciting."

Since its creation in 2002, The Wrong Object has been hailed as one of the most original and powerful bands on the progressive jazz-rock scene.  

Into the Herd is the band’s seventh official release (their first one was a collaboration with Soft Machine’s Elton Dean which appeared in 2005).

Merging jazz, rock and classical sensibilities with samples and electronica, influenced as much by Stravinsky and Bartok as by Gong and Zappa, the Belgian sextet continues to expand its vision of intriguing rock and jazz expressed in exuberant shifting accents, superb melodies, contrapuntal complexities and colorful arrangements.

The result is a new opus of thundering monumentality, whose artistry and sound remain unmistakably their own and create a diverse and vibrant listening experience, one which has become well-known in jazz-rock and progressive rock circles and which All About Jazz describes as a mixture of “spunky world-music interludes, outside jazz treatments and scorching movements amid majestic, prog-like escapism”.

With a line-up comprising members of seminal acts such as Univers Zero, Machine Mass and FlatEarth Society, Into the Herd is one of the Wrong Object's most accomplished releases and arguably their strongest offering thus far.

--LINE UP--

Marti MELIA: tenor sax, clarinet, backing vocals

François LOURTIE: tenor & soprano saxes, vocals

Michel DELVILLE: guitar, Roland GR09, vocals

Antoine GUENET: keyboards, vocals

Pierre MOTTET: bass

Laurent DELCHAMBRE: drums, percussions, objects, samples

All tracks recorded by Maxime Wathieu, mixed by Etienne Plumer and mastered by Mark Wingfield.

Marc Atkins beautiful art website: marcatkins.com

Physical and digital release on the 22nd of February 2019.

The cd is sold out

Track listing:

1. Into the Herd (Delville) 4:11

2. A Mercy (Delville) 4:55

3. Rumble Buzz (Delchambre) 7:10

4. Another Thing (Delville) 6:52

5. Filmic (Delville) 5:34

6. Mango Juice (Delchambre) 8:58

7. Many Lives (Guenet) 6:09

8. Ship of Fools (Delville) 6:39

9. Psithurism (Delchambre) 3:42

And on Bandcamp:

ODG097 : The Paul Swest / Eyeshadow Falls

Covert art by Jimmy Fountain

ODG097 : The Paul Swest / Eyeshadow Falls

Charles Chace is an artist and musician from Massachusetts who has exhibited in galleries in New York City, Miami and North Carolina.

His recent works consist of a multimedia installation that included paper collage, video, and

manipulatable noise machines.

Other recent work includes a series of portrait paintings that musician Dave Bazan (Pedro The Lion) used for a series of record covers.

His avant-garde free jazz musical project is called “The Paul Swest”. Using multi-track recording he plays an array of instruments: upright bass, drums, guitar, wooden flute, bells etc. Through this process he’s able to create works that sound like group improvisation. They range from composed motifs to free form splatter, from Cecil Taylor’s Unit Structures to Derek Bailey.

Charles Chace

Interview for All About Jazz:

Q - Teachers and/or influences?

CC - Except for a brief study with guitarist Fred Fried, I'm primarily a self-taught guitarist who has played for over twenty years. My main influences are Robert Johnson and Cecil Taylor—I appreciate the former for his unstoppable tone and the latter for the incredible force of his creative power. With Taylor, you always need a second listen to get what he's doing as an artist.

Q -Your sound and approach to music?

CC - I’ve worked hard to develop my sound by listening carefully to other players and studying a lot of different techniques. At first, I only wanted to match that thick fat crispy tone that Charlie Christian captured. But listening to guys like Eugene Chadbourne and Derek Bailey caused me to expand my tones. So nowadays I just try to play the noise that fits the music. The results are, I think, much more interesting because now I explore all the sounds that I can get out of my instrument. But no pedals. That sound just doesn't work for me.

Charles Chace - Guitars, Prepared Guitars, Drums, Upright Bass, Electric Bass, Wood

Flute, Glockenspiel, Melodica, Bells, Shakers

Recorded and Mixed at BeepWave Studio

Mastered by Chris Colbert

Digital release on the 15th of February 2019.

Track listing:

1. Eyeshadow Falls

2. A Special Talk

3. Diamond Shopping

4. Dave’s A Richard

And in Bandcamp:

OJP035 / OUC017 : Atsuko Hatano / Bleeding Heart

Covert art by Saskia Griepink : 'Bloedend hart'  

OJP035 / OUC017 : Atsuko Hatano / Bleeding Heart

After releasing the beautiful EP 'Endless Birthday / Yellow Boys' (see OJP031 / OUC015), Atsuko Hatano returns with her new amazing mini album 'Bleeding Heart'.

Atsuko Hatano is a Japanese Viola player using her instrument with a lot of electronics to add textures and layers to her sound. In this case she recorded playing with a  5 strings viola with leslie speaker. Definitely contemporary classical but with a very electronic approach. 

All music by Atsuko Hatano, recorded at Hoshi To Niji studio.

She has been playing and recording in solo or in collaboration with various artists : site.

Atsuko San

Digital release on the 8th of February 2019.

Track listing:

1: Twisted Compass

2: Down in the Dirt

3: The Heart Is a Muscle

4: Sinkhole

5: Funhouse Mirror

6: Bleeding Heart

7: Blind Alley

And in Bandcamp: