 Dear friends in press and radio; Happy New Year! We wish each of you & yours a year blessed with good health and filled with good friends, and astounding music and art. It's 2012, a year that didn't bode well for the Mayans, but which hopefully will be kinder to our own civilization. We predict a year of unrestrained musical & poetic & artistic creativity, in stark contrast to the glooming global economy. Those of us in the avant arts can safely navigate these 'interesting times' if we continue to work together: in unity there is strength. In the spirit of future collaboration: in Jan. 2012 we launched the Cuneiform Dance Project to team cutting edge music by our artists with dance companies worldwide. For more information, contact Project Manager Kelly Mann at: DanceProject [ a t ] cuneiformrecords.com In the spirit of collaboration past: we want to thank EVERYONE - our artists, our staff, our intern team, our audiences, and all of you in radio and press - for making Cuneiform's Nov. 2011 dual-city label showcases - "Cuneiform Curates The Stone, NY" and "Cuneifest, Baltimore" - such a great success. EVERYone was amazing, and all of you have our eternal appreciation and love. Special love to fans who flew to NY and Baltimore from across the US and Canada, and from Scandinavia, Europe and the Middle East to attend the NY shows and sell out Cuneifest. Special thanks to the journalists , publications and djs who did concert previews and label profiles, some of which are archived on the Cuneifest site: http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/festival/2011/baltimore/press.html In sadness, on the deaths of collaborators past: the music world suffered multiple losses in 2011, when three of Cuneiform's artists died: British jazz drummer/ improvisor TONY LEVIN (d. Feb. 3, 2011); British jazz composer/educator/ bassist GRAHAM COLLIER (d. Sept. 9, 2011); and Italian minimalist composer/sound artist/producer PIERO MILESI (d. Oct. 30, 2011). For links to some obits, please click HERE. Our condolences to all those who lost loved ones in 2011. Cuneiform's 5 Wondrous Winter 2012 releases are: JAZZ, BIG BAND JAZZ, JAZZ-ROCK Both PHYSICAL and DIGITAL versions of our promos are available. Digital promos can be downloaded in several formats (lossless flac, mp3, aac, etc...), and are accompanied by album artwork, press releases, and artist promo photos. Please read through this email to find out WHAT new releases are available, WHEN they will be released and HOW to request them for possible review/airplay. We also have mp3s for which you can LISTEN / DOWNLOAD. Alongside/along with these upcoming releases, we will continue to ship promos of PRIOR Cuneiform CDs & DVDs released over the past months. Fall 2011 releases can still be requested; these include -Bill Laswell, Raoul Björkenheim, Morgan Ågren: Blixt [Click Here] for a list of Cuneiform's Winter 2012 New Releases. [Read this online] [Click Here] to see our "Promo Request Procedures" or scroll down. [Read this online] best regards, Joyce: joyce@cuneiformrecords.com (director, press & foreign radio) Javier: radio@cuneiformrecords.com (North American radio) |
CUNEIFORM'S WINTER 2012 RELEASES
[Click on album cover for detailed info on each release or scroll down]
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Ergo - If Not Inertia |
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Forgas Band Phenomena - Acte V |
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Michael Gibbs and the NDR Bigband - Back in the Days |
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Joel Harrison, Lorenzo Feliciati, Cuong Vu, Roy Powell, Dan Weiss - Holy Abyss |
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Thinking Plague - Decline and Fall |
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"Sorrows of the Moon"
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Ergo :: If Not Inertia LISTEN/DOWNLOAD: WATCH: The Making of IF NOT INERTIA
“Ergo's music is also rooted in jazz...fused with electronica and a distinct avant-garde feel. ...quite beautiful and moving...a bit like Sigur Ros meeting Sun Ra uptown.” - Terrascope “This is music that evolves slowly, almost imperceptibly; yet for all its freedom, there's no shortage of structure...Hints of Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley imbue Sroka's writing, but never come to the forefront…Sroka takes a different approach to composition, one where improvisation and structure work hand-in-hand, each feeding the other.” - All About Jazz “Pointillist gurgles and clouds of computer haze are made beautiful by boss Brett Sroka's design sense...The subtleties of...Multitude, Solitude are a nifty confluence of George Lewis' dreamscapes and Miles's Lonely Fire...it's a record that invites you to watch the embers glow.” - The Village Voice Whitney Balliet famously described jazz as the “sound of surprise.” For the experimental electro-acoustic trio Ergo, jazz is a forum for surprising sounds, startling textures, and gently enthralling improvisation. With the ensemble’s third release If Not Inertia, Ergo continues to astonish, delivering music that investigates strange and unexpected spaces while inviting listeners into the process. The latest incarnation of Ergo features founder and guiding spirit Brett Sroka on trombone, computers and whistling, Sam Harris on piano, prepared piano and Fender Rhodes, Shawn Baltazor on drums. Mary Halvorson, the dauntingly prolific young guitar star, joins the band on three tracks and Sebastian Kruger contributes acoustic guitar on one. Equally inspired by Sun Ra and Sigur Ros, the trio is devoted to exploring the push and pull between structure and freedom, density and spaciousness, and electronic and acoustic timbres. Their music unfurls in uncharted territory, a vast sonic realm defined by loops, improvisation, brief composed motifs, and constantly shifting interplay. In addition to the music, the CD includes a .mov file of an incisive five-minute film by Donya Ravasani, The Making of If Not Inertia, featuring interviews with the musicians about the process of creating the album in the studio. If Not Inertia opens with the minimalist excursion “Sorrows of the Moon,” a quietly roiling piece that adds layer upon layer over a piano drone, accelerating gradually to an anxious epiphany. “Two For Joy” opens with an exquisite electric piano figure that evokes the opening of a music box filled with clanky toys, sepia-toned photos and brittle leaves. The album’s centerpiece, the almost 12-minute “Little Shadow,” is a case study in Ergo’s methodology, from the hushed cymbal rainfall and the breaking-dawn trombone line that wends slowly hither and thither without building to a sizzling climax. Similarly, Sroka whistles a portentous, meandering melody on the title track that could serve as the ominous theme for a laconic spaghetti Western. The energy shifts abruptly on the “The Widening Gyre,” as Sroka’s trombone blusters and roars and Halverson showers bent notes over the gathering storm. By the time the album closes with the sweetly guileless “Let’s” Ergo has completed a singular journey that fights stasis on every level. Without recourse to obvious grooves, this is music that compels movement, emotional, intellectual and even spiritual. In many ways, Ergo is the sum of its manifestly creative parts. Raised in Lexington, Mass., Sroka studied with trombone greats Britt Woodman and Steve Turre at Manhattan School of Music, where he earned a BA in 1997 and pursued his own compositional studies by dissecting dozens of Duke Ellington scores. Sroka made his recording debut as a leader with 2002’s impressive Fresh Sound-New Talent CD Hearsay, a stellar sextet session featuring rising young masters Jason Moran, Eric Harland and trumpeter Avishai Cohen. Shortly after the album’s release, electronic music captured his imagination, and Sroka immersed himself in synthesizers and software seeking, he said, “to reconcile 600 years of technology between the trombone and computer.” In addition to Ergo, he is a member of the psych/noise/rock collective 12,000 Trees, and a prolific film composer. Ergo came together in 2005 when Sroka was working with a cadre of similarly-inclined musicians, unconcerned about genre conventions and performing in venues such as Mercury Lounge, 55 Bar and Galapagos with audiences open to musical exploration. Evolving out of these musically permissive forums, Ergo released its 2006 debut album Quality Anatomechanical Music on its own Actuator label, an album lauded as the year’s best debut CD by All About Jazz-NY. The original lineup featured Sroka on trombone and computer, Carl Maguire on Rhodes electric piano, Prophet Synthesizer and effects and drummer Damion Reid (best known for his work with Robert Glasper, Greg Ward and Rudresh Mahanthappa). The album’s success led to performances at an international array of major festivals. It also led to Ergo’s ongoing relationship with Cuneiform, a label committed to working with artists who create genre-defying music, including avant-garde leaning jazz. The trio’s Cuneiform debut, 2009’s Multitude, Solitude, featured a new version of Ergo with Sroka, Maguire and drummer Shawn Baltazor, a dynamic, stylistically expansive drummer and composer whose recent gigs include two high profile concerts with Darcy James Argue's Secret Society. On Nov. 27, 2011, for Cuneiform At the Stone, the label’s two-week NYC showcase at John Zorn’s legendary club, Ergo performed with one of jazz’s most acclaimed pianists (who is now the Kennedy Center’s Advisor to Jazz), Jason Moran, as their special guest. Ergo’s lineup on its newest CD and second Cuneiform release, If Not Inertia, took shape with pianist/keyboardist Sam Harris joining Sroka and Baltazor. Born and raised in Dallas, Tex., Harris has emerged in recent years as one of the most sought after young pianists in New York City, working regularly with heavyweights such as trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, vocalist Gretchen Parlato, and bassist Linda Oh. The presence of fellow sonic seeker Mary Halvorson on three tracks of the new CD adds a good deal of drama to the trio’s sound. Like the musicians in Ergo, she’s well versed in the mainstream jazz tradition, but she’s dedicated herself to honing her own idiosyncratic improvisational toolkit with an extended palette of sounds and wide-open aesthetic that encompasses avant-rock, new music and free improv. A prolific bandleader in her own right, Halvorson tours and records with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist Trevor Dunn and wind legend Anthony Braxton. It’s no surprise that she’s joined forces on If Not Inertia with Ergo, a band that resists with every note the forces, internal and external, that work against musicians who seek new sounds. If Not Inertia also features acoustic guitarist Sebastian Kruger as a guest on the track “Let’s.” Leader of the Brooklyn-based indie rock band Inlets, Kruger is a longtime colleague of Sroka and Baltazor. TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THIS PRESS RELEASE/BIO, click HERE For more information, see: Brett Sroka: www.brettsroka.com - Sam Harris: www.samharrismusic.com - Shawn Baltazor: www.shawnbaltazor.com |
Forgas Band Phenomena :: Acte V LISTEN/DOWNLOAD: WATCH: Acte V official trailer
"Since his comeback in the 90s with Forgas Band Phenomena, drummer, bandleader and composer Patrick Forgas ups the ante with each new release...and they just keep getting better and better like fine wine. ...This band flows smoothly between beautifully layered melodic structures into tasty rave ups...equal parts of jazz and rock, with a healthy injections of orchestral brilliance. ...a captivating and spellbinding journey." - Exposé "The Forgas Band Phenomena…blurs idiomatic considerations so extensively they render stylistic definitions irrelevant. No one can accuse…Patrick Forgas of being tame or conservative in his writing and arrangements. ...captivating." - Jazz Times "those...who grew up on the Return to Forever / Mahavishnu Orchestra / Weather Report strain of modern jazz...will love this group. ...The distinct Euro edge of classical Canterbury art rock minus the abject self-indulgence…extremely listenable music that keeps nostalgia to a minimum. ...terrific music made by a wonderful band that cannot be a trade secret for too much longer. Vive la Forgas!" - All Music Guide Composer/drummer Patrick Forgas has been hailed as “the French answer to the Canterbury scene” ever since his debut 1977 release Cocktail (recorded with members of Magma and Zao). Since the late 1990s, as leader of the Forgas Band Phenomena, he has helped ignite interest in Canterbury-infused jazz-rock among a new generation of young French jazz musicians and fans. Besides Forgas, most of the musicians in the Forgas Band Phenomena are in their 20s or 30s, and they enliven his compositions with an energy and verve that make the music sound fresh. For Acte V, his 5th Forgas Band Phenomena release (and his 3rd release on the American label Cuneiform), Forgas leads a 7-piece instrumental ensemble (sax, trumpet, violin, guitar, keyboards, bass and drums) through complex, melodic and epic compositions that mix ambitious progressive rock structures and intense jazz soloing. Fusing new jazz directions with the most adventurous rock of the 70s, the music should appeal to fans of Frank Zappa’s instrumental works and such British Canterbury bands as Soft Machine and National Health, as well as to followers of Magic Malik and other new jazz-rock and fusion bands. “Jazz-fusion, yes,” remarked Progression, “but with a degree of compositional content and integrity often absent in the genre.” Patrick Forgas was born in 1951 in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. Self-trained as a drummer, he built his first drum kit from salvaged materials when he was a teenager. Forgas also taught himself to play guitar, bass and keyboards. The multi-instrumentalist could also sing. He began his music career in the late 1960s, playing in cover bands. In 1975, Forgas recorded a demo at Barclay Records’ studio, with a trio that included bassist Didier Thibault (former Moving Gelatine Plates leader). He soon was signed by Gratte-Ciel, the label run by rock critic Jean-Marc Bailleux, a supporter of progressive music. Forgas’ debut release, called Cocktail, came out in 1977 (it was recently reissued on CD by Muséa, with new liner notes and a wealth of bonus material,). One critic recently described it as “innovative music in the same vein as Soft Machine or Robert Wyatt…superb compositions, full of invention and melodic research.” The album marked him as France’s leading exemplar of the Canterbury school, a style of music that began with such English groups as Hatfield and the North and National Health, who fused rock and jazz in bucolic extended compositions. The musicians that Forgas assembled to play on Cocktail, which was released under his name, ‘Patrick Forgas’, included his long-time music partner, the then-up-and-coming keyboard player Jean-Pierre Fouquey, who later joined Magma as well as Christian Vander's Alien Quintet and jazz trio. Other musicians were Zao members Gérard Prévost, Patrick Tillemann and François Debricon; American sax player Bruce Grant (a sometime member of Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath); and another young prodigy, guitarist Laurent Roubach. Following Cocktail’s release, Forgas formed a live band that included Roubach and Tillemann as well as new recruits Eric Bono (keyboards) and Philippe Talet (bass) (both later with French fusion band Abus Dangereux). The Forgas Band toured throughout 1978 and assembled material for a 2nd Gratte-Ciel album. The new album was aborted when the label declared bankruptcy, canceling the band’s nationwide tour; the Forgas Band soon dissolved. Except for recording a few pop/novelty singles as a singer early in the decade, Forgas retired from music during the 1980s. Encouraged by journalist and Muséa collaborator Alain Juliac, he returned to the scene and recorded two solo efforts, L'Oeil (1990) and Art D'Echo (1993), which featured Forgas on keyboards, drum programming and vocals, and contributions by reedsman Didier Malherbe (formerly of Gong) and most of the Cocktail musicians. In 2002, he released Synchronicité, a solo album featuring electronic/new-age music. The Forgas Band Phenomena has been Forgas’ main project since returning to music in the 1990s. He had begun assembling musicians for a live band in the mid-90s, and in March 1995, he led a group called Villa Carmen, which performed live. The Forgas Band Phenomena grew out of Villa Carmen, and fused his 90s music with material he wrote for his 1978 band. It released its debut CD, Roue Libre in 1997 on Cosmos Music, an independent label run by Aymeric Leroy and Olivier Pelletant. Dedicated to the Big Wheel, a huge Ferris wheel that dominated the Parisian skyline while providing popular entertainment for twenty years, the CD featured new pieces as well as a previously unreleased composition from 1978. Featuring a lineup that included guitarist Mathias Desmier (later of Jannick Top's STS) and mallet percussionist Mireille Bauer (ex-Gong), the band did a series of shows in 1998. In 1999, Cosmos Music released the band’s 2nd CD, Extra- 2004 marked a new incarnation of the Forgas Band Phenomena. With a new expanded lineup, the group appeared in June at Paris’ Le Triton for Les Tritonales, a progressive music festival that was also featuring Magma, Zao and Univers Zéro. The Forgas Band Phenomena’s Tritonales’ performance marked the debut of “Coup De Théâtre”, a 35-minute piece based on ideas for Forgas’ 1978 album. Cuneiform representatives at the festival signed the band, and in March 2005, Forgas Band Phenomena returned to Le Triton as an octet to record the epic-length “Coup De Théâtre”, two new, shorter pieces, "Soleil 12" and "Eclipse", and a new version of "Pieuvre A La Pluie" for a Cuneiform release. Soleil 12 (2005) was the Forgas Band Phenomena’s 1st Cuneiform release, and certainly the band's strongest work thus far, a dynamic fusion of jazz soloing and rock structures, and of music from the 70s and the current day. Performed by a large band composed of some of France’s best young jazz musicians, it proved not only that “Canterbury music is alive and well in France” [Exposé], but also that a style of jazz/rock first formulated in the 1970s, could remain vital and relevant as an alternative direction for jazz today. For their next album, the band this time decided to record in a studio rather than a live setting. The result was L'Axe du Fou / Axis of Madness (2009), consisting of fresh material including two epic-length pieces, the title track and "Double-Sens", both of which are reprised on the new album’s accompanying DVD. The lineup of the Forgas Band Phenomena that appears on both Acte V and its predecessor L'Axe du Fou / Axis of Madness (2009) has been together nearly five years, and includes Forgas (drums) as well as six younger musicians, including Igor Brover (keyboards), Kengo Mochizuki (bass), who had both already appeared on Soleil 12, plus newer recruits Benjamin Violet (guitar), Karolina Mlodecka (violin), Sébastien Trognon (saxes & flute) and Dimitri Alexaline (trumpet & flugelhorn). In addition to regular appearances in France, in late September 2008, they went on their first outing abroad - in Seoul, South Korea, no less ! - and in June 2010 were invited to appear at what turned out to be the penultimate edition of NEARfest, the world’s leading progressive rock festival, performing to a packed audience of 1,000. The concert was recorded and filmed. In March 2011, FBP went into Studio Aéronef to record six Forgas compositions for Acte V. A double disc set released by Cuneiform in early 2012, Acte V contains the band’s new studio CD and a 75-minute live DVD of its 2010 NEARfest performance, and showcases the formidable Forgas Band as both a studio and a live phenomenon. TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THIS PRESS RELEASE/BIO, click HERE For more information on Forgas Band Phenomena, please see: |
