Sloth Racket’s collective sound is dense and detailed, with heavyweight textures from the hugely satisfying twin saxophone plus guitar front line. Together they are the perfect purveyors of clatter-jazz – creating that ‘playing while falling down the stairs’ sound via a constant improvised five-way balancing act of glorious and successful freedom. …the smeared, impressionistic dialogue…
As a card-carrying pedant, of course this isn’t the “best” jazz and noise of the last year. It’s just what I like the most out of what I’ve heard… These are the albums that sum up 2019 for me – dense, disorientating, immersive, cathartic… and then there’s also a strong vein of what might be…
The latest from the Richmond Avant Improv Collective and it’s a soundtrack… kind of. Häxan is the first in a series of improvised scores for silent and obscure movies. This first choice is a 1922 documentary-style horror from Swedish director, Benjamin Christensen, a study of superstition, witchcraft, and how ignorance and illness fuelled historical witch-hunts….
