Volcanic Tongue Catalogue

Eye Contact
War Rug

KMB Jazz KMB-006

CD
£8.99


Album from this fantastic free jazz action trio featuring Matt Heyner (NNCK et al) on bass stunts, Matt Lavelle on trumpet and Ryan Sawyer on drums. Moves through great, pounding drums/trumpet face-offs that sound like a more martial take on Cherry and Blackwell's Mu to three-way time fluxing and wildly abstract silence/motion. Highly recommended.

Jandek
Brooklyn Wednesday

Corwood 0789

DVD
£10.99


DVD edition featuring both sets from this trio show with Sterling Smith on guitar and vocals, Chris Corsano on drums and Matt Heyner on bass, live at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, New York, September 7th, 2005. The sound is closer to the 'classic' Neilson/Youngs live blats but with a more straightahead garage/punk feel, with Sterling playing some of his oddest electric guitar downs while Heyner moves from groaning electric bass monoliths across the first set to quiet, semi-audible acoustic bass on the second. The second set is consequently the weirdest, with the extra space generated by Heyner fully inhabited by very minimal guitar work from Sterling and some oddly dramatised lyrical set-ups. Corsano plays it pretty straight for the bulk, riding behind Sterling's guitar like a steamroller, and at points the vocal delivery combines with the overall bounce of the rhythm section to birth something that seems to owe more to The Minutemen than any sort of avant blues tradition. The songs are great, moving from devastating emotionally wrought confessionals through to funny situational set pieces and Sterling really stretches out on vocals and is obviously enjoying the performance.