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BROTZMANN KONDO PUPILLO NILSSEN-LOVE  Hairy Bones  CD   (Okka Disk)   15.98
Hairy Bones IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Yeah! This monster set is already in the running for my favorite aggro-jazz album of 2009, and features a smoking quartet with some of my favorite players

engaged in high-power jamming, not the least of which is the legendary reedsman Peter Brotzmann, who needs no introduction to fans of extreme European

free-jazz. Hairy Bones documents a live performance in Amsterdam froom 2008, where Brotzmann teamed up with avant-garde trumpeter and former Praxis member Toshinori Kondo (who he had previously worked with in the Ayler tribute group Die Like A Dog Quartet), Norwegian free-jazz drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, and bassist Massimo Pupillo. All of these guys smoke, but it's the presence of Massimo Pupillo, who many of you will recognize from his bass playing in the crushing metallic free-jazz outfit Black Engine and in jazzcore heroes Zu, that makes this one of the heaviest free jazz blowouts to come through here this year. The album is split into two halves, "Hairy Bones" and "Chain Dogs", both over thirty minutes each; the first track is a scathing workout with Brotzmann strafing the air with his trademark bursts of chaotic sax and furious squalls while Kondo triggers beams his processed trumpet squeals (which sound like deep-cosmic beamings when he really lets loose on the title track), and the rhythm section creates a powerful rhythmic churn that's sometimes furious and thrashy, at other times stripped and meditative. But the real heart-stopping moments appear whenever the band turns all thrusters on and Pupillo's bass takes on a massively distorted tone that veers the group into some sweetly devestating Painkiller-style hardcore improv-jazz territory, with monstrous low-end bass riffs that would sound right at home on any sludge-metal album while Nilssen-Love pummels his kit into dust. The second longer track takes the group into bluesier territory over nearly thirty-eight minutes, but there's still some raging passages of thrash-jazz the bubble up to the surface amidst the more laid back blowing and acrobatic Ayler-style skronk. A top-notch hour long set that any free-jazz junkie will love, especially if yer into the heavier side of Brotzmann's collaborative projects. Comes in a gatefold jacket.


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