With a career that spans more than 30 years and nearly 70 albums as a leader (and about as a many as a sideman), jazz pianist Matthew Shipp has more than established himself as a singular talent.
So it’s interesting how The Unidentifiable (CD, mp3, wav), his fourth album with his current trio, has moments that recall a certain other prolific piano player’s iconic threesome, albeit while still being very Shipp.
Twenty-one years after they teamed up with the San Francisco Symphony for their 1999 live album and video S&M, Metallica and their local orchestra have collaborated again for S&M2 (CD, digital, vinyl, Blu-ray audio, Blu-ray, DVD). And like the original, this second collection of orchestrally-augmented Metallica has many moments of might and magic…and a couple that are misfires or just mushy.
With a name like Every Dog Has Its Day But It Doesn’t Matter Because Fat Cat Is Getting Fatter, you might expect the new album by the Okuden Quartet — bass clarinetist / soprano clarinet player / alto saxophonist / flautist Mat Walerian, pianist Matthew Shipp, double bassist / shakuchi player William Parker, and drummer / percussionist Hamid Drake — to be pretentious or silly or a bit too much. Thankfully, the music on Every Dog Has Its Day But It Doesn’t Matter Because Fat Cat Is Getting Fatter (CD, digital) — and yes, I am going to write it out in full every time because SEO — is anything but. Instead, it’s an impressive collection of acoustic jazz that’s both moody and manic, and a worthy successor to the previous albums these four have recorded in various configurations.
On their debut album, Threads (MP3, cassette), the Caterpillar Quartet play jazz both free and traditionally with equal skill. But while they’re clearly good at playing jazz in either style, it’s how this album presents the two sides of their musical personality that may (or may not) split fans.
Though he had recorded with them before (albeit always with other people), 2017’s A Rift In Decorum: Live At The Village Vanguard marked the true debut of Ambrose Akinmusire’s impressive jazz quartet, the most interesting new jazz combo since Matthew Shipp teamed up with Matt Walerian two years prior for Live At Okuden. Now the foursome have made their first studio album together, on the tender spot of every calloused moment (CD, digital, vinyl). And while most of it is equally as impressive as A Rift In Decorum, it does have some ill-fitting moments when three of the members go M.I.A. and their leader puts down his signature instrument.
For some people, this may not be the best time for noisy, loosely structured free jazz. Or, really, anything that isn’t soothing. For the rest of us, though, there’s Whit Dickey’s Morph (CD, digital), an epic two-disc set on which the free jazz / free jazz adjacent drummer plays with pianist Matthew Shipp on the first disc, Reckoning, and with Shipp and trumpeter Nate Wooley on the second, Pacific Noir.
Along with expansive anniversary boxed sets, the most welcome recent trend in album reissues is to reconfigure live albums so they present the concert whole, uncut, as they happened.
Which is what fans of Jimi Hendrix’s 1970 concert collection Band Of Gypsys are getting with Songs For Groovy Children: The Fillmore East, a four-CD, 8-LP, 43-track digital collection that presents both that legendary show and three others uncut for the first time.
Sometimes jazz can be really incestuous. Just consider the careers of tenor saxophonist Ivo Perelman, pianist Matthew Shipp, bassist William Parker, and drummer Bobby Kapp. Over the years, Perelman and Shipp have made around three dozen albums together; Shipp and Parker have recorded another two dozen; Perelman and Parker have five collaborations to their credit; while Perelman’s recorded two albums with Kapp, one of which features Shipp, and two others with Shipp and Parker, one of which features…wait for it…Kapp. It’s this latter configuration that presents Ineffable Joy (CD, vinyl, digital), a sometimes frantic and sometimes intricate collection that is this foursome’s second session after 2017’s Heptagon.
Like Metallica, R.E.M., and so many other bands who hit their stride in the ’80s, The Cult have been systematically reissuing their classic albums in grand style. The latest of which, 1989’s Sonic Temple, is being celebrated with Sonic Temple 30, which is available as a 5CD set, a digital edition, an 8LP vinyl version, a 2LP vinyl edition, and a limited boxed set that has 3LPs and a cassette. But while it has a lot of great music beyond just the album, the necessity of this Cult collection really depends on how diligent you’ve been since the ’80s.