Album: Three Cane Whale - Hibernacula

★★★★ THREE CANE WHALE - HIBERNACULA Delicate musical miniatures

Delicate musical miniatures spun from the English landscape

Since their eponymous 2011 debut, Three Cane Whale have kept it small without losing scale. A trio of Spiro’s Alex Vann, Get The Blessing’s Pete Judge, and guitarist Paul Bradley, together they often often recorded plein air, on hillsides, above waterfalls, in ancient churches and old barns.

EFG London Jazz Festival 2024 round-up review - from Korean noise to Carnatic soul

A trio of bands and artists blend world music, cinematic grooves and pure noise at the London Jazz Festival

November can be a month to hunker down for the onset of winter and its weather, and where better to do that than in one of the myriad venues across the capital hosting the annual London Jazz Festival and its hundreds of concerts, from cosy clubs like Ronnie Scott’s and Pizza Express Dean Street to the big stages of the Barbican and South Bank.

Kenny Barron Trio, Ronnie Scott's review - a master of the cool

★★★★ KENNY BARRON TRIO, RONNIE SCOTT'S Eloquent story-telling from jazz giant

Eloquent story-telling from jazz giant

Kenny Barron, revered as the best jazz pianist around, is a perfect gentleman and a master of “cool” – a quality once described in great depth by the American Africanist Robert Farris Thompson, in an article originally published in African Arts in 1973.

Album: Jon Batiste - Beethoven Blues

Beethoven's hits reimagined by the American musical celebrity

Beethoven’s renown in his own day was not just as a composer but also as an improvising pianist. He wrote in a letter in July 1819 that “freedom, and to move forward is the purpose of the world of art, as it is of the whole of creation.’

Interview: Roy Haynes, Jazz Drumming Giant (1925-2024)

RIP ROY HAYNES (1925-2024) Reminiscences from the jazz drumming legend, who has died

The jazz legend reminisces, from Satchmo to Metheny

Roy Haynes, who had begun to seem immortal, has died aged 99. In this extensive Arts Desk interview from 2011, one of the greatest jazz drummers ranges across his remarkable life with sharp intelligence and generous feeling.

Album: Møster! - Springs

★★★ MOSTER! - SPRINGS Norwegian supergroup merges jazz with rock’s outer edges

Norwegian supergroup merges jazz with rock’s outer edges

Springs begins cooking with “Spaced Out Invaders - Part I Quirks,” its fourth track. A spindly, rotating guitar figure interweaves with clattering percussion and pulsating electric bass. Around three minutes in, a sax – which, until this point, has kept in the background – begins whipping up a maelstrom. Overall, the effect conjured is that of a space rock-inclined exotica, Martin Denny had he been an early Seventies freak.

Album: Elephant9 with Terje Rypdal - Catching Fire

Thrilling union of prodigious Norwegians

Just before the five-minute point, a Mellotron’s distinctive string sound is heard. Three minutes earlier, a guitar evokes Robert Fripp’s characteristic shimmer. Uniting these might result in King Crimson but, instead, these are just two elements of “I Cover the Mountain Top,” the wild, 22-minute opening track of Catching Fire, a studio-quality live album recorded on 20 January 2017 at Oslo’s Nasjonal Jazzscene.

Album: The Smile - Cutouts

The trio's third album lacks the verve and intensity of 'Wall of Eyes'

The Smile’s second album Wall of Eyes, released in January, is a thrillingly discomfiting album by Radiohead alumni Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner. It has a coherent mood and flow, a great screw-the-musicbiz rock song in “Read the Room”, and a scintillator for all seasons in “Bending Hectic”.