Feb 08, 2019 by Ochs

Watch for these new CDs, digital-only releases — and a new LP - all releasing between 11-2018 and 3-2019.

  1. CD: What is To Be Done – the first release from the trio of Nels Cline, Gerald Cleaver, and Larry Ochs is out now from from “Clean Feed.” Very proud to be working with these cats, and very happy we were able to document this concert in 2016 for this release. Touring around the Northeast each December since 2015 with these two guys has been thrilling. We will have this new CD at all our April concerts in the Southeast (Orlando, Gainesville, Tallahassee, Atlanta Chattanooga, Nashville!). But also available now at Bandcamp: (larryochs.bandcamp.com/album/what-is-to-be-done) (So all three of these recordings mentioned so far were recorded in 2016; a good year indeed.) The music from this trio seeks sonically to soothe, to inspire, and to conspire.  Certainly as I produced this recording I was thinking about the actions of our younger comrades / resistance fighters from Florida, specifically, and from the entire USA more generally. It’s going to be up to them to lead the way towards a real solution to the current state of disarray, of fear and of corruption that we find ourselves in worldwide.
  2. CD: Songs of the Wild Cave has released on “Rogue Art.”  (RogueArt-0084). https://larryochs.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-the-wild-cave But if you live in Europe or Asia, you might be best advised to go to the RogueArt website, as postage might be alot cheaper. This Duo CD with drummer Gerald Cleaver was recorded in an unnamed cave in south of France. A crew of seven people helped the musicians carry the musical instruments down into the cave, and also helped the recording engineer to haul all he needed down the rabbit hole and into this living cave. There’s quite a story here, I refer you to my version of that  story, written not too long after the adventure took place in October 2016: http://www.ochs.cc/news/mining-songs-from-the-wild-cave.html Also at Bandcamp, you can read two very positive reviews for the recording from Downbeat and from The Free Jazz Collective“s website: www.freejazzblog.org
  3. Digital Re-release of a long out-of-print Rova CD: Rova + Anthony Braxton: The Aggregate. Originally released in 1988, this is certainly one of the top 5 recorded collaborations by Rova. Available at the Rova Bandcamp page.
  4. LP: A Jones in Time Saves Nine, by the trio Jones Jones (Ochs, Mark Dresser, Vladimir Tarasov),  released in mid-December 2018 on the Vilnius label “NoBusiness Records.” Digital downloads of the LP, including three extra tracks, are now available at:  https://larryochs.bandcamp.com/album/a-jones-in-time-saves-nine. All tracks were recorded on tour in California in 2016. Being a home tour for Mark Dresser, he performs on his own bass/electronics rig; that distinguishes this release from the most recent Jones Jones release on the label “Not Two”(Poland), a  CD that is fromlive recording from Moscow on a borrowed bass. (Dresser still sounds great on the Moscow improvisations.)  We hope that the new LP should have a special sound.
  5. CD: The Fictive Five  released its first CD on Tzadik in October 2015. The same personnel has recorded  in New Jersey at “Orange Sound” in late May, 2018. The plan is for Clean Feed to have this out by the time a European tour takes place in March 2019. (The band’s first European tour although it performed a premiere quintet engagement at the 2017 Festival Jazz em Agosto in Lisbon.)  The CD has been mastered and will be called Anything Is Possible.
  6. CD: In «early 2019», The Swiss label Hat Hut will re-release the legendary recording Saxophone Diplomacy, recorded by Rova on its historic tour of the USSR in 1983. I do not know this for a fact, but I am thinking that the conservator and long-time producer of Hat Hut, Werner Uehlinger, was inspired to re-release this recording following the inept «summit meeting» that The Angry Cheetoh and Boss Putin held together in summer 2018. The music here has a very different story to tell than the one laid out by the Hater-in-Chief. Tune in and drop out.