Browse by Label: WOBBLY RAIL

Artist:	SMITH/HARUMI MAKINO SMITH, WADADA LEO
Title:	Condor, Autumn Wind
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 001CD

Debut release on a new NC-based based jazz label. "Throughout his career Wadada has made some of his most powerful, effective, and affecting music in a solo setting. For Condor..., his first solo release since 1994's acclaimed Kulture Jazz, Smith was recorded live in Durham, NC, performing mainly on the trumpet (in hot blasts and blinding runs, muted cries and mournful, smeared notes), but also on wooden flute, mbira and intense, honking seal norm. He also sings on the haunting, almost ambient blues of Skip James's 'Special Rider Blues'. Poet Harumi Makino Smith collaborates on 3 pieces, reading her poetry in English and Japanese over Smith's improvising."

Artist:	LACY, STEVE
Title:	Solo: Live At Unity Temple
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 003CD

"Last year Steve Lacy crossed the pond to tour the US (he has live in Paris since the late '60s), performing both his trio, and alone, as he is captured in this recording from Chicago's Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Unity Temple." From John Corbett's liner notes: "Ninety-nine years after the building was completed, Lacy entered its chapel to set those columns in motion...to improvise the edifice..the music adjusts, becomes aligned with the space. Lacy calibrates, like a bat...a solo concert for soprano sax and architecture."

Artist:	BISHOP, JEB
Title:	98 Duets
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 004CD

"Member of the Ken Vandermark 5, the Peter Brotzmann Tentet, and leader of his own Jeb Bishop Trio, the Chicago trombonist makes his debut as a leader on this widely varied set of duets. Bishop coaxes all manner of voices from his horn, from airy bleats to bluesy melodies and smears, and plays beautifully off his collaborators Hamid Drake (perc.), Josh Abrams (bass), Mats Gustafsson (reeds), Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello), Ken Vandermark (reeds), and Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet). Wobbly Rail is proud to present the first release from Bishop, a North Carolina native!"

Artist:	IBARRA/DENIS CHARLES, SUSIE
Title:	Drum Talke
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 005CD

"A rollicking live set of drums and percussion from two generations of master percussionists. The late, legendary Denis Charles, a pioneering free-jazz drummer, and the quickly rising Susie Ibarra, former pupil of Milford Graves and current drummer for the powerhouse David S. Ware quartet among others, had been performing duets live an in practice for over a year leading up to the unexpected passing of Charles in early 1998. Tunes of both Charles and Ibarra are performed here, from the dynamic Charles duet standard of the title track to the gorgeous, shimmering 'Kulintang Medley' featuring Ibarra on tuned Philippine gongs. Drum Talk captures the pair before a lively crowd and at the height of their collective power in a sometimes thoughtful, often furious display of joyous and communicative drumming power."

Artist:	BUTCHER/PHIL DURRANT, JOHN
Title:	Secret Measures
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 006CD

"London-based saxophonist John Butcher has been active in the improv/new music scene since the early 1980's, performing and recording with Derek Bailey, Butch Morris, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins and others. On Secret Measures, the duo utilize three separate streams of sound: Butcher's live amplified saxophone and two separate treatment chains controlled by Durrant, to create an evolving, dynamic flow of sound and noise. Durrant fights the predictability of so much digital electronics -- in particular the deadening blanket of regular digital delay; he uses modulation to create random changes in the pitch and rhythm of the repeated sounds, and often 'scrambles' the sounds to make them unrecognizable as the original trigger played by Butcher. This also means that traditional reed techniques of multiphonics and overblowing can not be relied upon, as some of the most violent, dense sections of this music might arise when the saxophone is actually being played quite cleanly and simply. The result is an improvised music, which far from being some monstrous man-meets-machine music, finds both musicians equally explorative. Butcher, always one to explore the outer reaches of the saxophone rather than rely on the weight of its jazz history, finds himself pushing even further out as Durrant transforms delicate melodic flurries into landslides of thudding percussion or a stentorian roar is whisked into a telephone bleep." -- Richard Sanderson

Artist:	GRAEWE QUINTET, GEORG
Title:	Concert in Berlin 1996: Snapshots 1-53
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 007CD

"'The classic hard bop quintet has always been one of my favorite formats. Listening to a lot of jazz in my teens, I was drawn to quintets (Parker, Davis, Rollins, Monk) rather than to any of the piano trios.' -- Georg Graewe. And so on Concert In Berlin we get the Georg Graewe version of the classic quintet: abstract and delicate at times, muscular and pointed at others, always surprising and engrossing. The group is incredibly percussive, with Gustafsson's saxes and Tramontana's trombone often meshing seamlessly with the Mattos' cello and Mark Sanders drums into a fluttering rhythmic web. Duets and trios appear and disappear, soloists break in (sometimes for only the briefest interjection), eventually falling back into the flow of the quintet through the piece. Graewe's expressive piano regularly bursts in with ideas and statements, at times sharply pointillistic, at times gently splashing."

Artist:	AALY TRIO & KEN VANDERMARK
Title:	Live At The Glenn Miller Cafe
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 008CD

"In March of 1999, Ken Vandermark returned to Sweden for the third time since 1996 to reunite with Mats Gustafsson's critically acclaimed AALY Trio. The results of that tour's musical breakthroughs can be heard on Live At The Glenn Miller Cafe, which features four highlights from the explosive concert they played to an ecstatic, packed house. The performance was electrifying: saxophones firing splitting melodies into the audience that had formed a captivated wall around them, as the rhythmic machine of Kjell Nordeson and Peter Jansen pushed the energy level through the roof. Beautiful packaging, liner notes by Thurston Moore, and an excellent recording of a fierce set by Gustafsson, Vandermark, Nordeson, and Jansen.

Artist:	VANDERMARK/PAUL LYTTON, KEN
Title:	English Suites
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	WOB 009CD

Disc one: Chicago, USA January 11, 1999. Disc two: Hasselt, Belgium November 20, 1999. "The two concerts are quite different and show the range of stylistic concerns both Paul and I share: issues regarding rhythm, dynamics, space, tension, timbre, and melody. Both occasions gave me the opportunity to work with one of the pioneers and masters of European free improvised music one on one. This duo is one of the great challenges and pleasures that I've had in my life." --Ken Vandermark

Artist:	DICKEY QUARTET, WHIT
Title:	Big Top
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 010CD

"Whit Dickey was inspired to play drums by the music of Cecil Taylor and Sunny Murray, and later studied with master drummers Andrew Cyrille and Milford Graves. Since then Whit has performed and recorded with Bill Dixon, Matt Shipp, and David S. Ware, and of course the esteemed musicians that join him here on Big Top: Joe Morris, the most exciting and unique improvising voice on the guitar right now, Chris Lightcap, a versatile and respected young NYC bassist, and Rob Brown, whose voice on the alto and other reeds has been heard with such great groups as William Parker�s In Order To Survive."

Artist:	BISHOP/SEBI TRAMONTANA, JEB
Title:	Chicago Defenders
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 011CD

"Sebi Tramontana and Jeb Bishop originally worked together when Sebi visited Chicago in 1999 to perform at the Empty Bottle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music. On that occasion Sebi and fellow Italian trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini sat in with Jeb's trio. This led to a live Sebi/Jeb duo concert on WNUR, which in turn led to the idea of hitting the studio to record these duets. The sonic malleability of the trombone (plus voice, plus mutes) is a constant stimulus to the improvising trombonist, and putting two of them together often seems to create a mutual reinforcement of the desire to examine the slide horn's capabilities for everything from ephemeral melody to mud to bombast to underwater textures. In any case, this is the spirit in which the duos on Chicago Defenders were undertaken."

Artist:	VANDERMARK, KEN
Title:	Two Days in December
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	2CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	WOB 012CD

Duets with Raymond Strid, Sten Sandell, David Stackenas, Kjell Nordeson. "I had been thinking of recording a series of improvised duos with these four players for a couple of years, but it took some time to shape the way to go about it. The main thing was to show some of the improvisational range that each of them have and I thought that the best way to do this was to work with shorter durations, pieces from five to ten minutes in length, over two CDs so each duo could be represented by at least a half an hour of music . With these duos I think that we tried to be as free from musical categories and boundaries as we could, playing what the music suggested not what our preconceptions dictated. I feel that in many cases we succeeded. There are elements of styles defined as Free Jazz, Free Improvisation, New Music, Blues, Jazz, etc., but there are many times that I think we found something that is personal and does not fit into the categories that are set by 20th century expectations. It's a new time and we need to find music that belongs to our own experiences." -- Ken Vandermark

Artist:	FREE FALL
Title:	Furnace
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 013CD

Ken Vandermark (clarinets) / Ingebrigt H'ker Flaten (bass) / H'vard Wiik (piano) = Free Fall. Gorgeous trio recording from Chicago reedsman Vandermark and his trio Free Fall, achieving freedom & controlled chaos, balanced with beauty & delicacy. "Any listener with a solid knowledge of jazz history will realize that inspiration for the name of this group was taken from the brilliant album, Free Fall, by the Jimmy Giuffre Trio. The instrumentation has obvious parallels (clarinet, piano, bass), and I'd like to think that the music of this ensemble has an openness akin to that of Giuffre's band with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow. It is important to note, though there are other associations that can be made between the two groups (combination of pulse and open time, distribution of melodic responsibility through fragmentation, etc.), Free Fall was not put together to function as a Jimmy Giuffre 'tribute band'." --Ken Vandermark.

Artist:	IBARRA & MARK DRESSER, SUSIE
Title:	Tone Time
Label:	WOBBLY RAIL
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	WOB 014CD

"Astounding collection of duets by these two exciting improvisers -- Mark Dresser a veteran of the international improv scene and a master of the bass, and Susie Ibarra now firmly established as one of the most unique and creative drummers/percussionists in the world. These duos were improvised and recorded live in the studio in the summer of 2003, and cover an amazing amount of ground, from swinging, melodic grooves to nuanced, subtle dialogues."

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