Despite Basquiat's frequent references to jazz, bassist/composer/painter Lisle Ellis is the first in the jazz world to create an album-length homage to the painter's life and work...The point of the project is as a springboard, something to be revisited time and again as Ellis solidifies the relationship between the painter's immense oeuvre and his own work.

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The diversity held throughout this CD is astonishing, disarming, and unmistakably truthful, as testament to the fortitude of Ellis, a high-water mark for his career, and a marvelous statement as to how different elements of art can be made into startling music.

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With help from such stellar musical pals as saxophonist Oliver Lake, flutist Holly Hofmann and pianistMike Wofford, erstwhile San Diego bassist and electronic musician Lisle Ellis pays tribute to the late New York painter his album is named after. Blessed …

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Sembrerebbe che la musica al femminile si presenti gentile e delicata, ed invece no, il duo The Skein, composto dalla vocalista inglese Jessica Constable e dall´americana Andrea Parkins alla fisarmonica elettrica e strumentazioni elettroniche, fa subito pulizia con questo pregiudizio. …

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I was surprised by the wealth of evocative and expressive sounds that this fine duo pulls off. Jessica seems to be singing in some strange invented language (when she is not singing in English) while Andrea adds layers of kaleidoscopic electronic sounds that are forever in flux.

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They fill me with joy because the many ways they hop from one matter to another seem natural, they discover without effort new paths that close back after them as it always happens with enchantresses.

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They have discovered shocking and delightful new sounds on their instruments, and range boldly between contemporary classical music and anarchic free jazz. A free music recording you'll find yourself playing again and again.

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Gustavo Aguilar is a brilliant percussionist who grew up in Brownsville, where Texas meets Mexico. He now lives in New York . . . and has located himself in music at a point where composition and improvisation get into one another in extraordinary ways. . . . Gustavo Aguilar is himself a defiantly unorthodox musician - the kind we need - and this is a wonderful CD

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'Minamo' is extraordinary, a series of tight, dramatic events. Even without written music the musicians have plenty of ground under their feet: vamps, patterns, echoed motions. Both play with virtuosic precision and a great range of technique, even when the music becomes gestural and built on hummingbird pulses, glassy wipes of the violin strings, dark rumbles of rubbed piano strings. The whole record, but especially the second concert, runs on its own vivid tension.

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The best thing about the recording is the four pieces [ranging from 9 minutes to just over 40 minutes] are drawn out improvisations. Each of the players is permitted ample room to stretch out and show off their plentiful skills.

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