Wednesday, August 30, 2006

I see Naguib Mahfouz died at 94. A long life, at least. What a wonderful writer.

That Sei Miguel disc holds up real well on subsequent listens. Sounds a lot like what you'd exepct the next step after Bill Dixon's "Vade Mecum" albums to be, a similar sense of unfurling space, retaining a lot of jazz gestures but integrating them with abstract and electronic sounds and doing so without any (or, at least, much) sense of anachronism. For myself, this is a pretty impressive feat, as I generally find the introduction of jazz tropes into "eai" as grating or overly restrictive. But there's almost always a pendulum swing effect in any art form and perhaps we're beginning to see signs of a certain kind of revitalization of music which contains a jazz impulse, at least as one impulse out of many. I'm still a bit dubious, admittedly. This is the only music I've heard of Miguel's so I've no idea where or how this fits in with his historic arc but for the moment, it's some refreshing work.

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