Back to life...
Roaring back with a Wire cover feature...
It’s been a while… some major life events and general workload have meant I’ve not kept up regular posts on here, but I’m hoping to change that. At the very least, I’ll aim to keep up to date with any new articles I’ve published. So, welcome friends!
Wendy Eisenberg for The Wire
It was an absolute pleasure to write The Wire’s cover feature on Wendy Eisenberg. I’ve been a fan of their inspired work across avant-jazz, free improv, song, punk, new music and more for some time now. Their new self-titled album is a gorgeous collection of country, folk and jazz inflected songs, with beautiful string arrangements, pedal steel and synths by mari rubio aka More Eaze (whose own great new album comes out later this month). I spoke to Wendy and mari for the piece, as well as their friends and collaborators David Grubbs, Caroline Davis and Lester St Louis. It was a joy to put it all together. Happy reading!
Do subscribe to Wendy’s Substack: fascinating and poetic insights into their creative process, plus great recommendations for listening and reading.
More reading
No shortage of articles since I last posted, including several major features and reviews for The Wire (Fay Victor, Amina Claudine Myers, Laura Cocks, Sakina Abdou, Ingrid Laubrock, Nels Cline, Joe McPhee…) and We Jazz (Anna Webber, Anthony Braxton, Wrens, Anna Hogberg…), but here are few recent ones you can read online:
Charles Tyler - Voyage from Jericho Reissue of the week The Quietus
Also for tQ, an interview with Thurston Moore discussing ten entry points to the world of free jazz and improvised music, tying in with the publication of his, Byron Coley and Mats Gustafsson’s monumental tome Now Jazz Now.
An end of year essay for The Wire attempting to join the dots between artists working across jazz, improv, electro-acoustic, hip-hop, noise, underground club musics etc: Pat Thomas, XT, Ambrose Akinmusire, Chris Williams & Lester St Louis, Luke Stewart, Moor Mother, Lukas Koenig, Elvin Brandhi et al… Definitely keen to write more about this - it’s such a creatively rich and exciting nexus.
[Ahmed] are the best band in the world. I went deep on their stunning 2025 album Sama’a (Audition) for The Quietus.
On a related note, I profiled the genius that is Pat Thomas for The Guardian in late 2024. Felt really important to have him featured in a mainstream publication: he’s one of the major artists of our time, the real deal.
Defiant jazz! I had a lot of fun putting together this primer on inspirational free jazz hero Joe McPhee for tQ, with quotes from the great man himself and his collaborators Mats Gustafsson and Alexander Hawkins.
You need a subscription to read this in full, but I wrote this guide to the current wave of microtonal jazz, featuring Anna Webber, Zekkereya El-marghabel, Modney, Mat Muntz & Alec Goldfarb. Keep it wonky!
A 50th anniversary feature on Roscoe Mitchell’s mind-rearranging Solo Saxophone Concerts: “There’s something deeply moving about hearing a great artist testing the very limits of technique and form to push into the unknown. Mitchell is a conductor of magic and chaos.”
Musical Action
I play too! In 2024 contributed some guitar samples to my better half Mariam Rezaei’s last solo album Fractured. On “Slipping”, she cut my guitar together with drums by Lukas Koenig. That some people thought it was based on a duet between myself and Lukas is testament to her compositional brilliance as a turntablist. For “The Rage (for Joelle”), Mariam asked for some heavy shit in an Earth 2 vein, so I tuned to drop C, cranked up the RAT and followed her conduction. Mariam put it through further gain stages, repitched and cut it all up live. Fearsome! An honour to be involved with her projects.
I’m also in One Or Several Wolves, a Deleuzian improvising trio with Mark “Kenosist” Wardlaw and Toi Guy. The concept is my guitar and Toi’s vocals through Mark’s mind-boggling VST set up. The live inputs trigger MIDI instruments (bass, drums, sax and bagpipes in my case…) and there’s a bit of live processing too. We’ve done a couple of gigs here in Newcastle, the most recent being at the Wild Pop conference in November. Gnarly!
