kev rowland OCTET SKULL SESSIONS CUNEIFORM Cornetist, composer, and conceptualist Rob Mazurek first learned the foundations of improvised music while studying jazz theory and practice with David Bloom at the Bloom School of Jazz in Chicago, and first came to prominence when he formed the Chicago Underground Collective (which ranges in size from duo, trio and quartet to full orchestra depending on what is required and has been going for well over 15 years). He has also worked with more mainstream acts such as Sterolab and Tortoise and has worked on more than 40 albums. This is the first album by the octet and is a combination of some composition and a great deal of inmprovisation in an incredibly charged atmosphere. While often in jazz there is one solist at the time, with the rest providing the support, that is not really the case here as what we have is everyone soloing at the same time, but somehow keeping together providing a direction.

The personnel for this album, along with Rob, was drummer John Herndon, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, flutist Nicole Mitchell, Guilherme Granado on keyboards and electronics, Carlos Issa on guitar and electronics, Mauricio Takara on percussion and cavaquinho (Brazilian ukulele), and Thomas Rohrer on C melody saxophone and rabeca (a rustic Brazilian viola associated with the northeast). It sounds as if Zappa at his most eclectic is having a battle with Miles which results in the sonic equiavalent of a massive thunderstorm. This music is incredibly charged, and one can visualise the lightning passing between players as new ideas spark yet another onsluaght of notes and a different direction.

Mazruek describes the approach as “personalities blending sound ideas that have the potential to expand or contract at any given moment in order to find the hidden spaces that must exist for the elevation and understanding of the origin of where we possibly come from and where we might be going.” Complex and complicated, hard to listen to, this is music that is driving exploration into new areas of jazz that leave the listener drained by the end. www.cuneiformrecords.com