John Shand | Music & Other Spheres Posts

October 28, 2017 / Album Reviews - Archive

HARMONY OF DIFFERENCE (Young Turks/Remote Control) 7/10 It could almost seem like a wry joke. How do you follow up a three-hour album? Make one that lasts for 42 minutes. Kamasi Washington’s response to 2015’s monumental The Epic is so short by comparison that it’s being called an EP, when…

October 26, 2017 / Album Reviews - Archive

RECLAMATION (Tzadik) 9/10 Neuroscientific research reveals that our music listening is most intense during the silences. Such information has not diverted Burning Ghosts from their primary mission to fill the known world with sound. The San Francisco band’s second album sees them move to John Zorn’s prestigious Tzadic label where…

October 22, 2017 / Concert Reviews - Archive

Foundry 616, October 4 9/10 Improvisation is always a dialogue, even when only one person is playing. The musician is in dialogue with the instrument, the composed material (if it exists), the room’s acoustics and the audience. If, as here, the instrument is a piano, further dialogue exists between left…