Dawn After Dawn – Home is Where You Are (577 Records, 2025)
Here we have the Maestro (saxophones, trumpet and piano) along with Aron
Namenwirth (guitar, flute, percussion) and Jon Rosenberg (loops, effects),
under the banner Dawn After Dawn. Aron and Jon have been friends since 2020
and played as a duo, Hall of Mirrors. How the duo became a trio is clearly
explained on Bandcamp notes by Aron Namenwirth: “Find yourself lucky enough
to have Daniel and Jon in a recording studio and some incredible guitars
and pedals on a grand piano, incredible exchanges will happen. Then the
engineer becomes a musician…”. Electronic loops and experimental nuances
are interspersed with smooth, beautifully out of time, Dexter Gordon-esque
sax lines, soon to be hijacked by noises or crashed by Jimi/Miles-wise
telluric wah wah: as in any great record, no way to rest on a comfort spot.
About the “cooking”, here is Brooklin-based audio engineer, Jon Rosenberg:
“Between my love for dance music, the electric period of Miles Davis and
music for films, I began to add samples of tonally and rhythmically
centered material to see if, somehow, these two disparate types of music
could be made to mesh into something unique in the listener’s mind”. Should
we feel, as listeners, that the music depicts a borderless sense of
freedom, we got the counter-evidence of this directly by Carter’s words:
“Dawn After Dawn inspires me to be more free of being a saxophonist, so to
speak, Seems there are certain requirements and expectations that can be
suffocating, nerve wracking and confining in trying to be a saxophonist. I
have, for a long time, periodically been inspired to play in the inner
voices instead of playing what’s going on”.
Sonic Chambers Quartet – Kiss of the Earth (577 Records, 2025)
Let’s grant Maestro Carter a little bit of well deserved relaxation and
have a listen to this band co-led by New Orleans-based clarinetist and
saxophonist Byron Asher and New York City-based saxophonist and clarinetist
Tomas Majcherski. The multi-instrumentalists and composers have known each
other and performed together for over 10 years, primarily in the New
Orleans music scene, though their collaboration on this project only began
in 2023. Studies in philosophy and religion, as well as working in avant
garde theater, are part of their common upbringing and cemented their
personal and artistic bond. The powerhouse of this debut release provided
by Matt Booth from North Carolina on bass and Doug Garrison from New
Orleans on drum, is blasting colorful and polyrhythmic patterns, setting the
perfect frame for the warm, deep and intriguing textures put in place by the
two reedists. Experimentation and avant-garde music find an exciting
counterbalance in arrangements and sounds coordinates that moving the
listener straight to European chamber music tradition, epitomized by Part
One of the mighty Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, grinded and recast as
“an improvisatory vehicle”, to borrow their own words. Recorded in rural
southwestern Louisiana, Kiss Of the Earth sees at the mixing and production
helm Brian Seeger, longtime compadre of the band.