Sucker Punch Requiem (Read all reviews >>)

"The diversity held throughout this CD is astonishing, disarming, and unmistakably truthful, as testament to the fortitude of Ellis, a high-water mark for his career, and a marvelous statement as to how different elements of art can be made into startling music."
     - Michael G. Nastos, allmusic    Full text >>

Despite Basquiat's frequent references to jazz, bassist/composer/painter Lisle Ellis is the first in the jazz world to create an album-length homage to the painter's life and work...The point of the project is as a springboard, something to be revisited time and again as Ellis solidifies the relationship between the painter's immense oeuvre and his own work.
     - Clifford Allen, All About Jazz    Full text >>

His sensitivity to the visual, as well as musical, realms makes him ideally suited to salute Basquiat's graffiti-inspired paintings. His music on this album dances between - and around - form and abstraction, tradition and confrontation, clarity and distortion.
     - George Varga, San Diego Union-Tribune    Full text >>

You put it on out of curiosity, and what you get is a different musical world than the one you know . . . Ellis manages to create his own musical world here, based on the example of - and in homage to - graffitti poet and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. . . . And the musicianship is truly great . . . "
     - stef, Free Jazz    Full text >>

"And then, during a full listening, I realised that there were two aspects to the album. A smaller part is the constructed stream, from the opening it appears in a number of 'interludes' - shorter pieces which are titled Perishable fig. 1a to 3. These create interesting contrasts to the longer parts, and carry the themes of the opening.
     - Jeremy, Ampersand Etcetera    Full text >>

"'Sucker Punch Requiem' is a most fascinating work. . . . Each piece is like a painting with attention to each detail on the canvas . . . "Sucker Punch Requiem" is a wonderful endeavor overall and not very "out." This might come as a surprise to some who expect more outside sounds from Lisle based on his previous recordings. Forget those expectations and enjoy this special gift."
     - Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery    Full text >>

"Boasting fluid ensemble interplay, dramatic stylistic shifts and rich harmonic writing, Sucker Punch Requiem blends forward thinking experimentation with old school craft, resulting in one of Ellis' most accessible and rewarding albums."
     - Troy Collins, All About Jazz    Full text >>

"Sucker punch Requiem sounds like an achievement, something important."
     - Noel Tachet , Improjazz France    Full text >>

Minamo (Read all reviews >>)

"Minamo" is extraordinary, a series of tight, dramatic events. Even without written music the musicians have plenty of ground under their feet: vamps, patterns, echoed motions. Both play with virtuosic precision and a great range of technique, even when the music becomes gestural and built on hummingbird pulses, glassy wipes of the violin strings, dark rumbles of rubbed piano strings. The whole record, but especially the second concert, runs on its own vivid tension.
     - Ben Ratliff, The New York Times    Full text >>

"The playing is absolutely beautiful, and oddly enough it's beautiful in that classical way in which you might separate an individual's performance from the music that he or she is playing. There are moments here, as in the spontaneous melody of "One Hundred and Sixty Billion Spray," that are executed so well it wouldn't matter what the notes are (if such a distinction could be made, and it often is). But the two are actually making this up from the material of their interaction. Fujii is especially adept at elaborating form, sometimes creating a complex dialogue between left and right hands that follows, frames and amplifies Kihlstedt's lines. That expressive richness here (the Bartok/ Prokofiev lineage) springs from Kihlstedt's profound sound and attack, as rich and dynamic as any violinist who has entered the improvising community."
     - Stuart Broomer, Point of Departure    Full text >>

"For those listeners who enjoy free, truly spontaneous improvisation and the combination of violin and piano, Minamo with violinist Carla Kihlstedt and pianist Satoko Fujii cannot be recommended highly enough. Minamo is a triumph."
     - Budd Kopman, All About Jazz    Full text >>

"Minamo is a perfect thing, everything seems possible"
     - Noel Tachet, Improjazz Francez    Full text >>

unsettled on an old sense of place (Read all reviews >>)

"Gustavo Aguilar is a brilliant percussionist who grew up in Brownsville, where Texas meets Mexico. He now lives in New York . . . and has located himself in music at a point where composition and improvisation get into one another in extraordinary ways. . . . Gustavo Aguilar is himself a defiantly unorthodox musician - the kind we need - and this is a wonderful CD."
     - Julian Cowley, The Wire    Full text >>

"I love your "GUSTAVO AGUILAR: Unsettled On An Old Sense Of Place" CD so much I'm going to feature it on the Front Page of CD Baby for a few days. We're REALLY picky about what goes on the front page. We get about 150 new albums a day. . . . and yours is one of the best I've ever heard."
     - From CD Baby    Full text >>

Baggerboot (Read all reviews >>)

"They have discovered shocking and delightful new sounds on their instruments, and range boldly between contemporary classical music and anarchic free jazz. A free music recording you'll find yourself playing again and again."
     - John Gill, The Wire    Full text >>

"...it is highly provocative artistry that commands rapt attention to the intricacies of three astute musicians who reward the bold voyager with a startling brand of creativity."
     - Frank Rubolino, Cadence    Full text >>

"Baggerboot (Henceforth) is energized with palpable passion, with the three improvisers - Belgian bassist Peter Jacquemyn participates along with Gottschalk and Völker - liberated by free jazz passion. The trio improvises blatantly in a manner that mixes tension-release and virtuosity."
     - Ken Waxman, One Final Note    Full text >>

"...there is joy in the way that you do hear that cosmic thread when you open yourself up to it. An extraordinary and quite challenging trio, well worth your discriminating listening abilities."
     - Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery    Full text >>

"Bonnie Wright's new label, Henceforth Records is off to a good start with a couple of thrilling releases...What's interesting here is all three players are truly interested in the texture of the sounds. How will the sounds appear as Gottschalk scrapes a mean pattern across her violin, while accordionist Völker weaves waves of chaotic noise, all the while Jacquemyn pounds his bass into submission with brutal force."
     - Tom Sekowski, Gaz-eta    Full text >>

Sound on Survival Live (Read all reviews >>)

"The best thing about the recording is the four pieces [ranging from 9 minutes to just over 40 minutes] are drawn out improvisations. Each of the players is permitted ample room to stretch out and show off their plentiful skills."
     - Tom Sekowski, Gaz-eta    Full text >>

The trio leaps into a super-quick bop-like excursion with Marco spinning his unique lightning licks. Whoa, watch out! For those who the mind-blowing spirits of Fred Anderson, Kidd Jordan or Peter Brotzmann, this is one of those incredible trio dates that is hard to beat or improve upon.
     - Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery    Full text >>

"...A brand new label (Henceforth Records) sent us this splendid CD...Ellis on bass, Eneidi doing alto sax & Valsamis on drums...This is some of the most fresh & original improv jazz I've heard in (quite) a while, & I get an image of hearing these folks for many years to come! Some GREAT high-energy music that adventuresome souls everywhere will find totally enchanting. I give this one a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, as well as the "PICK" of this issue for "best improvised jazz"!"
     - rotcod zzaj, # 71 Improvijazzation Nation    Full text >>

Love the new 'Sound on Survival: Live' disc! Congrats one and all.
     - Laurence Donohue-Greene - Managing Editor AllAboutJazz - New York

"These songs explode with life and vibrant ideas. As the liners say. ". . . more often than not . . . the songs come to an arbitrated (not arbitrary) ending." Exactly. All tangents aside, these men know what they're doing and, more importantly, where they're going."
     - Aiding and Abetting    Full text >>

"...It's intensely rhythmic music - even Eneidi treats the saxophone as almost a pulse generator, the source of abruptly fired-off impulses with a surprisingly regular rhythm (though he uses that regularity to create syncopation effects too)."
     - Don't Explain    Full text >>

"thanks a bunch for the great CD. i will play the dickens out of it here at radio station kwva, eugene, oregon: the seat of anarchy in the pacfic northwest! keep us in mind when you produce/create the out stuff. thanks for the great music. honored to play it."
     - James Cervantes, Jazz Format Director KWVA