- Label: 'New Jazz and Improvised Music Recordings'
- Genre: 'Ambient'
- Release Date: '17th November 2025'- Catalogue No: 'NEWJAiM23'
Our Rating:
If, like me, the collocation of the words ‘free jazz’ and ‘improvisation’ fills you with a mild sense of dread, then these 20 items from Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) and friends will not be a particularly enticing prospect.
The fact that almost all the pieces are very short makes it slightly less daunting. The total running time is 62 minutes so the average length of each is a little over three minutes.
The boast is that “each track was created spontaneously [and] nothing was predetermined and everything happened in the moment of creation.”
The tracks are identified only by the names of the cast of international collaborators which include artists from Australia, Japan and Norway. The vocal gymnastics of Maggie Nicols figure prominently of five of the pieces.
They were recorded live at Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts during the closing night of GIO’s annual festival in 2020.
By adopting a free-spirited philosophy, the sonic mood is inevitably wild and not a little challenging.
This not an easy listen by any stretch of the imagination but somehow the tribal wildness of the project feels strangely liberating.
