| Junk Magic | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | April 20, 2004 | |||
| Studio | Brooklyn Recording, Brooklyn, NY Integral, Minneapolis, MN | |||
| Genre | Jazz | |||
| Length | 41:58 | |||
| Label | Thirsty Ear | |||
| Producer | Craig Taborn | |||
| Craig Taborn chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [1] |
| The Penguin Guide to Jazz | [2] |
| Tom Hull | B [3] |
Junk Magic is an album by Craig Taborn, with Aaron Stewart (tenor sax), Mat Maneri (viola), and Dave King (drums). It was released in 2004 by Thirsty Ear Recordings.
The album's title was also the name of the band, which was formed to be Taborn's electronic group, allowing him to explore the interactions of composition, improvisation and electronics. [4] The name came from Sam Shepard's writings. [5]
Taborn produced the album. [1] Texture and pulse were important contributors to the overall sound. [6] The title track contains "skittering beats [...that] layer themselves over off-kilter drum machine pyrotechnics and a looped piano phrase." [1]
Junk Magic was released on April 20, 2004 by Thirsty Ear Recordings. [1]
The Penguin Guide to Jazz commented that the album's title "is apposite, since it does resemble something beautiful and even something slightly forbidding created out of the remnants of a throwaway culture". [2] The AllMusic reviewer concluded that "Junk Magic is a stunner from start to finish, and one that challenges the notions and linguistic senses as to what jazz 'is', as well as what it is not." [1] Nate Chinen praised Taborn's work as producer, stating that "What pushes this album into the zone of innovation is his work as a sequencer and producer, which gives the lie to any accusation that 'jazztronica' means jazz musicians superimposing their tunes on synthetic grooves. What Taborn does is infallibly organic, even when he's performing radical reconstructive surgery." [7]
All compositions are by Craig Taborn.
Matthew Shipp is an American avant-garde jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader.
Mat Maneri is an American composer, violin, and viola player. He is the son of the saxophonist Joe Maneri and Sonja Maneri.
David King is an American drummer from Minneapolis. He is known for being a founding member of the jazz groups The Bad Plus and Happy Apple. King is also active in many other projects including free jazz collective Buffalo Collision with NYC "downtown" musicians Tim Berne and Hank Roberts and the electronic art/pop group Halloween, Alaska. He is also a member of the noise/prog band The Gang Font with former Hüsker Dü bassist Greg Norton. He also has a jazz quintet called Dave King Trucking Company.
Thirsty Ear Recordings is an American independent record label. It was founded in the late 1970s as a marketing company for the then-unnamed alternative music field, and expanded to issue its own records in 1990.
Chris Speed is an American saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.
Craig Marvin Taborn is an American pianist, organist, keyboardist and composer. He works solo and in bands, mostly playing various forms of jazz. He started playing piano and Moog synthesizer as an adolescent and was influenced at an early stage by a wide range of music, including by the freedom expressed in recordings of free jazz and contemporary classical music.
Gerald Cleaver is a jazz drummer from Detroit, Michigan.
Eivind Opsvik is a Norwegian jazz musician and composer, the son of the Norwegian interior and furniture designer Peter Opsvik.
Threads is an album by saxophonist and composer David S. Ware's String Ensemble which was recorded in 2003 and released on the Thirsty Ear label.
The Sublime And is a live double album by saxophonist Tim Berne's Science Friction which was recorded in Switzerland in 2003 and originally released on the Thirsty Ear label. The album was rereleased in 2007 along with Berne's 2002 Science Friction album as part of the Screwgun Records compilation Mind Over Friction.
Life Cycle is an album by American jazz drummer Whit Dickey recorded in 2000 and released on the Aum Fidelity label. Dickey leads the Nommonsemble, which includes Rob Brown on alto sax and flute, Mat Maneri on viola and Matthew Shipp on piano.
Craig Taborn is a pianist, keyboard and electronics player, chiefly in jazz. By the end of 2020, he had appeared on 14 albums as a leader or co-leader and more than 100 as a sideman.
Song for My Sister is an album by American jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell which was recorded in 2002 and released on Pi Recordings. It was the third studio recording by the Note Factory, a nonet with twin rhythm sections. Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn will later record duo album The Transitory Poems in 2019.
Triptych is the debut album by a free improvisation trio consisting of Danish saxophonist Lotte Anker and two American musicians: pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver. The trio had its inception in 2003, when a European tour came up and Marilyn Crispell, Anker and Cleaver's regular partner, was unable to participate. The album was released on the English Leo label.
Live at the Loft is the second album by Danish jazz saxophonist Lotte Anker with her trio with pianist Craig Taborn and drummer Gerald Cleaver, which was recorded in 2005 at the Loft in Cologne and released on the Danish ILK label.
Light Made Lighter is the second album by American jazz pianist Craig Taborn, which was released in 2001 on Thirsty Ear's Blue Series.
Disambiguation is an album by a quintet co-led by jazz pianist Pandelis Karayorgis and violinist Mat Maneri, which was recorded in 2001 and released on the English Leo label. Maneri had the idea to ask Karayorgis to write pieces for a quintet date with saxophonist Tony Malaby and bassist Michael Formanek already in mind. Drummer Randy Peterson was on pianist's trio and has long played with Mat in Joe Maneri's quartet.
Underground is the tenth studio album by jazz saxophonist Chris Potter released on the Sunnyside label in 2006. It features guitarist Wayne Krantz, keyboardist Craig Taborn and drummer Nate Smith.
Uncharted Territories is a two-disc studio album by English jazz bassist Dave Holland together with saxophonist Evan Parker, percussionist Ches Smith, and pianist Craig Taborn. The album was released on May 11, 2018 via Holland's own Dare2 Records label.
Compass Confusion is an album by the band Junk Magic, led by keyboardist Craig Taborn, and featuring saxophonist and clarinetist Chris Speed, violist Mat Maneri, electric bassist Erik Fratzke, and drummer David King. It was issued by Pyroclastic Records in 2020, 16 years after the group's initial release.
