The three musicians of GoGo Penguin show up for work every day with a simple goal: To bend, twist, prod and occasionally mutilate repetitive musical patterns until they sprout unanticipated polyrhythmic variations. They're improvisers who are alive to whim and impulse as well as the hypnotic pull of recurring loops; one thrill of "Atomised," the jittery opening track of the UK band's 5th album, involves following a simple high-speed arpeggio as it fractures into shards and is reassembled. Like all great jazz trios, GoGo Penguin intuit, together, when to take the next turn and how hard to lean into it. But the three—pianist Chris Illingworth, bassist Nick Blacka, and drummer Rob Turner – are inspired by breakbeat and the surging vistas of Squarepusher and other electronic adventurers. The compositions are rooted in that machine language.The fundamental tension between jazz impulsiveness and electronic order animates everything GoGo Penguin has done since its 2012 debut. Pieces written for the 2019 film Ocean In a Drop arrived at a nicely settled sweet spot between those extremes, and that gets further development on this album – particularly on the buoyant "F Maj Pixie" and the placid, engagingly meditative "Don't Go." The patterns of these pieces, and others here, seem fairly straightforward at the start. But there's dimensionality at work: What begins as the racing recurring thought of a coder who's compulsive about keeping order on the grid might blossom into something beautifully free, singable, even romantic. © Tom Moon/Qobuz

Locked down and unable to tour, GoGo Penguin made the most of the situation by developing their makeshift concert repertoire. This concert sees the virtuous Manchester trio play in a certain Abbey Road Studios. Four out of seven of the tracks from this short 30-minute Live From Studio 2, transmitted live online of the 29th of October 2020, come from their fifth album released in June 2020. This atypical situation rallies like never before pianist Chris Illingworth, drummer Rob Turner and bassist Nick Blacka. Like caged animals suddenly let free, the Mancunians deliver a powerful rendition of their famous concoction of contemporary jazz, electronic music and minimalism. From the first minutes of Totem which opens this EP, the rhythms throb more than we are used to as Illingworth’s fingers dart across the piano keys. “We didn’t want to play in an empty venue, somehow it just felt weird trying to create the energy of a concert in an empty room”, explains Blacka. “But we had recorded an EP in studio 2 back in 2015 and loved the space and somehow it just made sense to film a show here.” Chris Illingworth confirms this: “It’s a really special place and we wanted somewhere intimate that we would be excited to work in and where we could tap into that sense of excitement that you get from a live concert.” For Turner, t is more a question of sound. “When we perform, we’re always reacting to each other but also the crowd. The people and the energy in the space is as much a part of the performance as we are Studio Two is imbued with the ghosts of all the incredible music and musicians that have performed there. It has an atmosphere all of its own. You really feel the expanse of time, how much has happened before you and how much will continue to happen after you.” A great success through and through. © Clotilde Maréchal/Qobuz

Though this band takes many shapes, it is always centred around one man—the incredible Max Cavalera. Like many other bands, Soulfly has had to deal with a global pandemic that has called the group’s dynamic into question. Though the former Sepultura frontman seems to be blossoming alongside his son and drummer, Zyon (who’s been part of the band for almost 10 years now), the departure of loyal guitarist Marc Rizzo after 18 years of faithful service undeniably disrupted the band for a time. However, Soulfly is now back in top form with a brand new album.This album was made in a much more relaxed way than its predecessors, taking shape across the father and son’s numerous guitar-drum jams during the lockdown. Totem is a classic Soulfly album with a few surprises in store, injecting their music with a hit of fresh sound. Nonetheless, these tracks are still undeniably snarly and firmly anchored in thrash and death metal.The first surprise comes in the form of a throwback to the old-fashioned solo. If you love the swirling guitar solos of the late 80s, you’re in for a treat. The album’s producer, Arthur Rizk, gave his all both in front of and behind the studio desk. Many tracks are defined by their biting sound (for example, the intros of 'Filth Upon Filth' and 'Scouring The Vile', where you’ll find John Tardyn, Obituary’s chief screamer) and are as furious as they are fast. Another striking element is their return to a catchy rhythm that borders on neo-metal ('The Damage Done'), something which defined the band’s first albums as well as Sepultura’s famous album Roots, the last record which featured Max Cavalera before his departure. This little step back in time is not unwelcome, if nothing else it gives listeners time to come up for air between the intense waves of thrash and black metal ('Rot In Pain').This album features a jumble of ideas which could easily have made this release feel disjointed and poorly conceived. However, it’s successfully helped Soulfly break away from the rather rigid feel of their previous records. A proper family affair, with excellent production work and tracks filled with passion and unrelenting aggression - you’d be forgiven for thinking this was their ‘Best of’ album. Long live the Cavalera dynasty. © Chief Brody/Qobuz

Elixir is the first album Danish percussionist Marilyn Mazur has recorded as a leader for ECM in 14 years. It is an interesting number for Mazur, because she has also spent 14 years as a member of saxophonist Jan Garbarek's recording and touring ensembles. He appears on about half of Elixir as Mazur's only collaborator (apart from producer Manfred Eicher). That said, the solo pieces are the first remarkable aspect of this set. When Mazur works alone, her pieces defy everything we think we know about solo percussion recordings: there is a warmth and directness in these proceedings that is songlike rather than merely hypnotic or virtuosic. There is much to tell here, not merely to show. These short works are, in effect, aural stories. They arise from her intuitive understanding of an instrument and sound as well as her improvisational abilities as a percussionist, but they emerge as almost sung narratives told on her array of bells, marimba, bowed vibraphones, log drums, udu, cymbals, gongs, waterphone, hang, and metal utensils -- instruments and tools from all of the earth's continents. They are startling vignettes, because they offer a connection to something earlier to be sure, but also to something very universal in their accessibility as a kind of folk art. When she works with Garbarek, the sheer intuitive nature of their communication is simply startling. They do know one another well, but this is truly out of the ordinary. To be honest, as fine as Garbarek's own records have been, listeners haven't really heard him play like this for many years. The structured melodies and dynamic reaches in "Orientales," for instance, come from a very simple idea that he modulates on and returns to over and over again, but his intonation and sense of attack are very different than on his own records. Likewise, the tribal-sounding "Dunun Song" allows for the saxophonist to take his tenor and dance along a thematic idea that is as rooted in blues and New Orleans music as it is in African cultures. The relatively free abstraction in "Winter Wish," the longest of these 21 improvisations at a little over four minutes, is nonetheless measured by Mazur's sense of pace and space, and how her own measured tones offer another voice for her collaborator. The beautiful cymbal, cowbell, and log drums on "Creature Walk" are knotty, ever shifting in pulse and timbre, but always toward rather than away from the listener. The nocturnal waterphone on "Metal Dew," with the longish tones of shimmering small bells and rubbed cymbals, presents another piece of musical alchemy that, while sounding utterly strange and almost exotic, is nonetheless fantastically approachable and beautifully nuanced. In fact, the manner in which this album is structured draws the listener from front to back without once being overwhelming. Indeed, if anything, one is drawn increasingly and with great fascination into these gorgeous rhythmic poems, as if to a new land that is simultaneously welcoming and strange. Fantastic.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Mancunian band GoGo Penguin have always stuck to a jazz trio format, but their adventurous compositions embrace the propulsive basslines and mutating drum breaks of electronic producers like Squarepusher and Amon Tobin. Their first official remix collection arrives nearly a decade into their career, and it lets some of their influences expand on their ideas, sometimes taking them much further than they could've expected. Cornelius' take on "Kora" is one of the more straightforward interpretations here, adding some vibrant synth layers to an already busy rhythm. Machinedrum's "Atomised" is pretty faithful to the structure of the original at first, but he gives it a more hyped-up, club-friendly sheen, setting free with racing kick drums during the mix's second half. Squarepusher's "F Maj Pixie" translates the original into a complex web of knotty beats, delicate guitars, and thwacking bass, then unleashes an array of beautifully broken, aggressive breakbeats during the manic second half. Nathan Fake combines muscular drumming with arpeggio-heavy analog techno, and 808 State drop pieces of the original instrumentation into a whirlpool of sparkling melodies and skittering drum machines. James Holden's mix of "Totem" seems far removed from the frenetic original, transforming it into more of a starry ambient swirl, and Shunya similarly stretches "To the Nth" out, applying tense strings and melancholy vocals, then forming a nervously jumping rhythm before building up to a glitchy conclusion. After a menacing Clark interpretation of "Petit_a," Portico Quartet smooth things out with the forlorn neo-classical techno of "Don't Go."© Paul Simpson /TiVo

What's interesting about the latest outing from this prolific chamber group is not so much that they've chosen to create string quartet adaptations of music from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance -- after all, these are folks who have commissioned arrangements of Jimi Hendrix and Bo Diddley, so we've learned not to be shocked -- but rather that they've chosen to juxtapose the works of Machaut, Pérotin and Tye with pieces by John Cage, Moondog and Harry Partch, among other twentieth-century notables. But maybe that shouldn't come as a surprise, either. It certainly makes lovely musical sense: the stark and static beauty of Arvo Pärt's Psalom fits perfectly with John Dowland's Lachrymae Antiquae (did that man never cheer up?) and John Cage's Quodlibet sounds just right next to Pérotin's "Viderunt Omnes." Was Cage poking fun at his composition teachers with a parody of the raw, open harmonies of the twelfth century? If so, the Kronos folks have turned his intent on its ear in a way that he himself would probably have loved. Puckishness, however, is not really on the agenda here: the overriding mood is one of sadness and devotion, as the album's subtitle (Latin for "ancient tears") makes clear. Like most of Kronos' best work, this is dark, lovely, eerie stuff.© TiVo

Totem, with its focus on trance-dance, broke new ground by bringing drumming out of the ethnic bins and into new age. "Zone VI" begins the album with a hypnotic balance of bass toms played by Robert Ansell, the fancy drumwork by Gordy Ryan, clicks of woodblocks, and a synthesizer drone. The title cut is a serpentine experience which breathes through its undulating bass beats; layers of Middle Eastern rhythms give the dancer many intoxicating paths for movement. Throughout, the rhythms speak -- stately and zenlike to tumbling and swirling -- enticing movement The album ends with the melodically hip "Eliana" and (lest you forget you can dance with a partner) the cha-cha flavored "La Cancion de Manuel," both propelled by the funky bass of Alex Blake. © Carol Wright /TiVo