Marc Ribot : "Requiem for what's-his-name"

(Les disques du crépuscule, 1992)

On his second release as a bandleader, guitarist Marc Ribot is joined by players familiar from his gigs as a hired sideman, including saxophonist Roy Nathanson of the Lounge Lizards and the Jazz Passengers and multi-reed player Ralph Carney from Tom Waits' touring band. Though less swinging and fresh than 1990's Rootless Cosmopolitans, this album's original compositions and renditions of Duke Ellington and Howlin' Wolf tunes still leave plenty of room for Ribot's discordant guitar stylings.

Brian Beatty (Allmusic)

HERE

Roy Nathanson : "Fire at Keaton's bar & grill"

(Six Degrees, 2000)

Roy Nathanson has always been a storyteller. In the late 1980s, his band with Curtis Fowlkes, called the Jazz Passengers, echoed the voices he heard from his New York streets. Deranged and Decomposed and Broken Night/Red Light, both nearly impossible to find recordings, spoke of multi-ethnic ramblings, preachers, and strange drugs. Nathanson also wrote music for performance artist David Cale, accenting his tales. Later work with the Lounge Lizards and the nineties reincarnation of the Jazz Passengers with vocalist Debbie Harry of Blondie fame, further broadened Nathanson's musical palate. He is a showman with an inclination for burlesque, a joke and a good time.
Fire is the full realization of his storytelling. He constructs an imaginary tavern, with an assemblage of patrons and odd characters that include Deborah Harry as Cups, the bartender everyone lusts for, Elvis Costello the narrator, Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs as the would be arsonist, and various patrons that include a micro and a macro physicist. Not since The Who's Tommy or, well...The Van Trapp families exploits has musical theatre captured my imagination. Nathanson's theater is all about the bar's characters. Scored with tangos, a saxophone quartet, funk, organ grease, and Jazz Passengers circus music, the musical vignettes shed light on the tragic night of the fire, hint at relationships and turmoil, before disappearing into the smoke.
Nancy King and Kenny Washington sing/scat "Bar Stool Paradise" ala' "Moody's Mood For Love" at true lush life where a few drinks create eternal love, at least for tonight.
Nathanson casts his musical theatre with top musicians and eclectic styles. Where else can a B3, as if in a make believe jazz night, play opposite a cello and Dobro "kid song" next to a love song between two gay particle physicists? Somehow Elvis Costello's voice has become the narration of our times and Harry's graduation from Blondie signals a collective call for all of us to grow up already. Nathanson has given us the postmodern-Cheers, then burned it to the ground. See, jazz can be fun music, it can be theatre, and it can tell stories.

Mark Corroto (All About Jazz)

1- Fire suite 1
2- Fire suite 2
3- Fire suite 3
4- Bar stool paradise
5- Last call
6- Jazz night at Keaton's
7- A bend in the night
8- Carol Ann
9- Toast quartet
10- Loss
11- Cups
12- Fire suite reprise

musicians :

Roy Nathanson : alto, tenor & soprano sax (2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12)
Bill Ware : vibes, piano, hammond B3 (3,8,11,12)
Brad Jones : bass (1,3,5,8,12)
EJ Rodriguez : drums, percussion (1,3,5,11,12)
Marc Ribot : guitar (3,4,11)
Erik Friedlander : cello (1,10)
Jay Rodriguez : tenor sax (2,3,6,9)
Curtis Fowlkes : trombone (5,6,11)
Ben Perowsky : drums (3,6,8)
Anthony Coleman : piano (7)
Sam Furnace : baritone sax (2,3,9)
Ned Rothenberg : alto sax (2,3,9)
Rob Thomas : violin (5,6)
Charles Earland : hammond B3 (4,6)
Marcus Rojas : tuba (11)
Deidre Rodman : piano (5)
Cyrus Chestnut : piano (1)
David Gilmore : guitar (8)
Hector Del Curto : bandonion (5)
Danny Blume & Chris kelly : programming (8)
Mike Marshall : dobro (10)
Rob Johnson : trumpet (6,11)
David Driver & Darius de Haas : vocals (7)
Nancy King : vocal (4)
Kenny Washington : vocal (4)
Juan "Coco" de Jesus : vocal (10)
Corey Harris : vocal (8)
Deborah Harry : vocal (11)
Richard Butler : vocal (5)
Elvis Costello : vocal (1,3, 12)

HERE

Auktyon (АукцЫон) : "Girls sing" ("Девушки поют")

(Geometriya, 2007)

Veteran russian rockers Auktyon have enlisted the help of several notable american musicians on their latest release, so the music may well reach a wider audience than usual. But augmented or not, Auktyon's sound remains as curious and kinetic as ever.
Guitarist Marc Ribot, who appears on "Girls Sing" with fellow recruits John Medeski on keyboards, Frank London on trumpet and Ned Rothenberg on alto sax and flute, recently called Auktyon "punk rockers with a surrealist edge." Although that description sums up the eight-piece band's temperament and theatricality as well as any, "Girls Sing" is label-defying.
"Profukal" kicks off the album with frenzied Slavic funk: Ribot lays down chunky chordal riffs, Medeski scribbles away on a hammond organ and drummer Boris Shaveinikov vigorously assumes the role of pile driver until the atonal fade. In sharp contrast, the eight-minute-plus "Tam-dam" unfolds slowly and hauntingly, accented by Japanese flute and rustling percussion.
The remaining performances tend to fall somewhere between those sonic strategies, though the energy level never flags for long. Eastern European dance music, Gypsy guitar traditions and fusion jazz tints play a role in the mix, as does Auktyon's trademark (and frequently unhinged) blend of brass, reeds, percussion, vocals, strings and showmanship.

Mike Joyce (The Washington Post)

1. Profukal
2. Padal
3. Zhdat
4. Rogan Born
5. Tam-dam
6. Slova
7. Debil
8. Vozle menya
9. Dolgi
10. Devushki poyut

musicians :

Маrс Ribot -Harmony Stratatone, Аuditiоп (electric), Silveгtone
John Medeski - Hammond, Piano, Melodica, Chamberlin, Faгfisa
Ned Rothenberg - alto sax, Shakuhachi
Frank London - trumpet
Vladimir Volkov - double-bass, percussion
Victor Bondarik - bass
Boris Shaveinikov - drums
Nikolai Rubanov - bass clarinet, bass sax, soprano sax
Mikhail Kolovskiy - tuba
Dmitriy Ozerskiy - keyboard, vocal
Leonid Fedorov - vocal, guitar, percussion
Oleg Garkusha - vocal, percussion

HERE

David Shea : "Prisoner"

(Sub Rosa, 1994)

Prisoner is Shea's homage to Patrick McGoohan's paranoid BBC TV spy series from the 1960s (as well as other spy/adventure shows from the same period), and liberally uses samples from the show. He continues working with additional musicians after the solo effort of I, but the musicians are used to better advantage than his debut work Shock Corridor. He has compared the work to sound cinema, and the description is particularly apt in the way that he transitions from one scene to another, and where the later pieces in the suite harken back to the earlier ones. Each piece has its own character, but the transitions between them occur in a cloud of brief, noisy segments, mixing Shea's turntable work and instrumental improvisation. The instrumentalists get opportunities to solo without dominating the work, especially guitarist Mark Ribot (who gets a long solo on #2 and some great feedback noise on #6) and Cyro Baptiste, whose Brazilian percussion dominates #5. The four pianists get a long workout on #4, which includes a beautiful stretch of neo-classical piano writing. The paranoia of the show is reflected in the alternation between circus music and ominous sampled voices and sombre string music. Prisoner shows Shea moving away from the cacophony of Shock Corridor and working with longer forms, towards his excellent later suites, Hsi-Yu Chi, Tower of Mirrors, and Satyricon.

Caleb Deupree (All Music)

HERE

Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog

NB : no label, no date and no other information. But it's recorded live !

HERE

Marc Ribot : "Inasmuch as life is borrowed..."

(Ultima Vez, 2001)

HERE

KotKot : "Alive at Tonic"

(AWDRLR2, 2008)

A blast of surf guitar, punctuated with crisp snare cracks, is soon engulfed by swirling sound effects, frenetic drumming and a distorted guitar attack, revealing sonic swashbucklers with a mission. Drummer Amir Ziv's KOTKOT includes percussionist Cyro Baptista, guitarist Marc Ribot and electric bassist Shahzad Ismaily, all players with intertwined histories. Alive at Tonic culls spontaneous compositions from two shows at the lamented New York club (and one track from Ziv's pad) that evince the excitement of experimentation in live performance.
The opening salvo is followed by the subdued guitar and throbbing bass of "Won't U Be My Porcupine," boasting Baptista's echoed vocalizations and a classic Ribot angular run, leading to a pounding percussion duet. The guitarist's clean jazz sound counters the uptempo rimshots and Jew's harp opening of "My Dentist in Hawaii." Later, he creates sustained tones washed in delay, an idea that he tests further on "Let There Be Light" and "Told You So," reminiscent of sounds from his Scelsi Morning CD (Tzadik, 2003).
Ziv and Baptista also flirt with patterns they played together in their group Beat the Donkey, under the guitar washes of "Dentist" and the rollicking opening of "Told," though with modulated tempos and accents. A "drum 'n' bass" veteran, Ismaily provides a pulsing presence with sound smears rather than articulated notes filling the bottom end. The re-contextualization of motifs shows their malleability and applicability in disparate situations.
After an amorphous introduction, a galloping drum/percussion groove develops on the sprawling "Mono Dream," as Ribot slowly teases a melodic phrase, settling into and using it as a platform for wilder extrapolations. At 76-plus minutes, Alive at Tonic is a healthy portion, and some forays meander. It's a small quibble, easily erased by the insistent rhythm, ardent guitar slashes and funk touches of "Bring Them to Their Knees," a sonic maelstrom as denouement.

Sean Patrick Fitzell (All About Jazz)

HERE

Marco Cappelli IDR : "Italian Doc Remix"

(itinera, 2008)

With Italian Doc Remix, guitarist Marco Cappelli is interested in exploring points of intersection between his Italian heritage, the processes of migration and a welter of contemporary approaches that include collective improvisation and turntable manipulation. He and drummer Jim Pugliese have assembled a fine band that includes Doug Wieselman (reeds), Jose Davila (trombone and tuba) and Ken Filiano (bass), with Ribot a guest on eight of the 13 tracks and DJ Logic a guest on ten. While the band drops to trio dimensions for three minute-long free improvisations between Cappelli and his guests—sudden fracturing explosions of gritty guitars and turntable sounds—most of the music is dense, intense and sustained, with Cappelli's compositions based on sources like a Gesualdo madrigal and a host of traditional songs from the 16th to 18th centuries. DJ Logic uses LPs from a set called La Tradizione Musicale in Campania and Cappelli uses tapes of traditional music for one piece. The initial tone is set by an interview recorded with Brooklyn barber Lenny Ranaldo and from there it's a wonderful confluence of collision and empathy with traditional materials lovingly disassembled by turntable manipulation, noise and free jazz bluster. The conclusion, with Wieselman on tenor, emphasizes the closeness of a village brass band to the raw joy of Albert Ayler, terrain that's close, too, to Ribot's heart.

Stuart Broomer (All About Jazz)

HERE