Alex Bonney’s new label Earconnector taps into free jazz, improvised music and beyond. There’s an exciting spread of releases on the horizon.
The first Earconnector release seems to be Open Silver Skies which is a quartet affair just released featuring trumpeter and sound engineer Bonney’s combo that includes James Allsopp in the line-up, Olie Brice is on bass (and who’s got a great riff going on the title track) and the Lee Konitz veteran drummer Jeff Williams completes things. Bonney is quite Don Cherry and Loz Speyer-like in his contributions.
This group issued an album called Halda Ema via the Loop Collective a decade ago.
Bonney is also on a duo recording of 4 free improvisations called The Dancing Third with Tom Challenger, the title track of which is streaming.
The trumpeter also teams up with another reliably rewarding free-jazz saxist in Cath Roberts on ‘Seahorse’ drawn from the curiously entitled Owl Party Submersible.
Excitingly, Earconnector is also to release an album called Fabric of Memory featuring the remarkable sound of English keyboardist Matthew Bourne and Northern Irish bassist Dave Kane on this upcoming occasion keeping company with Norwegian-Sámi drummer Emil Karlsen. It’s out in February. ‘Sleight of Hands’ from it is streaming.
And last but by no means least Earconnector is to issue a new recording by Brass Mask back after a considerable time away spankingly newly reconfigured.
Led by Tom Challenger, the raucous New Orelans and far beyond group was impressive on Babel release Spy Boy which had Theon Cross on it back in the 2010s. This new one is called Cygnus.
For this recording, a whole load of new players are involved playing mainly Challenger tunes.
So there’s George Crowley, versatile long time Jamie Cullum player Rory Simmons, Miguel Gorodi, Cameron Scott, Caius Williams, Jon Scott of GoGo Penguin and Noah Ojumu in the sound.
Bonney is highly rated as an engineer working for people like Sun Chung of the acclaimed Red Hook label for instance.
I heard him in 2024 for the first time live on that occasion in the band of avant singer Paula Rae Gibson that also had Matthew Bourne in it playing the Vortex.
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