Below you will find extracts from the original Jazzwise reviews from the May 2021 issue, which you can enjoy in full (along with many thousands more) in the new Jazzwise Reviews Database. For more information, please visit: jazzwise.com/subscribe

Nik Bärtsch

Entendre

ECM

Nik Bärtsch feels a long way from jazz, but a lot closer to a freewheeling rhythmic spontaneity on this unexpectedly action-packed set... John Fordham

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Airelle Besson Quartet

Try

Papillon Jeune

Laid down after just two days rehearsal, Try feels effortless, liberating.  The exchanges between Besson’s clean but colourful playing and Sorling’s wordless singing unfurl over a firm foundation of barely there keys and drum sticks applied just so... Jane Cornwell

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Vijay Iyer Trio

Uneasy

ECM

Iyer continues to document the contemporary American experience, with its catalogue of inconvenient truths and dehumanizing facts, with music that deftly sidesteps convention while staying true to all manner of far-reaching traditions in Black music... Kevin Le Gendre

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James Brandon Lewis

Jesup Wagon

Tao Forms

This album provides further confirmation of Lewis’ growing artistic stature, as he clearly has important things to say socially, culturally and politically, as well as a creative drive that keeps resulting in one notable recording after another... Kevin Le Gendre

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Joe Lovano & Dave Douglas – Sound Prints

Other Worlds

Greenleaf Music

Sound Prints’ music may reference the classic free-collective innovations of Shorter, Ornette, and the mid-60s Miles quintet, but their audaciously sophisticated refinement of all that rich history makes them a truly contemporary jazz band... John Fordham

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Chris Potter Circuits Trio

Sunrise Reprise

Edition Records

Their second CD for Dave Stapleton’s Edition Records sounds like it has a freshness of purpose; a playfully inventive flood of ideas seem to organically and spontaneously flow out of Potter’s ear-catching new themes... Selwyn Harris

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Wollny/Parisien/Lefebvre/Lillinger

XXXX

ACT

The undertows are often fiercely, abstractly and sometimes caressingly electronic (Wollny plays electric keys throughout), from the chain-dragging sounds and detonations of ‘Somewhere Around Barstow’, to the choirlike echoes and huge, chugging grooves of ‘Too Bright In Here’ or the dreamy harmonies of the only composed piece, Wollny’s closing ‘Nostalgia for the Light’... John Fordham

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Thumbscrew

Never Is Enough

Cunieform

This formidably talented trio entered the studio to record Anthony Braxton material to celebrate the master’s 75th birthday. But they'd also brought songs of their own and these now emerge as Never Is Enough... Always is never enough to have this band (and Braxton) generating the new, the hopeful... Andy Robson

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Read the reviews of all of these albums in the May issue – out now! Subscribe to Jazzwise today