Herb Robertson

How much shit can one take? Well that depends. If it is being served by the quirky Polish trio 100nka—featuring guitarist Tomek Leś, bassist Adam Stodolski and percussionist Przemek Borowiecki—there may not be quite enough. Their music is rather undefinable, jumping and sneaking as it does into odd nooks and crannies…

Featuring Herb Robertson on trumpets, mutes & compositions, Frank Gratkowski on alto sax & clarinets, Julien Petit on tenor & bari saxes, Marcin Oles on double bass and Bartlomiej Brat Oles on drums. It is always great to hear the ever-inspired Oles brothers playing with the cream of improvisers like David Murray, Ken Vandermark, Chris Speed and Erik Friedlander…

These four segments are really one continuous free style improvisation between trumpeter Herb Robertson and drummer Phil Haynes, conveniently divided between pauses for listening purposes. There are extremes in dynamics and tempos, all of which are realistically captured by CIMP's unique engineering technique of recording unadulterated sound…

Duval is joined by Herb Robertson, Bob Hovey & Jay Rosen on a very coherent & varied free jazz album. To justify the title, the four musicians play an incredible array of instruments, including bass, electronics, trumpet, whistles, voices, flute harp, trombone, foreign language, turntable, drums, percussion, bells, shark, and even an egg beater.

Madness and esthetics, humor and beauty, seldom go together well in music, often the one goes at the expense of the other, but not so with this band. Their music is beyond description. There are laughs and crazy vocalizations, sometimes chattering of musical instruments like monkeys in trees, birds in the jungle, maybe pigs, possibly horses, sometimes incomprehensible and a seemingly pointless scattering of notes that never really evolve into phrases…