Laura Toxvaerd - Pladeshop album review: ferocious, ethnic-flavoured free improv

Pladeshop
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Artist: Laura Toxvaerd
Genre: Jazz
Label: ILK

Danish musician’s collective ILK may well represent the future of ‘art music’ recording. Run out of an old slaughterhouse in Copenhagen’s meatpacking district, they’re a shining example of musicians doing it for themselves, releasing a couple of dozen excellent recordings every year in small quantities.

Most of the material is from the darker, abstract end of the contemporary jazz spectrum, like this, one of three new releases on ILK’s White Label imprint (available on vinyl and download only) from Copenhagen saxophonist Laura Toxvaerd. Pladeshop matches Toxvaerd’s ferocious, ethnic-flavoured free improv with rising pianist Simon Toldam and veteran percussionist Mailyn Mazur, whose credits include stints with Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter.

If your bent runs to free improv, you could do worse than go to their new website and start connecting with others of your ilk.

Cormac Larkin

Cormac Larkin

Cormac Larkin, a contributor to The Irish Times, is a musician, writer and director