Beyond Borders: Some Thoughts About Clean Feed Records
And a plea for some compassionate purchasing on your part
This week, over at Free Jazz Blog (my usual home for writing and reading about jazz and -adjacent musics), there is a grand, multi-day feature about the Portuguese label Clean Feed,1 which for 23(!) years has reliably churned out some of the best jazz albums in the world (no “arguably” here, as I and many others would stand by this being an inarguable statement).
Warriors of the Wonderful Sound – Pedro Costa & Clean Feed
Clean Feed and the Promotion of Portuguese Jazz
The only possible reason the label has floated below the mainstream is the fact that it’s centered in Lisbon and primarily, though not entirely, features European musicians, who are regularly overlooked in US-dominated press. And this, naturally, creates a problem for an independent label like Clean Feed, which is on par with Blue Note and Impulse, in terms of quality, and ahead of both in terms of output. At best, audiences curious about the state of “jazz today” are missing out, and at worst the label risks going under due to diminishing sales.
As we know from copious amounts of data analysis, streaming is a disaster for independent musicians and labels, a (sometimes) necessary evil for labels and artists to try and procure some attention from the PR noise that threatens to bury their signal. Cases in point, pillars of the Clean Feed roster like Luís Lopes, Gonçalo Almeida, Sei Miguel, Martin Küchen, Susana Santos Silva, André Roligheten, and Eve Risser—each of whom is well established and respected in European circles—can scarcely get the attention of US audiences and critics. And American mainstays of the label—such as the late Dennis González, Michaël Attais, and Herb Robertson—tend to fly below the radar, so to speak, in stateside press. And while it’s true, some of us enthusiastically seek out new sounds, there is also a lot of great music coming in from press releases; keeping up with all of it is beyond what anybody could be expected to do. Yet, there’s something really special about Clean Feed, as both a label and community; in some ways, what Pedro Costa has done is create something that is as close to the 1950s–1960s Riverside and Blue Note “house band” concept as we’ve seen in decades—line-ups recur and reform, players in supporting roles take the lead for an album or two, the design is remains fresh yet continually bears the hallmarks of a distinctive aesthetic, and most importantly, there are at least a dozen top-notch albums a year.
Over the years, I’ve seen a few critics speak about Clean Feed broadly as a house for certain kinds of Ayler-esque free jazz or late-stage hard-bop, which misses (I think) the point. I’ve mentioned in the past couple of newsletters novelist and short-story writer John Barth, who invented a particular style of self-referential, postmodern metafiction. Following the story “Lost In the Funhouse” from the collection Lost In the Funhouse, Barth could not escape criticism that he had been there and done that. Similarly, anybody attempting to enter a similar self-referential, metafictional space could be branded as copying something that had already been done. But, is art only ever done once? Are Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler important because they did a thing, or are they to be treasured as groundbreaking artists who broke molds so others could learn and follow? I, obviously, think the latter. Take the great Catalan saxophonist Liba Villavecchia, who just released a new album with his trio and trumpet player Luís Vicente. Villavecchia’s recorded songs by Coleman and, with this trio, Thomas Chapin, alongside his own compositions and brilliant group improvisation. It’s a piano-less trio, the kind that Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman, primarily, birthed into existence and, 50 years later, has become relatively common;2 bassist Àlex Reviriego and drummer Vasco Trilla improvise unlike many double bass and drum set players. By this I mean, there are moments when someone who has listened to a lot of improvised jazz expects a group to go in one direction, and Villavecchia, Reviriego, and Trilla don’t only go someplace different, the whole makeup of the song transforms into a new thing. But, don’t just take my word for it. Instead, do the thing and go buy some music. Like anything else, we have to invest in the good stuff, even when it’s a little harder to find or a little more challenging to appreciate. Otherwise, we’ll almost certainly miss it when it’s gone, and wonder what happened anyway, what led to its slipping away, perhaps without even realizing the choice was ours all along.
Much of the catalog is still only available directly, through distributors, or sometimes through iTunes and Amazon. I’ll link here to some choice picks on Bandcamp, which I know a lot of folks prefer to purchase from. I would recommend buying from anywhere, though, just to get your hands on all this excellent music. And if you are in Europe and can afford postage, purchase directly from Clean Feed itself.
You wouldn’t necessarily know how common this trio lineup has become, given some critics (no naming or shaming here) still call this out sax, double bass, and drums as a remarkable and controversial grouping.