Northern Spy Records is the baby of co-owners Tom Abbs and Adam Downey, birthed after both left their jobs at the legendary ESP-Disk, a label with a similarly solid reputation for releasing music on the fringes. At ESP, free jazz legends like Albert Ayler, Guiseppe Logan and Frank Wright shared space with noise and psych-rock bands like The Godz and Fugs. For Northern Spy, the diversity of these idioms was merely a launching pad.

Jazz is still represented at Northern Spy by free jazz giant Charles Gayle and modern experimentalists Chad Taylor and Rob Mazurek (aka Chicago Underground Duo). But the label has an impressively broad definition of “Something Different.” Guitar minimalist Rhys Chatham offers up seaside tranquility. Old Time Relijun barks out punk-rock rattle and twang. Charlie Looker’s outfits Extra Life and Seaven Teares spotlight his “Morrisey’s-Dangerous-Twin” persona — a chanteur whose dark side has a dark side. There’s room for the hypnotic rhythmic intensity of the tribal Foot Village to sit side-by-side with the cheerful-drunk back-porch pop of the Colin L. Orchestra and the embraceable shape-shifting of noise savants Zs. Relative unknowns like Home of Easy Credit, the duo of Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen and Tom Blancart, get just as much juice from the label as guitar legends Thurston Moore and Marc Ribot.

Their bands tour religiously — they’re expected to. But the label puts in work, too. With two annual Spy Music Festival events under their belt, they’re already preparing for the 2013 edition, establishing relationships with NYC venues that serve disparate segments of music fans.

Which doesn’t mean the label doesn’t have its share of difficulties — even with something as seemingly banal as band names. “They’re all great names, artistically, but marketing wise, man, they are just god awful,” Downey laughs. “It’s kind of a joke. How in god’s name can people Google that? I mean, ‘Home of Easy Credit’ is just screaming to enter your spam folder. And Neptune — first off, there are probably five or more bands with that name that are bigger than our band. And it’s completely un-Googleable.”

This good-natured sense of humor is a job requirement when you’re releasing weird, difficult-to-market music for a living. Downey has it in spades, and the music on Spy reflects this temperament: It’s a costume ball of extravagant outsider music, where everything is a little bit scary and a whole lot of fun. Here, in his own words, are some of Northern Spy’s most memorable releases.

That tradition continues to this day, with modern jazz musicians discovering little compositional diamonds in modern pop. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. While honoring the past and communicating in a shared, established language is a defining quality of jazz, so is the tendency to adopt a forward-thinking approach to music, seeking to expand that shared language in ways that are both experimental and innovative. Considering how many modern jazz artists have grown up listening to a variety of genres, it’s only natural that they’d turn to these influences as they develop their own personal sound. The songs in this list are just a few examples of that enduring phenomenon, and offer a glimpse of modern jazz musicians as they compile a new edition of standards — a new songbook for a new era.

Strange and beautiful music from an artist who has made a career from creating it

Guitarist Bill Frisell has spent a career making strange and beautiful music, following creative paths that connect genre points that include jazz, but often travel far and wide from that spot. Over the last handful of years, he’s settled into a sort of jazz Americana, an inventive blend of jazz, folk, and rock that has allowed his singular voice to reach a full bloom.

On Frisell’s newest release, Big Sur, he features a new lineup (his Big Sur Quintet), which pulls together members of his 858 Quartet and Beautiful Dreamers trio — violist Eyvind Kang, violinist Jenny Scheinman, cellist Hank Roberts and drummer Rudy Royston — as part of a commission and residency in California’s Big Sur region. The resulting music isn’t a departure from recent Frisell albums, but it reflects aspects of each through Frisell’s focused inspiration in his natural surroundings.

At several moments in Big Sur a string quartet gives voice to captivatingly languid melodies, a sound typical to Frisell’s 858 Quartet 2011 release Sign of Life. But here, Frisell’s addition of drummer Royston provides the strings with a delightful counter-rhythmic element, instilling a tension that enhances, rather than shatters, the drifting serenity of the music.

And it’s not all music to drift off to. Not dissimilar to Frisell’s 2010 release Beautiful Dreamers, several tracks, like “A Good Spot” and “We All Love Neil Young,” have a spry demeanor, matching jaunty percussion with sunny expressions by strings, while Frisell wends unending paths between the two camps, sometimes shadowing the melody, sometimes shading in the lines of rhythm. And then there’s a track like “Hawks,” where Frisell takes over the song with an electric burn, ballasted by the hailstorm of drums and strings like lightning flashes streaking through the sky. It’s yet more strange and beautiful music from an artist who has made a career from creating it.

A promising introduction to a young jazz talent

Titling his debut album Anthology, For Now displays the amusing sense of self-deprecation that generally characterizes young musicians. But the confident voice multi-reedist Blake Lyman displays on the recording? That came out of nowhere.

Atypical of a young jazz musician’s debut, Lyman performs own compositions. On songs like “End of the Search,” a slow blues tune with a cool stroll, “Carthage,” with its velvet bass clarinet bisecting cyclical tenor sax notes, and “Pastoral,” a love song for the perpetually heartbroken, Lymon not only displays a remarkable depth of vision, but also doubles down on its strength by including one cover, Joe Henderson’s “Black Narcissus.” The song enhances the album’s identity rather than diluting it by demonstrating Lyman’s distinct curatorial sense. Lyman’s trio mates (Andrew Jones on bass and Jonas Oglesbee on drums) share his newbie status, which makes this promising introduction even more significant. It shows that great well of young jazz talent in the Pacific Northwest is only beginning to be tapped.

A final work that possesses the punch of his earlier albums

When an artist passes, there is, justifiably, an added significance placed upon their final work. That Bill Dixon titled his last recording Envoi, which indicates a look back or summation, can’t help but ramp up the emotional impact. Recorded in 2010 at the Festival International de Musique Actuelle just before he died, trumpeter and composer Bill Dixon assembled an all-star cast of master improvisers (including Taylor Ho Bynum and Rob Mazurek) and unleashed a battery of brass instruments, vibes, percussion, contrabass clarinet and cello.

Ominous throaty notes like voices calling out from deep beneath the sea, the unnerving pitter patter of drumsticks that grow closer then fade with a crash of cymbals, cello like a haunting wind gusting amongst the trees, bursts of vibes like moonlight cutting through darkened clouds…and then, like the first hint of sunlight, the high call of trumpet and a promise of hope and safety. Dixon’s music is signified by emotionally incendiary cross-currents.

Making his mark as one of the seminal figures in the free jazz avant-garde movements of the late sixties, Bill Dixon continued recording up ’til the very end. His final work possesses all of the punch of earlier albums, and provides every reason to celebrate this recording while also contemplating jazz’s loss.

Instrumental post-rockers make a promising opening statement

The opening notes of Take Acre’s debut album seem not to intrigue the ear so much as corral it. Bursts of electric guitar notes repeat in tight cycles right up front. Meanwhile, the warped luster of lap steel flirts with the ears just below the surface of the tune. Drums and bass walk in nonchalantly from either side. The volume rises. The song’s tempo increases, giving the impression of a tight space getting tighter until all that’s left is the listener in the center of it all. This is a pattern that repeats throughout.

Consisting of electric guitar, lap steel, bass and drums, Take Acre falls into the category of instrumental post-rock that savors the embrace of repetition, and adopting change only as reflected through intensity, not pitch. It’s an approach easy to warm to, but one that can lead to boredom in the absence of an unusual ingredient or two. Exhibit A: lap steel, the inclusion of which adds bright edges to the quartet’s lush waves of sound. Take Acre’s meticulous treatment of the melody is a pleasant thing to experience on its own, but juxtaposed against the wild aeronautics of a lap steel knocks the album up a notch for enjoyability.

Fans of Explosions in the Sky and Dirty Three should gravitate toward this. By way of introduction, Take Acre has made a promising opening statement.

Bonding facets of jazz into a startlingly alluring album

Bridging the divide between the atmospheric introversion of the Norwegian jazz scene and the boisterous extroversion of the American scene, Sunna Gunnlaugs has recorded an album that will appeal to bounce addicts and shoegazers alike.

Comprised of Gunnlaugs on piano, Porgrimur Jonsson on bass and Scott McLemore on drums, the trio deftly fuses facets of jazz that are not often combined. The opening track, with its gentle propulsion and innocent charm, is reminiscent of Keith Jarrett’s 1970s American Quartet, as is “Diamonds on the Inside,” with its soul jazz melodies and hard bop flourishes. No less prominent are dream-like tunes “Fyrir Brynhildi” and “Thema.” Both are austere and introspective, and would fit seamless into a playlist containing ECM artists Marcin Wasilewski and Bobo Stenson. Most successful, however, are the tunes where two different qualities shine equally bright; “Crab Canon,” opens with an extended bit of fuzzy tension as Gunnlaugs’s keys maintain a deep low hum and Jonsson’s bass rises and falls hypnotically; but when McLemore taps his way in, the trio sheds the tension and replaces it with a happy jaunt more conducive to tapping the foot than solitary thinking.

No less buoyant for its minimalism, no less lively for its melancholia, Gunnlaugs has bonded facets of jazz into a startlingly alluring album.

Let’s begin…

Julian Lage Group, Gladwell: This jazz guitarist’s concept album (songs based around the fictional town Gladwell) got plenty of recognition on Best of 2011 lists, and with good reason. This intriguing album navigated a path between Jeremy Udden’s folk jazz and the quasi-bluegrass of guitar master Leo Kottke. Alternating between acoustic and electric guitar, Lage builds his concept from the ground up. Blending sax and cello with his rhythm section, Lage creates a sound that seems intimately familiar, yet perpetually ephemeral. Pick of the week.

Cyminology, Saburi: A bunch of ECM titles dropped since my last column, both old-school and modern. Me, I focus on the new stuff, and the most refreshing titles here are by Iranian/German vocalist/composer Cymin Samawatie. Mixing traditional Persian music with jazz and backed by a piano trio, Samawatie manages to take the best of both modern ECM worlds: the introspective piano tinkering and the world music that really ain’t jazz. The end result is a serene yet upbeat mix of old world music in a modern jazz setting. For those of you who have grown picky with your ECM selections by way of experience, this is definitely one to look at, especially fans of Marcin Wasilewski and Anouar Brahem.

Dennis Rollins Velocity Trio, 11th Gate: The trombone-organ-drums trio isn’t one that gets explored too often, which makes U.K. jazz vet Dennis Rollins’s attempt that much more exciting. Known mostly for his involvement with hard funk ensembles, Rollins breaks away from that typecast and creates a surprisingly textured series of tunes, each way more individualistic than one might initially assume could be derived from the trio concoction of trombone, organ, drums. Yes, there’s plenty of groove throughout, but tastes of Latin, some ballad, some avant-garde deconstruction, some swing…and it all seems to fit somehow — a real solid album that should earn Rollins plenty of respect not just for the quality of the music but also the difficulty of of the task. Title track “The 11th Gate” ends the album on an outstanding note. It’s released on the Motema label, always a good source for tasteful jazz. Recommended.

Cholet-Kanzig-Papaux Trio, Connex: Nice piano trio date that gets better than nice when the bass gets aggressive and adds a delicious layer of tension to the recording. It’s the fourth album for this trio, following on the heels of a collaboration with jazz great Charlie Mariano. Nice example of the jazz coming out of Switzerland.

Gianluca Littera Ensemble Project, Sconcertango: Gianluca Littera brings his chromatic harmonica to a large string ensemble (with some percussion) for a series of compositions built around the tango. There’s some fuzziness as to when this album was officially released, and this album is cool enough to make me overlook what I can’t confirm. Frenetic, cheerful, and dramatic tunes, some quite straightforward and others with the melody wondrously misshapen. Just a beautiful, addictive album.

Lol Coxhill, Barre Phillips, JT Bates, The Rock On the Hill: Here’s one for the free jazz fans: a live free jazz performance with sax legend Lol Coxhill, Phillips on bass and Bates on drums. Recorded at a performance at the Theatre Dunois in Paris, France, nearly 30 years after their previous performance there, this trio shows themselves to be in top form. Coxhill, a vet of the European improvised music scene, has a uniquely conversational style of sax voicing, a style which alternates between convivial and abrasive, sometimes mumbling to himself under his breath and sometimes shouting right into the ear of the listener. Coxhill is one of those music treasures who are compelled to play a style of music that’ll never attract a mass audience, but who shines just as bright in front of a smaller audience.

Strange Sounds – Beautiful Music, Interrupted: Oh. My. God. I have a new most favorite album ever. Multi-reedist Araxi Karnusian is the force behind the Strange Sounds – Beautiful Music ensemble, a nonet, which includes a battalion of saxes and clarinets, piano, bass, drums and a string quartet. Cheery saxes, soaring violins and violas, piano bright and sunny, bass a cool breeze, and drums the rustle of the wind through the trees. Take your typical introverted sparse ECM-type modern jazz album and give it the big band treatment with classical music flourishes, and you start to get an idea of how this album sounds. Despite this album’s massive presence, there is an overarching sense of solitary quietness to the compositions, like immersing oneself into deep thought on a very crowded and noisy street. It appears that this album is only new to eMusic and was actually released back in 2007, but my love affair with this album precludes me from paying attention to mundane subjects like “time” and “release date” and “new”. Strange Sounds is like the noisier sister to Benjamin Koppel’s excellent Adventures of a Polar Expedition, which I also have an abiding love for, as many have read me gush about in various internet locales. Oh my yes, very, very highly recommended. Pick of the week.

James Carter Organ Trio, At the Crossroads: Yes, technically, they can probably get away with calling this a Trio album. Sax virtuoso James Carter is joined by Gerald Gibbs on organ and Leonard King Jr. on drums. But, really, it’s less a trio outing and more a tour of Detroit’s jazz scene, with other area musicians adding vocals, guitar, trumpet, and trombone to the mix for an excellent set of blues. Unless you’re fortunate to spend your winters protected from the sun by the shade of palm trees, then this wonderful set of organ trio tunes is perfect for fighting off the cold. Recommended.

Cataclysm Box, Mechanical Pieces: Well, this is a promising bit of excitement. A French quartet of sax, guitar, bass, and drums, it seems to stray close to the indie rock/jazz fusion of Todd Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors, toying with oddly configured melodies on sax, backed by rock riffs sometimes grungy sometimes Fripp-ian, and a jazz-time rhythm structure that keeps things centered even when the tunes get out on the fringes. I find this album really striking, both in terms of its tunefulness and also for its experimentalism. No doubt I’ll mention this album the next time I construct a Jazz for Indie Rock Listeners list. Very nice.

Isaac Jaffe, Telenova Vol. 1: Well, since we’re talking about indie-jazz fusion, we might as well mention bass player Issac Jaffe’s new album. Telenova really strays far away from jazz’s center, though as this particular vein of jazz-indie fusion is becoming more commonplace, the “center” of jazz is becoming an increasingly fuzzy measurement. A quintet of trumpet, tenor sax, guitar, bass and drums, the album keeps a rapid pace throughout, and even when Jaffe gets the group to lay back on the tempo, you can tell it’s just a matter of time before they get the heart rate up again. If I were to generalize the musical interests of a typical eMusic member, I’d have to say this album would be right up the alley of many.

Jimmy Owens, The Monk Project: Here’s a treat. NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Owens gives us an album of his own arrangements of Monk tunes. Lending his sweet trumpet sound to a septet ensemble which includes modern jazz giants Wycliffe Gordon (trombone), Marcus Strickland (tenor sax), Howard Johnson (tuba, bari sax), Kenny Baron (piano), Kenny Davis (bass, and Winard Harper (drums), Owens has crafted a series of magnificent versions of classic compositions for what might be the strongest release of a strong week of releases. The feel of much of the album is blues, evident even when the ensemble sounds chipper as hell. Never sounding reductive to some past age of music, this is as fresh as bread baked this morning and just as hot. Beautiful stuff, and very, very highly recommended.

Lutz Hafner, Bar Talk With Bela: This straight-ahead album features a strong cast of players. In addition to Hafner on sax, it also features some of the best musicians on the scene — Adam Rogers, Scott Colley, Donny McCaslin, Johan Ruckert and Rainer Bohm. Hafner’s sound on sax is perpetually curious, seemingly to always be looking to discover an inventive path less traveled. Interplay between the sextet member is top-notch, and makes for a very enjoyable listen.

Carmen Sandim, Brand New: Wow, beautiful! Former Brazilian, Current Colorado pianist Carmen Sandim comes out strong with her debut album, featuring mainstays of the Denver jazz scene, including wildly talented trumpeter Ron Miles. It’s mostly a series of tuneful post-bop tracks; deep melodies made more satisfying for not resolving to a natural conclusion, nice quick step rhythms that mesh seamlessly with Sandim’s piano bounce and skip, and some seriously lyrical guitar action. Recorded on the fledgling Dazzle Records label, who has put out some strong albums as their opening statements to the scene. Highly recommended.

Ilona Kudina Quintet, Nothing But Illusion: For a variety of reasons not worth rehashing, jazz flute has an unpopular reputation attached to it. Not only is this reputation unfair and misguided, 2011 provided a whole bunch of evidence that flautist led jazz groups are a rich vein of quality listening. Add Ilona Kudina’s latest effort to that list. Backed by a quality team, including jazz vet Billy Hart on drums, Kudina presents a series of bop tunes that both swing and mesmerize. Bypassing the exaggerated breathiness typical of some jazz flute, Ilona lays back and lets the flute do the work. Nice stuff here.

Johannes Enders Trio, Mondgovel: New release from tenor sax player Johannes Enders, who seems to be continually displaying some profound growth in his sound with each subsequent recording. This trio date really highlights the confidence in his play, developing into a real jazz vet. I’ve liked previous recordings just fine, but I gotta say that Mondgovel is really noteworthy (to my ears) in his development. If you’re looking for a recording which showcases tenor sax, just hit the download button on the link above.

Eyvind Kang, Visible Breath: Avant-classical more than jazz, but Kang has strong jazz roots, having collaborated often with Bill Frisell. Known primarily for his violin, Kang has peppered his discography with a series of classical-ambient-electronica-drone albums. Visible Breath should appeal to the same people who wake to his music just as the sun rises or bliss out to at the end of a very long Saturday night of Too Much Fun. Too beautiful.

That’s it for this week. Cheers.

An 11-piece army of musicians who sound like they've having a blast

On Hum, waves of noise crash down, one after the other, an 11-piece army of woodwinds, brass, strings, accordion and percussion thrown at the listener all at once. After the bullrush of “CO2,” instruments and electronics share the burden of building tension on “Hullun Paperit,” a wash of sound, powerful and lush. Hints of melody tease the promise of warmth, a promise honored half-way through the album with “Reliever,” a plaintive sax buoyed by an undercurrent of soft horns, cymbal rides and gentle effects. As if to prove it isn’t a bait-and-switch, Pesonen releases the strings for a cheerful rendition of Mingus’s “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” proof that their sonic aggression was a byproduct of experimentalism and not a lack of jazz chops. “Space Race” provides further evidence with a composition that allows strings and horns to layer solos in parallel lines, giving the sensation of listening to different facets of the same notes all at the same time. Hum ends with a nifty cover of the Beatles’ “Day in the Life.” Elena Setien turns a neat phrase on vocals, and the ensemble brings the noise while also flirting with a Dixieland/Fab Four mash-up. The musicians sound like they’re having a blast, and Pesonen’s compositions provide the space to improvise without leaving the reservation.

A fiercely ecstatic listen

Whenever a piano trio employs electronic effects on a recording, as The South Trio does on Elegy For A Raver, unavoidable comparisons are drawn to the stylings of modern jazz legends Esbjorn Svensson Trio. That’s too simple and a bit misleading: The most alluring aspect of E.S.T. was in their delicacy, that no matter how raucous the music got, beneath it was a fragile melody. The South Trio ain’t composing songs made of china. Elegy For a Raver storms the ears with the subtlety of stadium rock, and the resulting anthems provide every excuse to bounce your head and stomp your foot.

From the opening notes of “Balls In the Air,” the trio runs the listener over with a ferocious rhythm section and sharp piano lines; the electronic flourishes are the screeching of tires in two consecutive tunes in which the band embraces a raver aesthetic with genuine good cheer. Slurred chords are shot out with industrial precision and a party-time atmosphere dominates the album. On “Sparky Limps In,” the trio takes a modern ragtime piece and drops it into the middle of a sci-fi convention; jittering piano lines accompanied by alien laser gun effects. Beginning with “Hand On the Pillow,” the second half of the album settles into a jazz-rock fusion not unlike Ben Allison’s body of work, layering Lego blocks of melody atop one another, with the thematic expansions building intensity through repetition and not volume.

Recognized as jazz for its improvisation and experimentalism more than its strict adoption of tradition, it’s easy to imagine that Elegy… could become a focal point in the ongoing “Is it jazz?” debate. Less likely to be argued is Elegy…‘s status as a fiercely ecstatic listen, and recognition of The South Trio as a band to keep track of as it performs its balancing act on the fringes of jazz.

Motian had a distinctive sound on drums. With brush work that mimicked the rush of waves over the shore and cymbal ride patterns like the shimmering of stars, Motian achieved a delicacy on percussion that made him a favorite among musicians and listeners alike. And though the musicians he collaborated with had voices as varied as jazz is wide, Motian’s sound kept its identity even while blending in with that of his bandmates.

Motian initially made his mark as a member of the super-trio consisting of fellow jazz legends pianist Bill Evans and bassist Scott Lafaro with a series of classics like Explorations and Waltz For Debbie. A truly democratic trio where each member was able to express his voice, Motian’s understated style meshed perfectly with Evans’ subtle tinkering with the melodies of jazz standards and Lafaro’s innovative vocal approach to bass.

Later, he joined free jazz pianist Paul Bley on a series of recordings for the fledgling ECM label. Whether it was a trio rounded out with bassist Gary Peacock or a quartet album with the woodwinds of John Surman and the guitar of Bill Frisell, the experimental natures of the individual band members came together with an earthy, often introspective sound which conjures up thoughts of straight-ahead jazz.

Motian’s contribution to Keith Jarrett’s highly-influential American Quartet in the ’70s also can’t be overlooked. An odd mixture of hard-bop, gospel, free- and world-jazz fused into a series of joyously celebratory jazz albums that were highlights of that decade’s music.

But it may have been Motian’s later work that marked the heart of his contribution to jazz. His Electric Bebop Band, a throwback to ensembles like Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, gave a nurturing environment for young musicians to develop their talent and technique, and saw young jazzers like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Joshua Redman, Ben Monder and Brad Shepik come into the fold.

Motian never stopped making his imprint on the jazz form. Later recordings as part of a trio with jazz vets Bill Frisell and tenor Joe Lovano, as well as a trio of younger generation players in pianist Jason Moran and tenor Chris Potter showed Motian never really left top form, nor that his drums were any closer to losing their voice.

It is truly a heartbreaking loss.