CODYARTS
Midwestern Mythologies
work by
Steve Nelson-Raney
RECORDINGS
A Few Moments In JunePiano improvisations from 2008.
CD with cardboard sleeve $15.00
Polarity Communion
Piano improvisations from 2004.
CD with cardboard sleeve $15.00
CD with hand sewn sleeve and original photograph $25.00
Icarus As Flyboy Bix
Soprano and sopranino saxophone improvisations from 2003.
CD with cardboard sleeve $15.00
CD with hand sewn sleeve, poem and reed sculpture $25.00
The Zeus Series
Two improvisations. 'Stream Of Threads' for tenor saxophone; 'Core Samples' for piano.
Recorded live in performance.
CD in cardboard sleeve. $15.00
"The Zeus Series is a sometimes soothing, often frantic conversation with the mind, performed with uniquely imaginative artistry."
"Nelson-Raney's tenor has a big, brawny sound with a human, throaty cry. There's a touch of Rollins..., Coltrane... and Sam Rivers... What's impressive is that he carries off this solo with hardly a dead spot. It's a good performance. The second solo, played on piano is Core Samples and is clearly Cecil Taylor derived."
Eric Ludwig, Shepherd Express.
"Nelson-Raney's tenor has a big, brawny sound with a human, throaty cry. There's a touch of Rollins..., Coltrane... and Sam Rivers... What's impressive is that he carries off this solo with hardly a dead spot. It's a good performance. The second solo, played on piano is Core Samples and is clearly Cecil Taylor derived."
Robert Iannapollo, Cadence
Summer 1994
Improvisations for soprano and sopranino saxophones, some with hi hats and bell.
Enclosure contains an original poem by Bob Harrison.
CD in jewel case $15.00
"Summer 1994 comprises 12 solo improvisations which demonstrates his (Nelson-Raney's) purposeful control over circular breathing and multiphonic techniques now, largely thanks to Evan Parker's innovations, very much a part of many solo sax improvisor's armoury. Nelson-Raney has a strong enough sense of his own direction with this 'tradition', and his ideas have plenty of gusto and penetration. Make this acquaintance."
"On both soprano and sopranino Nelson-Raney utilizes some of (Evan) Parker's vocabulary, swirling sharp harmonics and tongue trills into a constant liquid flow; as a visual analogue, imagine a film that slips out of frame and suddenly reveals a new set of patterns as it sputters past. Nelson-Raney's most unusual device, however, is a peculiar percussion setup on which he accompanies himself. Two miniature hi hats... Sometimes they initiate a spasmic little rhythm in dialogue with the horn, sometimes they're independent of the reed ideas. It's a stripped down free-improvising one-man band that could make a living on the hippest of street corners."
Chris Blackford, Rubberneck
"On both soprano and sopranino Nelson-Raney utilizes some of (Evan) Parker's vocabulary, swirling sharp harmonics and tongue trills into a constant liquid flow; as a visual analogue, imagine a film that slips out of frame and suddenly reveals a new set of patterns as it sputters past. Nelson-Raney's most unusual device, however, is a peculiar percussion setup on which he accompanies himself. Two miniature hi hats... Sometimes they initiate a spasmic little rhythm in dialogue with the horn, sometimes they're independent of the reed ideas. It's a stripped down free-improvising one-man band that could make a living on the hippest of street corners."
John Corbett, The Reader
Some Piano Music
Recorded in 1989. Side one contains a long improvisation for prepared piano; side two contains four structured improvisations/compositions for piano.
LP in cardboard sleeve $25.00
"Pianist Steve Nelson-Raney seems to have assimilated a number of structural and technical devices of contemporary music (classical and jazz) and this makes his music curiously familiar and yet refreshing."
"Nelson-Raney has almost a trap drummer's - say Han Bennink's - sense of tension and release, of shading and drama. I like the way he makes connections like that... 'Paul' (dedicated to Paul Bley) is like a blackboard lecture on the relationship between Bley's rarefied single-note lines and Lennie Tristano's dense ones (over a walking bass so loose it would drive Tristano crazy)."
Art Lange, Down Beat (rating: ****)
"Nelson-Raney has almost a trap drummer's - say Han Bennink's - sense of tension and release, of shading and drama. I like the way he makes connections like that... 'Paul' (dedicated to Paul Bley) is like a blackboard lecture on the relationship between Bley's rarefied single-note lines and Lennie Tristano's dense ones (over a walking bass so loose it would drive Tristano crazy)."
Cadence
© Steve Nelson-Raney 2010