One of the most exciting net labels to show up recently is Clinical Archives. There is a huge amount of music on this label which is described as the “independent netlabel for eclectic and illogical music”. Their release Clinical Jazz may be of some help in defining the music of this label but it may not be too helpful because the anthology album itself is so huge! It has over 10 hours of music and is the equivalent of 9 CDs. Once you get past the size of this collection, you will find an exceptionally consistent quality of music that is either in the jazz genre or outside the genre of jazz but beholden to the the influence of this improvisatory music. Not everything here fits my definition of jazz but that is not the point. Clinical Archives is about expanding the definition of music and that is certainly the intent in these 94 tracks from all over the globe.

This mammoth collection gets off to an astounding start on CD 1 with “Asphodel” from France’s Strings of Consciousness. This collective’s music has the feel of a soundtrack for a David Lynch film. The second track by The Black Hakawati comes a bit closer to nu-jazz with an almost weeping tenor sax solo. Model Of The Invisible’s “Bluffing The Archons” is somewhere between jazz fusion and tiki lounge while “Popsong” by Broken Quartet ends the first CD with a minimalist melody.

There ’s just too much to go through on each CD but the variety of music as well as the high quality of the artists is extremely impressive. This page from the Clinical Archives website will give you a rundown of each track. Most of these artists do not have albums on Clinical Archive which is a shame but their web sites are listed for further exploration. Here are just a few of the tracks that stands out for me. Benzolnye Mertvecys’ “V Mast” on CD 2 has a neat bit of Zappa-like chaos through it while the following “First Meeting Took Place in a Tram” by BF is crime jazz waiting to be used in a vintage Polanski film. The Greek trio of Outward Bound is one the best examples on CD 2 of more mainstream jazz yet still manages to go off in new directions.

On CD 3, Pianist Cedric Piromelli also explore mainstream jazz with a firm nod to bebop on “Bye Bye Blues” and I love the playfully teasing quality on “Satan i Uppsala” by The Stoner. CD4 has tracks from artists like BLOB, Wozzeck, and Konstrukt which could be called free jazz and the CD primarily stays in the avant garde. Much of CD 5 is also avant-garde improvisation but sounding more post classical than jazz. Check out guitarist Tony Renner’s “Irk Bee Delay” which is a nice Derek Bailey styled improv. Yuri Yaremtchuk’s “fragment ?1″ for prepared piano, Bb clarinet, tenor sax and percussion offers a bit of a Cagian perspective. By the time CD 7 begins, most of the music has gone far beyond the normal definition of jazz and is also beyond categorization but there is still a lot of exceptional music ahead. Christopher Hoffman’s avant-shredding on “Dissipative” (CD 7), Vortex’s untitled track of industrial sound on CD 8, and Joe Frawley’s meditative but sometimes disquieting “Mistress of Ceremonies”(CD 9) all attest to variety of unusual sounds to be found on this collection. It is impossible to single out every good track so if you find something you really like, feel free to mention it in the comments.

This huge collection of music is available in 320kbps MP3. If you find something you like, please use the Clinical Archive website page mentioned above to explore the artists more thoroughly and support them by buying their CDs.

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