Argentinian tenor sax player and multidisciplinary artist Camila Nebbia is making noise on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years. From her home in Buenos Aires, she collaborates with some of the most noteworthy jazz musicians like pianist Paula Schocron or drummer Axel Filip, working on remote duo projects with American Japanese sax player-multi-instrumentalist Patrick Shiroishi, and now studying her master degree in composition and performance in Europe, where she already collaborated with local musicians in Sweden and France.

Burka is one of her Argentinian bands, a punk-jazz trio with Peruvian-Brasilian electric bass player Raian Valença  Joao and drummer Nicolás del Aguila, that call the ghosts of John Zorn’s Naked City and Ornette Coleman as spiritual forebears. «Claustrofobia» is the second album of the trio, following the self-released «La  venganza de la hija de Saturno» (2019). The new album was, recorded at «Doctor F» Studio in Buenos Aires in October 2020, and reflects the uncertain times of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.

The music of Burka is aggressive, intense, fast and uncompromising. Nebbia, who as a teenager played in punk bands, anchors Burka’s music in the ecstatic free jazz legacy and its clear that her powerful, commanding voice on the tenor sax is well-versed in Ornette Coleman’s harmolodics method, as well as the upper register shouts and bird calls of John Zorn, while her comrades push Burka more into raw and reckless territories. «Pequeño Episodio», with the vocal samples of Nebbia, is an exception here and takes Burka into more experimental, poetic edges. And like in all the great punk albums, by the time you adapt your dance moves to the high-energy music it is already over.

Eyal Hareuveni   

Camila Nebbia (ts), Raian Valença Joao (el.b), Nicolás del Aguila (dr)