| Free Jazz |
SoSaLa’s American Dream Trash Review: Free Jazz, No Wave and a Protest Album with Real Fire
The latest release from New York-based saxophonist, bandleader and activist SoSaLa is a ten-track protest album: improvised, abrasive in places, tender in others, and always clearly about something. An album that refuses to be background music. It is the long-awaited follow-up to his 2011 debut Nu World Trash, and it carries more than four decades of musical life across Japan, Europe and the United States.
The album is currently being promoted for the Recording Academy’s Alternative Jazz category. That fits a record that is hard to file anywhere else, even though the pull toward free jazz is the strongest thread through it.
Who is SoSaLa? SoSaLa was born in Switzerland to Iranian parents and raised in Hamburg. He began his music career in Japan in 1983, spent years in Tokyo, and moved to New York in 2008, according to the press materials. In New York he became a bandleader, label owner (DooBeeDoo Rec), editor, podcaster and educator. In 2015 he founded the non-profit Musicians For Musicians (MFM), which campaigns for fair pay for working musicians.
His mentor Ornette Coleman once called him “the freest sax player in rock music”. That is a useful key to this album. Coleman’s Harmolodics, the idea that harmony, melody and rhythm can all lead at once, is the philosophy under the whole project, and SoSaLa plays as if he took it personally.
The story behind the record explains its sound. In August 2024, SoSaLa invited multi-instrumentalist and engineer Mark C, co-founder of the legendary No Wave band Live Skull, to a session at Deepsea Studio in Hoboken, New Jersey. They had worked together in the past, and the first session, a duo, was entirely improvised. Three more sessions followed, with drummer and percussionist Andy Weintraub joining them. The sessions produced 38 improvised tracks in total.
When SoSaLa revisited the tapes in March 2025, he was struck by their energy and decided they deserved a proper release. The material was cut down to 15 tracks and then to the ten on the album. Trumpeter and flugelhorn player Volker Goetze, drummer Ronnie Burrage, percussionist Issa Sow and poets David Belmont and Ed Haas were invited to add their voices, and the overdubs were improvised too. You can hear this in the finished record. The grooves feel discovered rather than constructed, and the tension between rock-solid rhythm and free-flowing saxophone never settles into routine.
Musically, the album sits at a crossroads. Mark C’s guitar, bass loops, synthesizers and Farfisa organ bring the abrasive, atonal spirit of New York’s late-1970s No Wave scene. Weintraub’s drumming gives the music a propulsive, rock-like spine. Goetze’s electronic trumpet and flugelhorn add colour and a wider, more global sky. Over the top, SoSaLa’s tenor and soprano saxophone alternate between howling and singing, with spoken and sung vocals that sometimes sound closer to Dada than to conventional songwriting. The result is dissonant but never random. Even at its noisiest, the album keeps its sense of direction, and the grooves are strong enough that the free passages feel like a release rather than chaos.
Track-by-track highlights:
- “Goodbye Iphone” is the opener and the album’s most immediate statement. Emmy-winning poet Ed Haas MCs a piece first written on a New York subway about humanity’s battle with social media and technology, and SoSaLa turned it into a song. Brassy, urgent and cleverly accessible, it comes with a music video directed by Volker Goetze, and it sets the tone for the whole record.
- “American Dream Trashed” is the title-track statement. It draws on SoSaLa’s experience as an immigrant musician who arrived in New York hoping for welcome and found indifference. Off-kilter chord movement and a sax solo that breaks out of its rock frame suit the feeling of exclusion.
- “Who’s Lonely” is one of the album’s most balanced pieces. It builds slowly, with congas from Issa Sow, and its swelling arrangement conveys the fatigue of a city where people can be surrounded by crowds and still isolated. There is enough dissonance for free-jazz fans and enough familiarity to draw in newcomers.
- “The Promise and the Proof” is the longest of the song-led tracks at over six minutes, and one of the strongest. Written by Mark C, it reflects on youthful dreams giving way to distrust of those who govern. The message is simple: watch what they do, not what they say. Burrage’s drumming and SoSaLa’s unresolved, rising sax lines carry the sense of something promised but kept just out of reach.
- “Doing the Do” is a freewheeling rant, distilled from David Belmont’s poem “Doo Dah”, that celebrates non-conformity through repetition. SoSaLa and Belmont clearly enjoy themselves, and the playing swings between harmonic inserts and free-blowing phrases. It is playful, and it still has a point.
- “I Wanna Leave New York” is a restless, questioning piece about the unaffordability of city life, with Goetze’s trumpet adding a crazy-beautiful edge over the solid rhythm section.
- “Making Music Is a Profession” is the longest track, at 7:25, and a manifesto for fair pay. It sounds at first like a jazz-rock fusion number, then opens into liberating improvisation. For an album so tied to musicians’ rights, it is the natural centrepiece.
- “Tribute to No Wave” is exactly what it says: a love letter to the confrontational, noise-driven movement that shaped downtown New York, and with Mark C on board it sounds authentic.
- “In and Around the Loop” is the album’s breathing space. Gentle, minimalist textures and eastern-leaning rhythmic patterns give the listener a moment of calm. SoSaLa leaves its meaning open, and the hint he offers is that being “in the loop” and being “around” it are two different views of the same thing.
- “Gaza Open Air Prison” closes the album on a sombre, emotionally heavy note, setting voices taken from news footage over a driving rhythm. It is a thoughtful and earnest finale that reflects the record’s concern for people who feel unheard.
After listening to the album 3 times without a break, I tell you why you have to listen to it:
A real band feel: Because the music was improvised live, with the overdubs added in the same spirit, the album sounds like musicians listening to one another rather than assembling parts.
A clear identity: SoSaLa describes himself as a “Musician with Attitude”, and the album backs this up. Every track has something to say, from technology to housing costs to fair pay for artists.
Strong guest voices: Goetze, Burrage, Sow, Belmont and Haas all add distinct colour without crowding the leader.
Respect from peers: Saxophonist David Liebman has called the music “honest and fierce taking no prisoners”, and the praise from fellow musicians fits what you hear.
Very honestly, it is not an “easy” record. The dissonance is real, several tracks run past five minutes, and the album’s social themes are front and centre rather than hinted at. Listeners looking for polished studio jazz or radio-friendly protest songs will need (a lot of) patience. That is part of the point, and the reward is an album that gets richer on each listen.
2026 – American Dream Trash is a courageous, intelligent and often thrilling record. It joins the tradition of Ornette Coleman, the downtown No Wave scene and the free-jazz tradition, and still sounds like one musician’s honest portrait of America. SoSaLa asks his audience to slow down, listen actively and make up their own minds about whether the dream still exists. It is a great album, and for anyone curious about where free jazz and No Wave meet, it is well worth hearing.
Frankie Pfeiffer
Editor in chief – PARIS-MOVE
PARIS-MOVE, October 31st, 2026
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Listen and buy: stream it on SoundCloud or buy the CD from DooBeeDoo Biz