You’ve Got To Pick Up Every Witch!
Lists, Comments: 2021
By Don Allred
Some of these were on my Uproxx and/or Pazz & Jop Rip-Off ballots, with more on my ilxor.com/ILoveMusic's EoY/End of Year Nominee list.
Most are streaming for free on Bandcamp and/or YouTube. I've added links for some, probably not nearly all---no more soup for you!
Distinctions prob not always cost effective: everything listed here is very much worth hearing, at least to me, who shouldn't have spent this much time listening, but still. Ain't that sorry. The question right now, when the roll is last called down here, is, "Can l look at the title and and get a particular sense of how this music made me think and feel, in a way that nothing else quite did this year, or did at all, maybe even including the perception of a need I didn't know I had 'til the moments of ?"
Real Top Fave Albums, Gut Picks, Bias Babies
(*reissue **previously unreleased)
Amythyst Kiah, Wary + Strange
Angel Bat Dawid, Hush Harbor Mixtape Vol. 1: Doxology
Anthony Joseph, The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running For Their Lives
Archie Shepp/Jason Moran, Let My People Go
Arooj Aftab, Vulture Prince
**Arthur Russell, Live 24 to 24 Music: Live at the Kitchen
Billy Bang, Music From the Film Lucky Man
*Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, Making Love to the Dark Ages–LiveWired 2009
Carlos Niño & Friends, More Energy Fields, Current
Cleo Sol, Mother
Damon Locks Monument Ensemble, NOW
**Jeffrey Lewis & Peter Stampfel Band, Both Ways (The Great Lost 2017 Double-Album)
Martha Wainwright, Love Will Be Reborn
Modern Love (Various Artists)
Peter Stampfel, Peter Stampfel's 20th Century
Rebellum, The Darknuss
Soccer96, Dopamine
Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra: Tinctures In Time (Community Music Vol. 1)
*Sun Ra & His Arkestra: Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Beyond Saturn)
Tom Jones, Surrounded By Time (Hourglass Edition)
Tony Allen, There Is No End
William Parker, Mayan Space Station
Special Citations:
Moses Sumney, Live From Blackalachia film x album
Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga, Love For Sale 1965 airport lounge vroom album
Also Very Cool to Cool, From Great Enjoyment To Appreciation
75 Dollar Bill, Live Ateliers Claus
75 Dollar Bill, Social Music at Troost Vol. 1
Ben LaMar Gay, Open Arms to Open Us
Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, Angels Over Oakanda
Charles Lloyd & The Marvels, Tone Poem
Ill Considered, Liminal Space
Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die Live
James Brandon Lewis & Red Lily Quintet, Jesup Wagon
Juçara Marçal, Delta Estácio Blues
Lady Blackbird, Black Acid Soul
Leni Stern, Dance
Logan Richardson, Afrofuturism (2020)
Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog, Hope
Mdou Moctar, Afrique Victime
Michael Hurley, The Time of the Foxgloves
Mountain Goats, Dark In Here
Red Microphone, And I Became of the Dark
Rova Saxophone Quartet, The Circumference of Reason
Sault, Nine
Shawn Maxwell, Expectations and Experience
Sons of Kemet, Black To The Future
Tim Daisy & Ikue Mori, Light and Shade
Tune-Yards, Sketchy
For Futher Study (Definitely)
Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, The Rites ~ Butch Morris Conductions Inspired By Stravinsky's Le Sacre Du Printemps
For Further Study (Maybe)
Mountain Goats, The Jordan Lake Sessions Volumes 3 and 4
For Further Study: More Rock
Black Country, New Road, For The First Time
Black Midi, Cavalcade
Squid, Bright Green Field
Top EPs
Kalie Shorr, I Got Here By Accident
Patrick Cowley, White Trash
Rosie Turton, Expansions and Transformations: Part I & II
Singles, Favored Tracks
Cat Power, "I'll Be Seeing You"
Fire In Little Africa, "Drowning"
Fire In Little Africa, "Our World"
Jaimie Branch, "Love Song"
Jennifer Wharton's Bonegasm feat. Kurt Elling: "The Day I Tried To Live"
Juçara Marçal, "La Femme á Barbe"
Michael Hurley, "Blondes and Redheads"
Mountain Goats, "Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review"
Mountain Goats,"Against Pollution"
Red Microphone, "Revenge of the Atom Spies"
Sex Mob, "Night Creature"
More Top Reissues
Sex Mob (AKA Sexmob on Bandcamp), Theater and Dance
Spanish Fly, Fly By Night
Sun Ra & His Arkestra, Lanquidity (2-CD Ed.)
Sun Ra & His Arkestra, Sleeping Beauty (Expanded)
Comments
Sector I: Mostly in Alphabetical Order Mostly From Real Top (w Closest Related From Also Cool And Other Categories)
Amythyst Kiah, Wary + Strange—Title might come from a school report on her, but ain't sorry. Some sort-of-post-Armatrading? ballads, but/and keeps building to this folkbluestronic grind, while staying thematic (a break-up or at least can't-be-satisfied album overall), like "Fancy Drones" has this doleful grunty wry lick, but is also about fancy drones of the sterile insect people persuasion, among whom she includes herself, unless it's just the usual rhetorical "we," but doesn't sound like it. Voice can deliver dark volleys of notes, short shots, aimed at the Moon or a street sign, never oversung, with guitar guts hanging over the balcony, not drowning, waving.
https://amythystkiah1.bandcamp.com/
Now that's what I call bluestronic realness, and so's this:
Every day I go to be schooled, putting on the headset and smoking Soccer96's Dopamine, riding the drone that takes me to canyons of cans and The Great Spot of Eternal Storm—oops, a little to the left now—another spectacular day at the office. Can't afford to get too jaded, and it's not our job: must send thoughtful reports periodically, cerebrations and celebrations in a minor key, moody with it but also the trace of a voice in the wraparound windscreen is more than answered by excellent passers by, and some ravenous work-outs, solos-as accompaniment, recalling , in effect though not pedantically, Keith Moon, Elvin Jones, and Michael Prain of Die! Die! Die!, Soccer96 being keyboards x drum kit subset of The Comet Is Coming, sometimes aligned with Sons of Kemet, Shabaka and the Ancestors, maybe others.
Bluestronic, Tomtronic realness is Surrounded By Time (Hourglass Edition), where, on an invisible beach at the foot of a cliff (soundscapes yall, aided and abetted by Ethan Johns, son of Glyn, who helped the Stones realize some of their best tracks), Tom Jones meets a curious fella in Terry Callier's "Lazarus Man," a 9-minute extrapolation, and that's okay, dude's got all the time in the world, "I'm Lazarus, man!" Keeps exulting, can't get over it to anything else, giving me plenty of time to wonder what is life anyway, or especially, when it never does end, or comes back again again (and what is memory then, how does it adjust. Tom doesn't mind and/or can't help admitting (briefly) that he's old, feels the cold, then warms to Tony Joe White's "Mother Earth, " hopes she'll welcome him—someday, but right now, he's still got enough attitude for Malvina Reynolds' "Hole in My Head," so much so, he's got no room for no hole there—"TOO BAD!"
Angel Bat Dawid, Hush Harbor Mixtape Vol. 1: Doxology
From ilxor.com/ILM's Rolling Jazz 2021 thread–first impression has held up pretty well:
omg dedicated to Saint Escrava Anastacia.
credits
released June 19, 2021
All instruments, vocalz, and synths performed, produced, recorded, arranged & mixed By Angel Bat Dawid.
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/hush-harbor-mixtape-vol-1-doxology
First encounter w this, and don't know of course if it will seem as amazing now that I know what to expect (nothing like what I did expect from several titles, which is prob the point), but so far it's immediately compelling, often beguiling, with an eerie, tranquil intensity, and some shifting surfaces and perimeters (for inst, what's happening to the vocals going around the room---"I know I should be grateful"---in " 'Goree,' or Slave - Stick"---we also get the improbable redemption of overt Auto Tune sometimes, or maybe keys, emphasizing the inflection (of male group vocals? Or herself treated?) that suggests a African-Hebraic-Isalmic chain, rattling a little (the clarinet encourages this). One of the most affecting tracks is her untreated, a capella "Bet"---followed, in a plausible way, by a calmly killer finale trilogy. None of this is an onslaught of sounds though; each room is only as full as need be. Seems like a rec to fans of adventurously historical clarinetists John Carter and Matana Roberts (her Coin Coin series, and maybe all of his Roots and Folklore: Episodes in the Development of American Folk Music, although the album from that I'm thinking of, and most familiar with, is Fields).
Poet-novelist-songwriter-performer Anthony Joseph, of Trinidad and Tobago and Britain, gets compared to Linton Kwesi Johnson, but The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running For Their Lives is electrified by his own kind of speech-song, going back and forth from one to the other, syllable to syllable when he chooses, on the beat and calling it to free jazz, including splatter bop and Caribbean elements, whirling imagery—but then there's that show-stopping sound: dirt hitting the lid of his father's coffin. He's the immigrant in reverse, stepping around a now-unsettling setting in "my hip waistcoat," also in the apparently patient, good-humored, steady gaze of old and new friends and relations. Later he recalls other voices in the UK recalling when they eventually could call it home, and his own path toward that. The music always adapts to, is always just the right part of, each situation, and of him.
The spirit of free jazz also recharges its now familiar subgenre elements on the latest albums by Rova and Ill-Considered, with both brainiac ensembles going raw soon enough, although IC's Liminal Space starts out relatively tame, and overall can't escape slightly disappointing comparison w 2020's East-West, which was astonishing, as I noted then:
1 hour, 47 minutes, 58 seconds, rolls right along, segmentation down in there, tiny mile markers: seconds of distorted audience sounds back in the headphones every now and then, even a little back-and-forth of musos and crowd at one point, also distorted: all part of the carnival scrim, incl dub-associated effects, on the fly or might as well be. Sax turns into a swarm of bassoons about 8 minutes in, bass gets more distorted, needs no other guitars as suggestions of Last Exit just behind the curtain---in the vast Jazz Park (don't stick your fingers in there) on a windswept gray-green summer's day. Later clearing for a Middle Eastern view of the Med, which comes back later still as slow modal ferris wheel, empty but still turning-- for a minute,'til the bass has enough, and everything gets zigzag funky---going to night skies, night sweats, emitting then melting down, the ECM Sound expansions--the bass goes toward a metal chant, everybody falls into a funeral procession, like Ishmael at the beginning of Moby Dick: it's a sign it's time to ship out, and so they do, finding more excitement, along the way, that is--finale is black helicopter blades too fast and shakey, but still cutting through waves ov grooves. I dunno if there might be some predictable bits in there very eventually, for a while--hazards of long live performance--but an edit might kill the sense of pace, of searching in the moment, however in the moment this actually is.
Archie Shepp/Jason Moran: Let My People Go—The musical and emotional range just keep unfolding, giving us the whole picture, so we get the thoughtful spirituals and Ellington-Strayhorn's jewel of The Far East Suite "Ishtafan" (originally "Elf" before they played Iran), and "Wise One," the non-obvious Trane pick, which fits just fine with all the above and with "Lush Life" and "'Round Midnight," and even a radio edit of the opener, "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child," because the Lord helps those who help themselves. (Album cover also makes good use of artistic license: a tiny-spiked sun or anyway corona is popping its little yellow head-self up in dark folds of blanket-sea, which seems to be rising-tucking in what could be the Manhattan skyline, although buildings, cylinders, look to be moving to this side or that, out of building code, yet reflecting sun and other sky elements in a way that skyscraper steel and glass do, faithfully enough; there's a hovering, light brown, earthen skyscape behind all this too, like the music.)
Arooj Aftab, Vulture Prince—"Mohabbat": all that gathering of sense, senses, feeling sorrow, pulsation, other truth---in some notes drawn out, suspended, perfectly timed, peeled from reception (she's quoted to the effect that invocation call on the Vulture Prince brings renewal, is worth a shot), near strings, balancing for instance on the acoustic guitar cycle, the vocal notes occasionally venturing, returning closer to the hub (yes also thinking of bicycle guitar): sometimes makes me think of 60s Joni and Fairport, like if they did another otherwise elusive JM song after "Eastern Rain"---yeah this and "Last Night" especially make me think of DePlume, and a production by Solid Air-era Martyn, eventually veering toward One World, if he were directing say Pentangle's Danny Thompson & Terry Cox—but the singer, confident as ever, never gets lost in the pile-on of my associations. Lots of other stuff on her bandcamp. "Mohabbat" is also reminding me of how "Eastern Rain" and some other things on FC's What We Did On Our Holidays always had me thinking of East-West trade routes involving maybe the Arctic Circle, pre-Ice Age, say ( was first thinking of that during Weed Age) https://aroojaftab.bandcamp.com/album/vulture-prince
Good interview here: https://pitchfork.com/features/rising/arooj-aftab-vulture-prince-interview/
(later) Love in Exile performs as one continuous hour-long set.
Pictures help us to live in complete possession of our sense of sight…[they] send us back to life and to the other arts with the ability to see beauty all around us.
—Duncan Phillips, 1926
Join us from the gallery exploring the senses in our exhibition Seeing Differently: The Phillips Collects for a New Century, for a transformative, hour-long musical meditation from composer/pianist Vijay Iyer, vocalist Arooj Aftab, and bassist Shahzad Ismaily. Love in Exile creates lush, cathartic, and ritualistic soundscapes that activate visual works in the gallery by Leo Villareal, Malissia Pettaway, Rudolf De Crignis, and Richard Diebenkorn.
This performance will be broadcast on this event page and is free with registration. Once you have registered, return to this page on Sunday, May 9, scroll down to the section "Watch the Stream" and enter the password provided to you at registration. The performance will be available to view On-Demand.
You don't (and apparently no longer can) register to stream---I couldn't get the cart etc. to respond, so just clicked on the Vimeo, and here we go---already sounds awesome
Three pieces, in total a little over 53 minutes. First is the longest, slowest, zoneist, zzzz-est for me, penultimately, but I woke up for final coalescence---main thing here is, this really is a group, and everybody gets enough room, but Iyer goes a bit far into the weeds sometimes---however, on the second piece, about 24 minutes in, he switches to electric piano, and the whole thing is a little faster, more discernibly developmental---on the third one, he goes back to the acoustic, Chopinesque, then she comes in sooner than on the second, he goes to both hands on the left side, with pedals, and Ismaily's Moog bass drone is ominous--she reaches some peaks all through, without ever losing her cool.
I'll check their album for sure, but glad to have hers first.Three pieces, in total a little over 53 minutes. First is the longest, slowest, zoneist, zzzz-est for me, penultimately, but I woke up for final coalescence---main thing here is, this really is a group, and everybody gets enough room, but Iyer goes a bit far into the weeds sometimes---however, on the second piece, about 24 minutes in, he switches to electric piano, and the whole thing is a little faster, more discernibly developmental---on the third one, he goes back to the acoustic, Chopinesque, then she comes in sooner than on the second, he goes to both hands on the left side, with pedals, and Ismaily's Moog bass drone is ominous--she reaches some peaks all through, without ever losing her cool.
I'll check their album for sure, but glad to have hers first.(Update: Love In Exile album still not out as of 1-19-22.)
O now this is the shit (occasionally seems like some instruments other than listed, but might be how the listed are used---wouldn't swear she's not the flute, also, like it says, A masterful expression of lyrical and acoustic soul, tripped out through analog voltage and experimental digital filters.)
credits
released March 9, 2015
Bird Under Water
Written, Arranged and Produced by Arooj Aftab
Arooj Aftab - Vocals
Jörn Bielfeldt - Drums/Percussion
Mario Carrillo - Contra-Bass
Bhrigu Sahni - Acoustic/Electric Guitar
Magda Giannikou - Accordion on tracks 2, 3 and 4
Sonny Singh - Trumpet on tracks 2 and 5
Baqir Abbas - Bansuri on track 1
Rakae Jamil - Sitar on track 3
Tracks 2, 3 and 5 co-written with Bhrigu Sahni
Mixed and Mastered by Jeremy Loucas
Engineered by Joshua Valleau and Alex Syner
Album Art by Anum Awan and Yikun Liang
https://aroojaftab.bandcamp.com/album/bird-under-water
two weeks pass...
Kind of a DePlume vibe, or related appeal,anyway, but maybe earlier in the day or evening, and a little more spare?
https://alabasterdeplume.bandcamp.com/album/to-cy-lee-instrumentals-vol-1
― dow, Monday, May 31, 2021 5:06 PM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink
Sorry, meant to link re Carlos Niño & Friends on Rolling Jazz, but Arooj fans might dig that album too.
― dow, Monday, May 31, 2021 5:11 PM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink
certainly digging it
― corrs unplugged, Tuesday, June 1, 2021
**Arthur Russell, Live 24 to 24 Music: Live at the Kitchen
Yeah 00:00 / 01:06:53: That's it, one seamlessly interweaving banger--dunno how much is through-composed, but it's all very conversational, with 0 chatter, though some clatter, of Mustafa Ahmed's congas, Jeff Berman's drums, Rome Neal's percussion--times Larry (formerly of Desmond Child and Rouge) Salzman's guitar, as Peter Gordon's tenor sax crackles and Peter Zummo's trombone hums and holds and (you know it) slides along(the maestro doesn't sing, plays "Pizz Cello" upfront for first 7 minutes at most, then dives to bass function)--while Julius Eastman's organ punctuates, inflects, succinctly comments (incl. exclaims) on all of that and more---and eventually, the Downtown crowd does disco, as could still happen then (spoiler)
https://arthurrussell.bandcamp.com/album/24-to-24-music-live-at-the-kitchen
Billy Bang, Music From the Film Lucky Man
My intrepid jazz buddy John Wojtowicz has sent me the bandcamp link to the recently released soundtrack/audiodoc version of the 2010 film, which tracks Vietnam War vet Billy Bang's return to the country, traveling all through it, playing and talking with local musicians and maybe others--- I gotta see the whole thing for context, but it all comes into focus right away, and in effect completes a trilogy, following his Vietnam: The Aftermath, which I think first came out in 2002, and is like it says here:
As a belated document of his traumatic experience as a soldier in Southeast Asia, Vietnam: The Aftermath was a painful but cathartic album for free jazz violin great Billy Bang to make. Joined by fellow Vietnam vets including tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe, trumpeter Ted Daniel, drummer Michael Carvin, and "conductionist" Butch Morris, Bang paints a harrowing picture of the conflict on "TET Offensive." But employing Asian folk melodies like rays of sunshine through the darkness and sturdy bop lines as friendly arrows pointing the way back home, he offsets visions of death and destruction with humane insight and saving humor (then and now, there's nothing like a little '60s-styled "Saigon Phunk" to prop a grunt up). Bolstered by some richly textured ensembles, Bang rips off some of his most impressive and stirring solos. The contributors also include pianist John Hicks and flutist Sonny Fortune. --Lloyd Sachs
Frank Lowe, Bang's frontline partner in the Jazz Doctors, died before Vietnam: Reflections (2005), but it has James Spaulding, with guest Henry Threadgill on flute, joining Daniels, Hicks, Carvin, Morris,Carmen Lundy, Rob Brown, plus Vietnamese singer Co Boi Nguyen and Nhan Thanh Ngo on the 16-string dan tranh. As with The Aftermath, we get an intersection of post or late bop and Asiatic associations (which John says he always though of Bang's violining as having, way before he knew about any of these albums; I think it has something to do with his bluesiness too). They also perform some Vietnamese melodies, and--not seeing the credit on "Doi Moi," but it's one on of my favorite ballad tracks by anybody ever, and a poignant countercurrent to the rest of Reflections's dance thus far.
On screen, Lucky Man climaxes with a new arrangement of "Mystery of the Mekong," from The Aftermath, now performed with the Hanoi Symphony Orchestra: it's rich, dark, profuse, surefooted, river delta music for sure---but here, it's not the grand finale, it's track 4, dig.
Along the way, Bang's flying strings get matched by marching folk bands, and "Jungle Lullaby" starts nighty-night and then everybody goes wild as dreams, for a while, also into two shots of "New Saigon Phunk," rippling and loping. "Song For Don Cherry" is another good 'un, and can Bang keep up with the stone lithophone of "Dan Da"? It rings like a bell, but not too often and not too chime-y, and so far I prefer it to vibes---come back and start over, Gary Burton.
Incisive speed burns incl. excerpts of a Vietnamese woman on how her father changed after the War (with music far in the background, and what I'd hoped was an tape artifact turning about to the kind of engine still associated with war footage), and Bang in little spills of his own lifelong coming to grips. (This particular project was three years before he died.)
https://bbemusic.bandcamp.com/album/billy-bang-lucky-man
Here's a reasonable take on the music, incl. in context of the movie, with backstory to it and relevant aspects of Bang's life: https://www.allaboutjazz.com/lucky-man-billy-bang-bbe-records
*Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, Making Love to the Dark Ages–LiveWired 2009
...Meanwhile, archival 2021 release Making Love To The Dark Ages incl at very least an LP's-worth of instrumental goodness-to-greatness(good measure, in this vinyl-high, "post-album" age)---that is, my fave raves so far are the second half, at least impact-wise: "Dominata (the gabri ballad)"(15:47), and the two-part title work: https://burntsugarthearkestrachamber.bandcamp.com/album/making-love-to-the-dark-ages-livewired-2009
Now listening to yet another of their 2021 releases, younger contingent up front this time, Tate & other elders still along for the ride: https://burntsugarthearkestrachamber.bandcamp.com/album/the-darknuss Brides of Funkensteinoid for openers– "No culuds, no culuds allowwwed,"The Darknuss, by REBELLUM ~ Burnt Sugar Arkestra's Avant Funk & Roll Splinter Cell—and the set finds, mines, and minds a deep sweetness, w/o ever going mushy (only disappointment, at least to non-prog-me, is that Vernon Reid shows up to play what sounds like guitar synthesizer, vintage if you want to say it politely---but may come around to this cameo, in such persuasive context). Healing heat grasp of this set also lights the enterprising horizon skylines of Burnt Sugar's Angels Over Oakanda, with not the same kind of zoom lens as The Darknuss, but also within a budding trove, here seeded by persistent glimmers of something not unrelated to yet another previously unheard-of electric Miles situation/refreshment.
(Have not yet a hold of this meaty bete noir, which always has me trying to ride with one hand x lobe waving free: Burnt Sugar, The Rites ~ Butch Morris Conductions Inspired By Stravinsky's Le Sacre Du Printemps---w Pete Cosey, Melvin Gibbs, Mazz Swift, many more of course: https://burntsugarthearkestrachamber.bandcamp.com/album/the-rites-butch-morris-conductions-inspired-by-stravinskys-le-sacre-du-printemps Founding member Vijay Ilyer's pianoizm the stomping kicking hairline clarity centering this aquarium Big Bang 4everin progress, however: spin w him, and won't ever quite founder in the wonder.
Carlos Niño & Friends, More Energy Fields, Current
Tagged in label notes as 10 pristine gems of collaborative communication helmed by the Southern Californian sage, elegantly presented in his unique "Spiritual, Improvisational, Space Collage" style. And sounds like the improvisational part might feed and respond to the Space Collage: it's more jazz than set piece, like the tracks, never too long, might be scooping up something along the way, lighting in the bottle and vice-versa. Wonder if they play live, with loops, maybe? Listening on headphones, I keep getting aerial glimpses of the Pacific Coast Highway, interspersed w more time in little caves and coves: an intimate, though airy, small group sound, always incl. Niño (percussion, sound design, editing, mixing) and I think always Jamael Dean on keys, with others sometims on drums, tenor and/or flute, synths, and voices (on one track: wordless ones, don't worry, of Laraaji and Sharada). Shabaka Hutchings, Dntel, Adam Rudolph, Aaron Shaw, a bunch of others, coming in and moving on, at least for a while, never too many at once. First one to command my attention was "Nightswimming," then so many of the others that I gave up on linking a favorite in addition to the whole thing: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/more-energy-fields-current
― dow, Monday, 31 May 2021 21:57 (seven months ago) link
Niño's previous album on IA, Chicago Waves, is live if you're curious! I think I described it as more like ambient/new age than jazz on the IA thread but I liked it a lot
― rob, Monday, 31 May 2021
Cleo Sol, Mother
Many now living believe that Cleo Sol is one of the principal performers in Sault, who aren't big on credits.
Sault rules that 1. You must channel classic R&B. 2.You may not merely lay back and wallow in it, or not without paying the fare of customizing..
So Cleo Sol, who has me with the first celestial phrasing of first track on new Mother, could settle for that, but usually she makes her point early on, often in small units, a few words, few syllables, few notes, piano mirrors, centering the swirl. And then, pretty often she's set the clock with. several more minutes to fill, with killer filler, at the very least. Testing herself and listener. Another instant fave in this vein: "Build Me Up." "Build me up. Set me free." She sounds like she knows she's hard to please, but the song really tries,, whew (sucks for them, great for me).
In another one ( among so so many I haven't sorted them out yet), she's being fascinating as usual, when suddenly--"Hello?" sounds like she's ducked back there---taking a call, losing connection, both? Uh-oh. It's cool, Cleo, the song and I will wait for you. "Hello?" Sounds like she's going back down the hall---
No more spoilers. This is an often ravishing, well-grounded (if you credit/can tale this much confident romantic philosophizing from woman of the world who is also a mother, so tested that way too), long-ass album, but no prob so far w all in one sitting. May skip a couple eventually, but would rather have this many to chose from than few, or it may be too many to chose from period (either way, well-played, Cleo). https://cleosol.bandcamp.com/album/mother
Jeffrey Lewis & Peter Stampfel Band, Both Ways - the great, lost 2017 double-LP!
The recordings for this Stampfel/Lewis magnum opus were wrapped up way back in 2018 but remained in a top secret vault...
HEAR! Perhaps the final full-voiced recordings of the great Peter Stampfel before his pipes were diminished by dysphonia.
HEAR! The Lewis/Stampfel Band live favorites "Black Leather Swamp Nazi" and "Cajun Polka" and others which were such hits on our tours of 2013 and 2015!
HEAR! Our audacious acoustic attempt at Marquee Moon, and other such hubris!
HEAR! Many other and sundry sonic gems herein! Four sides of 10-zillion-karat gold!
Download comes with full liner notes PDF.
https://jeffreylewis.bandcamp.com/album/the-jeffrey-lewis-peter-stampfel-band-both-ways-the-great-lost-2017-double-album Just bought it on Bandcamp. Fine flac. and it really is both ways, frequently at same time: funny and srs, purty and not, really is the, really is great, really is lost, like all thangs, really is 2017, really is their *band*, really is their (deservedly double-)*album*, not just a bunch of tracks. Customized covers, incl. "New Lang Syne," indicating that old age is not going to be that brain-restful all the thee tyme (dang), "Internet" (to the tune of "Heroin"), and the non parodic string band expedition on "Marquee, " are as self-expressive as the originals, ditto a 1972 Hawkwind space boogie, with scary vibrations ov an orgone box, maybe, which Peter answers questions about, and yes he had a girlfriend who had one.
2021 also dropped off his very long-time-promised magnum opus—take it away, Louisiana Music Factory (listener's log follows)
Louisiana Red Hot Records release "Peter Stampfel's 20th Century" is an epic 100 song collection. The 5 Disc box set is augmented by an impressive 30,000+ words in an 88 page booklet that outlines the history of each selection alongside tales from the singular life of the artist, with pithy production notes from producer Mark Bingham added for good measure...Features Mark Bingham, Michael Cerveris, Jonathan Frelich, Michot's Melody Makers, Alex McMurray, Amasa Miller and Sarah Quintana
Seemed a bit too much like faded sheet music imagery, wall paper at first (hey, he should do Statler Bros' "Flowers on the Wall," also Sahm-Dylan duet "Wallflower"--maybe next time--could happen, given the range here), with singing close to a groan, just a little slow strumming for his bed---but pretty soon he and the music perked up, in bloom when it's the right time , sprouting and shedding and grafting instruments and styles(I won't tell you where the drums and wah-wah show up), also happiness and sadness and excitement and reveries and diving and rolling and popping up again, gracefully shadowing words and bridges and intros I didn't know about (a lot of old songs have intros rarely played later on), and I never know quite what he and helpers will go and do next, though it all hangs together.
I do recall during maybe the first 20 thinking that there might be some duplication of effort, that I might end up just liking 50 or so. But so far I like almost that many, and pretty sure will be more keepers in the second half (it's not divided up on Bandcamp, I just ran out of listening time 'til tomorrow)
diving and rolling and popping up again,, like Ishmael and Melville and RIP Dave Hickey, getting high on what they know and can still do, back in the saddle again. And again. ("Once more, with feeling.")
I knew there would be some gaps between further listening sessions, but had to jump more than expected,so right now I can't remember exactly which ones I'm likely to start skipping from last week's sessions, the first 42 or so.
But right now, I'm tempted to begin again with 12. "Ragtime Cowboy Joe"----then, for continuity x momentum's sake, skip some of the good 'uns along with duds, and jump to 50. "It Isn't Fair" and maybe
51."Jezebel"--then def. 53."Tennessee Wig Walk," and proceed from there for quite a ways---he reinvents Roundery folk-rock, with itchy warm blankets, corn cobs, corn plasters, potbellied stoves, bear breath, bear everything---eventually, in the late 70s-80s-90s-etc. material, the music becomes more like it was then, but not (when it's good) too close to original effect: he's still turning up aspects I'd forgotten about or never noticed, as in the reeely olde stuff he started with.
For inst.,(skip 74. "September Gurls" and 75."Tangled Up In Blue, " go to 76.) the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" is no longer nerf pop, it's a slowed, gathering, electric bluesy approach, trying not to scare her away---and that along with several varied but compatible reworkings soon after, overall gives me a flashback to youg weirdo romanitc Jonathan Richman---then Stampfel goes on to other things.
Skip 81. "Dancing With Myself" (voice totally inert there). Skip 86. "My Hometown" and 87. "Don't Dream It's Over"---then everything else is fine!!
I'm sure I'll find more keepers; this was just a single playlist.
And as xgau indicated, damn if Stampfel and "Earth To Grandma" don't seem genetically bonded, via Wussy's Chuck Cleaver, ditto "Yellow," with clouds of Chris Martin vocals cleared away--lovely compatibles also incl. "Loser," "Tubthumping," "I Will Survive," and Prine-DeMent homage "In Spite of Ourselves."A duet with Lilli Lewis on the 2nd vocal. No runny eggs on this track (As of Jan. 2022: about 70 keepers, at least.) https://louisianaredhotrecords.bandcamp.com/album/peter-stampfels-20th-century
(PS P.S. :Just in case you missed last year's list:
Not In Our Wildest Dreams
by Peter Stampfel & The Dysfunctionells
The Ds are Rich Krueger, who makes some pretty wild albums of his own when away from his bigtime medical duties--read all about his music on xgau's site---times five other guys, incl. multi-instrumentalists, and a couple of others show up on some of these selections from four live sets, in '94 and '96. Grab a coffee and vitamins and headphones:
https://peterstampfel.bandcamp.com/album/not-in-our-wildest-dreams. )
Martha Wainwright, Love Will Be Reborn—thought I'd said more than this! She's learned from the great French balladeers, as well as her own life, incl. in American and Canadian music: New album is wild, thematic and gooooing with the floooow, theme as raft, well-lashed, —though maybe a touch too ambient at times, but: swirly, never wispy—-sweeping all reservations along with everything else—only comparable contemporary sonic experience coming to mynd is Maria McKee's Pre-Raphaelite shout out to Beatrice, La Vita Nuova.
good interview:https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/aug/07/this-much-i-know-martha-wainwright-my-divorce-has-given-me-wisdom
Modern Love—(ilxors Alfred Soto and Tarfumes The Escape Goat finally prevailed on me to check the 2016 Rhino/Parlophone version of Young Americans; I'd only ever heard and didn't like the original single version of the title track) OMG, yall are right! Just listened: Phlly Soul as proto-alt.r&b, Bowie and Vandross and other voices swimming in the bass, in the buttermilk, developmental and accomplished. Ancestry of BlackStar, even.
seems like this 2016 master might possibly have been an influence on the new Bowie trib Modern Love, which also has me imagining a 90s Red Hot + Bowie, with cosmopolitan R&B voices x synths gliding through each other--and, right after hearing this remastered original, was esp. struck by the way Khruangbin's cover of "Right" stands on its own (unlike several fairly meh tracks before it).
Contributors seek to bring out the Bo's soul, funk, jazz and gospel traits---this last in the nay-saying, yet "Get me to the church on time" of the title track so gospel not gospel?! (As in disco not disco.)
Mostly they go for less-obvious, and often less-well sung originals, a or the major exception on both counts being We Are KING's "Space Oddity," with fun production, but the cool voices keep a lid on excitement, as his herky-jerky fervency def didn't.
Modern jazz development of "Heroes" (centered around also cool but affecting singing of Michael Taveres) is the damndest thing/honors the original (this would be yer Hal Willner 90s track)(Not jazz but also w appropriate and decided difference from orig.:Léa Sen's "Golden Years."
Since I'm in this deep, Ill say that my favorite playlist from this, because cohesively eerie and intense and mobile, is:
2.Sound and Vision – Helado Negro 03:21
7.Right – Khruangbin 05:08
10.Move On – L'Rain 04:00
14.Golden Years – Léa Sen 02:56
15.Fantastic Voyage – Meshell Ndegeocello 03:58
17.Heroes – Matthew Tavares 08:41
Also like these, which can work interspersed with those:
8.Silly Boy Blue – Nia Andrews 02:37
9.Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family – Foxtrott 03:11
11.Modern Love – Jonah Mutono 03:19
12.Where Are We Now – Bullion 03:31
13.Tnght – Eddie Chacon, John Carroll Kirby 03:35
https://bbemusic.bandcamp.com/album/modern-love
Also RIYL Moses Boyd's 2020 jazzoid Dark Matter, which suggest some shadings of early Massive Attack and Soul II Soul and maybe Bowie-Eno.
I'm sure I'll find more keepers; this was just a single playlist.
― dow, Thursday, 2 December 2021 02:40 (one month ago) link
(As of Jan. 2022: about 70 keepers, at least.)
Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra, Tinctures in Time— can't say it better than this guy does on Bandcamp:
Philip Graham---Oh how I do love this stately, swinging tumble of harmony and melody. The album seems like a slowed down, trippy echo of Duke Ellington's "The Second Line" from New Orleans Suite. It's not really all that slow: every track has satisfying internal dynamics, which go with the mixing of emotions, rhythms, incidents, shades of this and that--yeah, Ellingtonia and NOLA and Downtown hipsters have come this far:
'Tinctures in Time' is the first original music Steven Bernstein has ever written for the Millennial Territory Orchestra, which prior to this recording had exclusively been a vehicle for his arrangements of other people's songs, from Count Basie to Prince. Most of the album was composed in 2019, a tough period for Bernstein: Henry Butler had recently passed, and there was a series of serious injuries and death in his immediate family. Like a lot of people do, Bernstein got through it by working. "I was spending a lot of time on planes, going to visit people in hospitals," he says. "So what else am I going to do with my time? I ended up with all this music."
"The tincture of time" is a phrase Bernstein's father, a doctor, uses for when there's nothing to be done but wait for something to heal; the relevance of time as healer for Bernstein himself is clear. He altered the phrase so it makes a little reference to a favorite Sly Stone tune. And "tinctures," Bernstein says, also refers to "things that people take to give feelings of euphoria." It's why he also calls this collection of compositions "cannabis music."
But it's not some foggy notional bank of sands through the hourglass: everybody's very responsive, just never hyper (a tad outcat at times).Enough funk in there, also a soul anthem, not oversold, and sometimes I think Ben P. is playing a tabla?
Steven Bernstein - Trumpet, Slide Trumpet & Flugelhorn
Curtis Fowlkes - Trombone
Charlie Burnham - Violin
Doug Wieselman - Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone
Peter Apfelbaum - Tenor Saxophone
Erik Lawrence - Baritone Saxophone
Matt Munisteri - Guitar, Banjo
Ben Allison - Bass
Ben Perowsky - Drums
https://stevenbernstein.bandcamp.com/album/tinctures-in-time-community-music-vol-1
More Bernstein concerts for the young at heart:
Totally fun 2021 reissue from Downtown NYC '96,keeping me on my toes
Sleevenote 2
Working with Spanish Fly was an extraordinary experience for me as I most often work with classical music in my choreography. Their music, however, has the perfect pulse for a ballet. It's charged with an "in
Your face" attitude mixed with a sense of yearning. I began to see Images of characters right away. "Night Creatures" we called them.
Young people sliding up Avenue A, full of quirks and obsessions.We gave them names: the Snake Lady. the Sisters, the Lovers. These Characters became our guides. They lead us to Our themes and choices of style.
Lighting designer Mark Stanley created a set of massive Venetian Blinds which opened to reveal the dancers. This gave the work a
sense of spying, of voyeurism.
credits
released April 1, 2021
Steven Bernstein . trumpet, slide trumpet, cornet, crooning
Marcus Rojas : tuba, tubapercussion, tubasinging
Tronzo : slide guitar, cup guitar, prepared guitar
with Ben Perowsky : drums, percussion
FLY BY NIGHT" COMMISSIONED BY THE SAN FRANCISCO BALLET ASSOCIATION.
CHOREOGRAPHED BY CHRISTOPHER D'AMBOISE.
PREMIERED FEBRUARY 28,1996 AT CENTER FOR THE ARTS AT YERBA BUENA GARDENS.
BACKGROUND VOCALS ON TONGUE SANDWICH:
SPANISH FLY, HAL WILLNER, VICKI STANBURRY, LAURIE GALLUCCIO, AMANDA REISMAN
https://stevenbernstein.bandcamp.com/album/fly-by-night
― dow, Tuesday, December 28, 2021 10:37 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink
Well, the dance was in Yerba Buena, yeah, but you know where the music is coming from (EnYyCeee, no not EM Eye Cee, No Mickey Mouse Club Cali for start)---now I'm craving some Lounge Lizards, Jazz Passengers reissues---also something new from John Lurie World Orchestra.
This other Bernband reissue, Theatre and Dance, by Sex Mob (AKA Sexmob in Bandcamp listings), is a touch ouch daylight, bleary, jizzed-out at times (in originals, not classicks so much, certainly not Ellington's thriving "Night Creature"), then again appropriately so—-Bernstein's backstory alibi: In Nov/December 1998 I was touring with the Donald Byrd Dance Company for their epic staging of "The Harlem Nutcracker" which featured Duke Ellington's arrangements of Tchaikovsky's holiday classic, along with new arrangements by David Berger that continued in Duke's lineage. Not only was the piece beautifully conceived and executed, but the band included many legendary musicians (some who had played with Duke) including Britt Woodman, Jerome Richardson, Jerry Dodgion, Marcus Belgrave and Art Baron. I knew that Donald Byrd had expansive tastes in music, and at a party at the end of the run, I gave him the 1st Sexmob CD, which had just been released. A little while later Donald contacted me, he had been turned on by the music and made me an offer I couldn't refuse: to reimagine Duke Ellington's music in the image of the "old 42nd St," full of sex shops, peepshows, hookers and grime…. I know it's typecasting–-but it was a perfect assignment. FYI, I listened to Duke Ellington's music every day for approximately 30 years, starting in 1981.. it was as close as I ever got to a strict religious affiliation.
Donald gave me complete freedom in the recording, just giving me approximate timings for the pieces. I decided to use rhythms from across the decades of 42nd St's reign as the smut capital of NY, brought the arrangements in, and Sexmob went to work...
The work, entitled "In A Different Light: Duke Ellington," was premiered at the Joyce Theatre Feb 29, 2000. Donald's vision of capturing the feeling of the old 42nd St, including outfitting all the dancers with giant prosthetic breasts and enormous hanging phalluses (each dancer having a different coordinated color pattern on their appendages). This made for an incredible spectacle, but limited the number of venues willing to present the piece…story of my life.. the blessing and curse of a band named "Sexmob"
There is a funny story about a workshop/preview of the piece where Stanley Crouch was on the moderating panel. You can imagine what he had to say!
The final 4 pieces on this CD were written for a production of Mae West's 1926 play entitled "Sex"…yes more typecasting. The play was was presented by The Hourglass Group, and directed by Elyse Singer. It premiered in Dec 1999 at the Gershwin Hotel, and it was the first restaging of the play since it opened in 1926. The music manages to sound like classic Sexmob while being very "era specific"… Tony overdubs banjo, and Kenny sounds like a mix of Baby Dodds and Dave Grohl. Well, maybe not.
released April 1, 2021
1-6 Composed by Duke Ellington
7-10 Composed by Steven Bernstein /Spanish Fly Music ASCAP
All music arranged by Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein Arranger, Composer, Conductor, Primary Artist, Slide Trumpet
David Bias Sleeve Design
Jim Black Drums (Track 6)
Danny Blume Engineer, Mixing
Duke Ellington Composer
Chris Kelly Engineer, Mixing
Briggan Krauss Sax (Alto), Sax (Baritone)
Bubber Miley Composer
Irving Mills Composer
Gene Paul Mastering
Tony Scherr Banjo, Bass, Engineer, Mixing
Kenny Wollesen Chimes, Drums
Julie Lemberger Cover photograph
Read more, hear it all here:
https://stevenbernstein.bandcamp.com/album/theatre-and-dance
Sun Ra & His Arkestra's Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Beyond Saturn) is mah ideel, at least in 2021, combo of SRA exotica, relatively other originals, and respectfully recharged covers, though Sleeping Beauty (Expanded Edition)comes close, while lingering too wispy w the exotica for my tastes. Despite its title, this 2-CD version of Lanquidity is not so languid, more of a sly, lean grid excursion, bra hook braille, that electric Miles might approve, or should.
https://sunramusic.bandcamp.com/album/somewhere-over-the-rainbow-beyond-saturn Also see bandcamp for my other picks, and several more from across the years and sources (incl. bc addys).
Tony Allen's There Is No End keeps on echoing, extrapolating what I can only call Afropopodelic associations with grime? Certainly its own kind of hiphop musculature and brain cells—despite US3 etc., seems pretty freewheeling, in an authoritative way, for Blue Note—take it away, BN: MAY 7, 2021
Today, Blue Note has released There Is No End, a posthumous album from Tony Allen, who died last year at the age of 79. The album features guest rappers and singers including Skepta, Sampa The Great, Danny Brown, Zelooperz, and more. The release comes alongside a visualizer video for "One Inna Million (feat. Lava La Rue)."
"One Inna Million" brings Tony right back in the Lagosian grooves that first made him a global rhythmic icon. Featuring West London indie rapper Lava La Rue and an increasingly dense rhythmic and sonic palette in its arrangement, La Rue's mellow delivery perfectly floats above Tony's signature snare and hi-hat filigrees, which call to mind the great Bernard Purdie's signature funkiness, with that added dose of playfulness that defines the performances of truly great musicians.
Tony Allen - There Is No End (Full Album)
William Parker, Mayan Space Station—Smoke rings, if and when designed and detected in tyme, do not fade away, reward replay: that's the guitar of it, suggesting flaming space youth McLaughlin, between Miles and Mahavishu incarnations, exploring that smokey red chamber we must all pass through again—that will have been Ava Mendoza, in perfect balance with Parker's upright bass and compositions, Gerald Cleaver's tubs. I'd call it all reflective, non-grandiose grandeur, but often comes on more relaxed than that, so I should too.
Special Citations
Some kind of Special Citation, Laurie Anderson Award, whatever you want to call it, should go to Moses Sumney, director and star ov film x album Live From Blackalachia, which takes place during a day and evening in the mountains of North Carolina---no audience, so no "How ya doin Blackalachia" etc., but you are there. A seven-piece band total, I think (three horn players eventually appear in the gloaming, all in good time), opening with what I think of as psych metal then losing me a little in second quarter diffusion of prog-associated balladry, but coming back strong and then some with the rest, incl. slow motion acrobatics of falsetto, my least favorite (and then some) form of singing--even got a little tired of it on prev. Sumney albums---but this is incredible, incl even some use of microtones? reminding me of Arthur Russell's cello bow at times---and visuals are totally appropriate at all times---meant to compare w audio-only, as usual, but this time I couldn't look away.
(Only thing comparable in recent years: The Chicks' Gaslighter, with commissioned videos by female directors for each track, but those are discrete, while this is seamless---despite cut-ins of "low-fi video," like it says in the credits; also, times of day and evening can switch, never twitch.) Moses Sumney---Live From Blackalachia
(Later: can't unsee the video when I listen to the audio now (well-played, MS). Ilxor Indexed later mentioned being reminded a bit of Bjork, and I've since read that Sumney even covers her some times, also seems like Prince is an influence, but not too much in either case (although like I said, he does lose me sometimes---but that's just part of the trip).
A or the highlight of my Thanksgiving: Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga's recent Love For Sale. blasting my sister's car, all the way up there and back: it's a tight, hot lil Coal Porter set, w jazz lounge combo, incl rock appeal, in effect not that far from Louie Prima & Keely Smith with Sam Butera and the Witnesses: sonic personae not too different, overall affect like getting blitzed at Idlewild '65 w ghost of JFK (who still thinks the former name for it is better), as jets jet by. At least as car music, it's currently among the best, and has teetotaller me considering best way to egg that nog this year.
More Also Cool
75 Dollar Bill's Live Ateliers Claus starts with tracks from a 2016 show, right after the election: Chen says he's pissed with himself because he didn't see it coming, but takes out his frustrations in acerbic, swirling, African-influenced folk-rock-jazz, steadfast and developmental (sometimes sounding like two guitars), while Brown's found crate is very supportive. Later, in 2019, Chen also plays the lower register of soprano sax, while Andrew L.'s wide-ranging contrabass arco and Brown's "homemade horns" join in. One of their most consistent collections that I've heard: https://75dollarbill.bandcamp.com/album/live-at
Social Music at Troost Vol. 1 has a big thick middle standing-on-the-verge track I haven't gotten into yet, but the opener benefits from very atypical brevity and unexpected hippity-hoppity fun, serving as a foretaste of extended bunny trail adventures in track 3, though both are even more of a good old schooldays car revving up, eating a hearty breakfast of winter morning, and won't get stuck on—or lose something from underneath—to railroad tracks this time, sounds like! https://75dollarbill.bandcamp.com/album/social-music-at-troost-vol-1
Ben LaMar Gay, Open Arms To Open Us—-Keep an open mind, that subject is coming—
So my expat buddy who lives in Brussels, John Wojtowicz, sent me some youtube links and other things re one Jos Steen, who mostly sold his stuff via CD-Rs at gigs of which there were few, and he...passed away in 2012.
To the extent that their information is reliable, according to Discogs, "Shoes" was issued in an edition of 10 [sic] copies.
Most reliable discography found so far:...and at the bottom of that webpage you can read about the guy and his stubbornly individualistic, reclusive lifestyle.
https://www.united-mutations.com/s/jos_steen.htm
The worst thing that could be said about Jos Steen is that he was clearly influenced by Captain Beefheart -- except that out of all the people who were influenced by Beefheart, Jos Steen was the best I've heard.
From email discussion continuing the same thread:
My reply—Got it, thanks! Reminds me---I think you were the one who turned me on to Ben LeMar Gay, John---I was listening to his 2021 offering and starting to think of my sometime semi-neighbor Lonnie Holley, when I noticed that Gay's notes on the album incl. influence of Alabama summers in the country with his granny: the music of the wind and the trees and the other shit that musicians say, but I was already thinking something like that, though also like Holley, he's not shy about use of studio resources (ditto range of instruments and voices) Here's his latest, all of it streaming for free https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/open-arms-to-open-us
He mentioned the previous Gay album we'd heard, mentioned AACM connection, queried more re the Alabama bit (still not having read Gay's comments on Bandcamp page for the current albbum), and I added:
Yes, that's the one you introduced me too, Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun : that title's confident, cautionary-if-you-read-it-that-way view of manmade wondahs under the Sun------also comes to mind while listening to the new album, and I guess my Alabama association comes, along with his comments on the Bandcamp page, from the way his sounds remind me of Lonnie Holley's musical sculpture, a few blocks from here, which can chime and clang and bronngg, but only when there's enough wind to lift the found components, rust and all---then again, like Holley's actual albums, Gay's build on a momentum of determined rhythmic emphasis--which can change, like everything else, from track to track, but there's still enough continuity to keep me listening, loose and tight (not really all that loose: he's got some flexible sense of purpose back there).
https://daily.bandcamp.com/certified/lonnie-holley-mith-interview?utm_source=footer
Charles Lloyd & The Marvels, Tone Poem—
Ilxor Jordan reported on Rolling Jazz 2021:
I saw Nate Smith & Kinfolk in Madison last night, apparently their first post-pandemic show (!). Beautiful evening, a jazz-sized but enthusiastic crowd outdoors in a soccer stadium that usually has much larger concerts. Band was Nate, Jaleel Shaw, Fima Ephron, and Brad Allen Williams on guitar.
Incredible set, a lot of it really had a Brian Blade Fellowship jazz-Americana vibe (the guitarist especially, who's from Nashville apparently)(later corrected to Memphis). And it looks like Jon Cowherd plays with them sometimes? But he threw in enough Nate Smith doing Nate Smith beat things for the people (incl. a Funky Drummer break routine w/JB samples that seemed specifically made for me, since that's all I've been practicing for the last couple weeks). I responded
You might like Charles Lloyd and the Marvels' Tone Poem, which opens with Ornette's "Peace," cautious, shrewd and flexing, then xpost "Ramblin'" sets off, having decided the coast is clear enough for now---only thing that bothers me is Frisell's effects-laden loop de loops, apparently influenced by steel guitar, sometimes seem superfluous---well even more superfluous--next to the actual and no-b.s. steel guitar of Greg Leisz. On well, I cna listen around him, and he can bear down and knows, as they all do, not to gild the already gilded "Ay Amor," nor fuck around with "Monk's Mood, " for instance. Current fave is "Anthem" (by L.Cohen), which, despite its title, is pretty down to earth and grabbed me right away. Lloyd is not the most distinctive soloist, but he knows when just to shade and inflect this and curve around that, rather than bring on thee groovy noodles (although there's some of those, not too many).
Mentions of Lloyd remind me of my Rolling Jazz 2019 post:
Looking for Charles Lloyd on Bandcamp, found Manhattan Stories (2014), comprised of
two 1965 New York Concerts, Disc 1 recorded at Judson Hall & Disc 2 recorded at Slugs' Saloon.
A remarkable and previously unrecorded quartet featuring three jazz giants: guitarist Gábor Szabó, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Pete La Roca.
'It was a specific time and place'; Lloyd told Manhattan Stories annotator Don Heckman. 'We all felt like the boundaries were being dissolved and we could do or try anything. This is a music of freedom and wonder -- we were young and on the move.''
Which is just what the sample track, "Sweet Georgia Brown," sounds like (17' 49", but quite spritely). Especially digging the interplay of guitar and sax, bass and cymbals, also succinct solos, esp. PLR's and Szabo's---the latter bright and brittle, autumn leaves, but def not drifting. What other Szabo should I check? Used to see his LPs...
https://charleslloyd.bandcamp.com/
(That was first reposted on the Szabo thread I later found, good 'un too.)
Jaimie Branch, Fly Or Die Live—The trumpet player's unit is tight as a fist and flexible as a hand, melodic, even lyrical, around the scruffy boho hobo elbows and top hat of aural metaphor: no brag, jest fact, she's earned that, Branch, I mean, her crew too, strong enough for inclusion, not so dreamy that she forgets, while leading the sway, "This is, a lo-o-o-v-v-v-e song, for ass-holes, and clowns." Who could not sing along? Though I knew I was in quarantine, I was also here, at first listen, thrilled, warmed, not so dreamy that I forgets this goes on a bit long, and, though nothing of jazz history's weight is felt except the humor that not-kidding bids us to straighten up and fly right, or don't, Fly or Die's personal musical history is a little too much with us tonight, as the set sounds pretty familiar, except for this particular thrill—what the heck, for her and them and all three albums, I named ilxor.com's Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?
Lady Blackbird, Black Acid Soul—Cliché listening choice for a rainy winter's day (3 times in a row, which never happens, and getting more into details and the overall each time): jazz-blues-r&b ballads, small group, female singer, that 60s-early 70s association extended even though new songs, new-ish sounds, and the scene is now/you are there: Lady Blackbird's Black Acid Soul, which title I suspected was only hype before listening, but recording set-up brings out just enough hyperreal, crystalline, wine-dark-acidic dry edge to voice and acoustic piano, also occasional vibes, used for inst. on one track as piccolo bass-range? drone, sparingly, countering the upright bass, which appears on I think every track. Eventually some variety of instruments and tempo (also the closing title track sees and raises previous sonic designs' increasingly bolder, splashier advance into the 21st Century). Stylish singing, writing, playing, recording, never affected, always and increasingly affecting---that one you might be hearing on local public radio, that you're thinking (esp. w piano) might be written by Laura Nyro? Actually Tim Hardin, and nothing like "If I Were A Carpenter," although I could imagine Blackbird (whose opener,"Blackbird," is not the Beatles') getting away with that one too. Lady Blackbird----Black Acid Soul (Sorry, Tim---actually I heard him doing a pretty decent version of that song recently) Ilxor Moka hears her in there between Nina Simone and Sarah Vaughn, picks faves: "Fix It" which is based on Bill Evans' "peace piece" and floors me everytime. My second favorite would be the James Gang cover of 'Collage' which has a light psychedelic jazz vibe and a great bass sound to it.
The cover of Leni Stern's Dance is a winter curb full of musos, looking for the bus. Sure, that's always a big part of the roving life, whether coups and pandemics happen to be on at the moment or not: guitarist Stern, of Munich, Manhattan, and Mali, for instance, has seen all that, also The Big C, and just so far, of course. Her lines, whether building to solos or not, are always headphones, finding what they need in the mesh and tapping, digging in, birds on the wire and then some. Dance sees Stern again fronting her cross-cultural New York quartet, featuring brilliant Argentine keyboardist Leo Genovese and the bone-deep rhythm duo of bassist Mamadou Ba and percussionist Eladji Alioune Faye, both originally from Senegal. ..Along with Genovese, Ba and Faye, the album features one of Leni's confreres from her days playing in Salif Keita's band, Haruna Samake, who added his harp-like kamele n'goni to three tracks from afar and co-wrote one song with Leni, the buoyant "Kono" ("Bird"). Along with "Yah Rakhman," co-written by Leni and Faye, other highlights of Dance include the freshly arranged, richly harmonized traditional West African griot tune "Daouda Saane" and the hard-grooving, Genovese-penned "Kani" ("Spicy Pepper"), which features some characteristically piquant solos by the pianist. The track list also includes Ba's atmospheric "Maba" (an homage to his great-great-great grandfather, a heroic figure in Senegalese history), Faye's hopping, skipping instrumental "Hale" ("Children") and Leni's tuneful vocalise "Adjouma" ("Friday," a tribute to multicultural New York City)...As Leni explains, the band has gone from strength to strength. "It has been a real love affair between the keyboards and the rhythm section! The guys love Leo and all his fire. They always say, 'Leo is so baaad!' The West African rhythmic vocabulary – as well as its sense of form and call-and-response – can be challenging for any musician who isn't native to the music, but Leo seems to relish that, finding it to be a fun way of connecting to the African roots of his South American heritage. And, of course, there are lots of European classical influences on South American music. The richness of Leo's harmonic approach and his modern jazz idiom really add to the music, which you can hear on his new tune, 'Kani'."https://lenistern.bandcamp.com/album/dance
The mostly short tracks on Logan Richardson's Afrofuturism are bigger inside than out, in savvy cosmic showmanship that works even/especially on 8:14 "The Birth of Us," and a few more that go on for up to six minutes, but end just right (with a aoundtrack-associated continuity, incl. of synth and maybe organ, slipping in and out), Also, even though I haven't caught all the words in vocal samples, the timing, placement, cadence, and texture of voices is deft. Also: effective, wordless, non-scatting sung solo on "According to You," with happy response of strings, which previously appeared in the threnody "Black Wall Street," stirred by brief, incisive sax solo. "Birth..." seemed between Attica Blues and The Epic, and that impression took hold (speaking of savvy cosmic showmanship), but there's always a sense of Richardson's own concerns, of somebody thinking, of wariness and boldness, finding and seeking, solace and shelf life. https://loganrichardsonmusic.bandcamp.com/
Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog's Hope is an irritable cornucopia syndrome of quarantine work-outs, often witty venting, like over-the-top take-offs on and into righteously anti-righteous rare air ov contrarianizm, also rattling fabulism, melting keyholes and even jaaaazzzz, whatcha say, "Bertha The Cool"? And hooks, at times—just enough, no more for you! https://marcribot.bandcamp.com/album/hope
Following up on their well-received 2017 ESP-Disk' album backing poet Amina Baraka, The Red Microphone added guitarist Dave Ross to its roster and went into the studio with Ivan Julian (guitarist of punk icons Richard Hell & the Voidoids). A few other veterans of the downtown NYC jazz scene joined in to help accompany the provocative, political poetry of John Pietaro, who doubles on voice and drums.
credits
released April 23, 2021
The Red Microphone's And I Became Of The Dark is so much thee 2020s incarnation of a certain kind of 1960s ESP-DISK, a funky, stimulating harvest of beatnik verbiage, hipster humor, and jazz resources, maybe with some busking experience to keep it engaging and freewheeling. The combo, incl. several multi-instrumentalists and a couple of guests, who don't overstay their welcome, on viola and bari, is always tight and exuberant; don't know how much of the de facto arrangements come from good drummer Pietaro, who is also listed as musical director, but they are usually worth listening around his voice when need be. He's better the closer he gets to actual singing and emphatic chanting, but even when he's just intoning, he never gets in the way that much. "Revenge of the Atom Spies" is perfect opener, should be the single. Gotta check their album with Baraka, which I think is on the ESP-DISK bandcamp. Nu Cantu En Esperanto! https://theredmicrophone.bandcamp.com/
Expectations and Experience is certainly an apt title for Shawn Maxwell's new album of---jazz miniatures! A startling, refreshing experience: each track has its own identity, and satisfying enough lifespan (which can be tantalizing) in the cohesion, though "Alternative Facts," one of my faves, is the Crocus Behemoth at 4:17, without seeming any longer then the others (many are a little over one or two minutes): 17 tracks, unique subsets of 30 players total, as the leader-composer shifts between alto, soprano, and clarinet (bot mostly alto, I think) It's Young Chicago Today, continuing to see and hear so much, ready as anybody can be for quarantine, terse and witty, but not brittle, pensive sometimes, but not getting stuck in there, more of a ricochet though the grid of situations, with some aerial views---is it deep enough? The leader's succinct comments on the basis of each composition sometimes led me into great distracting expectations, but that's what I get for reading along while listening, should never do that. But it swept my few reservations along, though a (maybe!) stronger second half, especially? (Maybe, but the whole thing, incl. ballads, is quite a spin).
Sometimes it's like the effective contrast between what you might expect from the title of the aforementioned Attica Blues and its actual sound: not harrowing catharsis, or a dirge, but a countermove to the weight, coming up for air, never stopping for long. May not always work, but often enough, especially but not only for an approach and departure so tricky. https://shawnmaxwell.bandcamp.com/
Jordan: These Tim Daisy/Vasco Trilla drum duets are really doing it for me however:
Me: Will get back to that, but just now, about halfway through, I was wanting some variety, and jumped to Realy 030, which is: Tim Daisy: drums + percussion + marimba + turntables
Ikue Mori: Electronics
Light and Shade... A selection of material recorded on various instruments reconstructed, reimagined, and remixed by NYC based electronic musician Ikue Mori. A remote collaboration shaped during a unique moment in time.Yeah, this moment, seems like: the perfect illusion of remix on the fly, with no sense of distancing, just whatever's brought forward, around and up and down, from Daisy's instruments, incl. whatever he's got going on the turntable. Nothing dumped on top or otherwise intruding (maybe voices in there at least once, but then again they may well be worked up from the frictions of percussion, or maybe samples of Robert Wyatt's Ladytron, or Enotron, or all of thee above). no jazz per se that, I've noticed yet, but that kind of appeal is generated by the freedom x process. Faves so far: "Thoughts are Things,' "Steel Flags." https://timdaisyrelayrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tim-daisy-ikue-mori-light-and-shade-relay-030
Also For Further Study (More Rock)
Black Country, New Road, For The First Time: "Instrumental" thin but good exotica w big smelly drums and bass, kind of garage effect, ep when guitar comes in, voice kinda bothers me except *Singles?->"Science Fair" def works like disturbed student who sneaks in and records voice over the tapes of his Television/Voidoids/skronk fan neighbors, also maybe some others if can listen around him enough, music's usually good, maybe all or ultimately all of "Opus"?
Black Midi, Cavalcade: a few tracks free on bandcamp: good, kinda speedy indie rock filtering early solo McLaughlin, Caspar Brötzmann Massacre w more vocals?
Squid, Bright Green Field: Best when guy is screaming or going toward it, music usually good either way, informed but not bound by early prog, brutal prog? Not so many notes per minute as my usual idea of prog per se, also like rougher, stained T Heads, so Shudder To Think? More longwinded. Lots of slick Dark fun tho. For *Singles? "Narrator ft. Martha Skye Murray" think she's on some other early tracks, some fe voc, to good effect
Top EPs
Kalie Shorr, I Got Here By Accident: Title first of all from her being not only a "Wild Child," also "a love child...a flower growin' in the pavement...born 1200 feet from the ocean, 200 feet from a bar," and now Wild Child's "lookin' for the wild love." Other happy accident: Butch Walker, producer of Pink, Green Day, Avril Lavigne, and Taylor Swift, was impressed by viral vid ov acoustic "Amy" (which may be "the meanest song I've written," thus recalling her early single, "Fight Like A Girl")*. D-d-dang if that and the rest of this crew weren't born to bumrush her also blunt, country pop "emo twang," being now shaped even better for his punk-pop touch: "They wanted it," she affirms. They got it: carwash clarification, crunchy punctuation, tilting dynamics of virtually-no-frills flights to the soon-enough-but-never-anal finish lines of this Shorr-Walker roots move. A skatR park party platter of sizzly self-celebration, and she's even earned it, having pushed herself through the disciplined deep dives and flights of Open Book Unabridged (see country etc. round-up Changed The Lox for more on that).
*Amy, I know you hate me
He didn't love you, and so you blamed me
He wasn't over me, when you were under him
Even though I didn't do shit to you, yeah
It's baseless but I'm gracious
I wrote this song so you'd have a reason to
Patrick Cowley remains the still-warm black leatherette motorcycle mustachio cap Arthur Russell of posthumous popologicical offerings, thee gifts that keep on giving, though Crowley's are more like poppers and flashbulbs going off in the garage. His later leavings get more and more 0 budget, if possible, but soundz still make it through v. vividly, even musically, even from the junk shop 7" single sources of his latest:
….four tracks culled from some of Cowley's earliest rehearsal tapes. In 1972 Patrick was living in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood with Theresa McGinley and Janice Sukaitis, friends of his from New York. In 1973, Theresa and Janice formed White Trash Boom-Boom, an all-female avant-garde performance troupe. Reacting to the Angels of Light and the Cockettes, they captured the spirit of the times: camp, confrontational, and delirious. Theresa recalls, "We brewed a brand of performance that steered away from the doctrinaire and reveled in ambiguities." Patrick provided their theatrical experiments with appropriately zany musical accompaniment. Side A features two songs from the "Country and Western" skit, "Bride" and "Beer and a Pizza", which were written by Janice and Karen Dunaway and produced by Cowley. The feminist skit tackled the issue of women's limited life choices in society. The B-side contains "Baciami" and "Spengo la Luce", two songs from "Goes to Little Italy", a skit addressing Catholic expectations of female chastity, performed in 1974 on top of the bar at the Stud. These songs were lifted from an Italian folk 7" found at a thrift store, and feature "improvised" Italian. The material on Boom-Boom shows Cowley flexing his synthesizer muscles to create curiously camp genre pieces. This is an essential document of a bygone era.https://patrickcowley.bandcamp.com/
Nérija trombonist Rosie Turton's EP Expansions and Transformations: Part I & II is totally refreshing from first notes, riding through deep, luminous contouring—fave so far is "part II," where she's in call and response w violin---skylight electronics passing over them both at one point, with piano periphery and roiling bass and drums---they kick up the tempo on "The Unknown (Rework)," a new version of a song from 2018 alb Rosie's 5ive. And a closing remix of "Part II" keeps it up, without getting gimmicky: whole thing is reflective acoustic jazz with electronics (and cross-influence of associated dynamics, textures), finding its way across the plains of continuity. https://rosieturton.bandcamp.com/album/expansions-and-transformations-part-i-ii
More Singles (Some Were Already Mentioned w Their Albums)
"I'll Be Seeing You" is not my usual fare, even the original recording by Billie Holiday, who is also credited for writing it with Eddie Heywood. But somehow Cat Power's version (getting some extra credit for cruising straight at me, as a December '21 advance track from an otherwise often distractingly refracted 1-14-22 covers album, Covers) opens a winter afternoon's unexpected angle in "that small cafe, the park across the way," and nerts to the rest of it, word-wise, but we're moving along, 'til she stops for, "I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you." Hey, is that some kinda punch line, sister? Well maybe when she repeats it at the end, but then it's also note to self, back to reality for all concerned, up on tiptoes for the first line, feeling the flatsoles on the second. Twilight is the kiss is the blues, already gone for a while, and yet not quite, dammit! Cat Power---"I'll Be Seeing You"
Yeah, she can do that to covers sometimes, starting for me with The record to beat in '08
Fire In Little Africa is a multimedia project, with at least 50 participants, documenting the history of Tulsa hiphop and contingent R&B, spiraling around the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, including the burning of "Black Wall Street" and its residential community—in "Drowning" and "Our World," times and places and faces keep curving, walls of clear bottles of melodies and vitality and mortality and pain and wonder, on to the next moment again, just as the people in Mountain Goats songs have always been in the middle of something, even at the beginning and end of songs, and "Arguing With The Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review," as he passes through, might still be futile, no matter what points you've thought of since the last voyage (now through Muscle Shoals, for Dark In Here, with keyboardist Spooner Oldham as sometime ferryman, and it all tends to sound like Southern Steely Dan, elliptical words skipping over the voices and grooves of some lost Pretzel Logic paring), better keep your hand on or near the rail while turning around, though that can be distracting. The guy in this live (Zoom audience, though, is invisible, frustrating the maestro, as he gets distracted enough to complain about repeatedly, sometimes leaving performances leaking momentum, on The Jordan Lakes Sessions, Vols 3 & 4) "Against Pollution" has been to the end of something he never would ask for or anyway didn't, not that time, and he'd do it again, he'd do it again if he had to, and he would if it went again like it had, like it did, in this hard-edged, heart-leaky definition, this fired, fully-formed oral history in progress.
John Wojtowicz, John The Baptist for Juçara Marçal's Delta Estácio Blues, tips me on my fave track:
It's worth comparing her version of "La Femme à Barbe" (starts at 16:05 of the video)*
with Brigitte Fontaine's original: Brigette Fontaine "La Femme à Barbe"
*John continues: If you go to her website here:
http://www.jucaramarcal.com.br/
and click on the headphones icon, you'll see that she's made nearly everything she's done available for download (mp3 @320).
Just click on the individual album titles.
That includes the Metá Metá albums and EPs, including "Alakoro", the one they did with Tony Allen.
(also the latest and sev earlier here: https://jucaramarcal.bandcamp.com/album/delta-est-cio-blues )
On this cover, JM not only takes a turn into French, which I've never heard her do, but a new skin and skein, herself and someone after her own heart, close enough, bringing a needed jolt to this sometimes slightly too cool art-pop exhibit (which, as with Ill Considered's latest, has to follow an outrageous milestone–with another platter in between–-as mentioned in my annual round-up re 2014 music:
Juçara Marçal - Encarnado
https://jucaramarcal.bandcamp.com/album/encarnado
Amazing! Female voice, I think (though the Google translation keeps saying "he": trans? Some themes of spiritual and physical death and resurrection as rendered in somewhat brain-twisting English) No hint of goth/anything portentous/pretentious in the sung melodies, which are countered and commented on by two guitarists, each with his own approach; sax and violin occasionally drop in, very deftly. Guess I'll mention "post-Tropicalia," which the press kit does too; it's also right about the bits of skronk, avant-garage etc in the guitar styles (yo Arto, Ribot). Ditto around the edges of the sax, I say.
Michael Hurley's The Time of the Foxgloves sounds like an evening houseparty or afterparty conversation of seasoned singers, vintage songs, and newly arranged banjos, fiddles, a xylophone, a baritone ukulele, a pump organ, an upright bass, and, my favorite, that bass clarinet: not all in one track, but not too far apart, and likely as not to be along the route of Hurley's Wurlitzer A200, in which the stately, rippling tumble of "Blondes and Redheads" leads the way of summer and autumn imagery, with a little breeze, li'l chill (Foxgloves bloom in July, I first heard this in October, ah the power of prompted association, big thing in music always). https://michaelhurley.bandcamp.com/album/the-time-of-the-foxgloves
More:
From a group email discussion, my two cents on Respect:
1. As you've prob read by now, Respect is a helluva biopic, if you have any tolerance for the usual biopic arc---which, as reviewer Justin Chang pointed out is def. the/an arc of some artists' lives . quite plausibly Aretha's. within this '52-'72 segment: her father, as portrayed by Forest Whittaker in all evidence I know of (incl. hos own records, with sermons built around for inst "I Heard It Through The Grapevine," heard on black Sunday radio in early 70s B'ham) could be an overwhelming presence, an inescapable influence, for good and bad (deserving his own biopic and biobook), Also, in his own strenuous way, part of the collaborative experience of her music-making, along w John Hammond Sr (reaching his limit, self-admittedly), Jerry Wexler, the initially fraught Muscle Shoals sessions, and with her sisters, whose fills make the title song even more ir-re-re-re-sistable than Otis's original (otehrwise, his and Aretha's versions might be a draw) Another kind of collaboration comes from unexpectedly table-tossing Dinah Washington (Mary J Blige), delivering home truths. I've never seen nor heard Jennifer Hudson before, but her singing and acting are otm, in scenes that take as much time as they need. Would like to see the whole mini-series too.
Re Summer of Soul (the other 2021 movie I saw in a theater, with other people, even):
I've read elsewhere that there are 50 hours, maybe more, and hope that one day viewers can go to the Schomburg Center, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, *and* The Smithsonian, among many others all over the world---and, at least on a desktop in a cubicle, make their own movies (I mean, like chosing clearly tagged files, with an overall time limit, so you could come back the next day and make another movie if the place isn't too crowded).
I would pick every performance that Questlove picked, but in the context of whole sets---at least to check out, could be not every artist was good all the way through, at least by my standards---and I agree with those who think the interviewees and okay some of the op-ed people should have their own movie---I'd make one of those too, *after* watching all the music.
This was worth seeing in a theater with a big-ass screen and surround sound: the ideal of analog x digital, with soft-edged, smog-tinted July clarity of movement and texture--all those clothes, all that matter-of-fact prime of life, even ailing Mahalia kept coming through like she'd no doubt had to do before---the camera level and steady and near the stage, and you are there--turn around through the waves of faces: all part of it, though not the overload of actually being in a crwod that size---pellucid sound, never harsh.
But yeah, sound and vision of all that has to find its way through the talk, and it does---but, if you have to go to any trouble to make it to the theater, I'd say Hulu would not be that bad a choice; you're going to find your own way though either. I got used to it, and was glad that Stevie and Sly's crew came back, but the movie as now made is about the usual talk-music ratio (but yeah, no Grohl, no Bono, no usual suspects or other fooles).
From ilxor.com/Rolling Jazz 2021 (re Wadada Leo Smith, to start with):
Welp, somebody just sent me Sacred Ceremonies, and I've so far given up, after the first six tracks: Graves is of course the ideal collaborator, constantly (but never obtrusively) spinning fresh ideas around and behind the trumpet, but a lot of times I wish he'd challenge or just bust through these repetitive, frequently draggy-ass lines---at first it works as contemplation, but then what the heck, not nearly fuck, zzzz. Maybe I'll try some more of it.
Listening to more Wadada on bandcamp (think I may have already mentioned his cogent contributions to my beloved https://harriettubman.bandcamp.com/album/araminta):
from The Year of The Elephant, by Wadada Leo Smith's Golden Quartet, here is the robustly Milesian work-out,
1.Al-Madinah 10:01
Malachi Favors Maghostut - bass
Wadada Leo Smith - trumpet & flugelhorn
Jack DeJohnette - drums & synthesizer
Anthony Davis - piano & synthesizer
https://wadadaleosmith.bandcamp.com/album/the-year-of-the-elephant
And a couple of lively, warm, distinctive, sometimes exploratory, always emblematic free jazz trips w Braxton:
from Organic Resonance:
1.Tawaf (Cycles 1-7) 11:48
https://wadadaleosmith.bandcamp.com/album/organic-resonance
Now you might think 11:48 that feels more like 4 would be enough, not pushing your luck--but personally, I find that the variety (incl. some lyricism and dog-keening) certainly benefits from added time, and vice-versa, of course---goes into second plane of my attention sometimes, but pulls itself back into the foreground, often enough:
from Saturn, Conjunct the Grand Canyon in a Sweet Embrace:
1. Composition No. 316 28:4
Wadada Leo Smith - trumpet, flugelhorn
Anthony Braxton - saxophones
https://wadadaleosmith.bandcamp.com/album/saturn-conjunct-the-grand-canyon-in-a-sweet-embrace
― dow, Tuesday, May 11, 2021 2:41 PM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink
Almost as long as that last one, but tensile and interactive with no claustrophobia---think the strings are my faves here, but he's always responsive, and I'm always ready for those drums to jump in and out---really good live sound too:
Taif: Prayer in the Garden of Hijaz 27:57
Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith - Trumpet
Anthony Brown - Percussion
Del Sol String Quartet
https://othermindsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/om-live-taif-prayer-in-the-garden-of-hijaz
― dow, Tuesday, May 11, 2021 4:29 PM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink
I've been listening to some of his and Henry Kaiser's Yo Miles! tribute-based band albums, reissues and first releases, both on Cunieform's bandcamp pages: they're fun, not trying to beat Miles at his own game, but appropriately employing some of his and crew's more conversational approaches--shrewd-to-incisive comments from the guitars, bass, and keys for inst, w 0 bravura asshole Fusion solos, from them or anybody else---in fact, it's not really about solos, for the most part, although Greg Osby's alto and John Tchicai's soprano and tenor do provide tasty rations of such, and Smith flexes reflections of translucent punctuation.
This is a (non-Cuneiform?) collection of band originals from (then) OOP albums---current fave is the wah-wah shuffle, "Who's Targeted?", which also takes evasive action, and Smith also gets bluesy as hell on his hovering intro to "Miles Star."
https://henrykaiser.bandcamp.com/album/yo-miles-shinjuku
participants on this and/or other Yo Miles! bandcamp albums also include:
Kaiser, Mike Keneally and Chris Muir on electric guitars; Michael Manring on bass; Steve Smith on drums; Karl Perazzo on percussion; Tom Coster on keyboards,and sometimes Zakir Hussain on tabla, Dave Creamer on guitar, and the ROVA Sax Quartet .
So, over on
A Catchall Thread For The Current Jazz Scene In London… ,I was carrying about Nérija trombonist(-composer-arranger) Rosie Turton's own recent refreshingly airy, fluid, robust, succinct (even w remixes) EP, Expansions and Transformations, Part I & II: https://rosieturton.bandcamp.com/---which led me to Jennifer Wharton's Bonegasm, which is four trombones, piano/Fender Rhodes, bass, and drums: promising, but so far seeming overloaded sometimes, on {defensively titled?) Not A Novelty, their second album, so they've had a while to get it together, although maybe it's Second Album Slump; I haven't tried the debut yet. Or maybe it's just me, esp. re the leader's bass trombone, which is very much with us--I had a similar problem with the tuba on some of Your Queen Is A Reptile, but dug Black To The Future right off.
Still, I'm already struck by this Bonegasm ballad all the way through:https://jenniferwharton.bandcamp.com/track/twinkle
And the finale, with Kurt Elling! They should do much more with him, whom I've never heard like this: https://jenniferwharton.bandcamp.com/track/the-day-i-tried-to-live Especially like it when he "blah-blah-blaah" 's the trombones dogging his depressed heels.
― dow, Friday, July 2, 2021 2:47 PM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink
That's fun I guess, but don't come at me with four trombones unless you're a trombone shout choir (also ugh, that name):
The United House of Prayer band playing "It will Never loose its POWER"
Thank You Lord ( Could've Been Me) Sweet River
― change display name (Jordan), Friday, July 2, 2021 3:08 PM
Yeah, that's better!
― dow, Friday, July 2, 2021 3:19
(PS: from another Rolling Jazz 2021 discussion, re my frustration w Hancock-Shorter in Miles Quintet:
I played one of those Legal-in-Italy CDs (from before Media Lord Berlusconi became PM), Double Image(Moon, 1989), live in Paris, 1969, and here Shorter's effective enough, switching back and forth from tenor to soprano, rattling along between Miles and Chick Corea, with Dave Holland and Tony Williams prividing subway momentum--but then on Paris, France(Moon, 1990), live, 10-01-64, the full Second Quintet, Shorter and Hancock are back to being the blurry center I remember from xpost Water Babies and others, although in this case it may be in part the recording quality (which the other players push through).
However, will check the other live sets recommended, also Nefertiti,E.S.P., and Sorcerer---I did like Filles, but maybe because don't think there was any acoustic Herbie: he played electric piano on the first (?) session, later Corea played acoustic and electric.
...another formerly Legal-In-Italy set, Two Miles Live (Discarios, 19??), live in Vienna 11-05-71---boot sites usually say: Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna (Austria)
Österreischer Rundfunk radio broadcast (B+)
Miles Davis (tpt); Gary Bartz (ss, as); Keith Jarrett (el-p, org); Michael Henderson (el-b); Ndugu Leon Chancler (d); Charles Don Alias (cga, perc); James Mtume Forman (cga, perc)
Yeah, The Lost Septet, never as a full line-up, in the studio at the same time, apparently. Here. Miles draws dry ice and other smoke from the fractive frictions of wah-wah, Echoplex, pitch controls, whatevs, revealing passing patterns, indented on the inner surfaces of his glass headpiece, also for instance KJ's organ sustains metallic sheets which his electric piano hand taps more patterns into, while Gary B's alto and soprano go for microtones from the slaugherhaus, Henderson's bass is bruise as much as blues, drums are all around the town, in a supportive way---Disc One has a *bit* more variety, segmentation; Disc 2 grabs me by the back of neck right off and don't let go.)
