#Tomeka Reid

[jacobwren]

Tomeka Reid Quartet / Helvetic Music Institute Bellinzona 2017

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 10, Number 4

Alena Spanger

For one day in April, we were transfixed by the sun’s brief disappearance, marveling again at our smallness in the universe, our dependence on a fiery ball in the sky which might, it seems, not be as reliable as we had always assumed.  It was pretty cool, even if you weren’t in the path of totality (what an excellent phrase, by the way), and it distracted everyone for a couple of hours from all the bullshit flooding over the transom.  Which is also one of the main functions of the music we consume so voraciously.  We are always hoping for one or two or many transcendent experiences in these CDRs and tapes and mp3 folders that bombard us, and sometimes, dear reader, we find them.  Here’s this month’s report with Tim Clarke, Bill Meyer, Andrew Forell, Alex Johnson, Jonathan Shaw, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers and Bryon Hayes contributing.

Adult Jazz — So Sorry So Slow (Spare Thought)

Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since Adult Jazz’s stunning debut album, Gist Is. Perhaps the title of the Leeds band’s second full-length can be interpreted as an apology to those who have been eagerly awaiting a follow-up. So Sorry So Slow has not only been a long time coming, but also unfolds in fits and starts, as if unsure of the best way forward. It’s convulsive art-pop in the vein of Dirty Projectors or Bjork, with shades of hyper-pop in the digital sharpness of some of its edges, and chamber pop in the prominent employment of strings and horns. The album is most successful when the songs are straightforwardly beautiful, as in “Suffer One,” with its Owen Pallett string arrangement, and closer “Windfarm,” which has a pure, aching, almost New Age glow to it. Elsewhere, the overall lack of focus proves frustrating, and ultimately rather exhausting, across the album’s hour-long runtime. There’s plenty of beauty to be found, you just have to be patient.

Tim Clarke

Jeb Bishop / Tim Daisy / Mark Feldman — Begin, Again (Relay)

Begin, Again welcomes a couple of revenant Chicagoan musicians. Trombonist Jeb Bishop came back to the city after roughly ten years away, and violinist Mark Feldman after about 40. Drummer and vibraphonist  Tim Daisy invited them both to workshop some material in his home studio, and this session resulted. While both Bishop and Daisy wrote pieces, there’s an authentic ensemble feel; this music is very differently balanced than Daisy’s other chamber trio, Vox Arcana. Quick changes in direction and two-on-one dynamics abound, and it’s all enacted with a lightness that gives this music a feeling of floating even when the players are bearing down with serious intent.   

Bill Meyer

Cadence Weapon — Rollercoaster (MNRK)

The first thing you hear on Rollercoaster is a warm strum of acoustic guitar and the mellifluous voice of Bartees Strange. Then Canadian rapper/activist Rollie Pemberton AKA Cadence Weapon takes aim at technological saturation on his new LP Rollercoaster. The hectic production (there are 11 producer credits) mirrors the overwhelming chaos of social media flooded with bots, trolls, ads and misinformation overseen by the bloodless founder of Facebook and X’s fatuous head jester. Hip Hop, electro, RnB and manic hyperpop provide the backdrop to Pemberton’s diatribes which, although they occasionally have an odor of fish-filled barrels, say what needs saying with a maximum of snark and wit. Strange reappears periodically to offer a more organic musical and lyrical counterpoint to the hyperactivity. Pemberton has the awareness to embrace the paradox of working within the system he excoriates which adds an edge to his lyrics. If no-one is innocent and everyone’s throwing stones, Cadence Weapon is at least slinging the sharpest slates.

Andrew Forell  

The Children… — A Sudden Craving (Erototox Decodings)

Michael Wiener describes the music of The Children…, his long-running collaboration with Jim Coleman, Phil Puleo and others, as “gothic blues ambient.” At the height of my concern for tidy iTunes taxonomies, I would’ve been thrilled to think of that. And I’m not being glib: it is apt. One might be tempted to flip the last two words to get the more genre-y “Gothic Ambient Blues,” but Wiener, a Dusted contributor, has the order right. Their latest release, A Sudden Craving, may lead with a loose-hinged “gothic blues,” complete with eerie electronics, possessed voices, disturbed drums and alternately ghostly and shearing guitar chords, but it’s the way the band plays in the looming ambience, the engagement with the persistent presence of space – traced, occupied and ruptured – that ties together the album’s unsettling visions. In its haunted volatility, this can be a viscerally entertaining record and easy to get into, just make sure to carve out enough headroom.

Alex Johnson

Ciro Vitiello — The Island of Bouncy Memories (Haunter x Hundebliss)

Italian producer Ciro Vitiello’s work plays out like a reverie in the liminal space between dream and memory. Ethereal vocals and impressionist lyrics from Russian born singer Zimmy and Italian musician CRÆBABE float on warm wisps of synth and closely miked acoustic guitars. The instrumental tracks have a fractal, dislocated feel as Vitiello layers keyboards and sound effects of water, birds, child’s play and the odd menacing sounds one images hearing in the beast filled fairytale forests of childhood. The mood darkens further on “Sell Change of Heart for a Crocodile” or “Living in a Bouncy Castle” as scratchy disruptions like misfiring synapses interrupt the former as the keyboards swell crepuscular in the background. On the latter, titular castle seems to be deflating slowly, closing in on the occupants in slow motion, the air escaping in big wet bubbles. CRÆBABE closes the album steeped in a lonely haze of romantic and erotic nostalgia. Altogether as lovely and disquieting as the misty maze of memory can be.        

Andrew Forell

Coral Morphologic & Nick León — Projections of a Coral City (Balmat)

Miami duo Coral Morphologic (marine scientist Colin Foord and musician JD McKay) have worked together since 2007 producing projects that raise awareness of threats to marine biodiversity. Their new collaboration with producer Nick León soundtracks a multimedia installation which imagines the rising ocean reclaiming their city and enabling its colonization by resurgent coral reefs. The trio imbues this five-track suite with the tenacity and generative power of coral. An aqueous flow of somber tones dominates, but within them minute lifeforms take shape, coalesce, and spread with a quiet majesty that evokes the fragility of the reefs and inexorable process of survival and regrowth. Projections of a Coral City feels like a requiem, as much for Miami as the damage it has wrought on its environment. Poignant and hopeful it is a fitting tribute to the worlds we are in danger of losing for ever.    

Andrew Forell

Critical Defiance — The Search Won’t Fall (Unspeakable Axe)

Chilean thrash specialists Critical Defiance have delivered the metal record equivalent to a day at a theme park — absent all the waiting around in long lines. There are some long-ish tunes on The Search Won’t Fall (the title track runs close to eight minutes, and album closer “Critical Defiance” clocks in over nine and a half), but you never have to wait, for the next shift in rhythm, usually from fast to really, really fast; the next solo; the next crunching, athletically paced riff. Rollercoaster-scaled ascents and descents? Yep. Tilt-a-Whirl passages of dizzying axe-craft? Check. And the whole thing has the sort of so-bad-for-you-it’s-good sensibility of that extra-large bucket of French fries that came out of a huge bag of frozen shards of spuds, or the funnel cake you watched some tatted-up kid squeeze into a viscid pool of boiling oil of indeterminate age. It’s all hugely entertaining. This reviewer loves it when the songs get short; check out the sequence of “All the Powers” (44 seconds) to “Full Paranoia” (85 seconds) to “Margarita,” in which the record suddenly bottoms out into power-ballad mode. The move is delightfully goofy, a stolen kiss in the Tunnel of Love. It’s an open question if listening to The Search Won’t Fall has any sort of enduring significance, but when the ride is this much fun, who really cares?

Jonathan Shaw

Hässlig — Apex Predator (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Hässlig makes an unhealthily ugly sort of noise that the metal underground has insisted on calling “blackened punk” — a strangely provoking phrase that we seem to be stuck with. This specific iteration of the sound renders the relative kinship to punk neutral (wouldn’t “raw black metal” suffice here?), or perhaps a bit more worrisome. We should note that sole member DB also makes an especially bleak variety of depressive, sometimes doomy black metal under the name Negativa, the band logo of which does an irritating nod-and-wink in the direction of the swastika. So: A Spanish dude who records under a German-sounding band name and makes a record titled Apex Predator? Do we have to do some digging on the internet’s expanding communities of fash-hunting metal listeners? Likely we can take some consolation from Hässlig’s relationship with Sentient Ruin, a label that doesn’t fuck with NSBM nonsense. Unhappy song titles like “Psychopathic Triumph” and “Raping the Exoskeleton of Life” are likely meant to communicate equal-opportunity misanthropy: DB hates everybody. But “Slaves” and “Watch Them Hang” are a more unsavory combo, and it doesn’t help that DB claims Bone Awl and Ildjarn as influences. One wonders if associating the project with punk is a sort of semiotic gambit, hoping to temper some of the more troubling language DB uses (and maybe gets an edge-lord charge out of). It’s all becoming a bit tiresome. This reviewer really enjoys the music on Apex Predator, but by saying so, what is he validating?

Jonathan Shaw

Hour — Ease the Work (Dear Life)

Michael Cormier-O’Leary leads an ensemble of 10 through pensive instrumental reveries in this third full-length as Hour. You might know Cormier-O’Leary from the bands 2nd Grade or Friendship, or from running Dear Life Records. Others playing here have done time in various ambient, folk or mildly experimental outfits, Jason Calhoun, the synth player, in Paper Armies, Elizabeth Fuschia, a violinist in Footings and on the last Bonnie Prince Billy album, Peter Gill from 2nd Grade and drummer Peter McLaughlin from Dead Gowns among others. But the players meld in a very seamless, ego-less way, supporting brief, lovely bits of melody in guitar, strings, percussion, keyboards and, occasionally, electronic samples. The title track ambles nonchalantly, a skittery beat pacing tremulous washes of strings . “Dying of Laughter,” shades a little darker, pitched somewhere between conventional Americana and David Grubbs’ languid improvisations. None of these tracks last very long or stick very well in the limbic system, but Ease the Work is, regardless, a very pleasant way to spend three quarters of an hour.

Jennifer Kelly

Paul Lydon — Umvafin Loforð​un (Píanó)

Paul Lydon is an American who has lived in Iceland since the late 1980s. Throughout that time he’s kept up persistent but low-key recording under the names Blek Ink, Sanndreymi, Paul & Laura and most recently his own name. Over time, the music has changed from brittle, miniature songs to deliberately paced piano instrumentals. As befits a guy who lives his life within cultures, the music on Umvafin Loforð​un (translation: Wrapped Up In Promises) doesn’t slot easily into any genre. While spare, it lacks minimalism’s interest in repetition, and in its quiet way it remains to assertive to be ambient; and while his articulation brings to mind Mulatu Astatke and Alice Coltrane, there’s really no jazz or Ethiopian influence, just a similar respect for the qualities of individual notes. It does give the impression of reflection, as though he’s conversing with himself when he plays, but each piece has a lucidity which suggests that any spontaneous processes are tempered by some compositional pruning. It’s companionable stuff, at the service of those who could use some quiet company.

Bill Meyer

Mandy — Lawn Girl (Exploding in Sound)

Sugar pop melodies nestle into blistering onslaughts of fuzz guitar in this first solo outing from Melkbelly’s Miranda Winters, and maybe what’s interesting here is how a mature artist uses the basic rock and roll tools of her youth.For instance, though a new mom and well past the acne years, Winters casts a jaundiced eye on teenage love in “High School Boyfriend.”The song ends in a drum churning, guitar-busting, cheerleader shouting finale that kicks the whole experience to the curb.Sludgy “Forsythia,” by contrast, acknowledges the distance that Winters has travelled, the experiences she’s had, though that knowledge comes couched in muscular guitar blare.The one cover, of Jimmy Webb’s “I Am a Woman Now,” is acoustic and soft enough that you can hear Winters taking a sniffly breath, but also searing.“Now that I’m a woman, everything has changed,” she murmurs.The sentiment, maybe, but not so much the sound.

Jennifer Kelly

Orgöne — Chimera (3 Palms)

A chimera is a monster constructed of various parts—body of a lion, wings of an eagle, tail like a snake, etc.—and while by no means a monster, this latest LP from the West Coast soul collective Orgöne melds disparate threads into a slinky, funky groove. You can hear, for instance, futuristic fusion jazz, polyrhythmic Latin percussion, Afro-beat, way out soul positivity and psychedelic rock in these cuts, some instrumental, some with chanted vocals. An organ trembles with flickery vibrato, a bass slaps the off beats, a drum cadence saunters shambolically; it’s hot and cold at the same time. Blues-funky “Parasols,” blurts low-end and oozes chill, like Booker T & the MGs, but looser and more discursive. The groove rears up and you expect an old-style soul chorus—Charles Bradley maybe—but the work is done by the instruments, a nattering guitar and a flaring soaring keyboard. “Basilisk” twitches with wah wah and shudders with blasts of bass, not so far off from what the Budos Band does, but “Tula Muisi (Dance with Them)” adds torrid, Afro-beat style vocals. This stuff is fine on the home speakers, but likely much better in the room.

Jennifer Kelly

Polar Inertia — Environment Control (Northern Electronics)

There’s a lot of obscurity surrounding taciturn Parisian techno… artist? project? collective? Polar Inertia, but after a self-described “eight years of silence” they’ve reappeared with a full-length LP (a full hour, even) after previously only releasing EPs and live recordings. As with those EPs, there’s one track with a grim, foreboding spoken word accompaniment and if it puts one in mind of Annihilation at the South Pole, well, following it up with the brain-frying fuzz and throb of “Smothering Dreams” cashes that check immediately. The rest of the album ranges from beatless, dense noise (“Modeless Singularity”) to darkly insistent techno (“Arctic Singularity”) but all with enough of a shared vocabulary and similarly overwhelming, totalizing effect that it all lives up to the end of that opening monologue: “You will soon conceive what polar inertia is. What we do, at our scale, is environment control.”

Ian Mathers

Tomeka Reid / Isadora Edwards / Elisabeth Coudoux — Reid / Edwards / Coudoux (Relative Pitch)

This hour-long, completely improvised performance was captured in August 2021. The trio had played together a few days previously at the third iteration DARA Festival, a gathering of female string players organized by Biliana Voutchkova, so this was not a first encounter, but the trio’s interactions express a still a freshness that could come from players newly falling into a sympathetic union, or simply from the good vibes that tended to suffuse gatherings that post-vaccination, pre-Delta variant surge summer. Tomeka Reid (USA), Isadora Edwards (Chile/UK), and Elisabeth Coudoux (Germany) all play cello, and there’s sufficient consonance within the collective’s approach that time spent trying to figure out who’s who would be wasted. Rather, appreciate the spontaneous counterpoint, astute support, and uncluttered clarity of these four improvisations, which flow easily from rustling quietude to bright, bold cross-hatchings.

Bill Meyer

Sam Rubin — Bullet (Pleasure Tapes/Michi Tapes)

Two bullets, labeled “Bullet” and “Bullet 2” rip through the air on scuzzed-out guitar tone, like shoegaze but dirtier, as a rapturous chaos of drumming erupts and a noxious fog of noise envelopes high wistful vocals.You can taste the grit and sulfur in the air. Sam Rubin raises a lo-fi racket out of Kent, Ohio, letting factory effluents run through fragile melodies, corroding them, poisoning them and coaxing a poisoned beauty from the wreck. From the heart of Red America, Rubin launches “Trump,” a slow-motion, gut-shock of lumbering chords and feedback, but the best songs are about firearms.“Sniper Rifle” closes things out with Swans-ish clangor, guitar, drums, bass, all jumping on the downbeat, repeatedly, like a metal stamper gone amok in a post-apocalyptic heartland. Good stuff.

Jennifer Kelly

SAICOBAB — NRTYA (Thrill Jockey)

NRTYA by SAICOBAB

Japanese quartet SAICOBAB douses Indian raga in accelerant and showers it with sparks, creating an amorphous and fiery mix of traditional and contemporary sounds. Vocalist YoshimiO (Boredoms, OOIOO) both leads and chases the melodies proffered by sitarist Yoshida Daikiti. The two are engaged in a whirling quickstep (NRTYA is Sanskrit for “dance”) over the polyrhythmic pulsations of Motoyuki Hamamoto and Yojiro Tatekawa (Boredoms). The four musicians apply a hyperkinetic avant-rock slant to the traditionally placid raga format, emphasizing both rhythmic and melodic movement. YoshimiO’s extremely broad vocal range helps the music leap into the fourth dimension, and subtle electronic flourishes offer a glimpse into SAICOBAB’s futuristic worldview. With NRTYA, SAICOBAB challenges tradition, as the group’s infectious energy fractures the boundaries of both time and space.

Bryon Hayes

Alena Spanger — Fire Escape (Ruination)

Fire Escape by Alena Spanger

Alena Spanger’s voice is small, soft and very brave, as she ventures out of the shelter of prettiness into the wider world of dissonance and experiment. The singer made her first mark in Tiny Hazard, a Brooklyn art-music ensemble that similarly tested the boundaries of pop. Here in her debut solo album, she coos and hums and trills against a shifting background of baroque experiment; she lets us in, engagingly, into strange and wonderful places. “All that I Wanted,” for instance, pits a wild splatter-beat of tonal percussion, against a wispy pop anthem. “All I wanted is to dance with you,” she declares, in true diva pop style, against surging synths—but wait for it, the tune disintegrates into a soup of off-kilter fragments and spasmic beats. Spanger has some of Joanna Newsom’s wiry fragility, a way of infusing melody with intelligence and conflict, and she surrounds herself with Brooklyn avant-garde-ists, like Kalia Vandever on trombone in “My Feel,” Kitba’s Rebecca El-Saleh and harp and the critic Winston Cook-Wilson on keys and percussion. Ryan Weiner, who was also in Tiny Hazard, plays, engineers and mixes. But in the end, it comes down to one Alena Spanger, with the girlish voice and the voracious appetite for innovation. She can make a Satie reference sound like a sweet confessional ditty and a fire escape stand in for the soft, comforting edge of experiment.

Jennifer Kelly

Sunburned Hand of the Man — Nimbus (Three Lobed)

Nimbus by Sunburned Hand of the Man

Nimbus is Sunburned Hand of the Man at peak fidelity.Imagine Ken Kesey’s Furthur bus tuned up, cleaned up and given a fresh coat of DayGlo.The album also spans multiple iterations of the ever-mutating Sunburned line-up.Original member Phil Franklin returns after a multi-year hiatus, bringing his Franklin’s Mint songcraft with him; long-time associate Matt Krefting appears, offering a sinister spoken word monologue as the band writhes beneath.Poet and new Sunburned member Peter Gizzi unravels his verses over a pair of synth-heavy tunes: both the loping title track and the intense “Consider the Wound” benefit from his wry deadpan.The rest of the tracks are fare for those yearning for the Sunburned of yore, full of lysergic introspection and hedonistic grooves.Even at their cleanest, Sunburned Hand of the Man are weird and wild to the very core.     

Bryon Hayes

[lyssahumana]

[thewaysoundtravels]

Contemporary Downtempo Jazz

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra/Small Unit - Spectral Fiction

A frequently astonishing live performance captured last year at the Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago. Over the course of two long, exploratory tracks, Rob Mazurek guides his Exploding Star Orchestra through some beyond-category zones. You could slot this next to something like Art Ensemble of Chicago's Nice Guys, but it exists on its own plane, following an inner logic and purpose. The "Small Unit" here is full of all stars — drummer Chad Taylor, Angelica Sanchez on the electric Wurlitzer, Damon Locks adding fragments of poetry and abstract electronics. Everyone gets a chance to shine, but it might be Tomeka Reid who lingers longest; during her knotty, gnarly solo spotlights, she suggests an alternate world where Thelonious Monk played cello instead of piano.

[musicollage]

Joshua Abrams ‎– Represencing. 2014 : Eremite.

! listen @ Bandcamp ★ buy me a coffee !

[fuchsiaswingsong]

Listen to: Sauntering With Mr. Brown by Tomeka Reid Quartet

[jazzdailyblog]

Mary Halvorson: A Trailblazing Voice in Avant-Garde Jazz

Introduction: Certain artists emerged as pioneers in the world of contemporary jazz, pushing limits and changing the genre. Mary Halvorson is without a doubt one of these trailblazers. Halvorson has carved herself a unique position in the realm of avant-garde jazz with her distinctive approach to guitar playing and fondness for unusual sounds. This blog post will go into Mary Halvorson’s life,…

[radiophd]

tomeka reid quartet -- sauntering with mr. brown

[noloveforned]

no love for ned is back on wlur tonight from 8pm until midnight with a new theme! tune in at 8pm to see what will help shape the show this winter. if you can't listen live, you can check out last week's show on mixcloud from now until eternity.

speaking of last week's show, we belatedly wrapped up our fall theme last week. for the past four months we've been starting shows off with songs that mention food. we've heard songs from the memories, yo la tengo, bettie serveert, personal and the pizzas, the b-52's, tuscadero, the flaming lips, peach kelli pop, pavement, men i trust, luna, cibo matto, elf power, teenage fanclub, of montreal, leyna noel, oasis, and warren zevon.

no love for ned on wlur – january 5th, 2024 from 8-10pm

artist // track // album // label warren zevon // werewolves of london // excitable boy // asylum fraser bell // still spinning // still spinning 7" ep // little lunch barbara manning // don't hold back // charm of yesterday…convenience of tomorrow // ba da bing! uni boys // let's watch a movie // buy this now! // curation wolf girl // get you // every now and then // everything sucks nathy sg // corporate lawyer // nathy sg 7” ep // cowie jaw tyvek // m-39 // overground // ginkgo thee retail simps // rubble // rubble 7" // goodbye boozy sundae painters // in came you // sundae painters // leather jacket mhaol // jack // attachment styles // merge team dresch // molasses in january // hand grenade 7" // kill rock stars circle pit // infinity // bruise constellation // timberyard nighttime // when the wind is blowing // keeper is the heart // ba da bing! simon joyner, michael krassner and fred lonberg holm // my love isn't yours to give away // this is where the ocean begins // grapefruit brian eno and fred again.. // radio // secret life // text matthew sage and zander raymond // it is isn’t it // parayellowgram // moon glyph ambrose akinmusire featuring bill frisell and herlin riley // weighted corners // owl song // nonesuch brent fuscaldo and przemyslaw krys drazek featuring hamid drake, tatsu aoki, thymme jones and joshua abrams // mirror beams // june 22 // feeding tube / astral spirits angelika niescier, tomeka reid and savannah harris // oscillating madness // beyond dragons // intakt tierra whack // chanel pit // chanel pit digital single // interscope evelyn "champagne" king // love come down (12" version) // the essential evelyn "champagne" king // legacy missy elliott // work it // under construction // elektra the young senators // ringing bells (sweet music), pt. 2 // if there's hell below... compilation // numero group joey valence and brae // punk tactics // punk tactics // jvb 2m8o // what trent does // 2m8o // under the gun hazy sour cherry // i need your heart // hazy 7" ep // freak city soundtrack hero no hero // rabbit hole // pacific standard time // subjangle secret shine // temporal // untouched // sarah blue ocean // take a care // fertile state // slumberland hydroplane // we crossed the atlantic // selected songs 1997-2003 // world of echo duster // cigarettes and coffee // remote echoes // numero group

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Jordan Martins

Jordan Martins is a musician, organizer, educator, and visual artist whose works have been shown in Chicago and Brazil. While he has played steel guitar and other instruments for years with the singer / songwriter Angela James, his first solo album, Fogery Nagles, was released by the Astral Spirits label in the fall of 2023. In his review for Dusted, Bill Meyer wrote, “Fogery Nagles arrives, seemingly out of nowhere, but just at the right time.”

Sarah Davachi — Cantus Figures Laurus

I’m a sucker for long-form droney music in general and as of late I’ve been bathing in organ music of this kind as much as possible. I had really enjoyed Davachi’s other works but fell fully under her spell with this box set of works from the last few years with over four hours of heavy tones unfolding in various ways. I like to listen to this as loud as possible to feel these sounds as vibrations. There are several shorter tracks that focus on a particular palette or tonality, with the later tracks being from live recordings of longer performances. Even though the set is a compilation joining these sets of works together after the fact, I love this body of work as a sequence of experiences.

Caetano Veloso — Araça Azul

It’s hard to pick a favorite Veloso record, but if I had to it would be the utterly unique Araça Azul, recorded in 1972 when he returned to Brazil after being exiled by the military dictatorship years prior. The record is markedly outside of the original zeitgeist of the Tropicalia movement — less ecstatic, hopeful, collaborative, and postmodern in the mixing of styles — but at the same it’s maybe the purest expression of the experimental range of sounds and poetry that the movement ushered in. There are other musicians playing on some tracks, but the whole thing feels like a single creative brain tinkering with ideas and sounds until they take enough shape to be a “song.” There’s a fundamental collage approach that I love — where he engages in field recordings, musique concrète, dissonant orchestrations overlapping on simple folk melodies, and transformative and ballsy covers of classics by singers like Monsueto and Milton Nascimento.

Angelika Niescier, Savannah Harris, Tomeka Reid — Beyond Dragons

I had the good fortune of seeing this trio play at Elastic in Chicago this past spring. When they finished their set, my wife leaned over to me and said “THAT WAS HOT SHIT” which is maybe the most accurate thing to say about these players and this music. Niescier’s compositions are somehow tight and specific while simultaneously giving each player ample room to flex and explore with abundant space around the components of each piece. I love their ability to charge into a piece full steam with an almost aggressive sense of urgency and then allow their interactions to gradually fragment and dissolve into textural interplays and quiet call-and-response improvisations.

Paul Franklin— solos on “Together Again”

A friend hipped me to a video of Paul Franklin soloing over the Buck Owens classic “Together Again” and I’ve since gone down YouTube rabbit holes watching as many clips as I can find (and I see other people in the comments on the same journey). Franklin is a Nashville legend who has played pedal steel on hundreds of recordings since the seventies. As a member of the Time Jumpers, he plays as a sideman to Vince Gill at local venues in Nashville covering classic country songs, often playing this tune which originally featured Tom Brumley playing a quick steel solo that used some very innovative voicings at the time. Franklin’s playing is so technically brilliant, but it also illustrates the ways in which the instrument can be psychedelic and disorienting, even in a conventional setting. His solos always follow a basic architecture but there’s subtle variations, improvisations and flourishes in every version where you can see him trying to find new ways of cracking it open. My favorite clips are the ones where he goes out on a limb and the audience is noticeably giggling as they experience the sonic floor drop out from under them like they’re on a carnival ride.

Nicholas Britell— “Unto Stone We are One”, funeral “March Song of Ferrix,” season 1 finale of Andor

I sometimes dabble in the questionable array of new Star Wars projects and absolutely loved Andor’s vision of a bureaucratic fascist space empire, not spending a second on jedis and lightsabers, instead examining the interrelationships of imperial occupations, military contractors, and resistance movements. The last episode is masterful in part because the tension of the entire season simmers to a boil during a funeral procession with working class miners playing junky space orchestral instruments. The score of this funeral march by Nicholas Britell is a haunting, yearning motif that steadily builds but the stroke of genius is how perfectly out of tune the instruments are! Such a simple and surprising choice does such heavy lifting in terms of adding a sense of materiality to the setting and imbuing the dramatic build up with a subtle unease beneath the gorgeous arrangements.

Terry Riley— Music for The Gift

A very early work by Riley experimenting with tape loops, with an approach that is uncannily prescient in the way it does a live remix of a jazz quartet as they improvise around tunes. The fact that this particular quartet was Chet Baker’s (with trombonist Luis Fuentes, drummer George Solano, and bassist Luigi Trussardi) is a surprising interlocutor in all of this: it would maybe seem more fitting to for this to involve an unorthodox voice rather than a more straight ahead, idiomatic jazz player for these out-of-the-box experiments. But I think the music works precisely because of the nimble-swinging of the group as Riley cuts up and repeats their melodies and phrasing back onto them in a slurry of loops that piles up and interacts with their improvising in unexpected ways. The clarity and charm of Baker’s playing is a perfect fit. Peter Margasak wrote a great piece about it for Sound American that you can find here.

Macie Stewart and Lia Kohl— Recipe for a Boiled Egg

Two of my favorite improvisers in Chicago. They are so emblematic of what I love about the creative scene here in the ways that they endlessly collaborate across a range of genres and scenes, whether improvising or composing, playing songs or deconstructing forms. This is a biased pick because they recorded this at Comfort Station, the small and idiosyncratic multidisciplinary art space I run in Chicago. The thing that first drew me to Comfort Station was the building’s unique vibrant acoustics and the porousness of sound that you get with an old building directly facing a busy street. Macie and Lia lean into that context in stunning ways on this recording, narrowing in on their voices and their bowed instruments reverberating and inviting in sounds from the outside world instead of recording in the controlled environment of a studio. You can hear ideas take shape as each listens, responds, builds, grows, dissolves into the other’s playing, with a recording quality that grounds them to a particular time and place.

Olivier Messiaen — “Louange à l’Éternité de Jésus,” from the Quartet for the End of Time

This is probably the single most impactful and cosmic piece of music I’ve ever encountered. Messiaen wrote all the movements for the Quartet for the End of Time while he was in a Nazi POW camp, and the entire work is on another level. But the sixth movement — just piano and cello — brings me to my knees every time I hear it. The first time I heard it was somewhat random and personal: during my freshman year of college, my mom was coincidentally the staff accompanist at the conservatory of the university I attended. And I would often borrow her car to run errands while she was rehearsing with music majors preparing their senior recitals. On one such occasion I was tip-toeing back into her studio to return her keys and heard a bass player (bass majors often adapt cello pieces for their senior recital) bowing the opening notes of the melody which seems to ask for a dissonant response from the piano. Instead, I heard my mom play the slow, pulsing major triad chord that entered in response, settling the piece into a hypnotic journey. I felt like the floor gave way in an instant and I had never experienced anything like it. Susan Alcorn has adapted it for solo pedal steel in a really unique way melding the harmony and melody together, and Atomic included it on their 2018 release of covers, Pet Variations, playing with deep restraint that the piece calls for while also letting the energy bubble up restlessly.

Jeanne Lee — Conspiracy

It’s hard to find a better expression of vocals and poetry integrated into a free jazz setting than this brilliant 1975 record, with Jeanne Lee leading a killer ensemble including Steve McCall and Sam Rivers among others. I had never heard Lee’s work before coming across this album when it was re-released by Moved-by-Sound in 2021 and I was struck by how much sparseness there is (somewhat similar to some of Caetano Veloso’s delicate moments on Araça Azul even), and how simple utterances give way to grooves and freakouts with the rest of the players wrapping around Lee’s command of the sonic space. If I’m being honest, I think these kinds of approaches to free form improvisations can often collapse into a kind of cheesiness or ham-fistedness, and this record NEVER once gets close to that, everything feels so purposeful even when the exploration is at its outer limits.

Olaibi — Mimihawasu

Although I had heard her playing on works by Japanese band OOIOO, this is a musician/project that I hadn’t heard of by name until someone I follow on Instagram posted that they had passed away this October (coincidentally on my birthday). Something in the way they eulogized her touched me deeply and I listened to all of her records in the days after (and often since). Maybe it is because my exposure to her music was immediately tied to her recent death, but there’s something so profound, tragic, beautiful, frail, intimate and loving about her music all at once. I wish I had heard her more before her passing, but I’m grateful that in the wake of her death this world of sounds has entered my life.

[soundgrammar]

Listen/purchase: Hic Svnt Dracones by Angelika Niescier - Tomeka Reid - Savannah Harris

[chez-mimich]

ART ENSEMBLE CHICAGO_THE SISTH DECADE: “FROM PARIS TO PARIS” (parte II)

(Segue) Appena il tempo di riflettere ed eccoci catapultati nel vortice avvolgente di “New coming”, con i proclami di belligeranza sonora lanciati dallo “spoken word” di Moore Mother. Il tribale e giocoso “Bulawayo Korokokoko” chiude, in bellezza e freschezza tutta afro, il primo dei due dischi. Quando su un immaginario (e per pochi eletti, reale), piatto del giradischi, la puntina incomincia a leggere la prima traccia, qualcuno potrà pensare di aver sbagliato disco, perché con “We are on the Edge” sembra, a tratti, di essere stati precipitati nella Vienna di Schönberg. Ma se c’è qualcosa di certo nelle composizioni dell’Art Ensemble of Chicago”, è che nulla è certo; e così, con l’aiuto della tromba e del trombone di Simon Sieger veniamo traghettati dal Blau Donau alle sponde del lago Michigan: una metamorfosi “in progress” inaspettata e geniale. Ancora di stampo europeo la splendida “cantata” di Roco Córdova in “The Bamboo Terrace”, con una polifonia strumentale fatta anche di atonalità e di cromatismi di derivazione classica-contemporanea. Corale e minimalmente percussiva ecco “You with open arms”, seguita dalla quasi-ballabile “Funcky AEOC” (già nel repertorio del primissimo Ensemble), così come l’ascetica e chilometrica “Odawalla”. “Improvisation Two”, che chiude il lavoro, inizia come un canto gregoriano stralunato, si sviluppa con un anatomico gorgheggio delle voci e poi un fischio prolungato si unisce alla seconda parte composita, magistralmente ritmica e destrutturata, dove le percussioni afro convivono con la voce-soprano di Erina Newkirk. Vale certamente la pena ricordare gli straordinari musicisti, oltre a quelli già citati: Jean Cook (violino), Tomeka Reid violoncello), Silvia Bolognesi e Junius Paul (contrabbasso), Jaribu Shahid (contrabbasso e basso elettrico), Dudù Kuaté, Enoch Williamson, Babu Atiba, Doussù Tourè (percussioni), Eddy Know (viola), Brett Carson (piano), Steed Cowart (direzione). Dopo aver ascoltato un disco così, sembra che tutta la musica che hai nella tua discoteca sia confluita lì dentro, oppure il contrario, che da lì dentro abbia origine molta della musica che hai nei tuoi scaffali. Doppio disco semplicemente meraviglioso che, come diceva Oscar Wilde “per essere perfetto gli manca solo qualche difetto”.

[writingbyrobertbarry]

Reviewed Charles Curtis's Cafe Oto residency in the new Wire

[deadassdiaspore]

[fuchsiaswingsong]

Listen/purchase: Solace by Tomas Fujiwara

Tomas Fujiwara - drums and compositions Tomeka Reid - cello Patricia Brennan - vibraphone