#YearEnder

[mazelikedays]

2022 Year Ender

Currently Listening to: Yoasobi - Gunjou Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates Mood: Kinda chill If you see the picture, then you’ll see me at the bottom left. Finally, a Weiss Schwarz BCS Top 8 spot! On a side note, apparently my livejournal account is still alive, and I discovered my year end posts from 2006 are still alive. So I have been doing year end posts for the past 16 years. Kinda scare to read the earlier ones, since they’re likely cringey stuff. Anyhow, let’s do the 2022 edition of my year ender report! 

1. Last year, I was talking about COVID. Funny enough, I ended January 2022 with contracting the COVID virus. It just felt like a flu honestly, and I was working from home 2 days after. Thankfully though by the time of writing it was more or less dying down (except in China I think) and most countries have opened up.  Hopefully it finally becomes endemic this 2023, but then again most countries don’t care anymore as long as you are vaccinated.

2. A year came by, and I’m still here in Dubai. It’s not bad honestly, a few things happened here and there (like work from home due to my COVID stint, then having an issue with a crappy client who left months later), but overall it’s chill. I’m also getting an increase on January, which is some nice news. However, I still feel I can go elsewhere. I tried going back to Singapore, but unfortunately the job prospects there wasn’t that good. I actually got frustrated when I wasn’t able to get a job there around March/April. But then, something came up and now I’m gunning to go to either Canada or Australia, whichever invites me first. I have submitted my requirements for Canada and I’m still waiting for my final assessment for Australia, so let’s see. These things take time, but hopefully before July there would be some significant news. I’ll also try to apply to increase my chances.

3. Travel wise, I was finally able to go out of the country again as COVID restrictions got relaxed. I started the year with going to Bahrain, though unfortunately after the trip I got COVID. And then in May I was finally able to go back to the Philippines after 2 years, catching up with a lot of my friends. I was even able to go to places like Mindoro and Boracay. It was a fun and busy month for sure! Funny enough, I went to the Philippines again last October to play for WS BCS, and finally went to Singapore again this December. 

4. TCG wise, speaking of Singapore, I finally got a Top 8 placement this year! I won in the WS BCS Singapore Regional. I won using my Tokyo Revengers Dual Lane Pah-Chin deck! Finally, after playing for 8 years, I finally got a top spot! Unfortunately, I didn’t go past that as my deck decided to not cooperate, hehe! I also played in Manila last October but unfortunately lost to the guys who went Top 1 and Top 8 as well. For next year, I’m hoping to go higher and also to participate in the WS BSF in Manila so I can finally play an official team tournament major!

5. In terms of my weight, I got off to a good start. I was able to go as low as 79kg, the lowest I had since probably after childhood. Stress and non-activity though kinda made me gain weight, and going to Singapore pretty much made me fat. Now I’m at 85kg, so I finally bought weights and a stepper so that I can burn calories even if my place is small. As for cooking, I haven’t cooked new stuff lately, mostly repeat dishes. I also got lazy posting food pics and I had to cram a lot in a post recently. Hopefully the goodies I got from SG will motivate me to cook new dishes! 

6. Anime, Manga and Pop Culture stuff.

I think for anime and manga, this was the reverse of last year. I watched more anime and read way less manga. I think the reason for this is that a lot of the manga I have been reading have ended this year.  As for sumo, I’m still pretty much into it, and it was fun to see new winners. I felt the sumo season ended pretty weird though, with only Takakeisho left as Ozeki, and Abi winning out of nowhere, albeit in a kinda off manner. There’s a lot of up and coming new talent though, and I’m excited to see them rise!

Currently Watching:

Gundam: The Witch From Mercury S1 Planning to Watch: Engage Kiss, Jojo: Stone Ocean, Tokyo Revengers S2, Tomo-Chan is a Girl, Danmachi S4 Part 2, Bofuri S2, maybe Ayakashi Triangle? 

Finished This Year:

Hataraku Maou Sama S2, Rising of the Shield Hero S2, Princess Connect Re:Dive S2, Kaguya-Sama: Love is War S2 and S3, Danmachi S3 and S4 Part 1, Made in Abyss S2, My Sempai is Annoying, Mushoku Tensei S2, Komi-San, Mieruko-Chan, Kimetsu no Yaiba S2, Isekai Shokudou S2, My Dress Up Darling, Tokyo Revengers S1, Love After World Domination, Lycoris Recoil, Overlord S4, My Stepmother’s Daughter is my Ex, Tensei Shitara ken Deshita, Bocchi the Rock

Unfinished Anime: 86, Ranking of Kings

Finished OVA/Movies:

Yuru Camp Movie, Josee, the Tiger and the Fish, Metropolis, Her Blue Sky, FGO Camelot 2, FGO: Solomon, Quintessential Quintuplets Movie, Macross Delta Zettai Live, Fate Kaleid Liner Movies 1-2, 

New Manga Read:

Spy X Family, Ayakashi Triangle

Finished Manga: Tokyo Revengers, Dr. Stone Other Stuff Watched:

Movies: Eternals, Dune, How to Train Your Dragon 3, Rurouni Kenshin the Final, The Batman, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, The Green Mile, 

Series: Trese, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett

New Games Played: Mainly just playing Mahjong Soul and Pokemon TCG. I actually tried Tekken 7 and FF14 but didn’t feel going all out. Also played Wordle until like a few months ago.

8. Fulfilled (or not) Wishes a. Hoping to go back to SG again. - I did, but only as a tourist. I’m aiming for somewhere like Canada or Australia now. My friend will go to the UK soon so I’ll check that out as well. b. A Significant Other - I tried last Valentines Day. Miserably failed. Will put this on hold until I can go emigrate elsewhere c. Get Healthier – It was going pretty well the earlier months, but certain events made me gain a good amount of weight as well.  d. Travel more - I was able to travel to Bahrain, then went back to PH and SG. I would like to travel to either somewhere new, or in Japan again as well. e. For this COVID-19 nightmare to finally end. - It’s pretty much normal already at this point, just waiting for COVID to get endemic status.

New Wishes:

a. Get Healthier - Need to get my weight loss back on track. Hopefully new equipment will work out in my favor b. Get to emigrate elsewhere - Canada seems to be the most likely now, I sure hope there’s some news soon before July. Will check out elsewhere too that is nice and has a WS TCG community. c. Travel to new places - It’s kinda unlikely unless it’s already like Canada or Australia, but I would like to go to somewhere new. Let’s see. I’m also gonna camp to Hatta for the new year. Before I leave Dubai, I sure would like to go to Jebel Jais and do the skydive as well

d. TCG wise - Hoping to finally play in a teams tournament, and get more Top 8 or higher placements. If I can get an invite to worlds and if it’s gonna be in Japan, the better!

Oddly enough, I don’t have much else to wish for, maybe just for good health for me, my family and my friends. Typing this now because I’ll be camping tomorrow in Hatta! Anyhow, till next year!

[marsymallows]

LIFE LATELY / not a year-ender

LIFE LATELY / not a year-ender

Last night, I was asking J, the boyfriend if he’d allow me to become a full-time artist, coz it’s all I want to do with my life and what I would probably die doing. Someone said that if you want to know a person’s passion, try asking their parents what he/she loved doing as a kid while he/she was on his/her own. Growing up, we also learned that PASSION isn’t just something that you love doing,…

[jingbarroga]

Our Version of #Yearender! and it’s #Palaban indeed. 💯💪 Greenwich San Jose ‘yan e! 🏆 (at Purok Kainam by Ayayo) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmgXti4S9yQ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[utopianoverlord]

games I enjoyed in 2022

[dustedmagazine]

Slept Ons: 2023

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter

If you write for Dusted, you listen to music all the time and you try, at least within your general area of interest, to stay current with what’s current. Ask any of our significant others, and they’ll say we listen to too much music, to which we inevitably reply “What’s that, this ‘too much’ you speak of?” We listen to music while we’re eating, while we’re working, while we’re exercising, while we’re driving from one place to another, even while we’re brushing our teeth sometimes; though, admittedly, the sound quality is not that great in the bathroom.

Even so, we miss things. Here, in what has become an annual tradition, we revisit some of the albums that slipped away in one fashion or another, the ones that we kept putting off until it was too late, the ones we somehow didn’t catch wind of until well into January, the ones we discovered tardily on other people’s lists and year-end podcasts and radio shows. So here are our late finds, a favorite or two each that we never got the chance to write about. Fortunately, unlike bread and fresh fruit and bunches of cilantro, albums don’t go bad if you let them sit for a while.

Die Enttäuschung und Alexander Von Schlippenbach — Monk’s Casino Live At Au Topsi Pohl (Two Nineteen)

This record wasn’t so much slept on as patiently sleuthed. Die Enttäuschung, the long-running German quartet (their name translates as The Disappointment, an appellation that says more about their sense of humor than the quality of their ever-buoyant reimagining of bebop and early free jazz) started selling it at gigs in the spring of 2023. I bided my time, and when I made it to Berlin last fall, scoring a copy was on my agenda. To this day, the record and the internet are near strangers; while you can buy it from Bandcamp, there’s no download, streaming or videos. So, you’ll have to just take it from me that Die Enttäuschung’s reunion with now-octogenarian pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach will take wrinkles off your brow. The first time that these musicians recorded together as Monk’s Casino, back in 2005, they performed every one of Thelonious Monk’s compositions over three CDs; pith was essential. The repertoire hasn’t changed this time, but the approach is looser. Crammed into the intimate confines of the now-shuttered Au Topsi Pohl just as Omicron started ruining parties, the five musicians goose the tempos, spike the solos with impertinence, and veer around Monk’s sharp angles with a combination of intimate familiarity and belt-busting abandon.

Bill Meyer

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter — SAVED! (Perpetual Flame Ministries)

Not slept on so much as avoided— and why, at this point I am not entirely sure. When I saw Kristin Hayter perform under her previous Lingua Ignota moniker back in December of 2022, she opened with a set of devotional songs on piano, a variety of metallic objects set and chains draped across the instrument’s interior string works. It was extraordinary, and SAVED! features the same basic set of raw, austere elements: that prepared piano, Hayter’s remarkable voice and the problematics of faith. The avoidance may stem from my own fraught relations to the sort of grim Protestantism Hayter reimagines; I spend some time around fire-and-brimstone Baptism as a child, and it left a mark on me. She wove some of that language and those textures into the excellent Lingua Ignota record Sinner Get Ready, but there they were much more symbolic, and largely couched in specific fundamentalisms (Amish and Mennonite) that distanced them somewhat. The sounds and spiritual gestures on SAVED! are a good deal more familiar to me, and they haunt. Likely the haunting is the point. Certainly “All of My Friends Are Going to Hell” and “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole” smolder and then burn with varieties of hellfire I have smelled before. One can also hear those songs more metaphorically, and “I Will Be with You Always” (the best thing on the record) is replete with images and intensities that call to multiple levels of meaning, simultaneously and sublimely. SAVED! is a hard record for me to listen to, and that’s why I have come, somewhat belatedly, to prize it so highly.

Jonathan Shaw

Illusion of Safety — Pastoral (Korm Plastics)

Daniel Burke has been carefully and consistently nurturing his Illusion of Safety project for 40 years, and I’ve been embarrassingly ignorant of the output until now. Burke released multiple audio artifacts in 2023, including a 40th anniversary ten-cassette box set, so choosing a single album to write about for the Slept On column was a daunting undertaking. Pastoral is unique in that it shows off a more delicate and expansive side of the Illusion of Safety oeuvre. It’s also one of the few music-focused objects that the stalwart Korm Plastics label has released in years; the imprint focuses on the written word these days. Sonically, Burke has established a series of vignettes that follow a similar pattern. The music flows from short, sharp attacks into lengthy sustained quietude. Burke unleashes his jarring, frantic salvos both percussively and synthetically, and these brief but unsettling periods morph into slowly churning drone swarms. Given that this is just one example of Burke’s sonic vernacular, I’m excited to hear more. Thankfully, when it comes to Illusion of Safety, I’ve been a veritable Rip Van Winkle.

Bryon Hayes

Malla — Fresko (Solina)

So slept on was Malla Malmivaara’s second solo album that even the normally reliable Beehype missed it, but even if you did happen to notice its inclusion on my midyear list, overstating how well-crafted and immersive Fresko’s dance-pop tracks are is hard to do. It makes sense given she’s better known for her acting career, but Malla’s been in the Finnish music game for a long time, too — first in the short-lived mid-aughts house trio Elisabeth Underground, then as herself with 2019’s “Sabrina” single (which got a Jori Hulkkonen remix, a guy who once redid M83) that ended up paving the way for her self-titled 2021 debut full-length. Despite using similar synth arpeggios and a healthy dose of vocal reverb as she did on Malla, Fresko is a little bit darker, moodier, more down in it. Lead single “Moi” (“hi” in English) tells the tale, its perfectly crafted video full of young Rolf Ekroth models doing things like looking impossibly cool in ridiculous outfits and having fashion shows with ATVs in snowy back alley Helsinki parking lots are a perfect marriage of audio and video, images and a melody burned in my brain the moment I saw it. It is very much a dance record flush with tech-house tweaks and no grander artistic ambitions, but Malla’s barely crested 40; now that she’s pledged more time to her music career, it’s entirely possible Fresko is but a warmup for something bolder — and even if it’s not, you could do much worse than a third album full of body movers like this. Hi is right.

Patrick Masterson

Kevin Richard Martin – Black (Intercranial)

Ostensibly a eulogy to Amy Winehouse, Kevin Richard Martin’s Black is a deeply humane expression of isolation, loss and grief. Built from the ground up, the bass deep and warm, swathes of glacial arpeggiated synths and beats that hint at the club. Notes echo and ripple away to create silhouettes of solitude, a tangible manifestation of absence. Despite the deep weight of his music, Martin imbues Black with an incredible delicacy. His abstract architecture allows the mind to roam and the listener to connect with emotional truths. It’s the balance Martin finds between the particular and universal that gives Black it’s power. In the strutting bassline of “Camden Crawling” smeared with narco/alcoholic fuzz, the looming threat of “Blake’s Shadow” and the bleary saxophone in “Belgrade Meltdown” there are the faintest echoes of Winehouse’s sound which emerge from the depths of Martin’s echo chambers. A work of terrible sadness, great beauty, empathy and comfort.

Andrew Forell

Derek Monypeny — Cibola (2182 Recording Company)

Cibola eased into the world as 2022 turned into 2023, but it took me nearly a year to get to it. Monypeny is a confirmed westerner, having lived in Arizona, Oregon, and (currently) the California desert, and an awareness of both the wrongfulness and the good fortune of living in that neck of the woods infuses Cibola, which is named for one of the American southwest’s legendary cities of gold (helpful hint; if you ever encounter a conquistador looking for gold, tell them it’s somewhere else). Monypeny alternates between guitar, shahi baaja, and on electric autoharp the LP’s seven tracks, and Kevin Corcoran contributes time-stopping metal percussion to one of them. The music likewise toggles between stark evocations of space and swirling submersions into nether states. In either mode, Monypeny effectively suggests the gorgeous immensity and pitiless history of the land around him.

Bill Meyer

The Sundae Painters — S-T (Flying Nun)

One minute, The Sundae Painters are churning wild screes of noisy guitar, the next they construct airy psychedelic pop songs of a rare unstudied grace. The band is a super group of sorts — Paul Kean and Kaye Woodward of the Bats, Alex Bathgate of the Tall Dwarfs and the late Hamish Kilgour of the Clean — convening in loose-limbed, joyful mayhem in songs that glisten and shimmer and roar. “Hollow Way” roils thick, muddy textures of drone up from the bottom, the slippery bent notes of sitar (that’s Bathgate) and Woodward’s diaphanous vocals floating free of a visceral murk. “Aversion” lets unhinged guitar shards fly over the thump of grounding drums as Kilgour chants inscrutable poetry. The two HAP tracks, I and II, stretch out in locked-in, psychotropic grooves, relentless forward motion somehow dissolving into an endless ecstatic now. This full-length, sadly the only one we’ll ever have from the Sundae Painters now that Kilgour is gone, is as good as anything that its esteemed participants ever did in their more famous bands, and that’s saying a lot.

Jennifer Kelly

U SCO — Catchin’ Heat (Self Released)

Here’s the extent of what I currently know: Someone I have on Facebook posted a link to it as one of his favorite records of the year, and someone I don’t know responded that they bought a copy of the cassette before the first track even finished. U SCO are Jon Scheid (bass), Ryan Miller (guitar), and Phil Cleary (Drums) and they are from and/or based in Portland Oregon. According to Discogs and Bandcamp Catchin’ Heat is the first thing they’ve released since 2016. That’s it! I started listened to this with the same box-checking, due diligence energy I tend to have for the dozen or so records I hear about one way or another after I’ve already done my year-end writing; most of them, every year, I don’t even make it through one play (the fatigue has fully set in by this point in the process). But sure enough before the end of that first track, I knew this was going to have to be the record I slept on. It’s perfectly structured, with extra-long, absolute blowouts beginning and ending the record, the second and second-last tracks being the two shortest and the only moments of relative calm, and the middle two making up a strong core that both brings in some elements not found elsewhere on Catchin’ Heat (the vocals on “trrrem”) and is just the most straightforward version of the absolute burners U SCO can clearly summon up on command (“woe dimension”). As great and arresting as that opening track is, though, the closing “abyssal hymn” might be the real highlight here, bringing in clarinet and saxophone to add a whole new layer of skronk to what they’re cooking. I’ve listened to this record about 10 times in a couple of days, and they deserve to sell out of that run of cassettes.

Ian Mathers

[aryaraju]

[impermanent-art]

Thank you to the good folks at Up Magazine for giving me the chance to highlight a few of the many great artworks on the streets of L.A. last year. A few of the photos above. Link to the article here: https://upmag.com/la-2022/

[topoet]

2023 Recap

Over the past year my TOpoet.ca following blog shrank from 470 to 436! Sound like a loss but I did a major cull of followers who are no longer active on WordPress or who have never ‘liked’ a post.  The WordPress map show my hits have come from over 70 countries around the world. USA still tops the list but that Kenya & China are in the top 10 is a surprise. Singapore in the top 20. Still no hits…

[thinkinpoink]

Not to work post BUT nothing like realizing the work you have to do on a Saturday is the fun easy stuff!!! My favourite!

[nonfilms]

2023 was a remarkable time for cinema, with amazing titles released almost monthly throughout the year. Here are some theatrical and festival favorites that pushed the boundaries of cinema and absoultely inspired, astonished, and impressed us – films that haven’t left our mind since we first viewed them. 1. Hello Dankness (Soda Jerk)  2. Therapy Dogs (Ethan Eng)  3. Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki) 4. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer) 5. Killers of the flower Moon (Martin Scorsese) 6. Anselm (Wim Wenders) 7. Pacifiction (Albert Serra) 8. Open Doom Crescendo (Terry Chiu) 9. Free Time (Ryan Martin Brown)  10. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson) 11. Playland (Georden West) 12. My Animal (Jacqueline Castel) 13. Waiting For the Light to Change (Linh Tran) 14. Cash Cow (Matt Barats) 15. Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos) 16. Walk Up (Hong Sang-soo) 17. Birth/Rebirth (Laura Moss)  18. Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis (Anton Corbijn)  19. Priscilla (Sofia Coppola)  20. Passages (Ira Sachs) 21. Hannah Ha Ha (Joshua Pikovsky & Jordan Tetewsky) 22. The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki) 23. May December (Todd Haynes) 24. Dad & Step-Dad (Tynan DeLong) 25. Mississippi River Styx (Tim Grant & Andy McMillan) 26. Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV (Amanda Kim)  27. How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber) 28. The Horse Tail (Justyna Luczaj) 29. Onlookers (Kimi Takesue) 30. Divinity (Eddie Alcazar)  31. Enys Men (Mark Jenkin) 32. Cette Maison (Miryam Charles)  33. Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli) 34. A Thousand and One (A.V. Rockwell) 35. Sweetheart Deal (Elisa Levine & Gabriel Miller) 36. De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel)

[roricomics]

That time of year again? 2022 was feral, but I didn't have room on the grid to touch on every project I did; so I can say it was at least a productive chaos 😅

L-to-R art from: DarkPunk Zodiac; Coloring StL exhibit; SweetHot Artbook; Adult Casual Ep. 2; Mah Face; Whoa, Nellie! GN (written by Gibson Twist); She Becomes Death Book of Art & Verse; Nessie Who Never Was (written by Dani Colman); and Sugar: Little Earthquakes Graphic Album (written by Gibson Twist)

[acearohippo]

Dislyte sent out this little yearly wrapped email to those that linked their email accounts

As you can see I've been playing since game launch.

And here is the PROOF that I was struggling to get Li Ling for most of that time (I finally spun him on 23 November 2022)

Glad Tang Xuan is listed as my fave esper :') Love that monkey boy

[winterwindhymn]

thankful that Netflix and Disney+ don’t have a wrap up ☺️🙏🏼 . . . #yearend #wrapup #applemusic #goodreads #taylorswift #twentyonepilots #blackpink #themaine #music #books #reading #netflix #disney #disneyplus #streaming https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm6xIgOrJWu/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ladycybercat]

A highlight of last years art! I didn't get as much done as I'd intended but I'm working towards a direction I hope will find success. Thank you for all the support you've shown me.

Posted using PostyBirb

[dustedmagazine]

Music is an Essential Verb: Derek Taylor 2023

Music remains, along with family, friends, and a select few venial vices, my primary daily defense against the mental erosions of spiritual malaise and existential dread. Being a humanist also means being a realist, and little looks to be different on that score in the year ahead as we continue to careen toward a bleak and self-defeating dénouement. The veil of uncertainty around what ultimately feels like inevitability redoubles the need to remain thankful for and supportive of those who devote themselves to art. Summary capsules below describe some of the sounds that kept me going in 2023.

Peter Brötzmann, Wayne Shorter, Kidd Jordan, & Charles Gayle

“The trauma of my generation was what our fathers had done to the rest of the world, and so we said, ‘never again,’ and that was the whole impetus through all my life, and it still is.” ~ Brötzmann (2018)

Musician attrition and demise are dispiriting aspects of every annum, but the departure of four disparate octogenarian reedists exacted an especially steep emotional and cultural toll this year. Shorter and Jordan passed away in March, each of them leaving a rich legacy as indefatigable improviser and altruistic educator that continue influence and inspire. Brötzmann exited in June after the return of a protracted respiratory illness. Few if any can match the magnitude of his mileage and six-decade itinerary as an irrepressible, obstinately adventurous world traveler. Gayle ascended in September, an ardent, uncompromising eremite to the end. All four men left behind discographies and concert/interview footage that will leave the faithful and curious listening and marveling in perpetuity, but their collective absence still aches.

Kirk Knuffke & Joe McPhee Quartet + 1 – Keep the Dream Up (Fundacja Sluchaj)

One of the manifold joys of following the output of Kirk Knuffke is anticipating who he’ll collaborate with next. The cornetist’s ears and imagination are as huge as his heart, a trait he has in common with the equally equanimous Joe McPhee. They’ve known each other for years but Keep the Dream Up is their first released collaboration and it’s an affirming alloy of their complementary creative temperaments. Longtime McPhee comrades Michael Bisio and Jay Rosen complete the quartet with bass clarinetist Christof Knoche comprising the additive on a Brooklyn studio session that captures collective creative lightning in a digital bottle. My album of the year for these reasons and more, although hopefully Joe will bring his brass to a follow-up conclave soon.

Don Byas – Classic Sessions 1944-1946 (Mosaic)

Saxophonist Don Byas recorded prolifically during the 1940s. His porous sound and popular style bridged the schools of swing and bop through prowess and panache aligned with the most esteemed of post-WII tone scientists. That sustained industriousness hasn’t reflected in reliable access to his works, primarily because they’re spread across a plethora of independent labels and competing copyrights. Leave it to Mosaic Records to rectify the longstanding reissue lacuna. This long gestating collection corrals and sequences the bulk of them across ten discs, scrubbing their sound, and adding an expansive cache of rarified verité concert recordings made in a Swedish jazz fan’s residence. Indulging in one’s Byas bias has never been easier or as edifying.

Fred Anderson – The Milwaukee Tapes Vol. 2 (Corbett vs Dempsey)

Patience and long-game aptitude are among music producer/archivist/advocate John Corbett’s virtues. This unexpected, but abundantly welcome sequel to an archival Anderson collection on Corbett’s long defunct Unheard Music Series took 23 years to secure commercial circulation and offers an additional hour-plus from the same gig in improved sound. Fellow AACMers Billy Brimfield and Hamid (nee Hank) Drake join bassist Larry Hayrod in bringing vibrant, detailed life to the Lone Prophet of the Prairie’s (as Anderson was affectionately known) serpentine, cerulean melodies. Corbett’s current label released a plenitude of music in 2023 (see also below) but the uncommon opportunity to hear more Anderson of any vintage makes this release worthy of independent mention.

Jason Adasiewicz

Corbett vs. Dempsey also had a welcome role in Jason Adasiewicz’s return to record with two different projects. On vinyl, Roy’s World documents a 2017 Chicago studio session by the vibraphonist’s quintet originally intended as the soundtrack to a film based on neo-noir novelist Barry Gifford’s short stories. Chicago stalwarts Josh Berman, Joshua Abrams, Hamid Drake, join saxophonist Jonathan Doyle in the ensemble for a program that sounds at once fresh and nostalgic while always vital. On CD, Roscoe’s Village dispenses with band for a solo selective foray through the songbook of Roscoe Mitchell including evocative renderings of “Congliptious” and “A Jackson in Your House” that retain the composer’s essence while striking out in bold new directions.

Natural Information Society

Grounded as it is in core voices of guembri, frame drum and harmonium, codification of Josh Abrams’ NIS as a jazz ensemble immediately feels reductively incomplete. All participating instruments can be active architects in the undulating, melody-laced drones that frequently form the basis of the band’s gradual, granulated improvisations. Performances are more akin to collective expeditions where a galvanizing gestalt effect is afoot; one where earned communal peaks preserve the individual power and agency of the interlocking parts. Since Time is Gravity augments this already catalytic template by incorporating a larger contingent of Chicago colleagues including tenorist Ari Brown to the equation.

Abdul Wadud

A jazz-based improviser on the cello who didn’t double on other stringed instruments, Wadud was also a consummate collaborator and sideman. Magnanimity in lending his substantial talents to the projects of others resulted in a paucity of albums under his own name. By Myself from 1977 on the Bisharra label is a revelatory anomaly on that self-effacing resume. Wadud approaches the instrument as a multifaceted sound factory, plucking, strumming, and bowing, often simultaneously, to create solo tone poems steeped in personal poignancy. Gotta Groove’s vinyl reissue is a beautiful facsimile of the original album object in faithfully reconstructed fidelity.

Marion Brown

Georgia-born altoist Marion Brown had a lengthy, storied career but the body of recorded work that he left behind can present difficulties in terms of ingress to its totality. Scattered across labels, years, and circumstances, much of it is either out of print or commercially unreleased. That collective relative obscurity makes a trio of releases, two on the German Moosicus label, and a third Record Store Day viny reissue of Brown’s 1970 studio duets with Wadada Leo Smith under the shared sobriquet Creative Improvisation Ensemble even more valuable. Of the former two, Mary Ann presents concert material by Brown’s quartet from a 1969 Bremen club gig in soundboard fidelity. Gesprächsfetzen & In Sommerhausen combines two more German concert snapshots, quintet, and sextet, from 1968 & 1969 with Gunter Hampel originally released on the Calig imprint. Steve McCall is a boon on drums in all three contexts.

Art Pepper – Complete Maiden Voyage Recordings (Omnivore)

Art Pepper was an inveterate rake for most of his life, magnifying destructive interpersonal tendencies with drugs and frustratingly frequent acts of self-sabotage. That star-crossed propensity makes the fact that he left so much magnificent music even more miraculous. This lavish box is a fascinating compendium of the constantly competing artistic contradictions at his center, collecting a quartet gig across three nights and seven club sets in Pepper’s native Los Angeles, ten months prior to his premature passing at 56. Over half of the music is previously unreleased and the rhythm section, led by the impeccable and implacable pianistics of George Cables, gives Pepper a cumulative confidence boost that keeps him on the rails. None of it has ever sounded better.

Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra

Los Angeles of the late-1970s was an unforgiving environment for the economic necessities of orchestral jazz. The Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra, under the nominal leadership of pianist/composer/community organizer Horace Tapscott, was a tenaciously subversive force in the face of that ruinous rule. Adopting the Immanuel United Church of Christ as an informal base of operations, the large ensemble resourcefully engaged in an ambitious series of concerts in 1979. The Nimbus label, long a Tapscott exponent and repository, released the first three entries this year in an archival subscription series collecting the voluminous results. Titles are also available individually and present the pivotal band at a performative peak with star soloists Sabir Mateen, Billy Harris, Jesse Sharps, and Robert Miranda shining just as bright as their fearless foreman.

Alan Skidmore – A Supreme Love

Unexpectedly issued on Mark Wastell’s Confront label, an imprint better known for its fealty to free improvisation, this six-disc archival tribute to Alan Skidmore’s 70+ year career in music launches with the saxophonist’s 1961 radio debut and lands some seven-hours later with his intimate 2019 rendering of John Coltrane’s “Psalm.” The aural expanse between is brimming with bright moments and luminary collaborators the likes of which include Tony Oxley, Kenny Wheeler, Wayne Shorter, Dave Holland, Mike Osborne, Elvin Jones, and another dozen name drops from the top tier of improvised music. It’s a wild, illuminating ride and a sterling example of a musical memorial done right.

The Jazz Doctors – Intensive Care/Prescriptions Filled: The Billy Bang Quartet Sessions 1983/1984 (Cadillac)

Billy Bang and Frank Lowe shared a bottomless fraternal bond forged through parallel traumas internalized in Vietnam and expressed by the subsequent embrace of the restorative power of improvised music. The pair of sessions (one reissued, one archival) collected on this disc epitomize their deep attachment arguably as well as any of their other numerous collaborations. Outside the cardinal duo, the Jazz Doctors never really had a stable lineup, but the quartets here embody two of their best. Both programs are loosely adherent to freebop conventions with violin and tenor saxophone combining over contrabass and drums for a potent front line. Bang and Lowe are long gone now, their shared absence making the availability of this music even more precious.

Attila Zoller & Jimmy Raney

Hungarian guitarist Attila Zoller had selective affinity for other artists on the instrument, so much so that his mid-career period is seeded by fateful encounters with plectrist peers. Most prolific among these partnerships was his prudent pairing with Jimmy Raney. A popular proponent of bop-based jazz, Raney was in a similar exploratory headspace when the two joined forces on a trio of recordings for the German L + R label over a seven-year span. Concert dates from Frankfurt (’80) and Berlin (’86) find the duo spooling out lengthy dialogues that dabble in free improvisation while keeping codified melodies within reach. An earlier New York encounter (’79) explores their rapport in a studio. All three reissues on the Japanese Ultra-Vybe imprint are aces.

Steve Swell’s Fire Into Music

Simultaneously emblematic of NYC free jazz in the early aughts and fiercely dedicated to resisting pitfalls of provincialism by touring generously and rigorously, trombonist Steve Swell’s Fire into Music was one of the finest quartets of its kind. Posthumously dedicated to the late altoist Moondoc, this three CD set collects a trio of small venue concerts by the band from gigs in Texas and Ontario. As with the horns, William Parker and Hamid Drake are ideally suited to the extended, expository freebop safaris that formed the ensemble’s flexible repertoire. Swell’s the leader on paper but sagely embraces musical communalism without fail.

Intakt

Running a physical media imprint in the 21st century is an inherently parlous enterprise, but this steadfast Swiss label continues to evidence how it’s done. This year’s standout catalog entries include Andrew Cyrille’s Music Delivery/Percussion, the octogenarian drummer’s third solo album and first in 45-years; bassist Jöelle Leandré’s solo Zurich Concert; pianist Aruán Ortiz’s Serranías Sketchbook for Piano Trio; Beyond Dragons by the trio of saxophonist Angelika Niescier, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer Savannah Harris, and Ohad Talmor’s Back to the Land, a quartet-plus-guests survey that takes its compositional focus an archival workshop date by Ornette Coleman and Lee Konitz.

Ezz-thetics

The appearance of the Swiss Ezz-thetics imprint four years ago raised both eyebrows and ire. Lacking access to master tapes, veteran free jazz and new music producer Werner Uehlinger sourced commercially released editions instead, employing ace audio engineer Peter Pfister succeeded by Michael Brandli to rejuvenate and refurbish the recordings, stateside copyright considerations be damned. Reaction was expeditious and polemical, but proof is in the hearing as most of the label’s dozens of releases sound better than their original incarnations. Catalog highlights this year include another round of Albert Ayler airshots including his pivotal meeting with the Cecil Tayor Trio in 1962 on More Lost Performances, Charles Mingus’ At Antibes 1960, and Ornette Coleman’s At the Golden Circle.

Fresh Sound

Jordi Pujol is akin to Uehlinger in that he refuses to let his vision and ambitions as a producer be abbreviated by external opinion. In Pujol’s case it’s yielded a bountiful inventory of antiquarian titles that rights holders have shown little to zero interest in restoring to begin with. Cases in point for this year include a definitive collection of obscurando saxophonist Boots Mussulli’s works; concert and studio collections by the Count Basie alumni tandem of Al Grey and Billy Mitchell; hens’ teeth rare leader sessions by Arthur Lyman vibraphonist Julius Wechter; and a two-fer of Julliard-trained Ellingtonian Cass Harrison piano trio albums. Exciting guilty pleasures all around.

Playing for the Man at the Door

As complex as he was controversial, Robert “Mack” McCormick deserves consideration in the esteemed company of other maverick cultural archivists like Alan Lomax, George Mitchell, and Harry Smith. With a preservationist purview mostly comprising Texas and bordering states, McCormick spent much of his adult life obsessively documenting and disentangling the cultural capital of the region through recordings, photography, interviews, essays, and research. Smithsonian Folkways became repository for the massive reservoir after his passing and this box is the first in what will hopefully be multiple dispatches from the same. Unreleased field recordings of Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin’ Hopkins represent the big names, but works by the likes of Hop Wilson, Cedell Davis, Robert Shaw, and a handful of others are just as persuasive. Bongo Joe Coleman’s impassioned presidential pitch closing the set will have listeners pining for a time when third party Executive Branch candidacy didn’t seem so fraught.

Joni Mitchell Archives - Vol. 3, The Asylum Years 1972 to 1975

Mitchell’s continuing project corollary to her old friend Neil Young’s analogously exhaustive retrospective enterprise, this third entry in the series finds her 30-something-self further broadening the lens of her art beyond the solo concert music that dominated the first two boxes. There are stirring solitary shows here, too, but it’s the band offerings that prove most revealing, particularly in the company of reedist Tom Scott’s fusion group L.A. Express. James Taylor, Graham Nash, and David Crosby lend contributory hands, and there’s a brief but intriguing collaboration with Young alongside a trove of demos and workshop versions of songs from her first three albums for Asylum.

Martin Davidson

In closing, another memorial. Martin Davidson wasn’t a musician, but European free improvisation as an art and archive would be a fraction of what it is without his copious and enduring work. As steadfast proprietor of the Emanem label he put his resources into musicians whose efforts frequently fell outside the probability of consistent commercial remuneration. Under his aegis, influential improvisers like Steve Lacy, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Paul Rutherford gained robust catalogs alongside other aspiring artists who never garnered even niche cachet. Davidson was a curmudgeon and an anachronism, trusting his ears implicitly, suffering the indignities of inquiries from strangers seeking audience with the hip hop icon who shared the phonetics of his imprint’s name, and advancing the pleasures of physical media well past their purported expiration date. He was also a talented writer, adding invaluable context to his releases through first-person testimony and critique. Martin will be missed.

And as is tradition in this 20th iteration of this year-end exercise, 25 more titles in stochastic order. Thanks to all for reading, and gratitude to Jennifer Kelly for providing the forum and formatting.

Rodrigo Amado’s The Bridge – Beyond the Margins (Trost)

James Brandon Lewis – For Mahalia with Love (Tao Forms)

Henry Threadgill – The Other One (Pi)

Guillermo Gregorio – Two Trios (ESP)

Rob Brown – Oceanic (RogueArt)

Rich Halley Quintet – Fire Within (Pine Eagle)

Milford Graves w/ Arthur Doyle & Hugh Glover – Children of the Forest (Black Editions)

Mike Osborne – Starting Fires: Live at the 100 Club 1970 (British Progressive Jazz)

Jim Hall – Uniquities Vol 1 + 2 (ArtistShare)

Madhuvanti Pal – The Holy Mother (Sublime Frequencies)

V/A – On the Honky Tonk Highway with Augie Meyers & the Texas Re-Cord Company (Bear Family)

Mal Waldron & Terumasa Hino – Reminiscent Suite (Victor/BBE)

Oum Kalsoum – L’Astre D’Orient 1926-1937 (Fremeaux & Associates)

Sonny Rollins w/ the Heikki Sarmanto Trio – Live at Finlandia Hall Helsinki 1972 (Svart)

V/A – Equatoriana: El Universo Paralelo de Polibio Mayorga (Analog Africa)

Evan Parker – NYC 1978 (Relative Pitch)

V/A – If There’s a Hell Below (Numero Group)

John Coltrane – Evenings at the Village Gate (Impulse)

Derek Bailey & Paul Motian – Duo in Concert (Frozen Reeds)

Peter Brötzmann/Fred Van Hove/Han Bennink/Albert Mangelsdorff – Outspan 1 & 2 (FMP/Cien Fuegos)

Hasaan Ibn Ali – Reaching for the Stars: Trios/Duos/Solos (Omnivore)

Mark Dresser – Tines of Change (Pyroclastic)

Steve Millhouse – The Unwinding (Steeplechase)

Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet – Hear the Light Singing (RogueArt)

V/A – Destination Desert: 33 Oriental Rock & Roll Treasures (Bear Family)

[itanigrande]

Último día del año ✨😍 espero se la pasen muy bonito en compañía de sus seres queridos. Mis festejos terminan temprano por lo que probablemente podamos andar en stream dándole la bienvenida al 2023 en mi twitch 😄 así que si no tienen nada que hacer ahí los veo en la noche para pasar el rato. Otra fotito de #UTA Tomada por @mono_photography_mx ✨ #anime #yearend #2023 #utadance #onepiece #cosplay #méxico #japon https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm10mr5LjAB/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=