#jerome bryon

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 8, Number 1

Look! A 75 Dollar Bill on the beach. 

Here we are in a new year again, with the whole of 2022’s musical experiences still in front of us. Who knows what will knock us out in the next 12 months? Who knows what will fall short? But meanwhile, we’ve still got a pile of albums from 2021 that need attention, and with this Dust, we get to a bunch of them. At some point, we’ll abandon the rest of what we missed with a shrug and a sigh, but for now, here’s this vast compendium of short, mostly positive reviews of albums from late last year and early this year. Contributors included Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Patrick Masterson, Andrew Forell, Jonathan Shaw, Bryon Hayes and Michael Rosenstein. Happy new year!

75 Dollar Bill with Barry Weisblat — Social Music at Troost Volume 1 (Bandcamp)

Social Music at Troost vol.1 by 75 Dollar Bill featuring Barry Weisblat

As we move into 2022, the sands of COVID time keep pouring down, but one of the era’s venerable practices seems to have drawn to close. In 2021, the first Friday of each month was Bandcamp Day, when the digital sales platform refrained from taking its cut, and many performers debuted specially timed releases. 75 Dollar Bill, the duo of Che Chen (guitar, violin) and Rick Brown (plywood crate and other struck stuff), used that time to introduce a series of live recordings, including three that were recorded at the Greenpoint bar, Troost. The combo’s annual residencies there were opportunities to try out various ideas and associations, some of which have stayed part of their ensemble identity. With electronic musician and percussionist Barry Weisblat, on board, they did a deep dive into the concept of 75 Dollar Bill, jamming party band. If your GPS is running a little low on juice, you might end up in Brooklyn on a drive from the hills of Mississippi to the wedding halls of Mauretania, and the unrepentantly buzzing, joyfully clattering, long-form grooves dug on the two long tracks that make up most of Volume 1 will take you on that winding trip. Drive on!

Bill Meyer

 Abyssus — Death Revival (Transcending Obscurity)

Death Revival (Death Metal) by ABYSSUS (Greece)

The Greek band Abyssus does exactly what the album title says, bringing back the sound of old school death metal bands like Death, Obituary, Possessed etc. In projects like this, it is always a thin line between plagiarizing and staying true to the original. Death Revival sounds modern and as not grimy as their idols, but they’re not into experimenting: usually a mild term for this is “interpretation” of the metal classics. Abyssus does no interpretation. They don’t risk alienating listeners who may not like their death metal too fresh and modern. “The Ten Commandments” and “When Wolves Are Out to Hunt” offer almost perfect riffing (in the sense of perfectly copying), and overall this is very enjoyable half an hour of heavy and dirty music. Absolutely nothing new here but those who can’t find their dusty LPs of the bands Abyssus worships will be quite satisfied.

Ray Garraty

  Artsick — Fingers Crossed (Slumberland)

Fingers Crossed by Artsick

 Double-timed drums, handclaps, clanging guitars and fetching female vocals make Artsick sound like a good time punk band, but Fingers Crossed is less than rosy under the surface. The band formed a couple of years ago around Christina Riley on a break from Burnt Palms, with Donna McKean of Lunch Box and Hard Left on bass and Mario Hernandez of Kids on a Crime Spree on an abbreviated two-drum kid. Their sound is brash and charming, with Riley on keening lead and McKean crooning occasional descants in the background, the band on the fine edge between raw enthusiasm and sloppiness. But while all the signifiers are bright and positive, the lyrics are a bit dark. “Satisfaction, where are you,” Riley asks in opener “Restless,” as the tune thumps and rattles and buzzes; she sounds a little disconsolate amid the bubbly racket. Later in the more expansive and lyrical “Look Again,” a breezy sweet sludge of guitar and bass roils over poppy dueling vocals about not being able to let go of an ex. “Dealing with Tantrums” clatters with handclaps, finger snaps and a nimble cavorting bass, but there’s Riley again on a downer (“It’s so complicated/I feel so frustrated”). The sound is so fun, so boppy and positive, so full of gleeful mayhem, that it’s a bit disorienting to parse the lyrics. But the band is enjoying it — and it definitely sounds like they are — why can’t we all?

Jennifer Kelly

Michel Banabila — Echo Transformations (Knekelhuis)

Echo Transformations by Michel Banabila

Where to start with Dutch sound artist Michel Banabila, a guy who’s been in the electronic music trenches for longer than most people producing in his wake have been alive? Well, how about Echo Transformations, his latest full-length and first for fellow Low Country forward-thinkers Knekelhuis, a label I came to via Patricia Kokett’s brilliant Bizarr? My thanks to Matt Korvette for tipping me off that this is a wonderful fourth world excursion from a veteran composer who covers a ton of ground across these eight tracks, from the low-end shake of “Balafon Dub” to the swirling 11-minute “The Three Stages of Endurance” to the jungle trudge of “Zoosemiotics (Short Mix” to the plaintive piano plinks of “Cassette Loops (KH042 Mix).” Considering Banabila has been putting out music at a steady clip since 1983, Echo Transformations should serve as but a tip of the iceberg — and considering how much there is to sit with here alone, the mind races at what remains unheard. Let the deep dive commence.

Patrick Masterson

 Batang Frisco — Batang Frisco (BFE)

Batang Frisco by Batang Frisco

Eric Jensen and the late Bill DiMichele were part of the 1980s Bay Area experimental scene that included The Residents, Tuxedomoon and Chrome. Batang Frisco, their only album, was self-released in 1986. It’s an idiosyncratic mélange of synthpunk, found sound, outré prog rock and arcane lyrics that sounds like a soundtrack to a RE/Search anthology. The music is steeped in outsider and industrial culture, mysticism, Situationism and Dada. The dystopian bedroom disco of “Sewing Machine” rings out with Snakefinger-like guitar solos and samples of nervous laughter. “6th And Mission” imagines Tuxedomoon as Alan Parsons then adds a bluesy vocal coda. Detuned guitars and declamatory found speech animate “What Is Your Intimate Name.” Jensen and DiMichele simultaneously performed as both a noise rock and a cyberpunk band, and it seems they threw all their ideas at this singular album. However, one gets the feeling that they were romantic troubadours at heart. With the end of days ballad “Julie” and the closing lullaby “Myth,” particularly, you feel the beach beneath the cobblestones. Although of its time and place, Batang Frisco is a fascinating artifact well worth exhuming.

Andrew Forell

  Samuel Blaser & Marc Ducret — Voyageurs (Jazzdor)

Samuel Blaser & Marc Ducret - Voyageurs by Samuel Blaser & Marc Ducret

Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser and French guitarist Marc Ducret have been periodic partners for a dozen years. Their partnership has been documented in concentrated and enhanced circumstances often enough that this reviewer’s written liner notes for some earlier outings. This one, however, might be the best batch yet. It captures the essence of their chemistry, which boils down to three essentials. Both men are unabashed melodists; neither is afraid to disrupt the tunes they love; and their contrasting ways of accomplishing those ends, which are founded upon the elasticity of Blaser’s instrumental voice and the coarse abrasion of Ducret’s, ensure sufficient instability to keep things interesting. This combination of commonalities and differences is captured in fine fidelity on this studio recording, which took place in early 2019.

Bill Meyer  

  Boy Harsher — The Runner OST (Nude Club/City Slang)

Boy Harsher’s latest album is the soundtrack to a 40-minute horror film written, produced and directed by the duo Augustus Muller and Jae Matthews. The music sticks close to the band’s darkwave sound, throbbing bass lines and layers of synth except on the two tracks which feature guest vocalists; Cooper B Handy on “Autonomy”, a paranoid reflection on a shattered mind accompanied by a jaunty Depeche Mode backing and Mariana Saldaña on the shiny new wave disco of “Machina” complete with robotic backing vocals. “The Ride Home” and “Untitled (Piano)” provide suitably spooky atmospheres and Matthews moves easily from whispers to screams on opener “The Tower.” The Runner is an enjoyable but slight addition to Boy Harsher’s catalogue. The film, however, is well worth watching.

Andrew Forell

 Tyondai Braxton — “Multiplay” (Nonesuch)

Multiplay by Tyondai Braxton

Tyondai Braxton wants you to know he’s still out there. After half a decade of musical silence, his longest stretch since he started recording for himself with 2002’s History That Has No Effect, Anthony’s son suddenly dropped three songs in less than a month as 2021 rolled over to ‘22. It’s not a far cry from where he left off on 2015’s Hive1, but there’s a kind of melodicism with December’s “Dia” and “Phonolydian” and early January’s “Multiplay” that it often felt like Tyondai was trying to bury on his post-Battles LPs. A strong glitch influence balances out the birdsongs and long synth decays for his latest single, a track at once alien and earthen, bewildering and inviting — as the best of his music both solo and in Battles always was. It’s a pleasant, welcome return from the future portal Braxton alone seems to travel that gives nothing away on an album to come. Can’t stop me from hoping, though.

Patrick Masterson

 Jerome Bryerton / Damon Smith Duo—…There Must be a Reason for Generating Sounds… (Balance Point Acoustics)

...There Must be a Reason for Generating Sounds... by Jerome Bryerton / Damon Smith

This album represents both a memorial and a reunion, a pair of occasions that often go together. And if you’ve ever attended a good funeral, the sort where the good memories and renewed acquaintances overthrow the grief, you’ll have some idea of what this album feels like. Mind you, documentation doesn’t confirm that drummer Jerome Bryerton and bassist Damon Smith got together specifically to remember Wolfgang Fuchs, a reeds player who toured and recorded with the two men around 20 years ago and subsequently died in 2016. But that doesn’t really matter, because the close engagement and shared creation that they enact on this CD’s 11 tracks is illuminated in part by the fires of invention that he stoked when he worked with the younger Americans. Smith manages to be both forceful and non-dominant here, nimbly bowing and unsparingly tugging his strings in ways that generate lots of sound, and yet leave a lot of space for Bryerton to co-invent. The drummer responds in kind, generating small whirlwinds of metallic vibration and shuddering friction that compliment Smith’s playing without locking in.

Bill Meyer

Ceremonial Bloodbath — Mutilation of Sacrifice (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Mutilation of Sacrifice by Ceremonial Bloodbath

Ceremonial Bloodbath’s music makes you think the band should probably ditch the “Ceremonial” part of its name. This 7” record provides a vinyl version of the songs the band put out last year on a small-batch cassette, and it’s all bludgeoning, atavistic, pissed-off black/death, leaving little room for anything as remotely mannered as ceremony. The band features Anju Singh (thumpin’ skins) and Graham Christofferson (shoutin’ and grindin’ the gits) of excellent stenchcore outfit Ahna, and the duo have dubbed themselves “Nuclear Hammer Throne” and “Faceless Infinity,” respectively (right), for this latest outing. They are joined by two other Vancouver-based entities, identified only as Abysmal Berzerker and The Nocturnal Black. That should give you some context for what’s in store on this record: about ten minutes of downtuned riffage; spastic, manic rhythms; growls and howls; and assorted other varieties of sonic abuse. The songs feel even more purposefully primitive than the racket Ceremonial Bloodbath previously made on The Tides of Blood (2020), suggesting a devolving trajectory that can really go only one way: lower, unhappier and more mindless. Equally mindlessly, this reviewer can’t wait to hear what comes next.

Jonathan Shaw

 Deaf Club — Productive Disruption (Three One G)

Productive Disruption by Deaf Club

The four of us lying around suffering variously from a New Year’s Eve wedding hangover, I did the natural thing for my friend’s apartment ambiance to greet the new year: “Alexa, play The Locust.” It went over about as well as you’d expect, but if you’d told me as I sat there vacantly cackling that Justin Pearson would, less than a week later, have a new record out with his latest band, I’d probably have been able to muster some actual laughter from my husk of a body — yet here we are in the Year of Our Lord 2022 AD talking about a Deaf Club full-length (out on Three One G, no less) that thrives on the power of negative thinking. These 14 tracks claw their way out of the hardcore punk gutter and not a one among them exceeds two minutes (“Wide Lawn, Narrow Mind” is two flat). It’s clear Pearson and his cohorts (Brian Amalfitano of ACxDC, Jason Klein of Run With the Hunted, Tommy Meehan of The Manx and Chum Out!, and Scott Osment of Weak Flesh) know what they want out of this venture; it’s also clear they get it. If this is your speed and volume setting, Deaf Club delivers. Where you’re goin’, you don’t need no stinkin’ earplugs.

Patrick Masterson  

 Michel Doneda / Frederic Blondy / Tetsu Saitoh—Spring Road 16 (Relative Pitch)

Spring Road 16 by Michel Doneda, Frederic Blondy, Tetsu Saitoh

It takes just a few seconds to hear the webs of understanding that bind this trio. French soprano and sopranino saxophonist Michel Doneda and Japanese bassist Tetsu Saitoh first recorded together in the mid-1990s; this is their tenth album. Frederic Blondy, a French pianist of a younger generation, is only on two of them, but his involvement with the partnership still spans a decade. Each brings an expanded vocabulary on his instrument, encompassing burred long reed tones, glassy inside-piano sighs and hard-tugged bass clusters. But what makes this music so absorbing is a shared sense of proportion, direction and form. From moment to moment, their juxtapositions of timbres and dynamic shifts between density and space are as unerringly self-righting as a gyroscope. Which makes it all the more of a shame to know that there won’t be any more concerts, since Saitoh died in 2019. So play it now, and play it again next spring.

Bill Meyer

Eleventh Dream Day — Since Grazed (Comedy Minus One)

Since Grazed by Eleventh Dream Day

Chicago is the town where artists do the work, plugging on in all kinds of endeavors with minimal pay or glamour, but achieving, over time, a kind of hard-won, belligerent, excellence; if you can’t see it, your loss. Case in point, Eleventh Dream Day, a band that has been cranking out an album every half decade or so, through major label flirtations and obscurity and doggedly getting better with every record. The band started in Louisville half a lifetime ago, around Rick Rizzo, Doug McCombs and Janet Bean. It now includes additional players Mark Greenberg (keyboards) and James Elkington (guitar), and though these names are familiar, it’s not exactly a supergroup. They were all in this band before Tortoise, Brokeback, Freakwater, the Horse’s Ha and others. Together they crank the heavy indie sounds of Since Grazed, an album torched with winding Neil Young-ish solos and stirring spiritual sing-alongs that make an art form out of endurance. “Tyrian Purple” starts with a litany of abuses (“I’ve been laid off, I’ve been paid off, I’ve been grounded, I’ve been surrounded, I have floundered, the warnings sounded”) but lifts slowly into a triumphal chorus. “Just Got Home (In Time to Say Goodbye)” trudges disaffectedly, then erupts in glorious Crazy Horse riffs. “Every Time This Day It Rains” swaggers softly, a twang in its shuffling rhythm, but blossoms in its slow-unfurling refrain. It took me more than six months to get to Since Grazed. It took the band 40 years to make it. There was never any hurry. It’s here now and gorgeous, whenever you arrive.

Jennifer Kelly

 Ingebrigt Håker Flaten — (Exit) Knarr (Odin)

(Exit) Knarr by Ingebrigt Håker Flaten

The first global wave of COVID crashed especially hard on traveling performers, and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten was no exception. The peripatetic bassist, who at the time called Austin TX home, had to pull up stakes from a teaching and performing residency in Colombia and head back to his native Norway. Once there, the lockdown and subsequent restrictions twice canceled the staging of the music on this CD, which was originally envisioned to be a sort of musical autobiography performed by an international band consisting of musicians he had worked with in Europe, Central and North America. Ultimately, nearly a year after it was originally supposed to be staged, he assembled a band of Norwegians and recorded the music instead. Evidence of the places that inspired the music persist; rhythms from the land bridge between the American continents support a couple tracks, and a phalanx of swaggering horns and swinging rhythms echoes the sounds that his old mates in Chicago played during the time he lived there. With Oddrun Lilja Jonsdottir’s guitar in the lead, “Brinken” represents a sort of lyrical electric jazz that folks who mostly associate Håker Flaten with Atomic and the Thing might be surprised to hear. It’s a shame that we can’t hear this music as it was originally conceived, but this version is, perhaps, closer to his roots, and certainly more available to people who didn’t have Vossa Jazz on their itinerary.

Bill Meyer

 Josephine Foster — Godmother (Fire)

There are just three wispy songs on this slight EP, but what a magic they make out of Foster’s delicate, sepia-toned vocal stylings and minimal instrumentation. “Guardian Angel” has a certain amount of momentum, its whispery verse paced by the chink of tambourine and urgent strums. A synthesizer bubbles up from the spider-webbed crevices of this gentle frolic, bringing it subtly into the digital age. “Sparks Fly” is also rocked softly with rhythm, but Foster’s voice crests sweetly, archaically and touched with a ghostly vibrato over the friction. These songs stay with you like fragments of a dream you had, translucent, half-remembered and lovely.

Jennifer Kelly

 Grein — Taxic Gnosis (Dinzu Artefacts)

Taxic Gnosis by Grein

Taxic Gnosis is the debut recording spawned from the collaborative efforts of composer-performers Aaron Michael Smith and Jay Rauch. As the circumstances of the past two years required, the pair, who live on either side of the continent from each other, worked remotely. Rauch lives in Seattle and is focused on reeds, mainly the bassoon. Smith, a Bostonian, favors the viola. Both are instrumental polymaths. As is common with remote collaborations, the duo worked iteratively, passing material back and forth and adding layers; what feels like spontaneous improvisation likely developed through months of work. This project, which they’ve christened Grein, takes on several visages. There are swollen passages of interwoven, drawn-out tones, and then there are thornier moments where scrambled strings etch out byzantine patterns and brazen reeds flutter maniacally. The duo isn’t afraid to lighten the mood, even throwing in a few doses of humor. “SNORK” prominently features a homemade wind instrument that Rauch has dubbed the super snorkel, while the brief “Xeno’s Sausagecrust” employs the barking of what must be the eponymous canine. It’s refreshing to see that at the end of the day, composers just want to have fun.  

Bryon Hayes

 Halley-Clucas-Reed-Halley—Boomslang (Pine Eagle)

Boomslang by Rich Halley

Boomslang is named for an African tree snake that’s retiring and unaggressive but can slay you if you mess with it. Oregon-based tenor saxophonist Rich Halley’s music shares few qualities with said snake, although it must be acknowledged that this isn’t the first time that he’s named an album after a serpent. Halley’s playing is bold and overtly engaging, and he’s been known to travel long distances in order to play with like-minded musicians, but for this album, he’s back with west coasters for a pair of sessions with Matthew Shipp’s trio. Carson Halley, his son as well as his preferred drummer for the last decade, keeps the rhythms crisp and varied; Clyde Reed, his bassist for even longer, toggles between brisk, sympathetically grooving lines and mass-enhancing, out of tempo flurries. New to the crew is Dan Clucas, a cornetist from Pasadena CA. He and Halley jointly negotiate the tunes’ lyrical themes and sharp punctuations with aplomb, and alternate solos that profitably contrast brittleness and muscularity.

Bill Meyer

Hatcher / Maunu / Kirshner — Live At Splice Series (Kettlehole)

Live at Splice Series by Hatcher/Maunu/Kirshner

Bach’s music has often been praised for its mathematical integrity, and Anthony Braxton’s composition titles speak to the chemistry and rigor that goes into their realization. This Chicago trio, which did a good job of keeping its performance calendar filled in pre-COVID times, title the longer of the two tracks on this CD “Poem of the Obtuse Angle,” a title that incorporates both biography and process explication. If your idea of a good time involves digging through stacks of 1970s-1980s vintage vinyl, you will frequently encounter guitar/mandolin/violin player Peter Maunu’s name on fusion, new age and pop records. In the 21st century, he retired from California to the Midwest to purse his twin passions of Prairie School architecture and free improvisation. How’s that for a hard turn? Tenor saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher and drummer Julian Kirshner are both about half his age, but they’ve been playing with Maunu long enough to grow out of any punks meet the godfather dynamics. Over the course of said poem and its successor, they investigate zones of spiky coexistence, synched timbral exploration, and high energy propulsion, shifting from one interactional mode to the next with an exactitude born of the sort of rapport that only comes about when musicians commit to making each other’s good idea take flight.

Bill Meyer  

 Ignored — S/T (Self-released)

IGNORED - S/T by Ignored

In truth, music this loud and aggro is pretty tough to ignore, but we get the point. Ignored’s self-titled EP shouts, thumps and burns through eight tracks in fewer than 18 minutes, and that includes a couple extended recordings of folks lecturing the listener in Argentine Spanish, an idiom that this reviewer sadly has zero grasp of. Luckily, songs like “Basta le Impunidad” and “Incesto” speak in a sort of international sonic lingua franca: crusty, grindy hardcore that’s hugely pissed off and just as punchy. The song lyrics are quite direct; see “Incesto”: “Madre, padre / Me matan en vida abusándome / No puedo escaparme de mi propia sangre / Trabajo forzado, sexo sin placer.” Sin placer, indeed — and yikes. Most of the members of Ignored are women, and the songs are driven by their anger. It seems that sexual abuse, unfair labor practices, repressive religious creeds and political hypocrisies know few borders. That’s likely not news to anyone, but it’s still useful to have Ignored’s raging report from western Argentina. The music is pretty great, too.

Jonathan Shaw

 Karpenters (Kool Keith & Grant Shapiro) – Still Doing It (The Orchard Enterprises)

In recent years, Kool Keith’s modus operandi has been to collaborate with a fresh producer on every new tape. This gave exposure to slept-on producers and pushed the rap legend himself to unexplored territories. The EP with an LA-based producer Grant Shapiro may not be among the weirdest and most sex-obsessed CDs Kool Keith has done over 2020-21 span, because the main theme here is not sexy at all. It’s age and ageing. Shapiro layers the production with break beats and scratches of classical type, giving Kool Keith the foundation to reminisce about good old days in hip hop. The NYС artist stresses that in music, fame and success are so fragile they can literally break, leaving the artist broke and forgotten. While Kool Keith himself never fell off, thousands others did. The title track “Still Doing It” is a sad reminder of how “everybody’s hero… turned zero.” It’s a blessing we still have Kool Keith in a full creative mode.

Ray Garraty

 Lil Gray — “Missile” (Clockwork Productions)

Yung Kayo aside, no DMV artist recently has pulled me in more than Lil Gray. His range in delivery spans from the relaxed and reserved (“SOD”) to the more aggro and alive (as “Missile” is) — and sometimes it even spans both in the same song (witness the effortless transition in flows on “Uhaul/Sabertooth,” for example). “Missile” doesn’t feature any dramatic verbal derring-do, but it’s a good display of Gray’s ability to ride a beat. The real weapon here, though, is frequent associate Sparkheem on the beat, who’s one of hip-hop’s more interesting producers at the moment (evidenced by the examples he offers up on his site). Full of promise on both fronts, “Missile” seems set to continue the rise in profile of both Lil Gray and Sparkheem.

Patrick Masterson 

 Nullification — Kingdoms to Hovel (Personal Records)

Kingdoms to Hovel by Nullification

The semi-legible, nigh-hilarious charm of the title of this first LP by death metal band Nullification is clarified somewhat by its fourth track, “Kingdoms Reduced to Hovel.” Apparently the “to” is a preposition, marking a change in condition, rather than part of an infinitive. Still, this reviewer rather likes the notion of using “hovel” as a verb (as in “to hovel”) and the phrase’s provisional suggestion of a to-do list — a sort of itinerary of kingdoms that need to be smashed to little, smoldering bits. Any candidates for the top spot? But enough cheap laffs. Nullification is quartet of Filipino dudes, so English is the language of the former colonizer, and thus not such a bad thing to reduce to ruin. The music? It’s chugging, grunting Metal ov Death that seems determined to replicate the sounds of Cynic’s Demo 1991 or, in its more ambitiously musical passages, Morbid Angel’s Altars of Madness (1989). Kingdoms to Hovel isn’t quite a pastiche; the songs and playing aren’t calculated or irritatingly self-aware, and there’s not a note of irony at any point during the record’s 37-minute runtime. But Nullification’s sensibility is thoroughgoing in its focus on the late 1980s and early 1990s, years in which death metal was busily consolidating its hard-won aesthetic and subcultural parameters. The band’s enthusiasm for the aggressive simplicity of those parameters gets its purest expressions at the end of Kingdoms to Hovel, in two tracks that constitute an elaboration on a theme: “Everything…and Everyone (Nullified)” and “I, the Nullifier.” Subtle, it isn’t.

Jonathan Shaw

Charlie Parr — Last of the Better Days Ahead (Smithsonian Folkways)

Last of the Better Days Ahead by Charlie Parr

Charlie Parr plays a mean lick of blues, whether on banjo or electric or custom-constructed resonator guitar. He rambles and picks and bends and slides and, all in all, has the skills to plausibly name-check Robert Johnson (“On Listening to Robert Johnson”). “Decoration Day,” the final track on this two-disc set, is a broody, melancholy, nearly 16 minute meditation on guitar that would hold up against similar cuts from Jack Rose or even Fahey. And yet while Parr is nimble and often off-handedly astonishing on his instruments, the real payoff comes in the words, which distill contemporary rural life into bittersweet, gem-like stories. “Everyday Opus,” for instance, takes an unsentimental look at life on the periphery, its incantatory verses following a man who walks on roads built for cars to a bus stop to a menial job in the city. It is about as desolately beautiful as any song I’ve heard this year, as it returns repeatedly to chorus that reaffirms a shared humanity: “It’s as about as special for me…as it is for you.” It's followed by the haunted blues of “On Fading Away,” whose hollered verse and eerie picking take us on a rainy journey downstream in an abandoned boat. Matter of fact, but spiritual, the song makes us ponder all the people who have gone adrift in leaky vessels, ending up far from home but persisting, “The clouds were clearing/I put my matches out to dry in the sun.” Parr’s songs see right into lives that most people look away from, reminding us that we’re all the same kind of animal. That empathy, plus the fluid, beautiful playing, make Last of the Better Days Ahead special.

Jennifer Kelly

 Picastro — I’ve Never Met a Stranger (ur audio visual)

UR 041: I'VE NEVER MET A STRANGER by PICASTRO

For over 20 years, Toronto singer-songwriter Liz Hysen has shepherded the ever-evolving project that is Picastro. Consistent in her desire to push boundaries and play with expectations, she’s crafted an oeuvre that covers a lot of territory yet is guided by her unique sensibility. Such is the strength of Hysen’s vision that she’s drawn many likeminded musicians into her orbit. Cellist and composer Nick Storring, percussionist Brandon Valdivia (Mas Aya), and violinist Owen Pallett are just a few names of current or former members of her band. With I’ve Never Met a Stranger, Hysen has written a love letter to the city of Toronto. As such, she’s assembled an 11-strong group of friends and fellow travellers from a variety of the city’s micro-scenes to join her in recording this collection of cover tunes. Of the songs included, the one representing The Big Smoke — as the city is sometimes called — is “Tell Me White Horses” from The Silt, a stylistically evasive trio associated with the Rat-Drifting label. Hysen’s alluring, almost wispy, vocal delivery, kept aloft by the soothing coo of Luka Kuplowsky, and the looseness of the arrangement lend the track a sense of wonder and possibility that isn’t there in the original. Her version of The Velvet Underground love song “Pale Blue Eyes” includes saxophone, flute, synth, cello, clavinet, mandola and Hysen on the piano. The lush arrangement is truly evocative, bolstering Hysen’s gently sung duet with Matthew “Doc” Dunn. There is a palpable energy that grows as the song progresses, culminating in sonic fireworks. Rather than rendering simulacra of the tunes she chose for I’ve Never Met a Stranger, Hysen has instead filtered the original material through her own creative vision, constructing a gently flowing collection of songs in the process.

Bryon Hayes  

 Louie Ray — Still Unsigned (Still Grinding Entertainment)

In 2019 and 2020, Louie Ray mainly played a role of a sparring partner for plenty of Michigan rappers. He was best known not for his music but for a gimmick he invented allegedly with YN Jay. The two of them included failed lines from a studio recording into a song itself, not discarding them as usual. If you go back to his solo tapes, you understand why Louie Ray didn’t pop up earlier. His earlier material was in-front-of-the-bathroom-mirror raps, lacking in energy and focus. In Still Unsigned for, the Flint rapper emerges for the first time as a potent solo artist who can stand on his own. He even abandons his gimmick and goes for a straight delivery with no fooling around during recording. The level of improvement is so high, it’s hard even to pick standout songs. They all are catchy, well-crafted and groovy. Equally important is that he has the best selection of beats here, from Stupid Dog to Wayne616. Probably it was the best produced album of 2021.

Ray Garraty

 Samo Šalamon — Dolphyology: Complete Eric Dolphy for Solo Guitar (Samo Records)

Dolphyology: Complete Eric Dolphy for Solo Guitar by Samo Salamon

A recording of the complete compositions by Eric Dolphy for solo guitar? Leave it to Slovenian guitarist Samo Šalamon to tackle this. While Dolphy’s tunes like “Miss Ann” or “Hat and Beard” pop up from time to time, few have taken on the reed player’s noteworthy body of work. There were a handful of tribute releases in the 1990s by musicians like Oliver Lake, Vienna Art Orchestra, Aki Takase and Vic Juris or a later release of the Complete Works by the German group Potsa Lotsa and the recent Dolphy Underlined by reed player Marco Colonna and pianist Alexander Hawkins. But aside from that, tunes just popped up here and there. Dolphy was a remarkable reed stylist, but his compositions were just as integral to the sessions he led. Šalamon notes that he was influenced by Dolphy early on, and during COVID lockdown, decided to dive in to the reed player’s body of work for at-home practice sessions. The 28 readings here, mostly for six-string acoustic guitar with one for mandolin and a handful for 12-string acoustic guitar, take on the pieces using a variety of strategies, all of which are an outgrowth of the guitarist’s transcriptions of the compositions. There are pieces like “Miss Movement,” “The Prophet,” “Lotsa Potsa, “245” or “Far Cry” that hit with the heads and extend them into concise melodic explorations. Then there are takes like “Miss Ann,” “Iron Man,” “Springtime,” “Out to Lunch” or “Gazzelloni” that extrapolate the themes and extend them into harmonic abstractions. The steely ringing harmonics of songs like “Something Sweet, Something Tender” or “The Baron” wouldn’t seem out of place on a Bill Orcutt record. Šalamon applies an intimacy and attentive deliberation which prevails throughout, pulling all of this together. Throw this on for someone who doesn’t know Dolphy’s work and it stands up as a great acoustic guitar recording. For those familiar with Dolphy’s canon of work, it serves as a stimulating reappraisal of the reed player as vital if somewhat overlooked composer of jazz standards.

Michael Rosenstein

   Sauce Walka — “Mirror Effect” (The Sauce Familia)

It was the way he ad libbed “Ooowee” to make it sound like “Oi” that caught my ear initially. I don’t know even now if Albert Walker Mondane realizes how much of an East Londoner he sounds like doing that, but I do know that over the course of 2021, the Houstonian rapper formerly known as A-Walk slowly, subtly came to be one of my most played artists. It wasn’t just his buoyant, energetic verses; the thing about Sauce Walka (and his whole attendant Sauce Factory) was that he looked like he was having fun out there, dancing at gas stations or in the middle of streets, throwing down bars on a neverending romp around American blocks. “Mirror Effect” is a slight downshift from his other recent releases, though it’s hardly the first time he’s tried the chipmunk soul thing (see also: 2018’s excellent “Ghetto Gospel”), but the lines between British and Texan blur just that little bit more with a beat drawing inspiration from UK/New York drill and a video fittingly filmed in New York. “People love to live with lies / but die in front the truth” he offers, winging around a park overlooking the Hudson. The hat might say “Lost,” but don’t be fooled: Sauce Walka knows exactly where he is now more than ever. Long may he stroll.

Patrick Masterson

 Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio — The Bottom (Cuneiform Records)

The Bottom by Luke Stewart's Silt Trio

Washington D.C./NYC-based Luke Stewart was on a tear last year, putting out seven releases from solos to group outings to collective ensembles. Stewart starts off 2022 with this release by his Silt Trio with long-time collaborator Brian Settles on tenor and Chad Taylor on drums, recorded during Stewart’s Music Residency at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. Diving in to the free jazz tenor/bass/drums tradition, the six improvisations are relatively compact, with only one stretching past ten minutes. “Reminiscince” kicks things off with a feature for Taylor’s mbira playing with buzzing bass loping around the cyclical rhythmic patterns, setting the stage for Settle’s mournful tenor lyricism. “Roots” ratchets things up a bit with its bounding groove as Stewart’s bass locks in on Taylor’s spare polyrhythms. Settles picks up steam midway through but he seems to be holding back a bit, never quite locking in on the simmering energy of his partners. At almost 12 minutes long the free improvisation “Angles” gets off to a wandering start and never quite seems to find its footing. Stuart and Taylor stick to spare, textural musings and Settles pokes around with listless lyricism but nothing quite gels. The title tune with its spirited groove and gruff-edged tenor anchored by Stewart’s muscular bass line and the torrid trio romp through the 3-minute “Circles” fare better, though the latter closes out just as the three are gaining force. The languid shuffle of the closer “Dream House” wends its way with unhurried poise, featuring a strong walking bass solo, but one wishes that the trio would dig in a bit more. In the end, this is a facile outing but doesn’t quite measure up to what these three seem capable of delivering.

Michael Rosenstein 

 Tomato Flower — Gold Arc (Ramp Local)

Gold Arc by Tomato Flower

Tomato Flower, from Baltimore, spins out breezy, mildly psychedelic grooves with a bubbly Stereolab-ish vibe. A trio made up of drummer Mike Alfieri, and two guitarist/singers Jamison Murphy and Austyn Wohlers, the band slicks smooth, daydreaming melodies over a buoyant architecture of fusion-y instruments. “Red Machine” opens out like a sunny day on a coastal highway, bringing Os Mutantes to mind in its happy, trippy way. But as with the Brazilian psychedelicists, there’s skill behind the good vibes. The drifting, keyboard ringing, group sung wafting of “Shying” breaks down into noodling complexity mid-cut. It’s pleasant, but not just that, and anyway, isn’t pleasant underrated?

Jennifer Kelly

 triangulation — Whole Lotta Red but it's just my voice (self-released)

The most influential hip-hop record of 2021 was, of course, released on Christmas Eve 2020. Playboi Carti’s shadow loomed large over the rapsphere this past year, and the best explanation of his appeal can be gleaned from these 189 words. Clay Purdom’s observation that Carti is like Wire is revealing; I can’t help but think Whole Lotta Red is his 154, a record that turned deconstruction into dissolution and, ultimately, reformation. Anyway, the youths love him. 15-year-old YouTuber triangulation is, perhaps, the finest example: In a world where stan culture usually amounts to online harassment and little more, this kid meticulously recreated Carti’s most expansive record — we’re talking 24 tracks and 62 minutes — using only his voice both for beats and the startlingly on-point raps, revealing not just his talent but also the sometimes obfuscated contours of Whole Lotta Red itself. The internet is a dark place most days, but discoveries like this are what give me the energy to keep waking up in the morning. Eat your heart out, Medulla.

Patrick Masterson

[shadowmoonarts]

With all the BLM protests and inequality going, I'd like to recommend some really great books, that I've read, from an African-American's POV. Some of these books do involve racism towards the black community, but the book itself is beautifully written, and I'd recommend these any day!

The Hate U Give book by Angie Thomas 

A book about a 16-year old girl, Starr Carter. She witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, from the hands of a police officer and must find her voice to speak up for what’s right.

Ghost Boys book by Jewell Parker Rhodes

A book about a 12-year old boy, Jerome, who is shot by a police officer and observes as a ghost what’s happened to his family and the community. He also meets another ghost, Emmett Till, who helps him navigate his way around as a spirit.

Dear Martin book by Nic Stone

A book about a boy, Justyce McAllister, who has good grades and a pretty great life. He keeps a journal and writes letters to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about questions he has. Then one day, his best friend, Manny, is shot and killed by an off-duty police officer. Now Justyce must face the media and questions about what happened that day. 

Solo book by Kwame Alexander & Mary Rand Hess

A book about a boy, named Blade, who doesn't like the family and their lifestyle he's been brought up in. He faces racism from his girlfriend's father and the cameras that are always taking photos of his drug-addict and retired rock star dad, Rutherford. When he finds out he's adopted, he sets off to find his birth mother in Africa.

Swing book by Kwame Alexander & Mary Rand Hess

A book about a boy named Noah, who is trying to be as cool and smooth as the jazz music he likes. He struggles to confess to his childhood friend, Sam, and is taking advice from his best friend, Walt's cousin, and a podcast. Walt, nicknamed Swing since he loves to play baseball, tells Noah to get out there more, and live life.

The Crossover book by Kwame Alexander

A book about two brothers, Josh and Jordan, who love to play basketball and are facing life together, yet differently. They're also dealing with issues within their family.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 book by Christopher Paul Curtis

A book about a fourth-grade boy, Kenneth Watson, who's family takes a trip up to Birmingham, Alabama for the summer, in 1963. Kenneth and his older brother, Bryon, struggle to get along and try to put their differences aside for the summer. 

(Note: The Hate U Give and The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963 have also been adapted into movies, but I'd recommend reading the books first!)

[mitchbeck]

CANTLON'S CORNER: THE POST FREE AGENT FRENZY

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - If Steve Miller wanted to rewrite his masterpiece, "Take the Money and Run" and put a Hartford Wolf Pack spin on it, it might sound something like this. "This a story about Bigras and Gilly, two young hockey players with plenty of skill to show, here’s what they did when they decided to cut loose - Go on take the money and run!" AHL CONTRACTS ON THE RISE Take the Money and Run also defined how the last few days of NHL/AHL moving day or free agents. Jaws were sure to drop upon review of some of the salaries AHL players were handed out this week. It left everyone in the know, in some cases, more than just a little bit astonished. Cantlon's Corner has been reporting on the AHL since the late 1980s. At that time, the average salary was approximately on average, around $40K. A scant few top echelon players made $50K. Since that time, the 100-plus time percent increase is mind-numbing and must leave former AHL vets, shaking their collective heads. In 2019, in professional hockey, everything is about the cap. As of Wednesday, of the 124 total contracts offered, the teams collectively have spent over $707M. Stunning… poverty is certainly not a word one would hear among those in hockey circles. All salary numbers come from capfriendly.com A longtime hockey insider who requested anonymity put it in stark terms. What has driven this hockey salary "arms race?" ”The salary cap is precious gold. Teams protect that at all costs. The one-way money; that’s a real number and affects the cap either negatively or positively. Two-way contracts, which most AHL contracts, are, you see that while the increases are real, it really doesn’t affect the cap because the AAV is based on the overall one-way contract and that’s what matters.” Some players don’t need to head to Europe if they are raking in these type of salaries. Several teams have more lateral ability than others and some current and ex-Wolfpack players are benefiting greatly. Greg McKegg, who split last season between Charlotte and Carolina, inked a one-year, one-way deal for $750K  with the Rangers. That money counts on the cap. It's also a nice hefty increase from his AHL gig last season that paid $70K. Danny O’Regan, Jeff LoVerde, Harry Zolniercycyzk, and Thomas McCollum, are all new Pack signees. Their salaries have yet to be posted. Philadelphia helped out Lehigh Valley with ex-Pack, Chris Bigras, who signed for a $250K-AHL & $700k-NHL deal up from his $70K AHL contract last year. Andy Andreoff from Syracuse got himself a $750K one-way up from his previous $680K deal. Nate Prosser, from Iowa, earned a slight increase at $421.5K-AHL/$700K-NHL for two years up from his $400K/$700K contract. Rochester will get John Gilmour if he doesn’t make the Sabres roster and it will cost them $700K. Arizona helps out Tucson with two players returning from Europe. Andy Miele from Torpedo Novgorod (Russia-KHL) gets a two-year deal paying $275K in the AHL and $725K in the NHL. Beau Bennett from Dynamo Riga (Latvia-KHL) nails down a $200K-AHL and $725K-NHL pact while Aaron Ness, the ex-Sound Tiger, gets a two-year deal at $300K-AHL & $725K-NHL. In Binghamton (New Jersey), Dakota Mermis goes from $100K in Tucson to $200. A few took a pay cut. Ben Street was making $750K in San Diego and slips to $425K while Matt Tennyson from Rochester goes from $659K to $350K. Neither is expected to start clipping coupons. Charlotte (Carolina) sign enigmatic ex-Pack, Brian Gibbons (Salisbury Prep), for $100K-AHL and $725K-NHL after playing for a $1million last year between Anaheim/Ottawa. The Colorado Eagles (Avalanche) handed ex-CT Whale, Jayson Megna, a $350K-AHL and $700K-NHL one-year deal. Dan Renouf, from Charlotte, gets a two-year deal paying $275K in the first year and $350K for the AHL in his second year. He'll earn at the NHL level, $700K for two years. T.J. Tynan gets one-year deal paying him $425K in the AHL and $700K in the NHL. Chicago (Las Vegas) was among the busiest teams. Pat Brown from the Calder Cup champion Charlotte Checkers goes from $100K to $450K in his first year and $700K in his second year. Tyrell Goulbourne, after a nine-goal campaign with Lehigh Valley, goes from $70K to $225K-AHL/$700K-NHL in the first year and $700K second. Jaycob Megna (Jayson’s brother) goes from $260K in San Diego to $400K with the Wolves. Montreal beefed up Laval with Riley Barber ($300K-AHL.$700K-NHL) and Phil Varone ($450K-AHL/$700K-NHL) from Hershey and Lehigh Valley respectively. San Diego, via Anaheim, signs AHL Butterfield trophy winner, Andrew Poturlarksi, from Charlotte to a $350K-AHL/$750-NHL on a one-year deal. In Springfield, Tommy Cross (Simsbury/Westminster Prep) goes from $300K to $325K. Ethan Prow from Wilkes Barre/Scranton is joining him and going from $90K to $700K per for the next two years. Kevin Roy, after just 14 games last year with Anaheim and San Diego, gets a $300K-AHL/$850K-NHL seal for one year. Tampa Bay aids Syracuse with two new goalies veteran Scott Wedgewood and Spencer Martin at $750K one-way each. Ex-Pack, Chris Mueller, migrates to the Syracuse Crunch from the Toronto Marlies where he'll make $700K on a one-way, one-year up from his $650K last season. Danick Martel, despite an injury-shortened season (15 games) is rewarded with a $700K one-way deal after a $65K-AHL deal last year. Daniel Walcott, the ex-Pack, who, after just five games because of shoulder surgery, is given a one-year $125K deal for the AHL and a $700K NHL contract. Stockton gets Bryon Froese next season for $450K-AHL/$700K-NHL after splitting last season with Laval and Lehigh Valley. The Texas Stars got help from parent Dallas when they signed Tanner Kero from Utica. He gets two years at $300K in the AHL in the first year and $350K in the second with $700K & $775K respectively in the NHL. That's for two years and both are “down” from his one-way $800K deal last year. Utica (Vancouver) inked Justin Bailey to a $700K one way for two years. PLAYER AND COACHING MOVEMENT Last season’s Wolf Pack captain Cole Schneider re-signs with Nashville and will play for Milwaukee. No contracts details have been released yet. Six more AHL’ers head overseas for next year with two of them heading to Kunlun (China-KHL). Tyler Wong, from the Chicago Wolves, and ex-Pack, Adam Cracknell, who split last season between San Diego and Toronto. Also heading East is Adam Helewka of Milwaukee/Tucson who signs with Barys Nur-Sultan (Kazakhstan Russia-KHL) and the latest Trevor Cheek of the Tucson Roadrunners goes to Esbjerg (Denmark-DHL). Mark McNeil goes from Providence to EHC Linz (Austria-EBEL) and Zack Mitchell leaves the Ontario Reign for Neftekhimik (Russia-KHL). In Mitchell’s case, you think his agent explained to him he was leaving a sunny, warm LA suburb to go to Siberia? Now 52 AHL’ers have signed for Europe next season. Ex-Pack, and one funny guy, Francois Bouchard, makes it back home after playing with Dundee (Scotland-EIHL) to play for St. Jerome (LNAH) next season. Ex-Pack, Tomas Kundratek, leaves HC Davos (Switzerland-LNA) and heads home to HC Ocelari Trinec (Czech Republic-CEL). Brett Magnus of Sacred Heart University (AHA), signs overseas with HUS Hokii (Netherlands BEL-NED HL). That makes 44 collegians to sign for Europe and 221 overall college players signed pro deals. Read the full article

[thephycoinside-blog]

I’m done

I'm done. I just don't even know what to say in this rant at this point theres nothing I can say that’ll actually mean anything will change people will read it ignore it and carry on just like every other cry for help I can bring myself to make, I'm sick of having to live up to the expectations everyone has set for me, I always feel like a horrible person I'm an ugly fucker. I'm emo, depressed and giving up. my fight with depression it one that I'm not going to win and I'm aware of that because no one will fucking help me, if i had people here who cared then i could win. I'm going to go through the story of my life then maybe you can see why I'm so fucked up. I was born in a place in Ireland called cork city the diamond of Ireland (besides Dublin) i was living with my mum and didn't and still don't know my biological dad, as i got older i started to realize my mum wasn't normal i didn't know why at the time i was to young by the time i was 5 she was beating me and locking me in my room and starving me, shit like that. one day when i was about 6 going on 7 my mum has a breakdown on the stairs says she cant handle me anymore and puts me in care (she has a lot of drug problems and mental health disorders) my family specifically my aunti sarah gets word of this and immedietly comes to pick me and my brother up. then my step dad picks us up everythings happy family he gets with some amazing woman called michelle. two years later its summer me my dad my brother and michelle are sitting outside in the sun i was playing football with Jerome and Byron when my mother knocks on the door and demads she take ME back. (my step dad had no rights at the time and couldn't argue to much) so michelle argued with my mum bryon and Jerome argued with her friend domininc and i was up stairs scared. my mum called the police and they said my mum had to take me because my step dad had no rights later on the house is undersurvalience and i get taken back to my step dad blah blah blah. Fast forward 2 years so I'm now 13 i have met two of my closest ever friends dana and skylar we make a blood pact and say the only thing that could separate us is death. a year later skylar kills herself and dana is admitted to a psychiatric ward as she is “  unstable” i am left alone a lonely fucked up child. that is where all my problems me and dana remain best best and closetst ever friends to this day i visit her ever time i got back to ire land she is due to be released next year in January she is moving in with me. i also visit skylars grave.

[watchilove]

By marrying the performance of a sports watch with the elegance of a round timepiece, Richard Mille has successfully merged two diametrically opposing characteristics. Overseen by Julien Boillat, the Richard Mille watch exteriors teams have reinterpreted the collection’s first ultra-thin round watch: the RM 033, which was introduced in 2011.

Reinterpretation of the RM 033 introduced in 2011

First round automatic watch in Carbon TPT®

Limited edition of 140 timepieces

‘We believe it is both essential and logical to pay the same care and attention to evolving our collections as to the original creation of our models. In embodying the brand’s intended vision of extreme versatility, the RM 033 is a watch for every day and any day. We have reinterpreted its aesthetics without disservice to the original version by accentuating its lines. Meanwhile, the exterior decoration, case and dial have been reworked to project a sportier vibe. The RM 33-02 thus achieves a delicate synthesis of so-called ‘lifestyle’ style and sporty style,’ shares Julien Boillat.

Julien Boillat (by Renaud Corlouër)

The taut lines of the case combine the curves of a tonneau shape and the elegance of a round form with a subtle allusion to sporty style in the design of the hollows. This first round Carbon TPT® automatic watch exhibits a Carbon TPT® bezel and caseback alongside a satin-finished red gold caseband. The design of the strap prolongs that of the two indentations positioned unusually at 6 and 12 o’clock in a highly original way. These new vanishing lines also contribute to the dynamics of this already extremely bold case.

  The sporty, round, RM 33-02 timepiece is powered by the skeletonised RMXP1 calibre in grade-5 titanium. Regulated by a variable-inertia balance oscillating at 3 Hz, this calibre is wound by an off-centre platinum micro-rotor that considerably reduces the movement’s total thickness to 2.60 mm. Yet this thinness in no way inhibits the architectural expression intrinsic to the brand. The wet sandblasted and Titalyt®-treated baseplate, the micro-blasted, stretched and satin-finished surfaces, and the anglage—all produced entirely by hand—accentuate volumes by playing with shadow and light thanks to the highly graphic skeletonisation. The exterior elements and hour-markers further add to this complex sense of depth and power. In 5N gold hour-markers on two rigid titanium rails fixed between the flange and the movement. The dial, which spans the entire calibre, accentuates the volumes while the typography of the oversized numerals adds a dynamic element to the watch’s easy readability.

By juxtaposing soft gold with the strength of Carbon TPT®, and by combining the graphic codes of the lifestyle and sports spheres for both males and females, Richard Mille clearly communicates a desire to combine allegedly contradictory worlds within a single watch. The RM 33-02 Automatic is available as a limited edition of 140 timepieces.

Richard Mille RM 33-02 Automatic Technical Specifications and Price

Limited edition of 140 pieces in Carbon TPT® and red gold – 127.300€ without taxes (Germany)

MAIN FEATURES

CALIBRE RMXP1 Skeletonised automatic-winding movement with hours, minutes and off-centre monoblock platinum rotor.

POWER RESERVE Circa 45 hours (±10%)

BASEPLATE AND BRIDGES MADE OF GRADE 5 TITANIUM Manufacturing these components in grade 5 titanium treated with Titalyt® for the baseplate and black PVD coating for the bridges confers great rigidity on the entire assembly and ensures the precise surface flatness essential for perfect functioning of the gear train as well as stability of the movement.

The skeletonised baseplate and the bridges were subjected to separate and extensive validation tests to ensure they met rigorous strength requirements.

FREE-SPRUNG BALANCE WITH VARIABLE INERTIA This type of balance wheel represents the ultimate in innovation. It guarantees greater reliability when subjected to shocks and during movement assembly or disassembly, hence better chronometric results over time. The regulator index is eliminated, and a more accurate and repeatable calibration is possible thanks to 4 adjustable small weights located directly on the balance.

MONOBLOCK MICRO ROTOR To ensure the decentralised rotor’s optimal winding efficiency, the monobloc micro rotor has been designed to wind bi-directionally and is manufactured from solid platinum, providing it with an optimal weight-to-volume ratio.

SPLINE SCREWS IN GRADE 5 TITANIUM FOR THE BRIDGES AND CASE This permits better control of the torque applied to screws during assembly. These screws are therefore unaffected by physical manipulation during assembly or disassembly and age well.

  OTHER FEATURES

Movement diameter: 33.00 mm

Thickness: 2.60 mm

Number of jewels: 29

Barrel arbour: AP 20 steel

Balance: Glucydur®, 4 arms,moment of inertia 5.75 mg•cm2, angle of lift 53°

Frequency: 21,600 vph (3 Hz)

Balance spring: Nivaflex®

Shock protection: INCABLOC 908.22.211.100 (transparent)

Escapement wheel jewels: Rubifix (transparent)

Two-position stem: Manual winding, hand setting

CASE

The design and execution of the watch demonstrate a holistic approach to the conception of the movement, case and dial. As a result, everything has been constructed according to extremely rigorous specifications.

The front and back bezels are made of Carbon TPT®, a remarkable material with a unique finish obtained by layering hundreds of sheets of carbon fibres using an automated process that changes the orientation of the weft between layers.

Heated to 120 °C in an autoclave similar to those used for aeronautic components, the material is then ready to be machined at Richard Mille. During this phase, the many layers of Carbon TPT® are revealed, creating random patterns that make each piece unique. The caseband is in 5N red gold.

The tripartite case is assembled with 14 spline screws in grade 5 titanium and abrasion-resistant washers in 316L stainless steel, further complemented by integration of the lugs into the case’s torque screw system. The tripartite case is water-resistant to 30 metres, ensured by 2 Nitrile O-ring seals.

  DIAL

The numerals are created from solid metal and mounted on two linked, rigid titanium rails attached directly to the movement.

Thickness: 0.75 mm

FLANGES

Crafted of 5N PVD treated titanium; hour index points filled with approved luminous material.

Richard Mille RM 33-02

CRYSTAL

Bezel side

In sapphire (1,800 Vickers) with anti-glare treatment (both sides)

Thickness: 1.00 mm

Caseback

In sapphire with anti-glare treatment (both sides)

Thickness: 1.00 mm at the centre; outer edges 1.53 mm

Richard Mille RM 33-02 ©Jerome Bryon

FINISHING

MOVEMENT

Baseplate in hand-ground grade 5 titanium, wet sandblasted, Titalyt® treated

Bridges wet sandblasted, top surface polished by hand, grade 5 titanium PVD treated

Locking sections hand polished

Burnished pivots

Diamond-polished sinks on the bridge side

Pinions with undercuts

Richard Mille RM 33-02 ©Jerome Bryon

STEEL PARTS

Microblasted and hand-drawn surfaces

Sapphire-blasted surfaces

Anglage and polishing by hand

Richard Mille RM 33-02 ©Jerome Bryon

WHEELS

Rhodium plating (before cutting the teeth)

Minimal corrections applied to the wheels in order to preserve geometry and performance

Richard Mille RM 33-02 ©Jerome Bryon

Richard Mille RM 33-02 Automatic Gallery

Richard Mille RM 33-02

Richard Mille RM 33-02 ©Jerome Bryon

Richard Mille RM 33-02 ©Jerome Bryon

Richard Mille RM 33-02 ©Jerome Bryon

Richard Mille RM 33-02 ©Jerome Bryon

Julien Boillat (by Renaud Corlouër)

Richard Mille RM 33-02: A combination of ‘lifestyle’ and sporty style By marrying the performance of a sports watch with the elegance of a round timepiece, Richard Mille…

[youneedone2]

Optimum by Jerome Bryon

[blkwidowsweb]

Chicago Spotlight: A Conversation with DJ/Remixer, Steve Maxwell

Steve Maxwell, Chicago South Side East native, is a DJ/remixer whose star is rising in the Chicago House scene.  He likes to say he started his deejaying around 1980-81. Having his skills inherited from his brother Jerome Maxwell who Dj’d parties with Tony Hatchett, Andre Hatchett, Bryon Brayme, Jesse Sanders and Wayne Williams. Before ever touching a set of turntables he started remixing disco and R&B mixes which was known as “pause button” remixing.

Moving from the Pill-Hill area to Hyde he met others who influence him get started like Nick Stricklen, Geafro Roby, Keith Fobbs, Richie Smith and Steve Hurley. Known for all the intense pause button mixes, Steve started Dj’ing Hyde Park mansion parties, The Blue Gargoyle, Hyde Park Racquet Ball Club (before it was called Bally’s) and most of the Kenwood parties starting the Dj group name “Unique Sounds”. His current influences are likes of Joe Clausell, Louie Vega, Glenn Underground, Vick Lavender (Sophisticado Recordings), Dj Cheez (Universal Dance Music), Terry James, Sadar Bahar-Lee Collins (Soul in the Hole), JR JAM (PS Entertainment), Jamie 326 , Peven Everett, Jamiroquai, Osunlade, Incognito, Ambrosia, Roy Ayers and the list goes on and on…He’s been a resident and guest DJ at many venues in Chicago such as Red Dog, Sonotheque, Betty’s Blue Star, Brando’s, and is currently the resident Dj for Arise Radio f/k/a The Groove Temple on 88.7 fm WLUW along with Dj Shani and Jozana. I recently got a chance to speak with Steve about his love of house music, house culture and his rising status on the Chicago house scene.

Interview with Steve Maxwell

 Black Widow:   Hey Steve, thanks for taking some time to chat with me today!

Steve Maxwell:  Oh no problem. It is my pleasure. Thanks for talking with me.

Black Widow:  What are you listening to nowadays? Who are you digging in House music right now?

Steve Maxwell:  OH wow…that’s hard. It’s so much. I love soulful house music. I’m really digging Sean Ali and what he’s creating right now, DJ Beloved, Mark Francis from Shelter, Mike Dunn is hot, Manoo and of course Josh Milan.

Black Widow:  Who are some of your musical influences?

Steve Maxwell:  My brother, Jerome of course.  Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy, Andre Hatchett, the cats I grew up with as well…

Black Widow:  What about them inspires you?

Steve Maxwell:   I went to the box when Ron Hardy played and his edits were just so crazy.  His innovation, his creativity. He was just so different.  Frankie Knuckles had a style I related to.  He was laid back and had this finessed playing style.   Then, Andre Hatchett….man… when I was coming up he was the man.  He was the smallest guy on the decks but he had the biggest skills. His blends, his skills…he was just a master.   His style was impeccable. 

Black Widow:   How do you approach DJ’ing? Any personal philosophies?

Steve Maxwell:  Dare to be different.  Be yourself but stay humble. Don’t ever disregard your audience/your crowd.  You have to respect your crowd. It’s a balance.   You have to have personality. Your presence is so important. People gravitate to you when you show humility and authenticity.   You got to interact with people but separate yourself from the mess. 

You know it’s such a balancing act.   I love to introduce new music but I also have to read my crowd.   That’s really when your talent comes into play.  You can use whatever equipment you want but if you can’t read a crowd, it really doesn’t matter.  You gotta know how to read a room.

Black Widow: What inspires you?

Steve Maxwell:  The parties inspire me.  You know back in the day there used to be parties that really created an atmosphere. There were decorations and balloons.  It was those small details that would set the mood. That’s becoming a lost art.   I love the energy of a good party.  When the people are having a great time, dancing, and feeling the music, I am inspired by that.  The goal is to give the dancers a party experience. That includes all those details.

Black Widow:  How would you describe your playing style?

Steve Maxwell:  I love disco classics, soulful house and rare grooves.   I love my Chicago roots and try to incorporate newer stuff.  Introducing new stuff reaches out to younger generations. That’s why I like to do mashups.   I can take something popular and still make it sound fresh and different.  

Black Widow:  What do you love about being a DJ/Remixer from Chicago?

Steve Maxwell:  Chicago, you know it’s the birthplace of house.  It’s my home forever and I love my city.   The talent here is just unmatched.   Chicago is a gold mine.   I really believe we have the most talented DJs in this city. 

Black Widow:   Ok, last question.  So…you are playing the Chosen Few Festival this year.  How did you learn about that and what was your first reaction?

Steve Maxwell:   Wow…I’ll be honest. I never thought I’d be playing at the Festival.     It’s so funny because I had been in conversation with CF DJ, Alan King about having a few of the Chosen Few on my radio show.  So he sent me a message, saying he would be in touch and I thought nothing of it.   Next thing you know, CF DJ, Terry Hunter, calls and said…”Hey Steve, what are you doing July 1st”?  I was like….umm let me check my calendar! (Laughter).   I’m like OF COURSE I’M FREE!  You know then he said they wanted me to play and were complimentary of my style and that was that.  It was really cool.

Black Widow:  So how did that feel?

Steve Maxwell:  It’s such a high honor; you know…these guys are just at the top of their game.    After I got off the phone I was geeked and called my close friends who were supportive and happy for me.   It’s just so humbling. 

Black Widow:  I can’t even imagine! What has it been like since the announcement?

Steve Maxwell:  It’s been cool you know. For the most part, people are excited and happy for me but you know you get some of the haters but I don’t pay any attention to that.  This year is exciting. It’s full of Chicago DJs and the diversity of music that will be played is just incredible.  

Black Widow:  Have you thought about your set? Any ideas of the direction you are going?

Steve Maxwell: (Laughter) no! Not yet! LOL

Black Widow:  Well I appreciate you taking time to speak with me and can’t wait to hear you play at the Festival.  

Steve Maxwell:  I’m really looking forward to it. Thank you so much!

My interview with Steve Maxwell was so enjoyable. He’s truly a DJ that plays with soul.  His personality is so laid back and humble, he’s hard not to like. I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of the spotlight.

 Until next time,

See you on a dance floor!

Black Widow

  *Don't forget to check out Chosen Few Guest DJ,  Steve Maxwell and a host of other Amazing DJs at this Years Chosen Few Festival, July 1st & 2nd.  For tickets and information, go to www.chosenfewdjs.com or click the flyer! *

[matthewjameshunt]

Grand Sud marche, 03 2012, by Jerome Bryon. Photograph, 40 x 50cm. Shown by Galerie La Forest Divonne at Art16, Olympia, in May.

[samsarat]

From series Portraits de ma mère

© Jerome Bryon

[humeuroculaire-blog]

Jerome Bryon

[youneedone2]

by Jerome Bryon

[samsarat]

From series Grand Sud

© Jerome Bryon

via Galerie La Forest Divonne