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dustedmagazine · 5 years

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Dust Volume 5, Number 13

Junius Paul

It’s our last Dust of the year, written in an odd holding period between the flood of fall releases and the first few indicators that 2020 will, indeed, have music. We’ll be revisiting our favorite records one more time in writers’ year-end essays and hitting a few more obscurities in an upcoming, clear-the-decks January Dust. Then it’s time to say goodbye to a year that sucked on so many levels, but not in the music. This time, contributors included Justin Cober-Lake, Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Andrew Forell, Jonathan Shaw, Ian Mathers, Ray Garraty and Tim Clarke.

Brian Shankar Adler — Fourth Dimension (Chant)

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Percussionist Brian Shankar Adler has a funny way of looking at the world. Or, rather, he has a funny way of looking through it. His Fourth Dimension seeks a new perspective, a new way to ask questions. Instead of trying to find new ground through abstract experimentation, he works his way into patterns and shapes that build on each other. The album opens with “Introduction Drone,” but that sort of minimalist composition provides only one small element of Adler's larger idea. He and his group glide between silent or repetitive space and more melodic, energetic bursts. The whole album, then, takes on an irregular but not erratic pulse. Vibraphonist Matt Moran provides an essential element of the disc's feel. Each artist in the quintet contributes — guitarist Joanthan Goldberger shapes particular moods, for example — but it's Moran's vibes that dictate how far the record pushes into new space. He sometimes disappears and sometimes flourishes. These movements, as much as even Adler's drumming, give the disc its musical arc and particular spot, whatever dimension you may find it in.

Justin Cober-Lake

Angles 9 — Beyond Us (Clean Feed)

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When a musician is as prolific and diverse in approach as Martin Küchen, it’s tempting to consider how each new recording fits into or extends his existing body of work. But Beyond Us often directs the listener’s attention away from Küchen and towards the skills of the eight musicians accompanying him. This is probably by design, since when you have such great players, you might as well give them chances to shine. Their collective associations extend beyond this band, which has managed to defy the prevailing economic tides in order to tour and record repeatedly over the past decade; you can also hear some of them in Paal Nilssen-Love’s Extra Large Unit and the Fire! Orchestra. Whether they’re enriching his arrangements with nuanced and energetic playing, or swinging and exulting during solos and duo exchanges, the rest of Angles 9 sound simply marvelous. In particular, trombonist Mats Älekint, cornetist Goran Kajfeš and pianist Alexander Zethson draw out the robust bluesiness of “U(n)happiez Marriages,” and baritone saxophonist proposes a Moorish counterpoint to the John Barry-ish theme of “Against the Permanent Revolution.” But everyone punches above their weight, making this a deeply satisfying addition to their collective catalogues.

Bill Meyer

Bach Tang — Born Too Alive (Dove Cove)

Bach Tang - Born Too Alive by Bach Tang

LA-based trio Bach Tang — that’s Oakley Tapola on voice and guitar, Dan Ryan on bass and vocals, Rebecca Spangenthaler on drums — channel the chaotic energy of Swell Maps, The Raincoats and Essential Logic on their EP Born Too Alive. This ten-minute, six-song collection combines mutant Beefheartian boogie, defiant DIY post-punk clatter, deliberately distorted vocals and gleefully amateurish noise into a willful concoction that dares you to turn it down whilst forcing you to turn it up. Opening track “Litter Licker” is a perfect 59 seconds of racing down a hill — tumbling drums, tripping bass, guitar slashes, what sounds at first like classic fucked up sax skronking revealing itself to be the exhalations of an exhausted runner. “Dragon’s Blood!” is most straight ahead song here with a recognizable riff and even some harmonizing before it briefly collapses in on itself before a final burst to a groaning end. Bach Tang understand that brevity is the soul of wit and if the vocals can be grating, the songs flash by with enough invention to encourage repeat listens. Fans of the aforementioned bands and their ilk will find much to be intrigued by on Born Too Alive.

Andrew Forell

The Catenary Wires — Til the Morning (Tapete)

Til The Morning by The Catenary Wires

The Catenary Wires — that’s Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey — make a lovely, wistful sort of indie pop that is perfectly in line with what you’d expect from people who were in Talulah Gosh, Heavenly, Marine Research and Tender Trap. This is their second album as Catenary Wires, but they’ve been at this sunshine-through-raindrops thing for a while, and the result is not exactly polish but casual grace. They seem to land exactly where they need to, every time, without much premeditation. “Dream Town,” the opener, brushes by with a reticent sureness, Fletcher’s airy soprano harmonizing with Pursey’s hollow, post-punk resonances, the whole thing stirred to gentle life with finger snaps and lilting, wafting background vocals. “Half-Written” (Fletcher leading) is nakedly spare in the verse, but blows into waltz-timed, multi-voiced crescendo in the chorus. Neither voice is perfectly tuned, but they join somehow in worn-in, comfortable harmonies like they’ve been doing it forever, and they have.

Jennifer Kelly

Drekka — Beings of ImberIndus (Somnimage)

Beings of ImberIndus by Drekka

Mkl Anderson (pronounced Michael) has been hanging onto the edge of outbound sound since the mid-1990s. During that time, he’s run the Bluesanct label, played in Jessica Bailiff’s band, and played both solo and collaboratively under the name Drekka. While he often releases music digitally, his production means are primarily analog. Anderson made this 70-minute expanse of non-electronic drone with Icelandic musician þórir Georg, and while between then they play pitch pipe, voice, metal, and bass guitar, what comes out of the speakers sounds long, dark, and entirely non-instrumental. This CD burrows deep into the heart of a sonic black sun, and if you thrive on not seeing the horizon, it could be your next auditory weighted blanket.

Bill Meyer

Lucas Gillan’s Many Blessings — Chit-Chatting With Herbie (Jerujazz Records)

Chit-Chatting With Herbie by Lucas Gillan's Many Blessings

The Jazz Record Art Collective is a concert series that recruits Chicagoan jazz musicians to perform a classic jazz album their way. Chit-Chatting With Herbie originated when series curator Chris Anderson commissioned drummer Lucas Gillan to participate. Gillan decided to use his band Many Blessings to provide a personal angle on Herbie Nichols Trio (Blue Note, 1956). Since Many Blessings is a piano-less quartet (with Quentin Coaxum, trumpet; Jim Schram, tenor saxophone; Daniel Thatcher, bass) and Nichols was a pianist who never recorded with horns, there’s room for interpretation. Since both horn players are pretty fluent, you never miss the chordal instrument. And since Gillan values Nichols’ delightful melodies, which shine with good humor, spirit and form transcend instrumentation. But be careful playing this record, because it’s bound to make you smile a lot. And like mom said, your face might get stuck that way.

Bill Meyer

Frode Haltli — Border Woods (Hubro)

Border Woods by Frode Haltli

In the woods, it’s not always easy to see where the borders lie. That zone of uncertainty is exactly where Norwegian accordionist situates this project. Not only does he include a Swede, nyckelharpa (a Swedish keyed fiddle) player Emilia Amper, to join his otherwise Norwegian ensemble. The music itself occupies a shadowy terrain in which classical composition from different centuries mixes with Norwegian folk themes and the squeezebox-rich atmosphere of pre-rock continental café music. Percussionists Håken Stene and Eirik Raude are equally adept at Steve Reich-like mallet patterns and bowed metal atmospherics, which operate as a backdrop for Amper and Haltli’s stark and moody melodies.

Bill Meyer

Matt Jencik — Dream Character (Hands in the Dark)

Dream Character by Matt Jencik

Implodes’ guitarist Matt Jencik applied thickly fuzzed-out and massively reverbed guitarscapes to Black Earth and Recurring Dream, the band’s two excellent albums for Kranky. On Jencik’s 2017 solo debut, Weird Times, stripping away Implodes’ vocals and post-punk-leaning rhythm section left his guitar to roam like a wraith, swathed in static, tracing simple yet affecting arcs against a turbulent backdrop of noisy guitar loops. Ambient rock, if you will. On his new album, Dream Character, his instrumental palette has expanded to include bass and keys (not that the sound sources are especially easy to discern), but his aesthetic focus remains as tight as ever. The result is hypnotic, offering a satisfyingly rich blend of tones with just enough movement to keep the listener entranced. While Jencik is clearly venturing into shadowy realms — signposted by song titles such as “Dead Comet Return,” “Night Gallery Pause” and “Lifeless Body Train Ride” — there’s often a shaft of light cast into the gloom, whether via brighter tones or intervals. The final track asks “R U OK” — like most music of this kind, it offers a reassuringly melancholy blanket of sound within which to take refuge.

Tim Clarke

Pedro Kastelijns — Som das Luzis (OAR!)

Som das Luzis by Pedro Kastelijns

Pedro Kastelijns hails from the same trippy Brazilian scene as Boogarins, and likewise, favors a brightly colored, soft-focus form of psychedelia that evokes Love, Os Mutantes and early aughts Animal Collective. A few cuts — “Olhos da Raposa,” for instance — tap into a beachy bossa nova vibe in the languid guitars and junk yard percussion. Others feel less rooted in place, and touched by an arch, fog-fuzzed indie rock exuberance (“Som das Luzis,” “Flux Estelar”) that brings to mind Ariel Pink. Kastelijns sings in a wobbly falsetto much of the time, and accompanies himself on very DIY sounding drums, guitars and keyboards, and there isn’t an indelible hook on the disc, despite the aspirational “Pop Gem” titles of two of the cuts. Listening is a little like being stoned—that is, pleasant, mildly disorienting and hard to remember afterwards.

Jennifer Kelly

Julian Loida — Wallflower (Julian Loida)

Wallflower by Julian Loida

Gateway experiences are often remembered with mild embarrassment; just because something pointed you in a particular direction doesn’t mean it’s the best example you��re ever going to hear. Julian Loida’s Wallflower might serve as a gateway to minimalism and contemporary composed percussion. Its ten pieces, which are mostly constructed around repetitive vibraphone and piano figure, are unfailingly melodic. The compositions are succinct and unmarred with sudden changes, ensuring that listeners will not be taxed or distracted over each one’s course. Nor is he going to throw you off with extended techniques; he’s quite comfortable working with the vibraphone’s familiar, dreamy zone. But while he’s not going to wear anyone out, he doesn’t talk down to anyone, either. This music communicates directly, and it feels sincere in its simplicity. Gift it to the teenaged symphonic percussionist or budding ambient listener in your life.

Bill Meyer

Aurora Nealand / Steve Marquette / Anton Hatwich / Paul Thibodeaux — Kobra Quartet (Astral Spirits)

Kobra Quartet by Aurora Nealand / Steve Marquette / Anton Hatwich / Paul Thibodeaux

Around a century back, jazz progenitors King Oliver and Louis Armstrong travelled between New Orleans and Chicago, playing in both cities. While the two towns have gone on to develop jazz heritages with very different characters, a cadre of musicians has been cutting edge players from each back together in recent years. In a way, this isn’t new; the late Fred Anderson and Kidd Jordan enacted annual summits on the Velvet Lounge for years, and Jeb Bishop and Jeff Albert made the lemons of Hurricane Katrina into a sweet-sounding brew called the Lucky 7s. But guitarist Steve Marquette’s Instigation Festivals, which have taken place in both cities, have fostered a more complex combination of talents involving both cities’ avant-gardes. This quartet began as a free improv encounter involving two musicians from each city, but it turned out so well that the name of this tape became the name of a new band. Their music may build on past examples, but it’s definitely of its moment. Marquette’s resonant feedback and Anton Hatwich’s droning double bass bridge the electro-acoustic divide, and Paul Thibodeaux’s elastic beats suggest internal reverie more than second-line grooves. But it’s Aurora Nealand’s electronically processed singing and glassy tendrils of accordion that center this music within an otherworldly zone, albeit one where it’s still possible to stumble out of a late-night party in a black hole and find yourself blinking in the middle of a street party.

Bill Meyer

Junius Paul — Ism (International Anthem)

Ism by Junius Paul

Junius Paul is a shit-hot Chicago jazz bassist, a frequent collaborator with Makaya McCraven, one of the younger members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and a long-time habitué of the Velvet Lounge on the South Side. On this, his first album as bandleader, he exhibits a startling versatility, switching from acoustic to electric and back, spinning into heady frenzies (“You Are Free to Choose”) and pulling back into monastic discipline in minimalist tone poems (“Bowl Hit”). Paul is not above hitting a life-affirming groove, a la the laid back skronky swagger of “Baker’s Dozen,” but he’s also not married to it, witness the smouldery bowed abstractions of “Ma and Dad.” “Spockey Chainsey Has Re-Emerged” takes up a smoking quarter of the album’s duration, Paul’s restless bass pulsing under a fever dream of wild squalls of trumpet, luminous electric keyboards and a surge and roll of drumming. There’s plenty of great bass here, for fans of that sound, but Paul’s real strength is as a band leader and composer, leading a daring group of fellow travelers — Isaiah Spencer, Justin Dillard, Rajiv Halim, and Jim Baker — towards parts unknown.

Jennifer Kelly

Ploughshare — Tellurian Insurgency (I, Voidhanger)

Tellurian Insurgency by PLOUGHSHARE

This new EP from Ploughshare curdles and oozes with ugly blackened death metal — or perhaps in this case, it’s deathy black metal? As metal subgenres and sub-subgenres (really, it’s getting Melvillean at this point…) hybridize and mutate, the community of engaged listeners and creators sometimes gets overly invested in categorization and species identification. And there’s so much to observe, out in the wild spaces of culture. To wit: For three years now, this bunch of weirdos from Canberra has been churning out songs with unpleasant titles like “The Urinary Chalice Held Aloft” and “In Offal, Salvation.” But if you can groove with the scatological wordplay, the riffs are pretty good. The record’s A-side, which includes “Abreactive Trance,” suggests that these guys (guys? no names are available) have spent some serious time listening to Deathspell Omega’s Paracletus. Let’s hope Ploughshare doesn’t share that other band’s irredeemable politics. Just what is a “Tellurian” insurgency? A fantasy of the Earthball’s primitive lifeforce striking back? More facile chest-beating about “anti-human” noise? And just how serious or cynical is the band’s appropriation of that famous image from the Book of Isaiah? Hard to say. But the guitar tone cuts more like a sword.

Jonathan Shaw

Omar Souleyman—Schlon (Mad Decent)

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Omar Souleyman, Syria’s best known wedding singer turned global recording phenomenon (he’s made over 500 records), brings joy in a world of trouble. Souleyman hails from Ras al-Ayn in northeastern Syria, an area that has, over the last several years, been fought over by Syria, the Kurds, Isis and the Turkish Army. He’s been living in Turkey since 2011, but things are not so great there either. So, it is remarkable, in its way, that Souleyman’s latest album, a mash-up of traditional dabke, disco and techno, is so very celebratory. Rave meets traditional wedding dance in the synth-y, string-slashing “Abou Zilif,” a cut that situates a stirring, primal male-sung chorus amid a Levantine-flavored disco. “Layle” likewise moves fast and relentlessly, bursts of saz (Azad Salih) winding through thickets of multi-toned drums. It hits hard and repeatedly, and if this is what people dance to at weddings in rural Syria, hats off. I’m exhausted just sitting on the couch.

Jennifer Kelly

SunnO))) — Pyroclasts (Southern Lord)

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Pyroclasts is one of those releases that, viewed from one angle, seems to be at best inessential. Drone metal titans SunnO))) have already given 2019, in the form of Life Metal (which, as Dusted’s Jonathan Shaw puts it, is “a record that seeks the sublime”), an extremely essential record. If you were only going to listen to one album from them this year, that one is the one to start with. This one, by contrast, is literally a collection of some of the drones that Stephen O’Malley, Greg Anderson and their various guests and compatriots would start each day in the studio with when recording Life Metal. And yet, if you take a slightly different angle on it, Pyroclasts (named for the aftereffects of volcanic eruption) starts feeling more than anything else like a product of generosity. These were literally the exercises/rituals they began each working day with to get in the right frame of mind to make Life Metal; it would be entirely understandable if they didn’t want to share them with the world. The result both suffers and benefits from the much narrowed focus compared to their big brother; it doesn’t do everything Life Metal does, but if all you want is just under 44 minutes of straightforwardly brain-frying drone, Pyroclasts is here for you.

Ian Mathers

Horace Tapscott with the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and the Great Voice of UGMAA — Why Don’t You Listen? (Dark Tree)

Why Don't You Listen? - Live at LACMA, 1998 by Horace Tapscott with the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and the Great Voice of UGMAA

Recent lauded efforts by Angel Bat Dawid and Damon Locks suggest that socially conscious spiritual jazz is sending a message that makes a lot of sense in 2019. If such music speaks to you, consider checking out the work of Horace Tapscott, and particularly this welcome archival find. He was a composer, bandleader and pianist based in Los Angeles who led the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra from the 1960s until his death in 1999. Inspired by big bands lead by Duke Ellington and Sun Ra but concerned with celebrating and uniting the community where he lived, he fashioned music that into an exposition and affirmation of pride in pan-African and African-American ways and culture. This live recording of his ten-piece band in performance with a similarly-sized choir named the Union of God Musicians and Artists Ascension puts a hard stop on his timeline; it was the last time he played piano in public, since the aggressive cancer that ultimately killed him would first limit him to conducting in last appearances. There’s nothing wrong with playing here; he, saxophonist Michael Session, and trombonist Phil Ranelin all essay impassioned solos over the Arkestra’s massed percussion. But it’s the voices, led by singer Dwight Tribble, that embody Tapscott’s communal commitment and articulate his cultural concerns.

Bill Meyer

TENGGER — Spiritual 2 (Beyond Beyond is Beyond)

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It’s hard to create the kind of New Age-y post-kosmische psych drone that TENGGER does without having some kind of mystical angle, but the travelling musical family known as TENGGER leans into that harder than some. The mantra to focus on for this fine follow up to 2017’s recently reissued collection of harmonium, voice and synth-jams Spiritual is “if you’re looking at something, you should recognize that there is something invisible behind it”. Like most similar insights, let alone ones meant to be applied to a work of art, you’re probably going to get what you put into that one out of it, which means if you’re on TENGGER’s wavelength you probably already feel what they’re going for. Much of Spiritual 2 is fully up to the standard of its predecessor (the gently fried “See”, the suspended vocals of “Kyrie”, the softly pulsing extended length of “Wasserwellen”), but they show the most promising signs of growth when they adopt a bit of formal rigour. On the three-part dilatory experiment of “High,” “Middle” and “Low,” just subjecting the same melody to different speeds brings out something clarifying about the whole sound. You can really start to glimpse whatever invisible is behind it.

Ian Mathers

Various Artists — Pop Ambient 2020 (Kompakt)

Pop Ambient 2020 by Various Artists

Kompakt celebrates twenty years of the Pop Ambient series with a new collection of beatless luminance featuring stalwarts Joachim Spieth, Thomas Fehlman and Markus Guentner as well as some of the lesser-known names on the label’s roster.

Thore Pfeiffer’s “Urquell” — an acoustic guitar over an unobtrusive bed of synths and scratchy strings — sets the mood for the subsequent 85 minutes. Tracks float by lulling the listener into a state between dreams and catatonia. Good then that Maria Estrella reminds us to breathe on Morgan Wurde’s “Laesst Los,” a quite lovely track built on string beds, treated whispers and Estrella’s gentle instructions. The only vaguely unsettling moments come during Fehlman’s “Liebesperlen” with its lysergic take on deep house. NZ based composer Andrew Thomas rounds off the collection with two short pieces of atmospheric piano based contemporary minimalism that veer into Max Richter territory and are all the better for it. Pop Ambient 2020 is a warm bath; comfortable and enveloping without the depths to threaten, it passes by with few demands, diffident to the point of vanishing. Perfect for the next session in a hyperbaric chamber or MRI where at least there are whirrs and clicks to keep you alert.

Andrew Forell

Winds of Egotism — Winds of Egotism (Death’s Radiance)

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When Plato wrote his cave allegory, he couldn’t have Winds of Egotism in mind, yet his allegory became a reality with the band’s self-titled album. The band members haven’t left the cave and instead smuggled the gear in (even the country of origin is undisclosed). The resulting music raw, monotonic and unpretentious enough to be mistaken for drone. The guitar excavates sounds so primitive that it sounds more like an echo from the cave walls than a guitar. Couldn’t they ask Satan for better equipment? This EP is 17 minutes long total, just two short untitled tracks, with no audible difference between them. If true black metal is music that which doesn’t sound like black metal, then this is it. Plato or no Plato.

Ray Garraty

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