#michael banabila

[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

[randomvarious]

People Like Us - “Sugar & Splice” 4am Eternal by Osymyso 2000 Experimental / Sound Collage / Avant-Garde / Plunderphonics

People Like Us is the stage name of East Sussex, UK’s Vicki Bennett, a highly accomplished and respected DJ and sound collage artist. To quote music critic Heather Phares, “Bennett's works mix music, dialogue, and found sounds from old vinyl into expressive, amusing compositions” She debuted in 1993 and continues to release music to this day, having released a new album just less than two weeks ago. From 2003 to 2017, she hosted a radio show on New York’s famed and crazed “anything goes” radio station WFMU. She has also been given full access to the BBC’s massive archive so she can pursue her artistic visions and create more music the way only she knows how.

This one’s a bit short, clocking in at a mere one minute and forty seconds, but Osymyso mixes in a good chunk of the original work for this abstract trip hop / IDM mix he made for electronic music magazine Mixmag. People Like Us uses a variance of samples to create this song. The prominent sample, which repeats through the entirety here, features a girl, probably no more than 10 years old, singing for less than a second, backed by strings, bass, and drum. The song is constructed in sections, each broken up by a short organ flourish. After each flourish, People Like Us adds new sounds to accompany the foundational sample, experimenting with a variety of unintelligible sounds of deep and low frequencies. About two-thirds of the way through, Osymyso begins to mix in the succeeding track in the mix, “Milos Came By” by Michael Banabila, a similarly-minded artist to People Like Us. Osymyso pulls off the difficult task of blending two sound collages and making it sound cohesive.

A very unique approach to song construction. Maybe best heard when under the influence of something psychotropic, as it is quite trippy. Recommend if you dig Madlib instrumentals.

[cluboftigerghost]

More on this 302nd weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Gronkytonk: Record a single in the genre introduced in Malka Older’s novel Infomacracy) at: http://ift.tt/2hDfsB6 More on the Disquiet Junto at: http://ift.tt/2pEMRhk Subscribe to project announcements here: http://ift.tt/1iFaa50 Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: http://ift.tt/2yGyQIc There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion. Photo associated with this project is by Michael Banabila. It’s used via Flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license: flic.kr/p/EqsRd5 http://ift.tt/nZVAYA

[priceless-words-blog]

The Girl Who Loved The Sky

by Anita Endrezze

Little Girl, Big Sky by Michael Banabila

Outside the second grade room, the jacaranda tree blossomed into purple lanterns, the papery petals drifted, darkening the windows. Inside, the room smelled like glue. The desks were made of yellowed wood, the tops littered with eraser rubbings, rulers, and big fat pencils. Colored chalk meant special days. The walls were covered with precise bright tulips and charts with shiny stars by certain names. There, I learned how to make butter by shaking a jar until the pale cream clotted into one sweet mass. There, I learned that numbers were fractious beasts with dens like dim zeros. And there, I met a blind girl who thought the sky tasted like cold metal when it rained and whose eyes were always covered with the bruised petals of her lids.

She loved the formless sky, defined only by sounds, or the cool umbrellas of clouds. On hot, still days we listened to the sky falling like chalk dust. We heard the noon whistle of the pig-mash factory, smelled the sourness of home-bound men.

I had no father; she had no eyes; we were best friends. The other girls drew shaky hopscotch squares on the dusty asphalt, talked about pajama parties, weekend cookouts, and parents who bought sleek-finned cars Alone, we sat in the canvas swings, our shoes digging into the sand, then pushing, until we flew high over their heads, our hands streaked with red rust from the chains that kept us safe.

I was born blind, she said, an act of nature. Sure, I thought, like birds born without wings, trees without roots. I didn't understand. The day she moved I saw the world clearly: the sky backed away from me like a departing father. I sat under the jacaranda, catching the petals in my palm, enclosing them until my fist was another lantern hiding a small and bitter flame.