Monday, April 21, 2025

Music Week

April archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44070 [44035) rated (+35), 24 [33] unrated (-9).

I'm still in taking-it-easy mode, hoping that a few more days (or weeks or months) will aid in recovering from recent traumas -- I'm more optimistic about the eye surgery and the end of winter (although the last couple days have been pretty miserable) than about the world at large -- and give me time to plot a sensible path forward. I go to see the optometrist mid-week, which should give me a second opinion, some numbers, and possibly some answers on my eyes.

My impression is mostly favorable. I watch TV and go on walks without glasses. I can drive either with or without -- probably a bit better without, but with is good enough I've kept using them. I can still read, not great but no worse than before. (I've never used glasses for reading, so one question is whether they'd make a difference now.) Computer work is still iffy, so I might need some correction just for that. Many things are brighter, and that can cause some strain. It's also a good excuse not to kick myself for not getting much writing or programming done.

I did manage to publish a Loose Tabs on Thursday, and have added a couple items over the weekend, including a couple obituaries/remembrances of the late Francis Davis. I have a longstanding project to update and upgrade his Jazz Critics Poll website. That's on hold for the moment as we try to figure out what to do without him. Meanwhile, I've already collected a couple bits for the next Loose Tabs post. No regular schedule, but the outlet is there if I need it.

I'm expecting this week to be super lightweight. Aside from the doctor, I have some house work scheduled, and some shopping planned. I found some interesting things in the demo queue this week, although the A- albums (except for Dean Wareham) barely made the lower reaches the A-list. Several misses were also quite close, probably hampered by limited plays, with one becoming the first HM I posted a link to on Bluesky. I'm up to 96 followers there.

New records reviewed this week:

Benefits: Constant Noise (2025, Invada): North English duo, ominous spoken word vocals with electropop beats. B+(**) [sp]

Peter Brötzmann/Jason Adasiewicz/Steve Noble/John Edwards: The Quartet: Cafe Oto, London, February, 10 & 11, 2023 (2023 [2025], Otoroku): German saxophonist, one of the founders of the European avant-garde, recorded an enormous amount from 1967 up to his death, at 82, in June, 2023, a few months after this two-night, four set performance (140:28, available on 2-CD, with a 4-LP box and a 2-LP edit in the works), backed with vibes, drums, and bass. Hard to make fine distinctions among his work, but this seems like the sort of monumental capstone one can only imagine a career ending with. A- [bc]

Anla Courtis Ja Lehtisalo: 1972 (2022-24 [2025], Full Connect): Duo, two long-established experimental guitarists (plus long list of other instruments), both born in 1972 ("an era when sound was an experiment"), the former in Argentina, the latter in Finland (first name Jussi; "ja" here seems to be Finnish for "and"). Some remarkable rough-hewn ambient for a world on edge. A- [bc]

Christopher Dammann: Sextet (2024 [2025], Out of Your Head): Free jazz bassist from Chicago, first album, but has side-credits going back to 2014 (3.5.7 Ensemble, which I vaguely recall). Group here with trumpet (James Davis), two saxophonists (Jon Irabagon and Edward Wilkerson Jr), piano (Mabel Kwan), and drums (Scott Clark). Starts solid, stays solid, until the end when they almost break out. B+(***) [cd]

John Dikeman/Sun-Mi Hong/Aaron Lumley/Marta Warelis: Old Adam on Turtle Island (2022 [2025], Relative Pitch): Dutch, or at least Amsterdam-based, improv group, respectively: sax, drums, bass, piano. B [bc]

Trygve Fiske Sextet: The Flowers. The Dance. The Rumble and the Stumble. (2025, Slaraffensongs): Norwegian bassist, side credits from 2004, not clear how many (if any) he should be considered leader of (he's used Waldemar as middle name, and two albums are credited to Waldemar 4). This with Per Texas Johansson, Erik Kimestad Pedersen, Morten Qvenild, Oscar Gronberg, and Hans Hulbćkmo. B+(**) [sp]

Food House: Two House (2025, self-released): I've seen this co-credited to Gupi and Fraxiom, but as far as I can tell, they are Food House, not extra hangers on. Hyperpop, or bubblegum bass, or cartoon music sent schizophrenically awry. Not my thing, but probably more amusing than Skrillex. B [sp]

GFOTY: Influenzer (2025, Girlfriend): British glitch-pop singer-songwriter Polly-Louisa Salmon, goes by acronym for GirlFriend of the Year, I heard (but didn't much like) a 2016 EP, which was followed by a 2019 mini-album and now two LPs. I don't get the attraction of glitchy hyperpop but I'm not totally lost here, or totally disinterested, but this could wear thin. B+(*) [sp]

The Hemphill Stringtet: Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill (2023 [2025], Out of Your Head): Hemphill (1938-95) was an alto saxophonist, but also notable as a composer, arranger, and organizer -- a co-founder of the Black Artist Group (BAG) in St. Louis, and later of the World Saxophone Quartet, where he was de facto leader even if others, like David Murray, were better known. Some of his early recordings were duos with Abdul Wadud on cello, so the notion of forming a string quartet to play his music must have seemed natural. Two violins (Curtis Stewart and Sam Bardfeld), viola (Stephanie Griffin), and cello (Tomeka Reid). Although the notes say "all music by Julius Hemphill," a big chunk of it was originally composed by Mingus, and more was improvised. B+(***) [cd]

Jacob Felix Heule/Teté Leguía/Sanishta Rivero/Martín Escalante: An Inscrutable Bodily Discomforting Thing (2021 [2025], Kettle Hole): Percussionist, from Oakland, ten or so albums since 2004, mostly collaborations, Bill Orcutt is about as famous as they get, and another 30 or so side credits. The others play: bass, voice/electronics, sax. One 40:11 piece which gets uncomfortably noisy but then backs off a bit and haves fun with the mess. B+(***) [cd]

Homeboy Sandman & Illingsworth: Dancing Tree (2025, self-released, EP): Four tracks, 13:58. "Money don't make you rich." "You can only learn from experience/ so be curious." "Who wants to sit here and think that we can do something? It's fun to just blame somebody else." B+(***) [bc]

Homeboy Sandman & Yeyts.: Corn Hole Legend (2025, self-released, EP): Five tracks, 10:14. Nice song about Thanksgiving. B+(*) [bc]

Eunhye Jeong/Michael Bisio Duo: Morning Bells Whistle Bright (2023 [2025], ESP-Disk): Piano and bass duo, with one solo track each, but also joined for four tracks (three in the middle, plus the closer) by Joe McPhee (tenor sax) and Jay Rosen (drums). In some ways this seems slight, but every detail signifies. A- [cd]

Ingrid Laubrock: Purposing the Air (2022-24 [2025], Pyroclastic, 2CD): German saxophonist, based in New York, many albums since 1998, none like this one, where she composed music for the poetry of Erica Hunt, each set performed by a vocal-instrument duo: Fay Victor and Mariel Roberts (cello), Sara Serpa and Matt Mitchell (piano), Theo Bleckmann and Ben Monder (guitar), and Rachel Calloway and Ari Streisfeld (violin). No saxophone that I noticed, although I have little patience for this style of art song. B- [cd]

Will Mason Quartet: Hemlocks, Peacocks (2024 [2025], New Focus): Drummer, lives in Rhode Island, side credits since 2009, at least one previous album as leader, this a quartet with Anna Webber (tenor sax), Daniel Fisher-Lochhead (alto sax), and deVon Russell Gray (keyboards), on a multi-movement composition inspired by LaMonte Young. B+(**) [bc]

Joe McPhee & Paal Nilssen-Love: I Love Noise (2022 [2024], PNL): Spoken word intro: "I love noise, because it can be organized into music"; "I think my love of noise is always in the process of becoming." Such generalizations evolve into a sermon on jazz history, touching on Coltrane and Ayler, with drum accents, until McPhee ultimately (19 minutes in) lets his tenor sax take over. B+(***) [bc]

Paal Nilssen-Love Circus With the Ex Guitars: Turn Thy Loose (2024 [2025], PNL): Norwegian drummer from the Thing and many other groups, premiered this septet in a 2021 recording, replacing his guitarist with not just Andy Moor and Terrie Hessells -- who recorded as "the Ex Guitars" in Lean Left with Ken Vandermark-- but also Arnold de Boer, all of the Dutch postpunk group the Ex. The vocals (Juliana Venter, also de Boer) don't bother me here, and may even be a plus, but the pauses and quiet spots seem like a waste, especially compared to what they can do at full blast. B+(***) [bc]

Adam O'Farrill: For These Steets (2022 [2025], Out of Your Head): Trumpet player, father and grandfather were famous Cuban musicians, which he also knows a thing or two about, but he's more likely to hang out with free jazz types, collecting here a pretty stellar octet: Mary Halvorson (guitar), Patricia Brennan (vibes), David Leon (alto sax/flute), Kevin Sun (tenor sax/clarinet), Kalun Laung (trombone/euphonium), Tyrone Allen II (bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). I'm struggling, as my instinct says this is too fancy, but the only thing that might keep this from becoming one of the year's top-rated albums is that it's on a tiny label few have heard of. (Note that Brennan and Halvorson have won two of the last three FDJC Polls.) A- [cd]

Samo Salamon & Ra Kalam Bob Moses Orchestra: Dream Suites Vol. 1 (2023 [2025], Samo): Guitarist and percussionist wrote three long pieces (24:46, 13:38, 17:12) for large ensembles of 19, 16. and 18, total 27 musicians, nearly all familiar names, which add marks of individuality to the collective reverie. A- [cd]

Jaysun Silver: No Excuses (2025, self-released): Punkish, lo-fi, first album after an EP, 10 short songs in 19:07, has a sense of humor (Bandcamp page says "Brooklyn's best musician" and uses tags "amazing, classic, masterpiece"). B+(*) [bc]

Skrillex: Fuck U Skrillex U Think Ur Andy Warhol but Ur Not!! <3 (2025, Atlantic/Owsla): Electronica producer Sonny Moore, from Los Angeles, gained a measure of fame for a series of 2011-14 albums, then nothing until a pair in 2023 and now this, which I am assured is "continuously engaging and hilariously silly" -- traits I didn't come remotely close to being able to confirm. B- [sp]

The Third Mind: Live Mind (2024 [2025], Yep Roc): Roots rock band, best known members are Dave Alvin (from Blasters, with a long solo career) and Victor KRummenacher (from Camper van Beethoven), with vocals by Jesse Sykes, who fronted the Sweet Thereafter for several 2003-11 albums. B+(**) [sp]

The Tubs: Cotton Crown (2025, Trouble in Mind): Welsh indie band, Owen Williams is singer-guitarist, second album. Some jangle. B+(*) [sp]

Mathilde Grooss Viddal/Friensemblet: Tri Vendur Blés Ho I Den Hřgaste Sky (2025, Losen): Norwegian saxophonist, has a half-dozen albums since 2006, leads a ten-piece group through a set of pieces based on folk themes, where the folksingers (for better or worse) seem to have the upper hand. B+(*) [sp]

Dean Wareham: That's the Price of Loving Me (2025, Carpark): Singer-songwriter, originally from New Zealand, moved to New York as a teenager, founded the bands Galaxie 500 (1988-90) and Luna (1992-2006 & 2017, overlapping several albums as Dean & Britta)), with solo albums since 2013, this his fourth, produced by the mononymous Kramer in a sonic nod to Galaxie 500. Actually reminded me more of the Go-Betweens, but calmer and in its own way weirder. The song in German is another plus for me, even before I identified it as a Nico cover. A- [sp]

Christian Winther: Sculptures From Under the City Ice (2025, Earthly Habit): Norwegian singer-songwriter, plays guitar, has a couple of previous albums. Group includes a jazz drummer I recognize, and the album eventually skews that direction, although I also wound up thinking of Arto Lindsay's skronk. B+(**) [sp]

Wolf Eyes: Wolf Eyes X Anthony Braxton (2025, ESP-Disk): The former is an electronic music duo from Detroit, Nate Young (electronics, vocals, harmonica) and John Olson (pipes, electronics) that has an insane number of albums since 1998 (Discogs says 130). The saxophonist you most likely know has even more albums, going back to 1968. I'm on record as hating his 1971 solo album, For Alto, but acknowledge that among the few people who can stand such harsh horror are huge fans -- it garnered a rare Penguin Guide Crown. This is every bit as ugly, and possibly as remarkable. B+(*) [cd]

Y: Y (2025, Hideous Mink, EP): English group, first release, 4 songs, 13:30, vocals recall Lydia Lunch, maybe because rhythm touches on New York no wave, goosed with sax riffs. B+(*) [sp]

James Zito: Zito's Jump (2024 [2025], self-released): Guitarist, based in New York, seems to be his first album -- Discogs led me to a trumpet player of that name, 1923-2014, who played in many big bands, from Tommy Dorsey to Gerald Wilson -- a mainstream quintet with Chris Lewis (tenor sax/flute), Luther Allison (piano), Rodney Whitaker (bass), and Joe Farnsworth (drums). Mostly originals, but they liked "After You've Gone" enough to include it twice. B+(*) [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Peter Brötzmann Trio: Hurricane (2015 [2025], Old Heaven Books): As with Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, I expect that the late German saxophonist's posthumous oeuvre will eventually match, in quantity if not in quality, what he released during his lifetime -- in his case a relatively long one. This was recorded at a festival in Shenzhen, with Sabu Toyozumi on drums and Jason Adasiewicz on vibraphone, for a bit of tinkle that first struck me as an oriental touch, but adds its own dimension. As for the title, this barely reaches Category 1 intensity, which is the way I prefer him. B+(***) [bc]

Charles Mingus: Mingus in Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts (1977 [2025], Resonance, 2CD): A tremendous bassist from the start, his genius period as a composer ran from roughly 1956-64, although he got a second wind in the early 1970s with a new quartet that went independent under the joint leadership of George Adams and Don Pullen. His health soon deteriorated, and he died in 1979 (age 56), so anything from his last few years doesn't come with great expectations. I found this one unsettling at first, but flashes of brilliance kept surfacing, most from compositions that undoubtedly have been done better elsewhere, but he had an uncanny knack for breathing fresh life into everything he touched. And for making small groups -- this one especially notable for Jack Walrath (trumpet) and Ricky Ford (tenor sax). Also, he closes both sets with his own solo piano. A- [cd]

Charles Mingus: Reincarnations (1960 [2024], Candid): The bassist, coming off a peak year that included Blues and Roots on Atlantic and Mingus Ah Um on Columbia recorded three albums for Nat Hentoff's label in 1960 -- two nearly as good as his masterpieces, plus a third set of scraps. After the revived label reissued the catalog, they found more scraps, which they fashioned into Incarnations, and more scraps here: five tracks, 48:30, with various musicians, notably Eric Dolphy (3 tracks, on flute, bass clarinet, and alto sax), and Roy Eldridge (2 tracks, on trumpet). B+(**) [sp]

Spectacular Diagnostics: Raw Game [Ten Year Edition] (2015 [2025], Vinyl Digital): Chicago hip-hop producer Robert Krums, reissue of first album, twelve tracks with nearly as many guest rappers (including Jeremiah Jae, Quelle Chris, Vic Spencer, Westwide Gunn & Conway the Machine). B+(***)

Old music:

Charles Mingus/Max Roach/Eric Dolphy/Roy Eldridge/Jo Jones [Jazz Artists Guild]: Newport Rebels (1961 [2024], Candid): Hard to parse this album cover, as the title could be the group name or vice versa, or either could be "Jazz Artists Guild," but the names are too big to ignore -- although Jones is the only one to play on all five tracks, and other notables show up on the roster here and there, including Booker Little, Kenny Dorham, Benny Bailey, Jimmy Knepper, Tommy Flanagan, Abbey Lincoln, and a couple lesser-knowns (like Peck Morrison on bass, twice), but I don't see where Roach plays. B+(***) [sp]

Charles Mingus: Charles Mingus and the Newport Rebels (1960 [2010], Candid): Another compilation from the same sessions, but of six songs, only one appeared on Newport Rebels, and while the cast of characters is similar (Dolphy, Eldridge, Flanagan, Knepper, Jones, and Richmond appear here), some new names also slip in (from the cover: Ted Cuson, Booker Ervin, Paul Bley). B+(**) [sp]

Charles Mingus: The Complete Town Hall Concert (1962 [1994], Blue Note): This was reportedly a "live workshop" of music meant to be recorded later, including two parts of a two-hour composition ("Epitaph") that was ultimately recorded by Gunther Schuller in 1989. But when United Artists released 36 minutes of this in 1962, it was widely deemed a disaster, with this later 68-minute CD merely aimed "to clean up the mess." A very big band: 7 trumpets, 6 trombones, 10 reeds (including an oboe), 2 pianists (Jaki Byard and Toshiko Akiyoshi), 2 bassists (Mingus plus Milt Hinton), Dannie Richmond on drums (but with extra percussionists), just one guitar (Les Spann). B+(*) [sp]

Phew: Phew (1981, Pass): Japanese singer Hiromi Moritani, started in post-punk group Aunt Sally, recorded this first album with members of Can (Conny Plank, Holger Czukay, Jaki Liebezeit), kept the name as an alias for more albums after 1987, including work with Anton Fier, Bill Laswell, Jim O'Rourke, and members of Raincoats, Boredoms, and Einstürzende Neubauten. This is very much part of the moment when bands like Cabaret Voltaire were being formed. Probably someone to study further. B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Alberto Pinton's Relentless: Allt Större Klarhet (Moserobie) [03-14]
  • Ryan Truesdell: Shades of Sound: Gil Evans Project Live at Jazz Standard Vol. 2 (Outside In Music) [05-30]

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