|
An occasional blog about populist politics and popular music, not necessarily at the same time. LinksLocal Links Social Media My Other Websites Music Politics Others Networking Music DatabaseArtist Search: Website SearchGoogle: Recent Reading
Music DatabaseArtist Search: Website SearchGoogle: |
Music Week [550 - 559]Monday, November 9, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25726 [25691] rated (+35), 439 [439] unrated (-0). Fall is coming to Wichita several weeks later than usual this year, but we raked up a first bag of leaves yesterday (many more are still on the trees, but no longer green). That got me started thinking about EOY lists. My own lists-in-progress currently show 59 jazz and 42 non-jazz new records on the A-list (reissues/historic music: 6 + 5). I added eight records to those lists this week. Michael Tatum reviewed the Chills in his latest column, and also tipped me off on two of this week's three rap albums (Blackalicious and Peaceable Solutions, although I was vaguely aware of the former). The third rap record was Paris, reviewed by Robert Christgau a while back. I had put it off because it's a double, and only gave it one spin, but it's so solid it's in my shopping basket (along with Laurie Anderson, Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, and Sleaford Mods) as a possible P&J contender. Four jazz records too. Jörg Fischer has been sending me CDs for a couple years and Spicy Unit finally hit the spot. The other two -- Ochs-Robinson Duo and Michael Zerang & the Blue Lights -- I had to stream. I spent a big chunk of time last week scanning through The Free Jazz Collective's blog and adding all the new 2015 releases they reviewed to my 2015 release list file. I don't find their ratings to be very reliable, but they do cover a lot of avant-jazz. I probably added a hundred albums, noted a couple dozen to look up, and listened to a handful. The Zerang album is the Mars Williams-Dave Rempis joust of my dreams (and its companion is either more or less depending on your perspective). And the Larry Ochs duo is as clear a showcase for his powerful tenor sax as I can recall. The trawl also located a few links below. The fourth jazz record was one I got in the mail and played a lot (4-5 times), wavering on the fence. Josh Berman is actually in Zerang's band, but he is better heard on his own new trio record. Probably would have been an easier call had I not played it right after Ochs and the two Zerangs and started worrying that everything was sounding A-worthy. (As I'm writing this, I'm playing random shit from the queue and not having that problem at all.)
The release list file is currently approaching 2500 entries (2389; about one-third are jazz: 813). I'll keep growing the file for a while, but eventually it will give way to an EOY List Aggregate file, like the one I did last year. EOY lists start showing up in mid-November, especially in the UK (which probably has more music magazines than the US does). The counter in the music tracking file shows 751 records either rated or in hand this year. Unlikely I'll hit 1000 this year, as I have done a couple of times in the past. Recommended music links: The first few links come from the Free Jazz Collective crawl.
PS: Sometime back I incorrectly got the group and album title swapped: should be The Spanish Donkey: Raoul (2015, Rare Noise). Group members are: Joe Morris, Jamie Saft, and Mike Pride. Grade: B. New records rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, November 2, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25691 [25653] rated (+38), 439 [447] unrated (-8). A busy week, in all regards except unpacking. Rated count is back up after last week's dip. I got a jump there by looking at everything I hadn't previously heard on Alfred Soto's "third quarter report" (ASAP Rocky, Speedy Ortiz, Florence + the Machine, Brandon Flowers, Angel Haze, Destroyer, Robert Forster, Janet Jackson). Some good records there, but nothing I especially loved. Still, the exercise did send me back to Forster's best-of (didn't get to Grant McLennan's companion comp, something I should remedy; at least with McLennan I'm more familiar with the source albums, a couple of which I've A-listed -- Watershed and Horsebreaker Star). Most importantly, Michael Tatum published a new A Downloader's Diary last week. (My archive copy is here.) Not a lot there I hadn't heard already -- Deerhunter, Forster, and Destroyer are in my list this week but I got them earlier, without the benefit of Tatum's advice. (I came up with slightly lower grades for Deerhunter, Forster, and Jill Scott -- any of which could be chalked up to lack of patience with records a bit outside of my wheelhouse.) Aside from ratings quibbles, I should point out that the Heems and even more so the Kendrick Lamar reviews rank among the year's best music writing. I did get two A-list records from Robert Christgau's Expert Witness this week: Laurie Anderson's Heart of a Dog and Jeffrey Lewis' Manhattan. I gave them two spins each -- not enough to rise beyond A-, although Lewis was getting better, and I can certainly see the appeal of Anderson's stories (I'm just not as swept away by the music as I was by Strange Angels, or even Home of the Brave). I'll probably break down and order copies of both, but actually the new record that impressed me the most this week was Lyrics Born's Real People (also two spins). Evidently it came out in May but the first I heard of it was when it showed up on one of Mosi Reeves' Rhapsody lists. Tom Shimura is as much a cult-favorite among Christgauvians as Anderson or Lewis, so I'm surprised no one flagged it. (Or did I just slip up and not notice?) Very rare that I actually buy records any more: after Yesterdays closed there are no decent record stores in Wichita, and the impulse buys I would occasionally pick up at Best Buy petered out as their inventory continued to shrink. I do continue to buy books, though not often music books. (I did feel a desire to own, but haven't yet read, Michaelangelo Matos' The Underground Is Massive.) I was tempted last week by the two Allen Lowe books I don't own: Really the Blues? A Horizontal Chronicle of the Vertical Blues, 1893-1959 (the companion to his massive 36-CD trawl through blues history) and, especially, God Didn't Like It: Electric Hillbillies, Singing Preachers, and the Beginning of Rock and Roll, 1950-1970, but I got weak knees in Paypal hell (maybe later). However, the book I did order, and want to offer a preëmptive plug for, is Tim Niland's Music and More: Selected Blog Posts 2003-2015. I've been reading Niland's Music and More blog for many years now, not so much to find new music (since we seem to be on the exact same mailing lists) as to check my sanity. Blogs are pretty much designed to be disposable but his is the opposite: if compiled into an indexed, searchable Christgau-like website it would be viewed as an essential reference resource. His 822-page book is the next best thing. Bargain-priced, too. Two more A-listed new jazz albums this week (plus one old one). You may recall that I also liked Nat Birchall's Live in Larissa last year. Maybe the Coltrane-isms are too obvious, but it's not like we'd turn out noses up at a new vault discovery. The fact is I'd take either Birchall album over The Offering (the 1966 tape that swept the polls last year). I've never gotten anything by Birchall in the mail, so reviewing him is strictly a Rhapsody bonus (with the usual caveats: in this case I have no idea who else played on the album, although they're pretty damn good). Matthew Shipp's trio took a lot more time to suss out -- I must have given it five (maybe six) spins. Without doing any A/B, I think it's his best trio since he moved back away from the jazztronica of last decade, maybe because I hear more of the knockabout rhythmizing of the Ware Quartet and his later albums with Ivo Perelman. I should probably mention that there will be a memorial "to celebrate the remarkable life of Elizabeth Marcia Fink," who died on September 22. I've seen a very nice invitation, but can't find any public posting of it, so here are the details: the memorial will be on Saturday, November 7, 2015, from 3:00-6:00 pm, at Union Theological Seminary, 3041 Broadway at 121st Street, New York, NY 10027. The invitation asks for RSVP. We're not up for another trip to New York at the moment, but we do miss Liz -- in fact, remark on it every single day. New records rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, October 26, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25653 [25626] rated (+27), 447 [449] unrated (-2). Rated count slipped a bit, mostly because I lost a day-plus cooking up another chapter in my birthday dinner series. Tried my hand at Cuban cuisine this time, something I've sampled in restaurants not much more than a half-dozen times (mostly one in Royal Oak, MI, although we lucked into a very good place southwest of Miami). I've done a lot of Spanish (and Basque and Catallan and Portuguese, so should I say Iberian?) dishes, but very little from south of the border (aside from a massive feijoada one birthday). As with Spanish, Cubans use a lot of garlic but not much in the way of chilis. I've never liked the peppers that dominate Mexican cuisine, although I should figure out my way around them (as I've done with Indian, Thai, and Indonesian) given that the hardest part of any exotic cuisine is the shopping, and there are countless Mexican stores in these parts. (Actually, for this dinner I picked up most of the less conventional ingredients not from the bilingual Kroger but from a large Vietnamese grocer I frequent -- among other things, the only place in town I can get salt cod.) More details on the dinner in the notebook. Suffice it to say that despite some very poor planning and last-minute panicking pretty much everything came out splendid. Good company too, although by the time I was finished I was a bit too frazzled to get into it. Much on my mind was the thought that I'm getting too old for this sort of thing. No one thought to take pictures. Where's Max Stewart when you really need him? Also nostalgic for so many previous guests, especially Liz Jones, who inspired the first few dinners (and has long since lost touch), and the late Liz Fink -- people who really appreciated good food. (Liz, of course, was represented by her dog Sadie, who earned the title sous-chef by always being under my feet.) While cooking, I suspended my usual listening work and played oldies, starting with the Beatles and winding up with Atlantic R&B. The former hadn't happened in many years, but when I went out to shop for the meal, before I could pop a CD in -- I had picked out Rumba en el Patio by Conjunto Kubavana (1944-47) -- a song came on which struck me as the most completely marvelous thing I've ever heard: "All My Loving." I probably hadn't heard it since shortly after I bought the With the Beatles CD, but I found myself intimately familiar with every note and harmony. It was followed by Elvis Presley singing "All Shook Up," by comparison merely great, then something else I only vaguely recognized and didn't care for. Most of this week's list already appeared in October's Rhapsody Streamnotes. I noted there how many of my jazz picks were by (or featured) saxophonists, so maybe I'm compensating a bit for that here. My two top HMs this week -- Rich Halley's Eleven and Scott Hamilton's Live in Bern -- are by long-time personal favorites who have already scored A- records this year (Creating Structure and Plays Jule Styne). I have minor quibbles about both, but I haven't been conscientious enough to do the A:B comparisons to see which is really the better record. I will say that there is some terrific music on both. Instead, I went with another long-time favorite saxophonist, Rodrigo Amado. I suppose one could quibble there too, but Joe McPhee (who has another A- record this year) adds extra bite to some of the year's most impressive sax runs. The best post-RS record on the list is Marty Grosz's debut. I noticed that Rhapsody added some old Grosz Jazzology titles, and worked my way back. I mostly listen to avant-jazz these days, but I still hold to the idea that the old jazz is the real jazz, so guys like Grosz are always on my radar. Grosz was born a year before Bix Beiderbecke died, and well into his 80s he's still active -- his Fat Babies album Diga Diga Doo is also on this year's A-list. No comments so far on my question whether it'd be worthile to do another Turkey Shoot/Black Friday Special this year. I dropped the ball last year and no one picked it up -- I had hopes for Odyshape, but they crashed shortly before. I don't want to do the heavy lifting this year -- soliciting and editing entries -- but would be willing to format and post it and might even contribute something. So let me know if you want to volunteer. Time is running out. I'm not going to bring this up again. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, October 19, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25626 [25588] rated (+38), 449 [449] unrated (+0). Last week was disrupted by a "sleep study": turns out I don't get enough oxygen when I sleep, which leads to all sorts of unfortunate side effects, ranging from heart trouble to early senility. I've been feeling exceptionally tired this week, and pretty stupid as well. Presumably an expensive treatment regimen will follow. That is, after all, the American way. I did make a stab at a Weekend Roundup, but didn't get it done in time to post on Sunday. Look for it later this week -- hopefully tomorrow. Also, beware that it won't cover all the stupid things going on in the world right now. Thus far it's limited to Israel, and why the so-called Third Intifada is a ruse meant to derail an increasingly successful BDS movement by clouding the issue with senseless violence. This week I hope to do some serious cooking. Birthday dinner is coming up. Hopefully we can find some guests. I'm thinking Cuban, which means I'll finally have to learn how to make coffee. Usual mixed bag of records this week. Christgau recommended the Bottle Rockets and two John Kruth records. I didn't find the latest Kruth [PS: it's on Bandcamp], but took a look at holes in both back catalogs (I only knew Kruth from his duo with John Greene, Tribecastan). I also looked into Ulrich Gumpert's back catalog: a pianist from East Germany, he was at the center of one of the most adventurous jazz circles behind the Iron Curtain (along with Conrad Bauer, Günter Sommer, Klaus Koch, and the remarkable saxophonist, Ernst-Ludwig Petrowsky). Gumpert has one of this week's two new A- jazz records: the other I attribute to Joe McPhee but I've also seen an album cover with Jamie Saft's name in big print, and the pianist is clearly the one who holds it together. Much more new jazz in the queue, including some real prospects. I got a large package of material from a Spanish label I wasn't familiar with: UnderPool. Also a package from my Dutch friends at ToonDist -- but it was a little light, omitting the new (and presumably last) one from ICP Orchestra. Reports are that the brilliant Misha Mengelberg has been sidelined with dementia -- very sad news, incredible given the mental dexterity of his work going back to the 1960s. Among the stupider things I did this week was to write a letter to the Village Voice to inquire whether the new ownership might have any interest in reviving Jazz Consumer Guide. I'm not sure that's a good idea, but in my benighted state it seems at least like something I can still do. Latest Rhapsody Streamnotes draft count is 104 records. I guess that means I'm due to release one in the next week or so. I should also note that I took a pass at a year-end list: actually, two, one for jazz and another for non-jazz. I expect to do much resorting before the actual end-of-year, as well as adding more records, so take this list with more than the usual grain of salt. One thing that is clear is that the jazz list is shaping up as close to last year's (currently 52 new records, vs. 69 last year), but I'm way short of last year's pace for non-jazz (33 vs. 76 last year). The latter almost certainly reflects lack of effort on my part. Even though I've kept a tracking file this year, it isn't very comprehensive nor have I made much effort tracking things down. I expect to do better by the actual end-of-year, but it's beginning to look like a tall order. New records rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, October 12, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25588 [25572] rated (+16), 449 [437] unrated (+12). Two weeks ago, Monday Sept. 28, we packed up the car and drove east from Wichita, the main objective being to pick up the late Liz Fink's dog, Sadie, and bring her back to Wichita. (For more on Liz, look here.) We finally got out around 1PM, bypassed Kansas City before traffic got bad, had dinner in Columbia [MO], skipped north of St. Louis, finally pulling into our day's destination, a cheap motel in Effingham [IL], 565 miles out. Seems like I've done that drive dozens of times -- most recently a year ago when I drove to Cape Cod. Last year my second day pushed into southwestern Pennsylvania, but this time we faced constant rain and only made 405 miles, to Cambridge [OH]. That turned out to be close enough to reach Brooklyn on Wednesday. Overcast all day, rain threatening but we never got more than a few sprinkles here and there (and some eerie fog crossing an Appalachian pass). Drove through the Holland Tunnel, then "straight ahead for 3.8 miles" (as the GPS lady put it: down Walker merging into Canal, over the Manhattan Bridge, down Flatbush to Grand Army Plaza) then unload and park -- the part I dreaded most. (We played the "alternate side" parking game that night, then found a safe lot the next morning.) The apartment felt disheveled but mostly familiar -- the closets had been emptied of clothes, and someone unplugged everything so it took a while to get Internet working. My nephew Mike came over, as did Liz's friend Carol, who brought the dog -- a 7-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Laura had spent much time with but I barely recognized. (I had visited in spring 2014, my first New York venture since 2004. In the interrim and after, Laura had been there ten or so times.) Next day, Pearl Smith (Big Black's widow, Liz's heir, not that there's not much Liz hadn't already given away), Larry Fink (Liz's brother, the famed photographer), his daughter Molly (Snyder-Fink), and some others came over to sort through affects -- packing some things to pick up later but not taking much at the moment. Over the next few days several other friends of Liz showed up to look around, reminiscence, and occasionally pick up mementos. A few of our friends also came over to chat, and sometimes to go out for a bite to eat. When we got to NYC, the weather forecast called for five straight days of rain climaxing with Hurricane Joaquin (expected to miss us but not clear by how much). We only ventured into Manhattan once, a dinner with Georgia Christgau, Steve Levi, Robert Christgau, and Carola Dibbell. I figured the best time to get out would be Sunday afternoon. My nephew and his fiancée came over to help us load up the car. The drive down Flatbush, across the Manhattan Bridge, up Canal and through the tunnel was as easy as I could imagine. I would normally have driven half way across Pennsylvania after such an exit, but we were due for an oil change, and the dealers didn't do service business on Sunday. So I settled with driving to a friend's house near Newton, NJ, figuring I'd get the oil changed first thing Monday morning. That worked out pretty much as planned, and by 11AM we had driven back to I-80 and turned west. We made it through Akron and turned southeast, stopping in Mansfield, OH for the evening. Tuesday we got off to our earliest start and wound up in Columbia, leaving about 330 miles for Wednesday, home by 5PM. Normally when I drive that far, I have people and spots I want to see along the way, but Laura doesn't have a lot of patience for that, and I was feeling pretty miserable the whole trip. Before the trip, we had talked about the possibility of stopping in DC on the way out, coming back through Buffalo-Detroit-Chicago, and possibly making a side-trip to Cape Cod. None of that happened this time. (In 2004, I drove out through Kentucky to DC, then went to western Massachusetts before coming back through Buffalo and Detroit, then I took a detour to Ste. Saint Marie and Duluth just to see what I had never seen before. In 2014 I drove straight out to NJ, then on to Cape Cod, back to NJ, up to Buffalo, then down to Arkansas and Oklahoma. In 2001 I took a deeper southern return route, through DC into NC and across Tennessee and Arkansas.) Since we got home, Sadie has gotten a radical trim and been to the vet's, so now we have all the paperwork in order to get her properly licensed. (A lot more effort than it takes to get an UZI or AR-15 here in Kansas.) We have a two story house (plus a basement of sorts), and a fenced-in backyard she can have the run of -- stocked with squirrels and birds and occasionally visited by wilder life. She seems to be adjusting. Maybe I will too. I didn't manage to get a Weekend Roundup done yesterday. Had to work on the yard, plus my rhythm is totally screwed up due to a bad head cold on top of all the time changes. Anyhow, I didn't skip this weekly exercise because there was nothing to write. (I usually go into a news deepfreeze when I travel but somehow missed that this time.) Still, this week's stories diverge only marginally from last week's, or next week's, and one gets tired of writing the same over and over again -- so maybe the occasional break is needed just to maintain sanity. Still, two things I want to at least mention:
I have very little to add about the records below -- roughly one-half of a week's worth. The two picks were items I found on Liz Fink's shelf, and are possibly not the best Jazz Tribune picks for either artist -- Bechet is also represented by Volumes 1/2 which goes back to the mid-1930s, and RCA has both a slice of c. 1930 big band Armstrong and a 1947 live set, The Complete Town Hall Concert. Also, arguably I also overstepped my needs, in that I already have most of the music here, in Armstrong's 4-CD The Complete RCA Victor Recordings and Bechet's The Victor Sessions: Master Takes. Still, there's something to be said for not coming home empty handed. New records rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last two weeks:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, September 28, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25572 [25544] rated (+28), 437 [436] unrated (+1). Cut this week short, closing it on Sunday afternoon so I can move on to packing. I'll be on the road for the next 2-3 weeks, driving straight east to New York City, then some less straight route back. Not sure about internet access, especially while we are in New York. At any rate I won't have the computers, tools, books, and gear I use to produce these posts, so don't expect much here. Lot of stuff still in the queue, and there will be more before I get back. Ulrich Gumpert album is sounding pretty good at the moment, but I should hold back on it. Time may have contributed to the dip in rated count, but also note the sheer number of A- records this week. Most of them took 4-5 plays -- only New Order and the older Hooker were obvious picks from the start, and I still don't think the new MOPDtK is as good as most of the old ones (although Jon Irabagon has a field day). The Pop Group, the Specials, and Madness got extra plays in just missing, too. The latter came out of the Pitchfork 1970s list (well, not Madness, but it seemed like the moment). Very little left there that I haven't heard, just a couple records that aren't on Rhapsody. John Lee Hooker's Don't Turn Me From Your Door was a suggestion from Phil Overeem. There are, of course, dozens of Hooker albums I haven't heard, but On Vee-Jay 1955-1958 was on Robert Santelli's blues list, number 18. Metric is probably the most marginal of the A- records, something that became more apparent after I played New Order. New records rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, September 21, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25544 [25500] rated (+44), 434 [436] unrated (-2). I haven't played any Hatology records since last week's Rhapsody Streamnotes, although I expect I will before October's installment -- I'm still updating my checklist, and there's still lots to do (plus I'm finding a few older Hat Art releases). The only Hat A this week (and it's a full A) is Horace Tapscott's The Dark Tree, the latest reissue of a pair of albums I've long treasured. My latest tangent as been 1970s pop/rock. As I was checking out the new Giorgio Moroder Michael Tatum recommended, I noticed that Moroder's 1977 album From Here to Eternity was on a list Pitchfork had assembled of The Top 100 Albums of the 1970s. As usual, I was tempted to fill in all the holes, and doubly so for Moroder -- as background for the new one, and because it's an album I used to own but somehow hadn't listed in the database. (I was on Casablanca's mailing list for a while in the late 1970s.) Turns out that I had previously graded 85/100 albums -- the '70s were my decade, after all. My homework: Nick Drake, T. Rex, Neu!, Can, Saturday Night Fever, Pop Group, Suicide, Specials, Tim Buckley, Cluster, Faust, Van Halen, Nilsson, Throbbing Gristle, King Crimson -- someone at Pitchfork is really into Krautrock. I knocked about half of those off this week. Their list exhibits some unsurprising biases -- among pop/rock entries, 42 Brits but only 8 Afro-Americans, same as the number of Krautrock albums -- but did include 5 jazz albums (4 Miles Davis + 1 Herbie Hancock). There was a severe dry spell in the mid-1970s: only 9 albums for 1974-76. Unlike many lists, they weren't shy about picking 2nd, 3rd, or 4th albums by favorites: 4 each for David Bowie, Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd; 3 for Can, Brian Eno, Iggy and/or the Stooges; 2 for The Clash, Elvis Costello, Nick Drake, King Crimson, Kraftwerk, Fela Kuti, Ramones, Talking Heads, Neil Young. Still, I can't complain about the overall quality (unlike many recent lists): they picked 10 A+ albums, another 25 A albums, 25 more A-, and only 7 albums B or lower (only Van Halen much lower). On the other hand, some missing artists: Captain Beefheart, Ornette Coleman, Derek and the Dominos, Nick Lowe, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Marley, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Van Morrison, Mott the Hoople, New York Dolls, Parliament, Pere Ubu, John Prine, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Steely Dan, Donna Summer, Bill Withers. I was tempted to offer an alternative list, but it could easily be as long. By the way, the new Moroder album is unique in his catalog: it's like a compilation of productions for other singers as opposed to the robotized disco albums he released under his own name. At least Moroder's old Casablanca records are on Rhapsody (but not, alas, his 1969 That's Bubblegum). I tried assembling a playlist to match Casablanca's disco sampler Get Up and Boogie, but came up short by half. All the new jazz I had this week was three high-B+ HMs until I gave Ochion Jewell a couple extra spins. Although he may be more impressed that he got Lionel Loueke to play on two tracks, the secret ingredient is the pianist and drummer from Dawn of Midi, offering many surprises. Preoccupied as I've been elsewhere, there's quite a bit of new jazz in the queue. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old records rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, September 14, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25500 [25453] rated (+47), 436 [426] unrated (+10). Once again I spent most of the week trawling through the Hatology releases on Rhapsody. The A- rate, which had been declining the last two weeks, even got a bump to 32% (8/25, counting one older Hat Art release; last week was 20.6% [6/29], previous 28.5% [6/21]; previous database was 36.1% [26/72]). I had previously reported on the Myra Melford title (Alive in the House of Saints), but further research revealed that the 2001 Hatology reissue had been expanded to 2CD from the 1993 Hat Art release I previously listened to (then, erroneously, substituted the later cover for). It's one of those "more is more" records, never flagging for a moment. Among the others, the biggest surprise was Austrian saxophonist Max Nagl. His earlier Ensemble album is pretty much as good as the one I picked, and the Big Four records are more than interesting. The Konitz-Solal duo is the most marginal of the picks, probably because I expected more than just support from the pianist, but it is a lovely outing for Konitz, and sometimes that's enough. Jimmy Lyons shows up on two terrific albums: one an oddly named trio, the other soaring over ane specially energetic pianist named Cecil Taylor. I had some trouble playing Taylor's solo disc: a third cut that played long after I thought the album finished should have prodded me to give it another spin, but I let it go. It's a little annoying that Hat only reissued the first of two Garden sets. Sometimes their latest reissues have combined pairs of separate discs (e.g., Horace Tapscott's The Dark Tree), and now we're starting to see them splitting 2-CD sets up (as with Anthony Braxton's Quartet (Santa Cruz) 1993). Strange company. What helped me sort this out was the compilation of a complete Hatology Checklist file, based on the label's own discography plus a lot of checking into Discogs. This shows that I still have yet to get to 73 records (although there may be some redundancies there, plus there are a couple of rejiggered reissues of records I've previously heard -- the 2-CD The Dark Tree is bound to be as great as the older separate CDs). I also haven't dealt with their "contemporary composition and new music" label, Hat[now]Art, but it appears that most of their albums are also on Rhapsody now. Right now, I'm more tempted to add the older Hat Musics and Hat Art labels, as some of the latter's titles have also appeared on Rhapsody. I may take a break from Hat this week as I try to wrap up a Rhapsody Streamnotes column: something like 167 records in the draft file already, but perhaps a little short on new music. I did add three new jazz albums to the 2005 A-list this week -- two with drummer Mike Reed (whom I expect good things from, but not necessarily flute albums). Also good to hear that Mort Weiss is working again. Still, I doubt if I'll find much more new music soon enough for this month's column. Robert Christgau's revived Expert Witness hasn't been offering much I agree with so far -- second A- we agree on in four weeks is Shamir's Ratchet (first was Boz Scaggs' A Fool to Care), although I'll note that I did only give Jamie XX's In Colour a single cursory spin. (The only one I hadn't heard this week, Diplo's Random White Dude Be Everywhere, got two plays. The massive Funkadelic HM, another 2014 album, just got one, and had settled into its grade slot an hour before it expired.) More to check out in Michael Tatum's latest, A Downloader's Diary (42): Ezra Furman, Freedy Johnston, Giorgio Moroder. He had already tipped me off to Songhoy Blues (which I had, along with Bassekou Kouyate, Ashley Monroe, and Mountain Goats, at A-, with Tal National and Yo La Tengo just short at high B+ (I'm not as pleased or amused or whatever the verb should be with Nellie McKay's trawl through '60s pop). Also, can the duds (Iris DeMent, Neil Young) really be so bad? If I don't get to them this week, I will next time. (Or maybe not: I've looked for DeMent but her record isn't yet on Rhapsody.) For those of us who count things, note that Tatum has logged his first thousand Downloader's Diary albums (current count = 1001). See his Archive, in particular the Index. By the way, if someone wants to contribute a banner and suggest a revised color scheme (or a whole new skin) let us know. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old records rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, September 7, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25453 [25408] rated (+45), 426 [429] unrated (-3). Spent nearly the whole week listening to old jazz from Werner Uehlinger's Hatology label (or hatOLOGY, as he prefers), knocking off another 29 albums this week. As expected, the quality (at least as reflected in my grades) is dropping a bit: 6 A- records this week, so 20.6%, down from 28.5% (6/21) last week and 36.1% (26/72) from the previous database. Three of those six were from Anthony Braxton, so that won't happen again, and one of the others featured Ellery Eskelin -- I'm only aware of one more record by him that I haven't heard, something called Arcanum Moderne. Still, the next few weeks -- I have a list of 55 more Hatology albums I haven't heard yet, and I'm only up to about 2006 in Discogs' listings -- are bound to reveal some surprises. As the rated count shows, I've been working very fast. Two Braxton albums fell just short, mostly because at the time I didn't feel like giving either a second spin (the one with Max Roach was most deserving of further attention). I pulled the earlier Urs Leimgruber albums off my unplayed shelf. The first (Statement of an Antirider) was by far the best solo sax album I've heard in the last two weeks, out of way too many. I played it twice, wrote it up as an A-, then dialed it back a notch. I took a couple flings on related non-Hat albums (Ran Blake, Anthony Ortega) but they didn't turn up much. Not much new jazz this week, but I did manage to check out three new albums with saxophonist Jon Irabagon. I was surprised to note that I had only given one of his own albums an A- in the past -- 2010's Foxy -- because he must have more than a dozen side credits rated that or higher (mostly MOPDTK, but most recently Barry Altschul & 3Dom Factor: Tales of the Unforeseen). I took a look at his website calendar for July-August and he was working virtually every day, with almost as many different groups. He may be spreading himself thin, but he sure gets around. I expected better things from the Dave Douglas (with Irabagon) and Irabagon (with Tom Harrell) and gave them plenty of line. Nice things on both, but neither managed to break out of the postbop mold. Still, I came up with one superb album for the week, from guitarist Liberty Ellman. He writes good parts for all three of his horns, and I love Jose Davila's thumping tuba, but the solo that always grabs my attention is by alto saxophonist Steve Lehman. Ellman gets a lot of side credits for mixing, including the last several albums by Lehman and almost everything else on the label they share, Pi. This is the third A-list album of four releases on Pi, the highest batting average of any label (pretty much year after year, by the way, so don't let the small sample size fool you). The others are Henry Threadgill's In for a Penny, In for a Pound and Amir ElSaffar's Crisis are the others; I have Steve Coleman's Synovial Joints way down at B+(***), and a fifth release, Jen Shyu's Sounds and Cries of the World just arrived and in the queue. Probably have enough for a Rhapsody Streamnotes column, but I feel like I'm in the middle of all this Hat stuff. (I do: 128 records; but just 48 new, only 5 A-.) Also, I don't know how useful this file is (even to myself), but I fixed some typos in Music Tracking 2015 so now at least it's viewable. I also added everything in AMG's weekly "featured releases" up through last Friday, although I haven't gone through the other "review sources" in at least three months. Having an absolutely miserable day today -- perhaps a cold on top of the worst allergies I can remember since moving west. Comes on the second straight 100-degree day here, although only the seventh such day this year. (It may be a record hot year for the world world, but not for Kansas.) Happy Labor Day: a good day to remember that working people, and not profits or property, built everything you hold dear in America. New records rated this week:
Old records rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
Ask a question, or send a comment. Monday, August 31, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25408 [25368] rated (+40), 429 [426] unrated (+3). Christgau makes a big point about never writing about an album until he is sure what he thinks about it, including a firm grade. I've never been so certain about anything, or at least about music, so I've always regarded my grades as provisional approximations. That doesn't mean that I don't take due diligence. I very rarely grade an album A- on one play, although I also rarely give a second play to a B+(*) to give it a chance to rise of fall a notch, or a B- to see how bad it really is. Still, it seems like the line between B+(***) and A- is unusually cloudy this week. The Barry Altschul album and a couple of the old Hat discs are pretty solid, but all the rest of the A- records are borderline. Some of the B+(***) come close, too -- in particular, it's tempting to bump up everything Ellery Eskelin does, while on the other hand, I rarely get excited enough by Paul Bley and/or Jimmy Giuffre. I finished digging through the ECM records on MPE. They only go back to March (or maybe later, as the label's German and US release dates aren't always the same), so there are still some 2015 ECM releases I missed -- notably everyone's favorite, Jack De Johnette's Made in Chicago. Despite the "[dl]" notation below, everything I rated was based on streaming, and the user interface requires me to login again every time I finish an album, so there's a built-in bias against second plays. The only ECM record I downloaded was Elina Duni's, and I haven't tried burning a copy yet, but it struck me as something I'd be willing to do a little work to hear again. (She's an Albanian folk singer, but works with a first-rate Swiss jazz group, Colin Vallon's piano trio.) Falling just short of that are two other B+(***) albums by Gary Peacock and Stefano Battaglia -- good records, but not as exceptional. Jerry Bergonzi's new record is probably the most borderline of all. I must have played it six, maybe as many as eight, times, and every time I was ready to file it as a high B+ I'd hear something special -- always from the tenor saxophonist. The problem is he get diluted with a second horn -- no knock on Phil Grenadier, whose trumpet sparkles throughout, but I prefer Bergonzi's trios and quartets, albums like Tenor Talk and Simply Put. After Christgau declared Stuff Like That There Yo La Tengo's "loveliest album ever," I almost reflexively considered it an A-, but then I looked up Fakebook in my database and was reminded that I had only given it a B+(*) -- the best thing about their covers album was that it showed that they owned some of the same esoteric records I did. Aside from the Hank Williams, this new batch of covers is even more esoteric, sometimes a plus, sometimes not. And while it is lovely -- it reminded me of one of those later, hitless Everly Brothers albums -- much of the middle wasn't especially distinguished. But it ends on a song so good I started having second thoughts. Just didn't follow up on them. Going into the week, it wasn't clear what I would do down in the old music section, but last week I had followed the new Gary Peacock album with an older Paul Bley duet, Partners -- a 4-star from the Penguin Guide list, and that got me to looking at what else Rhapsody had from Bley that I hadn't heard before. That's when I discovered that Rhapsody had added a sizable chunk of the Hatology (aka Hat Hut and Hat Art and Hat Now) catalogue. Hat was one of a handful of European labels that rescued avant-jazz in the late 1970s -- the only more important label, at least for American avant-gardists, was Black Saint/Soul Note (in Italy), with DIW (Japan) coming a bit later, and Leo (UK) and FMP (Germany) focusing more on European artists. Checking back through my database, I had previously rated 72 Hat albums, and had another 109 in the "shopping" list. To give you a taste, all of the following are rated A- or higher ([A] so marked):
So that's 26 A/A- records, before I added six this week (plus one more after the cutoff, so next week). Possible I'm loosening up the curve: I'd expect the percentage of A-/A records to decline over time, having cherry-picked the best prospects early on. Indeed, it has: the legacy share is 36.1% (26/72), whereas this week's haul is down to 28.5% (6/21). I expect it will drop further as I keep tapping into this resource. By the way, I've run across a couple cases where cuts are missing. If that seems minor, I may just hedge, but Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy: Live at Dreher Paris 1981 was reduced from 4CD to three cuts (all takes of "Round Midnight"), so there's nothing a critic can do about that. Also, I haven't found much here that predates the launch of the Hatology (or as they prefer to style it, "hatOLOGY") label. There are several weird things about Hat's business model. One is that they tout their releases as "limited editions" -- usually that means a run of 3000 units -- so their most popular titles tend to run out of print, while they periodically binge and put the rest on deeply discounted sales (I've picked up a lot of titles for $5 or less over the years). Currently Hatology is used both for new releases and reissues of out-of-print titles. One pair of grades is worth breaking down. The two Joe McPhee discs are both solo, one coming in at A-, the other B-. As near as I can figure it, McPhee's 1976 album Tenor was his answer to Anthony Braxton's 1969 For Alto, an album often held to be brilliant as well as uncompromising -- Penguin Guide awarded it one of their crowns -- but which I've always found to be plug ugly (I gave it a D based on an LP I no longer own). Tenor takes the same approach and, given the larger horn, digs even deeper. If I were to revisit For Alto (and I do have the CD somewhere) I would probably bump it up some, but I found myself anxious for Tenor & Fallen Angels to end long before it did. On the other hand, As Serious as Your Life varies the instruments -- McPhee is also a superb trumpet player (actually, pocket cornet here), and will astonish you on crashing piano, and he adds some electronics to a couple cuts so he actually has a beat to bounce off, so it winds up being a very different album. The Tony Coe album is another Penguin Guide 4-star that I found while looking for Hat releases -- he has a couple of them, a long association with Derek Bailey and/or Tony Oxley, an avant side far removed from his roots with Humphrey Lyttelton in Britain's trad jazz movement. Could be this swing album sounded even better as a break from all the avant-jazz. At any rate, I found it delightful. One more thing to note: with the author's permission, I've revamped the Michael Tatum archive. Hopefully in the future we'll add some more old pieces, but for now it has all of the A Downloader's Diary columns (including his latest), all properly indexed, a total of 978 albums. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old records rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
|
