For jazz fans, the Losen Records catalogue seems to have either re-appeared or re-updated today (a Monday). Among the pleasant surprises is seeing the new LRK Trio release, "Urban Dreamer", appearing. They are a trio from Moscow, and I enjoyed their last release from 2017 (also on Losen and available at eMusic)
ETA: Caution, there's 6 minutes missing on track 1 of the Emu version. (makes it useless) ETA 2: The eMu version seems o be fixed now.
Harmony Rockets with Special Guest Peter Walker
+Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Nels Cline (Wilco), Jesse Chandler, Martin Keith
"...this small town (Woodstock), housing as it did so many maverick
talents, fostered a scene of damage and dysfunction that endures to this
day. It pulled in all manner of wannabes and hangers-on, alcoholic
philanderers, dealers in heroin and cocaine, and left at least one
generation of messed-up children with no direction home." -- from 'Small
Town Talk' by Barney Hoskyns
Longtime Woodstock resident, guitarist Peter Walker recorded two albums
for the Vanguard label in the late Sixties in a style best described as
American folk-raga. He studied with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, and
was Dr. Timothy Leary's musical director, organizing music for the LSD
advocate's "celebrations." He was also a close friend of fellow
Woodstock resident, the late folksinger Karen Dalton, and helped produce
Remembering Mountains : Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton (Tompkins
Square), which features unrecorded Dalton compositions brought to life
by Sharon Van Etten, Patty Griffin, Lucinda Williams and others.
Rediscovered by Tompkins Square in 2006 after
decades out of sight, Walker has remained active into his 8th decade,
recording for Jack White's Third Man label, and now, collaborating anew
with fellow Upstaters, Harmony Rockets. Joined in a mighty super-session
with Harmony Rockets (Mercury Rev), Martin Keith, Nels Cline (Wilco),
and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Lachesis/Clotho/Atropos is a
mind-melting inter-generational collaboration that could only have
coalesced around the wool sweaters, warm teacups and moldering
bookstores of "Old Old Woodstock", both the real and mythologized
versions.
A couple "new" albums showed up on eMusic today on RareNoise Records, including the latest Jamie Saft Quartet release. This continues a pattern in which RareNoise seems to be delaying eMusic releases until about 3 months following actual release date. Anyway, a small bright spot in the abyss of remaining jazz labels on eMusic:
The Caretaker - Everywhere At The End Of Time - Stage 5
"Post-Awareness Stage 5 confusions and horror.
More extreme entanglements, repetition and rupture can give way to
calmer moments. The unfamiliar may sound and feel familiar.
Time is often spent only in the moment leading to isolation."
Some fun jazz releases for the first day of fall: (Sadly the first two are not available on eMusic or Bandcamp, but are readily available elsewhere, incl. 7Digital. Get The Blessing's latest is an absolute blast, is available on Bandcamp, and really should get a listen from @jonahpwll - hint, hint ;-).
Two tracks from this collaboration between Miguel Zenon and Spektral Quartet are streaming at Soundcloud. I saw the premiere of this great piece of music at Hyde Park Jazz Fest a couple years ago - Amazing to hear Miguel's distinctive "lines" played by a string quartet
... you open the front door and on the ground, lying flat in front of you, is the double LP set that you paid 308.00 DKK to get delivered from Denmark. If I hadn't already recognized that it was the postal carrier at the door, I could easily imagine just walking out my door and crushing this thing.
As the nights darken and the winter chill starts to creep in… Let this album transport you to the exotic island of Sri Lanka, where Wil’s field recordings of his time spent there intertwine with the analogue warmth of looping synths and enigmatic, dreamy melodies.
- After almost 30 years of making records and stage productions, however, Eckert this week releases his very first solo album, The Natural World,
on the National Sawdust Tracks label. On it, he accompanies himself in a
selection of 13 songs, playing an assemblage of instruments that
include the usual guitars and keyboards, and branch into wide
traditional associations via hand percussion, wood flute, tenor banjo,
penny whistle, and a variety of ukuleles. The settings frame Eckert’s
operatic presence with intimate focus, minimally ornamented, as if
floating before a billowing black curtain.
The album opens with a haunting rendition of “Black Is the Color of
My True Love’s Hair” that harks back to its origins as a Scottish
ballad. But in “Bar Fight,” which could be a hillbilly picking tune
(“Bar fight/Up all night/Couldn’t come down ’til the morning
light/Shirt’s all bloody I’m a sorry sight/Gotta go to church but it
just ain’t right”), that cultural resonance also chimes with an Asian
influence. Elsewhere, Eckert offers a manifesto of sorts (“The Singer
Sings,” lent meditative intensity by a droning shruti box) and a
wordless falsetto (“Dry Land,” likewise hypnotic with its oscillating
accordion and ambient keyboards). Each piece suggests a gemlike fragment
of an evocative, mood-soaked suite.
It doesn’t take very long for Colin Stetson’s score for the latest Hulu drama “The First”
to announce itself. The opening credits sequence is short, but on the
strength of a striking visual and the musical force of a rocket engine,
the series gets off to an impressive start.
The composer behind “Hereditary” (music that’s haunting in a
completely different way), Stetson’s work as a saxophonist helps anchor
this story of humans and space in something slightly unfamiliar to those
who watch these kinds of futuristic stories. Where previous tales of
astronauts have leaned on triumphant brass and heavy strings, there’s a
spareness to a lot of what Stetson puts forth here.
Stetson’s work on the series isn’t always the kind that draws that
kind of attention. In the pivotal fifth episode, the music works as a
complement to a river of memories that lead a number of key characters
to their respective parts in this unfolding Mars saga. Although those
sax arpeggios are sometimes a strong underline to some sequences of
intense uncertainty, they sometimes flutter around the action at a
breathy volume barely above a whisper. . .
A couple of @jonahpwll's Bandcamp recommendations this month are available at eMusic (and there is not much jazz left there, so who knows how long it will last...)
Really liking this new Turboprop release on Anzic Records and available on Bandcamp:
“I’m grateful for the abundance of good that there is in the world and I
feel privileged to experience it every day.” These words, from the
liner notes of Ernesto Cervini’s new Turboprop album, Abundance,
describe the feeling and purpose behind the Canadian drummer’s new
release.
New album from Ivan Pavlov aka CоH is a recording session in memory of
his old friend Mika Vainio, who sadly passed away last year. The concert
based upon this material took place place at Dom cultural centre in
Moscow on 18.06.17. Unfortunately, the original live recording was lost
due to a hard disk crash. Presented record is a live-in-a-studio version
of the show, carefully engineered and mastered for the CD release.
Musically it is deep electronic ambient with some throbbing rhythm
pulsations and occasional glitches. CoH is active since late-90es, the
project has got numerous releases on various labels including such
milestones of modern electronic scene as Raster-Noton and Mego. Ivan
also was a part of a post-utopian project Soisong made together with
Peter Christopherson of Coil.
these songs were initially created for a live performance during the all
night "cele :: doze" sleep concert that occurred in denver in jan, 2017
(and later recomposed into songs winter 2018).
some locations where field recordings that were used were gathered: the
boetecher hall (i.e. the denver philharmonic), golden gate canyon -
golden, colorado, & red river gorge in kentucky.
The three new Woolgathering Records releases I had mentioned previously (in the upcoming Soundcloud/Bandcamp/etc. forum) - Matt Ulery "Sifting Stars", Russ Johnson "Headlands", and Tim Haldeman "Open Water as a Child" - are now all available on both Bandcamp and eMusic.
Following Nicolas’ interest in primitive technologies, history of electronic sound and the evolutions of its aesthetic, the Ensemble d’oscillateurs became a laboratory in search of a sine wave aesthetic: the ensemble took an interest in pieces from the repertoire ('Jar Piece' by Pauline Oliveros, 1966), but also in graphic scores ('December 1952' by Earle Brown, 1952; 'SYN-Phon' by Candas Sisman, 2013). The latter, which closes this album, was actually not written for one specific instrument. A collective work has been accomplished around the interpretation (literally) of the graphic notation: assigning a line to an oscillator, while some others are shaping the sound of a circle or quickly stepping in to give a sonic life to an array of connected dots.
Yoko Ono: vocals Thomas Bartlett: keyboards, electronics, piano, bass Animals: baboon, crows, elephant, monkeys, panther, whale, wolf Nico Muhly: string arrangements Violins: Caleb Burhans, Patti Kilroy, Laura Lutzke, Courtney Orlando Marc Ribot: electric guitar & acoustic guitar Doug Wieselman: bass clarinet Erik Friedlander: cello Kassa Overall: drums Children: Lucian Glover, Neve Glover, Damon Hudes, Isadora Kenneally, Milo Leonhart
Following twenty albums over 50 years, Yoko Ono’s Warzone is
strikingly different from any record she has made previously, but it is
also strikingly different from any album that anyone is making…
Yoko revisits and reimagines 13 songs from her past work, spanning 1970
– 2009, the lyrics and messages still pertinent – perhaps even more
pertinent in 2018. “The world is so messed up. Things are very difficult
for everybody. It’s a warzone that we are living in…” says Ono. “I like
to create things in a new way. Every day things change.”
The recordings and arrangements on Warzone are
very stripped down, with a particular emphasis on Yoko’s voice and
lyrics. Here in this minimalist landscape the content of her message
rings clear and unencumbered; sometimes somber warnings, sometimes
uplifting encouragement, but her wisdom and fortitude are unflinchingly
strong, her power having intensified with time and life experience. She
ends the ominous questions of Now Or Never (1971) with
one of her most famous and inspiring lines: “A dream you dream alone is
only a dream, a dream we dream together is reality.”
Warzone further
builds the legacy of an artist unparalleled in her unique and singular
vision. At 85 years young, Ono is already plotting her next album… It is
not too late to change the world. We need Yoko now more than ever.
- Second in a series of two previously unreleased soundtracks Henning
Christiansen made for the films made by his partner and collaborator
Ursula Reuter Christiansen. Den Røde Skov (The Red Forest) was Ursula’s
second film made in 1986.
In stark contrast to the exquisite romantic melancolia of their first
collaboration, The Executioner, Den Røde Skov resides as one of the
wildest recordings in the entire Christiansen catalogue. Aligned more
with works like the legendary collaboration with Nam June Paik and
Joseph Beuys, Abschiedssymphonie, Den Røde Skov unfolds as a delirious
and demonic audio exhibit, at once deeply eccentric and utterly
enthralling.
Featuring the exceptional sound work of Ernst Kretzer and contributions
from Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Addamaria Reuter Christiansen,
Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen, Carla Tató and Werner Durand this is a
rich tapestry of sounds, voice and obtuse atmospheres drifting from the
deeply meditative to the outright hysterical.
Cuong Vu – trumpet Bill Frisell – guitar Luke Bergman – bass, additional guitars on track 5 Ted Poor – drums, fender rhodes on track 5
- As a followup to 2017’s acclaimed Ballet: The Music of Michael Gibbs, Seattle-based trumpeter Cuong Vu joins forces once again with guitar great Bill Frisell, bassist Luke Bergman and drummer Ted Poor on the boundary-pushing quartet outing for RareNoise Records, Change in the Air. With all the members of the quartet contributing compositions, this one finds the four participants on equal footing on ten adventurous originals. From Poor’s dreamy, noirish opener “All That’s Left of Me Is You” and his lonesome echo-laden waltz “Alive” to Bergman’s dynamic “Must Concentrate,” Frisell’s delicate “Look, Listen” and his beguiling heartland melody “Long Ago” and Vu’s angular “Round and Round” and his edgy and electrified “March of the Owl and the Bat,” these four stellar musicians are truly on one accord and dealing with a rare level of nuance and depth of communication on Change in the Air. . . .
Comments
ETA: Caution, there's 6 minutes missing on track 1 of the Emu version. (makes it useless)
ETA 2: The eMu version seems o be fixed now.
Harmony Rockets with Special Guest Peter Walker
+Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Nels Cline (Wilco), Jesse Chandler, Martin Keith
Longtime Woodstock resident, guitarist Peter Walker recorded two albums for the Vanguard label in the late Sixties in a style best described as American folk-raga. He studied with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, and was Dr. Timothy Leary's musical director, organizing music for the LSD advocate's "celebrations." He was also a close friend of fellow Woodstock resident, the late folksinger Karen Dalton, and helped produce Remembering Mountains : Unheard Songs by Karen Dalton (Tompkins Square), which features unrecorded Dalton compositions brought to life by Sharon Van Etten, Patty Griffin, Lucinda Williams and others.
Rediscovered by Tompkins Square in 2006 after decades out of sight, Walker has remained active into his 8th decade, recording for Jack White's Third Man label, and now, collaborating anew with fellow Upstaters, Harmony Rockets. Joined in a mighty super-session with Harmony Rockets (Mercury Rev), Martin Keith, Nels Cline (Wilco), and Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Lachesis/Clotho/Atropos is a mind-melting inter-generational collaboration that could only have coalesced around the wool sweaters, warm teacups and moldering bookstores of "Old Old Woodstock", both the real and mythologized versions.
More extreme entanglements, repetition and rupture can give way to
calmer moments. The unfamiliar may sound and feel familiar.
Time is often spent only in the moment leading to isolation."
Stage 6 - Released in March 2019
Two tracks from this collaboration between Miguel Zenon and Spektral Quartet are streaming at Soundcloud. I saw the premiere of this great piece of music at Hyde Park Jazz Fest a couple years ago - Amazing to hear Miguel's distinctive "lines" played by a string quartet
is the double LP set that you paid 308.00 DKK to get delivered from Denmark.
If I hadn't already recognized that it was the postal carrier at the door, I could
easily imagine just walking out my door and crushing this thing.
The album opens with a haunting rendition of “Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” that harks back to its origins as a Scottish ballad. But in “Bar Fight,” which could be a hillbilly picking tune (“Bar fight/Up all night/Couldn’t come down ’til the morning light/Shirt’s all bloody I’m a sorry sight/Gotta go to church but it just ain’t right”), that cultural resonance also chimes with an Asian influence. Elsewhere, Eckert offers a manifesto of sorts (“The Singer Sings,” lent meditative intensity by a droning shruti box) and a wordless falsetto (“Dry Land,” likewise hypnotic with its oscillating accordion and ambient keyboards). Each piece suggests a gemlike fragment of an evocative, mood-soaked suite.
It doesn’t take very long for Colin Stetson’s score for the latest Hulu drama “The First” to announce itself. The opening credits sequence is short, but on the strength of a striking visual and the musical force of a rocket engine, the series gets off to an impressive start.
The composer behind “Hereditary” (music that’s haunting in a completely different way), Stetson’s work as a saxophonist helps anchor this story of humans and space in something slightly unfamiliar to those who watch these kinds of futuristic stories. Where previous tales of astronauts have leaned on triumphant brass and heavy strings, there’s a spareness to a lot of what Stetson puts forth here.
Stetson’s work on the series isn’t always the kind that draws that kind of attention. In the pivotal fifth episode, the music works as a complement to a river of memories that lead a number of key characters to their respective parts in this unfolding Mars saga. Although those sax arpeggios are sometimes a strong underline to some sequences of intense uncertainty, they sometimes flutter around the action at a breathy volume barely above a whisper. . .
some locations where field recordings that were used were gathered: the boetecher hall (i.e. the denver philharmonic), golden gate canyon - golden, colorado, & red river gorge in kentucky.
by ENSEMBLE D'OSCILLATEURS
Thomas Bartlett: keyboards, electronics, piano, bass
Animals: baboon, crows, elephant, monkeys, panther, whale, wolf
Nico Muhly: string arrangements
Violins: Caleb Burhans, Patti Kilroy, Laura Lutzke, Courtney Orlando
Marc Ribot: electric guitar & acoustic guitar
Doug Wieselman: bass clarinet
Erik Friedlander: cello
Kassa Overall: drums
Children: Lucian Glover, Neve Glover, Damon Hudes, Isadora Kenneally, Milo Leonhart
Yoko revisits and reimagines 13 songs from her past work, spanning 1970 – 2009, the lyrics and messages still pertinent – perhaps even more pertinent in 2018. “The world is so messed up. Things are very difficult for everybody. It’s a warzone that we are living in…” says Ono. “I like to create things in a new way. Every day things change.”
The recordings and arrangements on Warzone are very stripped down, with a particular emphasis on Yoko’s voice and lyrics. Here in this minimalist landscape the content of her message rings clear and unencumbered; sometimes somber warnings, sometimes uplifting encouragement, but her wisdom and fortitude are unflinchingly strong, her power having intensified with time and life experience. She ends the ominous questions of Now Or Never (1971) with one of her most famous and inspiring lines: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream, a dream we dream together is reality.”
Warzone further builds the legacy of an artist unparalleled in her unique and singular vision. At 85 years young, Ono is already plotting her next album… It is not too late to change the world. We need Yoko now more than ever.
In stark contrast to the exquisite romantic melancolia of their first collaboration, The Executioner, Den Røde Skov resides as one of the wildest recordings in the entire Christiansen catalogue. Aligned more with works like the legendary collaboration with Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys, Abschiedssymphonie, Den Røde Skov unfolds as a delirious and demonic audio exhibit, at once deeply eccentric and utterly enthralling.
Featuring the exceptional sound work of Ernst Kretzer and contributions from Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Addamaria Reuter Christiansen, Bjørnstjerne Reuter Christiansen, Carla Tató and Werner Durand this is a rich tapestry of sounds, voice and obtuse atmospheres drifting from the deeply meditative to the outright hysterical.
Bill Frisell – guitar
Luke Bergman – bass, additional guitars on track 5
Ted Poor – drums, fender rhodes on track 5
- Bandcamp - Emusic
Helge Sten - Electronics.
Ståle Storløkken - Keyboards and electronics.
As mentioned (somewhere) by @soulcoal, Makaya McCraven has a new album coming out. It's now streaming at Wire magazine: https://www.thewire.co.uk/audio/tracks/makaya-mccraven-album-preview# Release date is this Friday, I think