2024 YEAR'S BEST ALBUMS
clicking cover art opens Spotify
Yirinda
YIRINDA
Released 16 February 2024
Chapter Music
*****
A stunning fusion of timelessness & the contemporary, indigenous language & contemporary music.
Yirinda means 'Now' in Butchulla language and it is the name taken by duo Fred Leone and Samuel Pankhurst, who combine ancient Aboriginal language with sublime modern production. Their music invokes thousands of generations of story and culture, while emerging as something entirely new.
Fred is one of three Butchulla songmen - a song and language custodian for the Butchulla people from the Fraser Coast region of Queensland, including K’gari (formerly known as Fraser Island). He sings the songs on this album in the endangered Butchulla language, now spoken by only a handful of people.
Samuel is an internationally acclaimed contrabassist / producer known for his kaleidoscopic harmonies and polyrhythmic mastery. He has scored extensively for contemporary dance, recently for notable choreographer Thomas Kelly’s celebrated work SILENCE.
Their self-titled debut album was recorded in Brisbane by Samuel, then mixed in London by Jake Miller (Björk, Arca, Yves Tumor) and mastered at Abbey Road by Alex Wharton (The Beatles, My Bloody Valentine).
The album sets Fred’s powerful vocals against striking experimental soundscapes, rich with strings, horns, double bass, synthesizer, piano and percussion. The result is otherworldly, a timeless art music outside Western convention.
And what about the beautiful cover artwork? It was created by Fred’s niece, the contemporary Indigenous artist Mia Boe created.
“I got all the ochre colours from Butchulla Country, from Rainbow Beach all the way up to Burrum Heads and sand from the island from K’Gari,” Fred says.
“She used all those colours as the palette. I took bags, loads of colours to Naarm down to Melbourne to her. And then she said, after going back and forth with us for a while, ‘this is what I’ve come up with’. I said, ‘What? You’re kidding!’ That album is in itself, is a piece of art.”
Read more ... Bandcamp
Perak
THEE MARLOES
Released 22 July 2024
Big Crown Records
*****
Thee Marloes, hailing from Surabaya, Indonesia, blend their unique background with a soulful sound that's both familiar and distinct. Led by Natassya Sianturi's excellent vocals, with Sinatrya 'Raka' Dharaka on guitar and Tommy Satwick on drums, the trio combines soul, jazz, and pop with an Indonesian twist.
From port city of Surabaya on the island of Java, Indonesia comes Thee Marloes, comprising Natassya Sianturi on vocals, Sinatrya ("Raka") Dharaka on guitar, and Tommy Satwick on drums. Their unique sound mixes elements of their local culture and music with influences of Soul, Jazz, and Pop.
So fresh are they that only eight of the twelve tracks from their first album have been released at the time of writing. We will update links as more are released.
With early influences from American hip-hop and alternative rock, Raka found himself driven to write his own songs. Night after night, after getting off work Raka would play and pen his songs with no real idea what he’d do with them. While raw, these early drafts had potential—that much he knew. After crossing paths with Tommy, Raka now had a partner to start fleshing things out with. With similar musical influences and passion, the duo began getting gigs both sitting in with other bands and DJing parties around Indonesia and Southeast Asia. While they didn’t know it then, this time spent cutting their teeth, playing shows, and seeing what was out there, would serve as a crucial foundation for their sound to come.
A significant step was taken in 2019. Raka and Tommy saw a woman perform at a local show that truly captivated them. Her name was Natassya, and her voice had such feeling and range that they knew they had to work with her. Natassya, surrounded by a musical family, grew up in church honing her vocals in the choir. Those chops coupled with the fact that she was inspired by a spectrum of absolute global legends, ranging from The Jackson 5 family to Erykah Badu made her a perfect fit. Raka and Tommy invited her to join a recording session, and it was clear right away that she added a meaningful and talented depth to the music. So now, almost suddenly, with the addition of Natassya, they were a trio that found an authentic voice blending an Indonesian vibe with the universal appeal of soul, jazz, and pop.
Read more ... Big Crown Records
Endlessness
NALA SINEPHRO
Released 6 September 2024
Warp Records
*****
‘Endlessness’ is a remarkable record, a project that borrows from dozens of voices while communicating in only one. Somehow eclipsing the magic inherent in her debut, ‘Endlessness’ finds Nala Sinephro operating in a creative universe of her own.
For those who embraced it, Nala Sinephro’s 2021 debut album ‘Space 1.8’ offered a glimpse of the divine. Unshackled from expectations, it found the composer – and her trusty harp – moving into the unknown, easing the listener into unfathomable spaces.
As a follow-up, ‘Endlessness’ comes with no small degree of pressure. Remarkably, it ups the ante still further, an ode to life, beauty, and the joy found in the mundane, an audio diary that could only come from one voice, at one time.
The format is remarkably simple, allowing vast swathes of sound to be tethered to a definitive framework. Clocking in at 45 minutes, it features 10 tracks, with one continuous arpeggio running through the record, shape-shifting along the way.
The cast is utterly glowing, containing a literal who’s who of British freedom music – (now ex) Black Midi drummer Morgan Simpson for example; Mercury nominated saxophonist Nubya Garcia; the wonderful Sheila Maurice-Grey, and many more.
Read more ... Clash
Daughter of a Temple
GANAVYA
Released 15 November 2024
*****
Daughter of a Temple’s purpose, ganavya will tell you, is that people “know there’s a village for you, always in the ether. The worlds we dream of are possible when we come at it with the right amount of discipline and devotion. I hope that’s what resonates with them, that it tells the story of this random girl who dreamed of this world and then it manifested itself. I hope it makes them feel less alone, because that’s what it did for me. I think of it as proof that prayer works and love exists…”
‘Daughter of a Temple’ was recorded over a week in 2022 at the Moore’s Opera House in Houston, Texas, after ganavya had reached out to friends and associates over the preceding months to join her for “a gathering in and for devotion”. This was to draw on studies of what she terms the musico-philosophies of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, and she’d even promised herself she’d invite anyone who brought up Turiyasangitananda’s name around her. “You really shouldn’t do that,” she chuckles. “It turns out a lot of people talk about her!”
Consequently, the album – which also brings the Hindu tradition of harikatha into the 21st century – draws upon a vast cast of contributors across multiple disciplines, among them esperanza spalding, Vijay Iyer, Shabaka Hutchings, Immanuel Wilkins, Peter Sellars, Rajna Swaminathan, Charlotte Braithwaite, Chris Sholar, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Bindhumalini Narayanswamy. Her mother even helped cook for participants. The results, an innovative and deeply moving blend of spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional music, were initially recorded and edited by Ryan Renteria, then further edited and mixed by Nils Frahm at LEITER’s Funkhaus studio in 2024.
Read more ... LEITER
Filthy Underneath
NADINE SHAH
Released 23 February 2024
Universal Music
*****
Nadine Shah returns after an absence of four years, with a deeply personal but life-affirming collection that transcends the turbulence of its subject matter.
There is a fine line to tread in any creative labour when opening up about your personal struggles. It’s delicate work to find how much honesty resonates with an audience and what becomes alienating. Nadine Shah navigates this rough terrain on her fifth album, Filthy Underneath, a record which deals with how, in a few very short years, she coped with the death of her mother, substance abuse, a suicide attempt, recovery and the end of her marriage.
Any one of these topics could be completely overwhelming for listener and artist alike, but Shah’s control of the narrative makes her songs sound more confidential than confessional. She exercises the same incisive observational skills that she applied to songs about social unease and toxic relationships when she turns the lens on herself, as willing to be cutting, critical and humorous when she is her own subject.
The self-awareness around the weight of her material reads in how she tempers her delivery.
It’s in her wry humour, however, where she shines brightest, even on some of the most thematically dismal tracks.
She knows how it all sounds and she isn’t worried about any judgement. She is an artist wholly in possession of herself and her own story.
Read more... The Quietus
Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace
SHABAKA
Released 12 April 2024
Impulse Records
*****
There isn't anything incendiary or fiery about Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace. Its gentle, warm production and unhurried playing are deceptive: These tunes, as rendered, are far more complex in arrangement and presentation than they appear. Combined, they reveal the artist's pursuit of creative excellence as an aesthetic practice with a spiritual dimension.
In 2023, jazzman Shabaka Hutchings announced he would be shelving his saxophone for the foreseeable future. A consequential decision, it meant the end of Sons of Kemet and The Comet Is Coming, two of the three groups that established his reputation.
In November 2022, he foreshadowed that assertion with Afrikan Culture, recorded mostly solo on shakuhachi, flute, and clarinet. He followed it in 2023 with the mysterious jazz/hip-hop offering Flowers in the Dark by Kofi Flexxx on Native Rebel Recordings.
Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace was recorded by Maureen Sickler at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey in 2022. Unlike anything he's released yet, Shabaka uses wits and intuition to summon this music up from his unconscious. He's assisted by a studio cast that includes pianists Nduduzo Makhathini and Jason Moran, drummers Nasheet Waits and Marcus Gilmore, flutist Andre 3000, percussionist Carlos Nino, harpists Brandee Younger and Charles Overton, bassists Esperanza Spalding and Tom Herbert, multi-instrumentalist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Floating Points, and vocalists.
Read more ... AllMusic
Til My Song Is Done
EMMA DONOVAN
Released 19 April 2024
Jindahood / Cooking Vinyl Australia
*****
"I know this album is just the start of continuing to stand strong not only for my daughters but for all the other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women working in the Australian music industry today".
Faced with an opportunity to record her first solo album since the 2004 EP project titled Changes, and her first album after eight years without The Putbacks ensemble, Donovan says she was propelled into some deep introspection.
“I wanted to approach the album as a clean slate, but looking back at what makes me who I am,” Donovan explains. “I began by asking myself, who am I? Who is Emma Donovan? And what do I want to do? I want to be the deadly granddaughter, niece and daughter. I want to make my family proud.
Til My Song is Done is honouring that legacy of our family country music ways.
“That's exactly what this album is for me, like if they're proud and they're happy, if the family is honoured, that's all I need to know. And mum would be proud.
Read more ... Emma Donovan
Odyssey
NUBYA GARCIA
Released 20 September 2024
Concord Jazz
*****
The orchestra is a big, powerful force; only the most thoughtful and mature musicians in any genre can use it so judiciously. That’s the true ambition of Odyssey, and Garcia nails it.
“With strings” albums are all but a rite of passage for jazz artists. Every player with any degree of ambition eventually gets the jones to hear their own sound buttressed by orchestral arrangements; that sonic sweep is just too much to resist. Most, though, haven’t gotten that audacious by their third full-length. But then, the notion of audacity doesn’t even seem to occur to Nubya Garcia. Once the saxophonist and composer gets an idea (or many ideas at once, in her case), she does what she has to in order to execute it, scope or practicality notwithstanding. The mix of youth -Garcia is 33 years old - and ambition often leads to clutter, to overload; not here.
But sometimes, even in Garcia’s idiosyncratic world, the medium is still the message. If the strings don’t needlessly interfere with the rest of her palette, the opposite is also true. Hence there’s no sax or rhythm section on “Water’s Path.” The strings carry their own weight, from the stirring drama of the cello-viola melody down to the pizzicato violins and contrabass that give the piece its percussive thrust.
Read more ... Bandcamp
From The Fire
AUDREY POWNE
Released 26 April 2024
BBE Music
*****
Audrey Powne's stunning debut album is set to be one of those must have LPs in any music lover's collection. Something of an auteur release it features nine tracks all composed by Audrey, with all string arrangements and all produced by her.
UK-based Naarm/Melbourne artist, producer and multi-instrumentalist Audrey Powne is a creative force carving out a distinctive path in the future jazz and soul world.
Having honed her craft in the vibrant Melbourne music scene Powne can now be found performing in some of the most visionary musical circles globally.
Audrey's decision to produce the whole album herself came from a desire to take creative control of her music and apply techniques developed from the influences of the producers she had previously worked with.
If all of the above were not enough Audrey also wrote the lyrics for those tracks on which she sings, and as a multi-instrumentalist contributes piano, Rhodes and organ. She also features as a trumpeter with dextrous and soaring solos,
Read more ... Bandcamp
Wild God
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
Released 30 August 2024
Bad Seed / Play It Again Sam
*****
Throughout Wild God, the rattling fire of Thomas Wydler’s drums and the rolling undertow of Martyn Casey’s bass keep up the heat beneath the gracefully meandering, melodic arcs of Cave’s piano, Ellis’s violin, synths, flute and loops, Jim Sclavounos’s spine-tinglingly resonant vibraphone, and George Vjestica’s tender guitar. Melodies flood through the music and then disappear like currents. Wild God can feel fathomless, but it leaves you buoyant.
Punk-turned-prophet Nick Cave often describes music as “sacred”. Performance, for him, is an act of communion with the audience. But Wild God, his 18th album with The Bad Seeds, feels more like a baptism: an ecstatic immersion in the rushing, pooling waters of love and loss that the sexagenarian artist has experienced since the death of his sons Arthur Cave (15) and Jethro Lazenby (31) in 2015 and 2022, respectively.
Across nine swelling, sinking, swirling soundscapes, the album’s imagery plunges listeners into the lakes and seas of a “swimming god” before bringing us up for air to gawp up at the stars (“bright, triumphant metaphors for love”) and then grounding us on a warm Earth where “the country doctor whistles across the meadow” and rocking us to sleep with the muffled piano ballad “As the Waters Cover the Sea”.
Cave has described each song on this record as an individual conversion – one track is titled as such – but you don’t need to subscribe to any religious faith to buy into the transformative power of love that is hymned here.
Read more ... The Independent
Love Heart Cheat Code
HIATUS KAIYOTE
Released 28 June 2024
Brainfeeder
*****
For its high number of pleasurable components and intricacies, Stevie Wonder-worthy changes in key and tempo, and philosophical goodwill, "Make Friends" is the band's new creative apex. Palm's morphing into a one-woman Wonderlove seals it at the end.
Early into it, Love Heart Cheat Code seems to have the makings of the first concept album by Australia's premier hardcore avant-soul/jazz/funk/hip-hop band.
(The album-opening) "Dreamboat" enables dynamic-as-ever singer/guitarist Nai Palm and the preternatural rhythm section of Perrin Moss, Paul Bender, and Simon Mavin to travel the spaceways.
It leads to "Telescope," a glimmering groove of interstellar wonderment where everything apart from an interpolation of the Temptations' "My Girl" seems otherworldly. The following "Make Friends," however, departs from any perceptible sci-fi narrative with Palm praising a he, a she, and a they for being down-to-earth companions.
"Everything's Beautiful" is one of several songs that both references the sun and incorporates flute and harp, and on the lysergic Dilla-fied funk of "Dimitri," though that could be set in the Land of Oz.
Surprises and oddities flourish - "Cinnamon Temple," is a spasmodic eruption of technical life metal and "Longcat" pays swirling tribute to the Japanese feline whose figure became an Internet meme.
The band finishes off the album with a raucous remake of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" that shoves the acid rock classic in front of a fun house mirror. Increased chaos and whimsy only heighten Hiatus Kaiyote's ability to enchant and exhilarate.
Read more ... AllMusic
All Born Screaming
ST VINCENT
Released 26 April 2024
Total Pleasure Records
*****
Clark’s records often display warmth and vulnerability in flashes, but All Born Screaming feels thoroughly romantic and highlights bits of beauty amid Clark’s usual lexicon of chaotic, violent imagery.
All Born Screaming, Clark’s self-produced seventh album, goes for a hard reset on the St. Vincent project, not by going back to the harsh, alien textures of, say, 2011’s Strange Mercy, but by flicking the dial from “shock” to “console.” Musically, it feels like the first St. Vincent album since Marry Me presented without a unifying aesthetic: at various points, Clark incorporates Bond theme melodrama, Steely Dan-style prog, bouncy art pop and lechy industrial rock, making for what is arguably her loosest record, an exhale after years of fitting her songs into increasingly tight restraints.
Read more ... Rolling Stone
Wall of Eyes
THE SMILE
Released 26 January 2024
Self Help Tapes / XL Recordings
*****
"Wall of Eyes", The Smile's sophomore studio album affords it's three famous members a far less encumbered creative home than does Radiohead and Sons of Kemet, the juggernaut bands from which they hail.
Wall of Eyes is also the band's second studio release in less than a year - a haul that Radiohead has most recently taken twelve years to achieve and Sons of Kemet's five.
The music is so dominated by Yorke & Greenwood and similar enough to Radiohead to suggest that when the great band records again it should present a further increment in their artistic development, perhaps a long-form suite, rather than to replicate and be compared to The Smile project.
Although The Smile is an emerging project it is a working band: still building a reputation, touring large halls but not stadiums and playing regularly - 64 shows in 2022, 20 in 2023 and 24 planned for 2024. However, it has the unparalleled assets of the Yorke-Greenwood partnership (now entering their fourth decade together since their schooldays beginnings) and Skinner's expertise in the engine room.
Standout tracks here are the "Wall of Eyes", "Bending Hectic" and "Friend of a Friend". Jonny Greenwood's orchestrations and instrumental mastery throughout the album are inspiring. Yorke is at the height of his powers, drawing from his full vocal range and often using his instrument as another would a synthesizer. Skinner demonstrates once again that he is a generational quality drummer and percussionist.
The bands debut album "A Light For Attracting Attention" was among www.SunNeverSleepsOnMusic.com top albums of 2022 and "Wall of Eyes" will surely be near the top of our 2023 list, come December.
How great is this trio? It's difficult to judge at this stage of their career. My Top Ten list of iconic rock &/or jazz trios of all time includes Cream, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Police, The Beastie Boys, Nirvana, The Jam, Oscar Peterson (with Ray Brown and Herb Ellis), Bill Evans (with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian), Keith Jarrett (with Gary Peacock & DeJohnette) and Ahmed Jamal (with Israel Crosby and Vernel Fournier).
As I listen to the second album from The Smile, I wonder - should I displace one of these and admit The Smile to this list?
Sun Never Sets On Music
Cutouts
THE SMILE
Released 4 October 2024
Self Help Tapes LLP / XL Recordings
*****
The fact that Yorke and Greenwood are able to take ideas they’ve honed in Radiohead and use them in a fresh and alternative way in The Smile, which is buoyed by Skinner’s signature drumming style, is a mark of their brilliance
In the years since Radiohead released their latest album, A Moon Shaped Pool (2026), fans have been desperate for a follow-up. Instead, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood decided to team up with Tom Skinner from Sons of Kemet and form The Smile. You can hardly complain — The Smile have already released two highly impressive records, and with their third, Cutouts, they’ve proved that their genius hasn’t gone anywhere.
The album is a relentless and bold instrumental journey through frantic riffs and Skinner’s tight drumming, with the band even drawing from Eastern psychedelic influences and, like their previous album, Wall of Eyes (2024), it features beautiful compositions performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra. It has been less than a year since Wall of Eyes, a stunning collection of tracks, yet it seems like the band were simply too full of ideas not to share another body of work.
There is no slip in quality here, the group continue to demonstrate their innate ability to make songs that are consistently engaging, emotive, and richly textured. With every song, they give us something fascinating to grip on to, whether that be a pulsating electronic beat or a high-octane guitar riff that demands we brave eroding our corduroy and dance.
Read more ... Far Out
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Confidenza
(Original Soundtrack)
THOM YORKE
Released 26 April 2024
Unsustainabubble / XL Recordings
*****
Enigmatic, claustrophobic and intense – amplified by Thom Yorke’s score – Confidenza is an exquisite thriller and a deep analysis of human behaviour.
Pietro is a revered teacher, Teresa his brilliant and precocious student. Their affair is both illicit and tempestuous. After one fight, Teresa suggests that each tell the other a secret, one so shameful or shocking that were it to be made public, it would destroy that person’s life.
Time passes, Pietro’s stature as a writer grows and his family settles into the comfort of a bourgeois life. But he is haunted by the possibility that Teresa may one day reappear and tear apart his world with the secret she knows.
Daniele Luchetti’s first collaboration with Elio Germano, Mio fratello è figlio unico (2007), established the actor’s reputation. With Confidenza, both the filmmaker and the star profit from a partnership that has grown creatively richer.
Confidenza follows Yorke’s previous full-length score and original soundtrack for Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 Suspiria remake, receiving a Grammy-nomination for Best Song Written for Visual Media.
Produced by Sam Petts-Davies (Suspiria, The Smile, Wall Of Eyes), Confidenza sees Petts-Davies and Yorke working again with the London Contemporary Orchestra alongside a jazz ensemble which included Robert Stillman and fellow The Smile bandmate Tom Skinner.
In 2019 Yorke contributed music to Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn and in 2022 he wrote two original tracks for the series finale of Peaky Blinders
Read more ... IFFR (International Film Festival Rotterdam), Happy Valley Shop
Only God Was Above Us
VAMPIRE WEEKEND
Released 5 April 2024
Columbia Records
*****
Only God Was Above Us isn't just a great album in its own right -- it's one that enriches the understanding of Vampire Weekend's entire history.
Father of the Bride (2019) showed that Vampire Weekend's willingness to challenge assumptions about their music was as important as their willingness to examine memories and history. They continue to do both brilliantly on Only God Was Above Us, albeit in radically different ways.
Where Father's leisurely sprawl reflected the band's adopted home of Los Angeles, God uses pre-9/11 New York City as a framework for ten urgent musings on how history happens. Its songs are packed with thoughts and allusions that go as deep as subways and are piled as high as skyscrapers. taking its name from a 1996 New York article, "Prep School Gangsters" combines school day memories and generational cycles of poverty and prosperity with surprising joy.
Though the band twines and unpacks cultural narratives more overtly than ever before, it never feels simplistic.
Ezra Koenig's wordplay remains dazzling, resulting in pearls like "A staircase up to nothingness/Inside your DNA" on "Classical"'s melancholy study of how history is written by the winners. When he combines his deceptively simple rhymes and complex ideas with Father of the Bride's emotional openness on "Capricorn," which extends compassion to the generations "sifting through the centuries for moments of your own," it makes for some of Vampire Weekend's most moving music.
Read more ... The Quietus
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Back To Black
(Original Motion Picture Score)
NICK CAVE & WARREN ELLIS
Released 12 April 2024
Back Lot Music / Focus Features
*****
Back to Black is essentially a gentle, forgiving film and there are other, tougher, bleaker ways to put Winehouse’s life on screen – but Abela conveys her tenderness, and perhaps most poignantly of all her youth, so tellingly at odds with that tough image and eerily mature voice". The Guardian
The film has received mixed reviews, most of which focus on its not attempting to provide the definitive biography or delve forensically into story of her tragic deterioration and ending, nor to deliver the definitive musical bibliography.
Instead, the film explores relationships that surrounded Amy, while remaining more generously sympathetic to the characters surrounding her than earlier documentaries following her death had conceded.
In press materials for her film, director Taylor-Johnson said of Cave and Ellis’ musical contributions: “Nick and Warren were the only musicians in my mind to score Back to Black. Over the years I’ve listened to everything they’ve composed and longed to realize the dream of working together. Their sensibility as well as understanding of this story has led to a profoundly deep and moving film score.”
SunNeverSetsOnMusic
Three
FOUR TET
Released 15 March 2024
Text Records
*****
The twelfth Four Tet record offers up a rich sonic collage, club-friendly hi-hat patterns, and plenty of plinky-plonky pleasantness – in short, everything you would expect from the 12th Four Tet record
Despite recent public bromances and reports of dropping Taylor Swift’s ‘Love Story’ into sets to please his daughter, Three, Hebden’s twelfth as Four Tet, rarely goes off-piste from what we’ve come to expect. Opener ‘Loved’ could have fitted neatly into almost any album from the last twenty years or so, while ‘Storm Crystals’ exemplifies the patchwork layering of sound that is his stock in trade. Only ‘Daydream Repeat’ hints at this pacier, dance-oriented iteration of Hebben, with its skittering, fizzing hi-hats and tubular swathes of feedback, which then transmogrify into some ice cream van–like pinky-plonkiness. Its arrival as fourth track brings a welcome levity to proceedings and you sort of wish there was more of it.
Nevertheless, if Three is predictable in its lack of surprises, in Hebden’s case, that can only mean what’s on offer is sturdy and assured. As a producer, he’s a master craftsman, working with his head to delicately manipulate the listener’s heart. Everything is pristine and spiritually uplifting.
For any fans who like consistency in their Four Tet albums, Three will be the magic number. What anybody else thinks will unlikely concern him.
Read more ... The Quietus
Night Reign
AROOJ AFTAB
Released 31 May 2024
Verve Records
*****
On this, the Pakistani-American singer, composer, and producer's fifth studio album, the music holds visual context, a cinematic soundscape that brings life to the divinely ominous space we call the dark.
Some songs can only be heard at night - lunar lyrics for evening ears. It’s the songs of the night that stand us tall in the day, eyes filled with the work of stars. What voices will we take into our liminal slumber? What patterns and pieces will break open the night mind’s path?
Arooj Aftab answers these questions through, Night Reign. Within the realm of darkness, Night Reign points to layers of depth that blend each song into a narrative of uplifting surrender.
Night Reign is an act of tender defiance. Protest and prayer. It’s not geographical affiliations or the details of her birth certificate that awakens Arooj’s listeners. It’s her refusal to adhere to the limitations of race, borders, and gender, though her work is intricately tied to these malleable ideas.
Night Reign is an invitation or a call to action. This album permits us to give into the night because, in the night, we come into form, into the messiness of our whole beings.
Read more ... Verve Records
Mujer
YASMIN LEVY
Released 8 November 2024
*****
“If there were no religions, music would be the religion of humanity. As a person, I believe that each of us is a different color of God, and each color has its own beauty. God sent His colors to this world through us. We are just the conduits. If we understood this, we wouldn’t hate and fight each other, if we
understood, that each of us is a part of God, if we connected and loved God’s colors, our world would be beautiful and without wars. Thank God for letting me bridge people and cultures through music.“ Yasmin Levy
Yasmin Levy (born December 23, 1975, in Jerusalem), is a renowned Israeli singer-songwriter known for her unique blend of traditional Sephardic music with flamenco and modern styles. Influenced by her father, Yitzhak Isaac Levy, a prominent Ladino music researcher, Yasmin combines traditional instruments like oud, violin, and cello with contemporary sounds.
Her debut album, “Romance & Yasmin” (2000), garnered international attention, leading to a Best Newcomer nomination at the 2005 BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards. Subsequent albums, including “La Judería: Ladino Meets Flamenco” (2005) and “Mano Suave” (2008), received critical acclaim and commercial success, with “Mano Suave” charting in France and Sweden. Her 2009 album “Sentir” further showcased her distinctive sound.
As a Goodwill Ambassador for Children of Peace, Yasmin promotes cultural understanding. Her global performances and collaborations highlight her versatility and dedication to preserving and revitalizing Judeo-Spanish traditions. Yasmin Levy’s work bridges cultural divides, making her a significant figure in world music.
Read more ... Yasmin Levy
Fado Camoes
LINA
Released 19 January 2024
Galileo
*****
The 12 tracks show Camões addressing themes relevant today—childhood, change, love, loss. They also reveal conflicting sentiments, suggesting an era in which passion was often squeezed between richer language and shorter lives.
In 2005, Lina gave a preview of her own career as a fado singer by playing Amália Rodrigues in a theater musical based the great fado diva’s life. On her 2020 album, Lina_Raül Refree, she reinterpreted Amália’s songs, exchanging fado’s traditional acoustic guitars for minimalist backing of mostly piano and synths; a few purists complained, but the album won a host of prizes.
On Fado Camões, her newest release, Lina is still experimenting - and also reaching way back, marrying fado to the works of Luís Vaz de Camões, the sixteenth-century poet who is to Portuguese literature and language as Shakespeare is to English.
Best known for Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads), the epic poem about Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India, Camões also wrote hundreds of lyric poems. Lina looked for verses suited to fado’s cadences and assembled an able crew for her expedition. Music was borrowed from traditional fados, or newly composed by singer-songwriter Amélia Muge or by Lina herself.
Like Vasco da Gama rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Lina’s career is a voyage of discovery, and it looks like another epic. (Galileo MC)
Read more ... World Listening Post
Constellation
CAOILFJIONN ROSE
Released 24 May 2024
Gondwana Recordings
*****
The ten tracks on ‘Constellation’ feel rooted in a knowledge of folk, jazz and all the twentieth century’s classic tunesmiths, and yet they seem to create a magical, otherworldly space of her own imagining, blending Caoilfhionn’s core piano with synths, and pitting a live rhythm section and saxophone embellishments against ambient samples and future-facing production techniques.
Caoilfhionn Rose (pronounced Keelin), is a singer, songwriter and producer who was born in Manchester, England, with family roots in Northern Ireland and Yorkshire (UK).
With her third Gondwana album, ‘Constellation’, Caoilfhionn Rose has come of age as an artist, digging deep to find experimental new ways of expressing her wonder at nature’s beauty, her love of music in all its diversity, and her belief in the restorative powers that both afford in the troubled post-COVID world.
‘Constellation’ features contributions from Halsall’s rhythm section, drummer Alan Taylor and bassist Gavin Barras, as well as Jordan Smart from Mammal Hands, whose supple sax exquisitely colours the fringes of most of its songs. Also guesting: John Ellis, former member of The Cinematic Orchestra, beatifically tinkling the ivories at the end of ‘Fall Into Place’, and producer Aaron Wood via a raft of ambient samples adding textured loveliness throughout ‘Rainfall’.
“I love being open to collaboration,” Rose enthuses, “and the record’s a collage, knitting together all these influences, sounds and players, and just really going for it with the experimentation in the production.”
Read more ... Bandcamp
Joy Machine
DIZRAELI
Released 31 May 2024
Def Presse
*****
The sound is a visionary mixture of hip-hop, post-punk and jazz.
Recorded almost entirely in a single day at the legendary Total Refreshment Centre in London, Joy Machine brings together some of the most exciting musicians in London’s new jazz explosion. With contributions from Alabaster DePlume and trumpeter Jonathon Enser (Nubiyan Twist), vocals from Dizraeli (Worldwide Music Awards Best Album nominee), drums from Ben Brown (Alfa Mist, Mulatu Astatke), bass from uk jazz scene favourites Daisy George and Joe Downard, synths from Joseph Costi (Yusef Cat Stevens , Bahla) and saxophone from free jazzer Ronan Perrett.
In the tradition of Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew , the band came to the studio in October 23 with only one pre-written track (the uplifting summer anthem Greek Summer) and once that was recorded, spent the rest of the day improvising wild, explosive music laced with Dizraeli’s rap and spoken word lyricism. The result is a record bursting with urgency, intensity and life, and one that cements Dizraeli’s position as an innovative wordsmith, bringing both personal depth (as in Abigail , a homage to the sister who died before he was born) and fierce political commentary (as in Dear Cousin , a goosebumps-inducing narrative that transports the listener aboard the boat Adriana carrying refugees across the Mediterranean, which sank in June 2023 drowning 500 people, and then confronts a very English bigot in the second verse).
Read more ... Bandcamp
TRAИƧA
RED HOT ORG - VARIOUS ARTISTS
Released 22 November 2024
Red Hot Org
*****
‘Mahashmashana’ is assured, emotive and luminous, Tillman, aka Father John Misty’s distinctive phasing is magnificent, his melodies are gorgeous and this soul-baring record is set to be a firm favourite for both new fans and the existing congregation that worship at the altar of Father John Misty.
Red Hot is a non-profit organization that produces music and media dedicated to social change, beginning in 1990 at the height of the AIDS pandemic.
Red Hot's mission is to raise awareness about diversity and equal access to health care. The company has produced 25 projects to date and given away over 15 million dollars to organizations around the world.
With production beginning in 2021, and over 100 artists contributing, TRANƧA marks one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by Red Hot - a spiritual journey across 8 chapters and 46 songs, spotlighting the gifts of many of the most daring, imaginative trans and non-binary artists working today. It softens the edges of the world we know, and invokes powerful dreams of the futures that might one day thunder from its cracks. The album's instantly memorable cover speaks to the tension between nature and constructed environments, and the tension of transness in the western gender binary.
Transa includes new works by Sade Adu with a culture-shifting ballad “Young Lion” sung for her trans son, Izaak; a side-length original by André 3000 and appearances by Sam Smith, L’Rain & more.
Read more ... Bandcamp
The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow
CHARLES LLOYD
Released 15 March 2024
Blue Note Records
*****
In its entirety, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow is a kick in the ass call to arms of the life and beauty still to be experienced when minds and hearts are set free to imagine other states of being.
For a long, grateful while now the music of Charles Lloyd has rippled out from that rarified space where the ego does not prevail. A pool of depth and wonder which culminates in one masterful artwork after another, for example Wild Man Dance (Blue Note, 2015) and 8: Kindred Spirits Live from the Lobero Theater (Blue Note, 2019).
Lloyd's eleventh Blue Note album, the double disc set The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow is also his first new studio recording since the 2017 sessions which brought us the darkly shimmering Vanished Gardens (Blue Note, 2018) and the finely curated Tone Poem (Blue Note, 2021).
At times these fifteen new works sound like conflict and question in their rawest forms. At times they are the sound of wisdom, reason, and comfort, but Lloyd has always had that extra tinge of humanness in his sound. It is the character of his tone. Maybe it is just that now, as the gray skies darken, the music is more reflective than forward looking as he has been since the swinging Sixties.
In its entirety, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow - highlighted by Lloyd's lucid and dreamy "When the Sun Comes Up, Darkness Is Gone" and his look back to "Cape to Cairo" from All My Relations (ECM, 1995) - is, what the bards of olde would say, a kick in the ass call to arms of the life and beauty still to be experienced when minds and hearts are set free to imagine other states of being. Yes, that is what it is.
Read more ... All About Jazz
Unomkhubulwane
NDUDUZO MAKHATHINI
Released 7 June 2024
Blue Note Records
*****
South African pianist, composer, healer, and philosopher Nduduzo Makhathini's third Blue Note album uNomkhubulwane is a transcendent three-movement suite which pays homage to the Zulu Goddess uNomkhubulwane and explores Africa’s tragic history of oppression and features Makhathini’s trio, with bassist Zwelakhe-Duma Bell le Pere and drummer Francisco Mela.
Since making his international debut for Blue Note in 2020 with Modes of Communication: Letters From the Underworlds, and his 2022 master work In The Spirit Of Ntu, Makhathini has earned widespread acclaim for the genuinely spiritual transcendence of his music. For Makhathini, a Zulu healer and educator who has delved deeply into the histories and traditions of his ancestors, improvised music has never been merely about aesthetics or idioms. As the New York Times put it when naming Modes of Communication one of the Best Jazz Albums of 2020: “In a moment when spiritual jazz has become a dangerously buzzy concept, trust a musician who has truly devoted his life to As always, Makhathini’s message is ultimately one of perpetual optimism for his people, and for all people. “Essentially, this offering is an invitation to humanity to cultivate ways of being that yearn for freedom and balance,” he says. “Here I invite you to a new mode of humanism that is oriented towards singing the songs of uNomkhubulwane.”
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Read more ... BlueNote
Mahashmashana
FATHER JOHN MISTY
Released 22 November 2024
Joshua Tillman / Sub Pop Records
*****
‘Mahashmashana’ is assured, emotive and luminous, Tillman, aka Father John Misty’s distinctive phasing is magnificent, his melodies are gorgeous and this soul-baring record is set to be a firm favourite for both new fans and the existing congregation that worship at the altar of Father John Misty.
Some things in life are inevitable, taxes, love and of course death – a theme that is explored in stunning fashion across Father John Misty’s new album ‘Mahashmashana’.
It takes its title from ‘Mahāśmaśāna’, the Sanskrit word for ‘great burial ground’ and follows on conceptually from the last track of his previous album ‘Chloë and the Next 20th Century’ which references it with the lyrics ‘Come build your burial grounds’.
The genesis for this record originated after Josh Tillman (Father John Misty) read a book by Bruce Wagner called Memorial. Despite the less than ebullient subject material, ‘Mahashmashana’ still manages to be uplifting and is full of Father John Misty’s sublime storytelling throughout.
It’s about knowing oneself and the infinite reminder that every new beginning has an inevitable end.
It’s an album of contrasts in many ways. It’s intimate yet expansive, it’s beautiful, but also reveals the ugly truth that death is inevitable for us all, but how you live your life is what counts.
It seems that there is one more thing to add to the list of ‘inevitable things ’in life – that a Father John Misty album will always be life-affirming, moving and captivating.
Read more ... Clash
Polymorphic
by Maddison Carter
Released 23 February 2024
Earshift Music
*****
Maddison Carter is a Melbourne-based drummer and composer, quickly making a name for his vast textural palette, versatility and extended rhythmic vocabulary as an improviser.
Polymorphic is the groundbreaking project from Melbourne based Maddison Carter, a visionary percussionist and composer. The project emerges from the creative expanses of Melbourne's lockdowns, capturing a new direction in Carter's artistic journey. Polymorphic is a reflection of Carter's life, his connection with his ensemble, and an intimate portrayal of his artistic and personal growth, inviting listeners into a world of deep emotional and rhythmic exploration.
Formed amidst the solitude of 2021 lockdowns, "Polymorphic" began as a solo exploration and evolved into a sextet ensemble, symbolizing Carter's commitment to melodic richness and the unconventional use of the vibraphone. "Polymorphic first grew during Melbourne’s many lockdowns," explains Carter. "It was born out of a change of lifestyle and my frustration with playing only non-pitched material. This music brought me back from a period where I spent far less time on music." The ensemble’s journey mirrors Carter's own artistic transformation, from a period of diminished musical activity during the lockdowns to a rekindled passion for composition and performance.
Read more ... Bandcamp
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Orchestras (Live)
BILL FRISELL
Released 19 April 2024
Blue Note Records
****-
A rare recording in which a sprawling symphonic ensemble moves as if by intuition, urging one of jazz’s best small groups toward their next spontaneous discovery.
In the trio format he’s favored throughout his career, the guitarist and composer Bill Frisell has always projected an orchestral scope through his remarkably complete sense of harmony, a unique gift for melodies that remain with you long after a performance, and a keen feel for how dynamic range can be used to convey emotion.
But on his new double album Orchestras, he makes those symphonic evocations a reality.
Produced by Lee Townsend, Orchestras documents two inspired concert hall engagements arranged by Michael Gibbs for Frisell’s trio with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston:
LP1 featuring the nearly 60-piece Brussels Philharmonic, conducted by Alexander Hanson;
and LP2 with the 11-piece Umbria Jazz Orchestra, under the musical direction of Manuele Morbidini.
“The idea is that we’re always going to be on the edge of what we know,” Frisell says, “or hopefully off the edge of what we know, into some sort of uncharted territory. We were still playing whatever comes into our imagination.”
Read more ... Blue Note
Y'Y
AMARO FREITAS
Released 1 March 2024
Psychic Hotline
*****
Continuing to intwine ancestral knowledge into his music, Amaro Freitas brings his fresh, “decolonized” interpretation of jazz. With his new album Y’Y Freitas steps into a new realm of musical creation that’s rooted in magic, possibility, and stewardship for the earth, changing what the genre can be.
What drives Amaro Freitas in life is experience. In 2020 the pianist, who hails from the Northeastern Brazilian coastal city of Recife, was drawn to Manaus, located in the Amazon basin, some 4600 kilometers to the west.
His experience in that lush wilderness led him into a new realm of musical creation, one rooted in magic and possibility and tempered by a sense of stewardship for the earth’s bounties and a connection to the Sateré Mawé indigenous community.
Crucial to the experience for Freitas was the maintenance of a true exchange of knowledge. According to Freitas, in the resulting album, Y’Y (pronounced: eey-eh, eey-eh), he pays “homage to the forest, especially the Amazon Forest, and the rivers of Northern Brazil: a call to live, feel, respect, and care for nature, recognizing it as our ancestor.”
Read more... Bandcamp
This Is How You Do It
THE BAMBOOS
Released 3 November 2023
Pacific Theatre
****-
Could there be a more appropriate title for The Bamboos' masterclass 11th studio album? After 23 years at the forefront of Melbourne/Naarm's funk and soul scene, the nine-piece sound is as vital as ever, laying down imperial grooves and rhythms you can set your watch to.
This follow-up to 2021's Hard Up (one of the best albums of that year) is the perfect sonic pick-me-up.
From the horns-aloft punch to the contemporary spin on classic sounds, The Bamboos remain the band we've always loved. But there is some new DNA in the mix. We're introduced to Auldist's eldest son, Reginald AK, lending some creamy vocals to the neo-soul joint 'Safe From Heaven' and the sassy, snapping, chunky organ-led 'Bored'.
"It's been mum and I against the world. I've always held her as my hero," he says of carrying on the family tradition. "To stand this close to her in the sonic arena is something I've dreamed of my whole life."
Eveen whn The Bamboos play it straight, they're difficult to fault.
The Bamboos' latest is – as ever — a world class reminder that, well, This Is How You Do It. Indeed!
Read more... ABC
3
ABDULLAH IBRAHIM
Released 26 January 2024
Gearbox Records
*****
“People don’t like Abdullah Ibrahim, they adore him, bestowing on him the devotion normally reserved for Nina Simone. When he plays, melodies tumble out effortlessly, as he slides from theme to theme like a laid-back South African reincarnation of Thelonious Monk.” - The Guardian
Taken from Abdullah Ibrahim’s summer 2023 sold-out headline date at London’s Barbican Centre, the new album “3” follows suit and is spread across two performances – the first is recorded without an audience ahead of the concert straight to analogue on a 1” Scully tape machine, which had previously been used by Elvis at the famous Memphis-based Sun Studios.
The second recording is taken from the evening’s performance itself with Ibrahim performing in a unique trio which includes Cleave Guyton (flute, piccolo, saxophone) who has performed alongside the likes of Aretha Franklin, Dizzy Gillespie, and Joe Henderson, as well as lauded bassist and cellist Noah Jackson, both of which are members of EKAYA and featured on Ibrahim’s Top 3 Billboard Jazz album “The Balance”
Read more... Gearbox Records
Speak To Me
JULIAN LAGE
Released 1 March 2024
UMG Recordings
*****
The term ‘complete musician’ is overused, but in both composing and improvising Julian Lage has to be close to one.
Over the years since he was discovered as a 12 year-old prodigy, gigs with Gary Burton, John Zorn and Charles Lloyd have not only cemented Julian Lage's reputation for audaciously secure technical command and idiomatic openness, but also empathic sensitivity in a band.
Lage, however, has no trouble holding any stage on his own, as he repeatedly shows on this contrast-packed set of a dozen originals, despite the invaluable guest presences of saxophonist Levon Henry and much-admired pianist Kris Davis within his regular lineup. There are backbeat-smacking electric groovers, catchy country-pop songs, classic guitar-jazz ballads, and lyrical themes that dissolve into free-improv – but the storytelling conciseness of the tracks, and the surprise turns in all of Lage's fastmoving solos, keep you leaning in.
Read more ... Jazzwise
Chorus
MILDLIFE
Released 1 March 2024
Mildlife / [PIAS] Australia
*****
Chorus is the sound of singular entities coalescing into a wondrous whole. It’s harmonious togetherness and celebratory symbiosis. And it’s the band’s ultimate statement of their borderline mystical unity, their unified theory of groove.
On their third studio full-length, Mildlife link microcosmic personal meaning with a macro view from on high.
“Chorus is about a coming together of disparate elements. Not in some sort of utopian aesthetic where everything works perfectly, but in the natural flow and state of things,” shares the band’s Jim Rindfleish. “It’s about cosmic compatibility and chemistry: what makes things work? Not just what makes the band work, but what makes good music, art or love? It’s the rhythm of nature”.
Following 2020’s Automatic and 2017’s Phase, Chorus arrives as Mildlife’s most optimistic record, serving as a sonic testament to the band’s unwavering adoration for the beguiling realms of 70s psychedelic and cosmic sounds. Delve deeper, and you’ll unearth Polish jazz, Italo disco and a sprinkling of contemporary electronic sounds. Chorus is the dance of an expanding and contracting universe - its groove is forever and always, cyclical and evolving. In its most human moments, the album luxuriates in the velvety embrace of Tomas Shanahan’s bass lines, Halliwell’s luminous guitar riffs, Kevin McDowell’s hushed and alluring vocals, Rindfleish’s intricate percussive tapestries and the spiritual rhythms of regular collaborator Craig Shanahan. Swept up in the chorus, the lines between individual and ensemble blur.
Read more... Bandcamp
Something In The Room She Moves
JULIA HOLTER
Released 22 March 2024
Domino Recording Co Ltd
*****
Her latest release on Domino finds Holter crafting sparkling yet reserved avant-pop layered with profound ambition. Gone are any hints of the guitar-centric music she created on her earliest projects. Instead, she graces our ears with sumptuous synths, sun-kissed pads, spaced-out bass, and gloriously lilting alto.
Musically, Something in the Room She Moves relies on a rotating core of synth, bass, woodwinds, and horns. Only a few tracks feature any sort of traditional percussion and nary a guitar is to be heard. Holter has formed a postmodern chamber quartet of talented multi-instrumentalists skilled in pop, jazz, folk, and classical—equal parts Alice Coltrane, Kate Bush, Cate Le Bon, and Joanna Newsom.
Something in the Room She Moves use mood as a lodestar by embracing a naturalistic and impressionistic aesthetic. Exuding an experimental elegance, Julia Holter powers her music all via a keen sense of purpose. She isn’t wandering blithely through a torrent of emotions. She’s channeling her feelings into her art. She first encourages the listener to pay attention to what she’s saying, and then she welcomes them to feel the music on their own terms.
Read more ... Treble
The Liminality of Her
AMANDA WHITING
Released 22 March 2024
Fast Word Records
*****
A virtuoso in her field, this classically trained musician has quickly established herself as an essential player in the UK jazz scene, carving her own unique sound, following on from the paths forged by Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane.
Amanda Whiting; a highly-acclaimed Welsh harpist & composer.
If there is a context in which Amanda Whiting’s jazz harp is not mesmerizing, she hasn’t found it yet. Whiting’s fourth album steeps the Welsh musician’s delicate melody lines and lustrous chords in an aura of hazy, ethereal mystery. That aura extends over a set of mellow grooves, which, far from grounding the music, are as atmospheric and hypnotic as their surroundings.
Those grooves—played throughout by bassist Aidan Thorne, drummer Jon Reynolds, and percussionist Mark O’Connor—serve as a reminder that the new UK jazz scene comes out of London’s dance music underground. Yet even the deepest and hardest veins of funk they mine here, as on “Liminal” and “No Turning Back,” become gentle swayers once Whiting’s harp enters the picture.
Read more... Bandcamp
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The Carnegie Hall Concert (Live)
ALICE COLTRANE
Released 24 March 2024
Impulse Records / Ume
*****
A live set from 1971, finds Coltrane – plus a band featuring Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Tulsi Sen Gupta and others – on inspired form.
Had this review been written some twenty years ago, it would have needed a preamble arguing how Alice Coltrane (aka Swamini Turiyasangitananda) was much more than “one earthbound projection of John’s spirit”, as Amiri Baraka infamously wrote in his liner notes to her 1968 solo debut A Monastic Trio. In the past two decades, Alice’s work has been reappraised and recontextualised, thanks to both her spiritual role attracting diverse listeners and a younger generation of artists like Angel Bat Dawid and Kamasi Washington providing new readings of the legacy of spiritual jazz. Coltrane’s significance has been rightly elevated into the highest echelons of the jazz pantheon, where her influence is now often mentioned in the same breath as her husband’s. While Coltrane’s music needs little promotion at this point, the ‘Year of Alice’ initiative spearheaded by Impulse! and The John & Alice Coltrane Home is more than welcome, especially when it brings to surface outstanding recordings such as The Carnegie Hall Concert.
Captured in February 1971, four years after John Coltrane’s death, the concert marked a pivotal moment in Alice Coltrane’s career as she found herself on a journey of metaphysical and artistic rediscovery. While her record Journey In Satchidananda – named for her mentor, the yoga guru Swami Satchidananda – had only been released a few days earlier, the group’s performance of its brand-new material is confident and inspired. Coltrane herself appears on piano, harp, and percussion and is joined by a cast of long-time collaborators: Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders on reeds, Jimmy Garrison and Cecil McBee on double bass, Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis on drums, Kumar Kramer on pump organ, and Tulsi Sen Gupta on tamboura.
Read more ... The Quietus
Ein-Sof
ITZHAK VENTURA
Released 29 March 2024
Raw Tapes Records
*****
Ventura created this album to speak to the soul: “I want people to feel the connection of heart and spirit. The ney itself is a reed cut from its source; this sound reflects how we are also separated from the divine. And these songs bring us closer to unity.”
Ney (an end-blown flute that figures prominently in Arabic music.) artist, composer, producer & live performer Itzhak Ventura honed his skills growing up in the vibrant port city of Jaffa-Tel Aviv, his hometown and symbol of the resurgence of israel ethnic music.
Being widely regarded as a leading Ney player , he immersed himself in learning and exploring the Arabic, Turkish, and Persian Ney styles.
In addition to playing with The Jerusalem Orchestra East & West since its inception in 2009, he has played with renowned orchestras and musicians across a wide range of musical genres.
Ventura was inspired by some of the greatest Ney players in history and top present day musicians to create a new hybrid that combines ancient Ney flute sounds and motifs with contemporary sounds and production while maintaining the traditional sensibilities he was raised with.
With Ein Sof - which translates to 'there is no end'- Itzhak Ventura has created a mysterious, slowly-unfolding album pairing his fluttering ney with an ambient-electronic sound-bath from producer/musician Yuvi “Rejoicer” Havkin. The record, pushes the boundaries of the Raw Tapes label’s already-experimental, genre-blurring roster.
Ventura and Havkin converged in the studio in February, 2023, and immediately found their spark. The 10 tracks of Ein Sof pay homage to the classical tradition of the ney while adding electronic flourishes that help these recordings transcend anything that’s come before.
Note: SunNeverSetsOnMusic featured Venturer's previous album Aligned in our October 2022 playlist.
Read more ... Soundcloud, Bandcamp
Erbil
OMAR SOULEYMAN
Released 29 March 2024
Mad Decent
*****
Omar Souleyman’s 5th studio album pays homage to Erbil — the city in Iraq that offered solace and embraced Souleyman during recent uneasy times.
Souleyman's move to Erbil came rich with new experiences and friendships best celebrated in joyous songs dedicated to a new chapter of life.
Erbil’s 8 tracks see the Syrian wedding singer turned global electronic music icon again teaming up with his longtime keyboard player Hasan Jamo alo for an ever ambitious and forward thinking techno-meets-Dabke sound.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Embracing
MOKSHA
Released 3 May 2024
Jazzland Recordings
*****
On the record's seven tracks, the trio alternates between their own experiences with Indian, Norwegian, North and West African music, in addition to good old-fashioned jazz rock and the occasional noisy freak out.
There is both seriousness and ecstasy on Moksha's second album. There are complex and virtuosic moments, but it also feels like music that arose from the simplest of all starting points, the play between three good fellow musicians. The trio's unique interplay began back in 2012, when they were still students and met to experiment with rhythm, raga and jazz.
Now, with their second album, the palette has been expanded, both as a trio and as individuals. Their session, recorded in Newtone in January, featuring some selected guest musicians, does not feel overloaded with references.The music they play is the sum of their shared experiences and it kicks.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Fearless Movement
KAMASAI WASHINGTON
Released 3 May 2024
Shoto Mas Inc, Young
*****
Fearless Movement is an unabashed, cross-country, transgenerational manifestation and celebration of Black American music, pushing it forward from a deep love of its past not just in the spirit of community but in its actual presence.
From his days as a “Young Jazz Giant” and his inaugural tour with Snoop Dogg to his sprawling two prior albums, each rendered by a cast of dozens, Washington has indeed functioned as a very bright star in his artistic constellation but never the one around which everyone else revolves.
This idea has never been more clear or powerful on Washington’s records than on Fearless Movement, his first album in six years and, even at 86 minutes, his most concise statement by half since the breakthrough run that began with 2015’s The Epic. On these dozen tracks, Washington creates a playground and invites friends in to be themselves, shaping a dizzying crosshatch of ideas where George Clinton’s lounge croon sets up a trumpet-chased pep talk from rapper D Smoke, or André 3000 slips – with flutes in hand – into a nocturnal haze that feels like some futuristic Debussy state of bliss.
It is easy to imagine Washington disappearing here, his restless tone shrouded beneath the features and tizzy of ideas. And, sure, this is not a saxophone record, not something that will convince you he is a titan of the instrument itself. There are, however, many moments where he cooks, like his steady climb toward a bellow during Prologue and his ever-winding lines during The Garden Path.
Read more ... Mojo
Shoot The Engine اقتُلْ الدافع
Carl Gari, Abdullah Miniawy
Released 9 May 2024
Amphibian Records
*****
Blending avant-garde electronic soundscapes with poetic lyrics.
The Egyptian-German collective, composed of Abdullah Miniawy, Till Funke, Jonas Yamer, and Jonas Friedlich, has been engaged in intensive collaboration after their initial meeting in Cairo in 2015. Earning critical acclaim from esteemed media outlets.
Their debut album, "Darraje," was recognized as one of the top 50 albums of 2016 by the American NPR.
Their release, "The Act of Falling from the 8th Floor," garnered attention from Pitchfork, The Quietus, and Wire Magazine, with "Zawaj" ranking at the top of Resident Advisor's list of "Deep Listening" tracks in 2019.
More recently, Abdullah's album "Le Cri Du Caire," featuring Erik Truffaz, won Les Victoires Du Jazz 2023 award – the French equivalent of the Grammy Awards. in the World Music category.
As a writer, his lyrics have left a mark in the Middle East region, notably during the Arab Spring, where they were displayed in places like the Yarmouk camp in Syria.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Find Your Flame
NUBIYAN TWIST
Released 3 May 2024
Strut Records
*****
They weave depth, sophistication, emotional heft -- political, spiritual, and personal -- discipline, and resonant emotion to create nearly limitless creative possibility in a savvy stylistic juxtaposition of neo-soul, funk, jazz, hip-hop, Afrobeat, reggae, and EDM.
Since forming at Leeds College of Music in 2011, Nubiyan Twist has expanded and refined their musical palette without succumbing to excess.
Find Your Flame is the band's fourth album. This break-laden, horn-drenched exercise in uptempo contemporary jazz-hop is as poignant as it is elegant in guitarist/composer Tom Excell's arrangement.
Find Your Flame is the Nubiyan Twist album where what they've done before, and this sophisticated new direction comes together with remarkable consistency and explosive creativity. It's the album that reveals, 14 years on, that Nubiyan Twist is no longer a good band; they're a great one.
Read more ... AllMusic
Here In The Pitch
JESSICA PRATT
Released 3 May 2024
City Slang
*****
Her songs are still wounded and far away, but the expanded instrumentation gives them a prismatic glow and makes for one of the most fascinating and repeatable sets from an artist who was already in a class by herself.
Up to this point, Jessica Pratt's gorgeous songs were almost translucent, their thin layers of nylon-string guitar, occasional piano, and her whispered vocals all stacked on each other like faded, see-through filmstrips. Her third album, 2019's Quiet Signs, was her most subdued effort yet, its songs powerful and engrossing but also seeming like they might float away completely if they weren't focused on tightly enough.
Pratt deepens both her captivating songwriting style and otherworldly presence while expanding her sound in multiple dimensions on her fourth record, Here in the Pitch. Where distant guitars have been the main accompaniment for much of her work before this, opening track "Life Is" announces a change by starting with the crack of reverb-laden drums and gradually bringing in bass guitar, string-like keys, and other ephemeral sounds. The arrangement is panoramic when compared to Pratt's usual sparseness, with clear nods to '60s orchestral pop productions from the Beach Boys, Love, the Walker Brothers, and the like.
Indeed, overt references to Pet Sounds come up repeatedly, in the bassy woodwind asides of "Better Hate," the seashell percussion and beachy organ of "Nowhere It Was," the accordion bellows of "By Hook or by Crook," and several other instances. Pratt also brings in a mercurial kind of bossa nova flare akin to Astrud Gilberto's saddest songs, the lonely longing of the Zombies, and the straightforward pop structure of '60s hitmakers like Sandie Shaw or Petula Clark. Even though these influences are displayed freely, that's not to say Here in the Pitch is mere re-creation of a certain sect of sunshine pop. Pratt's voice, songwriting turns, and distinctive melancholy all remain singularly her own, and the fuller, more excitable arrangements only shine light on her talent from new angles. While her material before this was insular, these songs find Pratt opening up her private sound world just enough to let a glimpse of its depth come through.
Read more ... AllMusic
Central Park's Mosaic of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens
WADADA LEO SMITH,
AMINA CLAUDINE MYERS
Released 10 May 2024
Red Hook
*****
Smith composed six of the seven pieces on Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens, and he’s joined by pianist and AACM cohort Amina Claudine Myers, who completed the sessions with no prior rehearsal.
The great AACM trumpeter and composer’s releases since 2012’s Ten Freedom Summers encompass an alternative map of America, lovingly sketching in its Great Lakes and National Parks while honoring its civil rights leaders, artistic geniuses, and the millions displaced and killed in its creation.
Smith composed six of the seven pieces on Central Park’s Mosaics of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens, and he’s joined by pianist and AACM cohort Amina Claudine Myers, who completed the sessions with no prior rehearsal.
Smith describes Central Park as his favorite park in the world, but from the first minor-key piano notes on “Conservatory Gardens,” it’s clear that Mosaics is about more than bucolic landscapes. The tone is stately and almost elegiac throughout, as if a grand, seismic, and vaguely frightening event is taking place on a glacial timescale.
Mosaics is short, just 36 minutes, more than a quarter of them occupied by “Conservatory Gardens.” But it doesn’t feel small, even when compared to Smith’s almost improbably ambitious epics like the four-and-a-half-hour Pulitzer nominee Ten Freedom Summers. Its borders seem to extend beyond its confines, as if there’s a theoretical piece for every meadow and lake in Central Park and this is just a small leakage from a vast parallel universe rendered through music.
Read more ... Pitchfork
Lives Outgrown
BETH GIBBONS
Released 17 May 2024
Domino Recording Co Ltd
*****
Beth Gibbons’s first official solo effort, Lives Outgrown, picks up where Portishead’s 2008 album, Third, left off, with detail-rich orchestral chamber pop backing a stunning exploration of aging and grief.
The singer’s existential fears about time’s creep and holding onto once-vibrant emotions and connections is as captivating as it is devastating.
Across the album’s 10 songs, Gibbons swims against life’s currents. Musically and thematically, she actively resists the dulling of sensation that, she suggests, comes with age: “I used to feel the feelings,” she sings on the unsettling “Burden of Life.”
That tension is palpable throughout Lives Outgrown. Gibbons’s feelings about mortality—“Gone too far to rewind…We all know what’s coming,” she laments on “Rewind”—are accompanied by instruments that often seem to be at war with one another. The drums are frequently arrhythmic and asynchronous, as on “Burden of Life” and “Tell Me Who You Are Today.”
Lives Outgrown is a despairing portrait of growing old, dotted with bursts of hope and still-fiery conviction. Occasionally, joy bubbles up to the surface and Gibbons is able to resuscitate the vitality of her youth.
Lives Outgrown presents an artist whose capabilities have been sharply honed, with the skill to convey all of life’s complicated, thorny emotions.
Read more ... Slant
Amen
JOY GUIDRY
Released 10 May 2024
Whited Sepulchre Records
*****
Piercing and purposeful, raw and real, Guidry’s past and present music permeates with intelligence and openness. Sonically, the meditative pulses of ambient music blended with elements of jazz and soul, forming something new and true.
AMEN is the 3rd release by bassoonist / composer / producer Joy Guidry. Representing a major step up in her ability to fully realize and embody a sound and concept, AMEN moves from rousing, rafter-splitting spiritual jazz and gospel compositions to ambient compositions that create a powerful statement of communal healing and peace. The album features contributions by Niecy Blues, Kalia Vandever, Jillian Grace, and Jessie Cox.
Love is a verb. It is an action taken, one that must be renewed within the self. It is a process of learning, evolution, and the very nature of what it means to nurture ourselves and others. And few artists know this as intimately as Joy Guidry, the Texas-bred, California-based bassoonist. The fruits of her efforts can be heard through Guidry's latest album, Amen.
Recognizing her trans identity and embracing the need to make difficult decisions with the people in her life brought forth the heart of Radical Acceptance. “There's nothing wrong with us. There's nothing wrong with any of us, when we look in the mirror, and we see something wrong, that was purely taught,” Guidry says.
Amen is the next step forward, one that calls in the power of community when embodying our true selves.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Empty Voices
HAMED SADEGHI
Released 14 June 2024
Hamed Sadeghi
*****
Empty Voices tries to define a new form of beauty and tries to present a forgotten love through music - A seven-piece ensemble including four horns, percussions, double bass and the Persian tar that is expected to be loud yet it presents a linear gentle soundscape.
Hamed Sadeghi is an Iranian-born tar player and composer based on Gadigal land (Sydney). Trained as a Persian classical musician in Tehran, Hamed’s haunting compositions give you a taste of his cherished culture. He has performed at the most notable music festivals and in prestigious concert halls in Australia and overseas.
He writes: "My passion for creation and my love both for the Persian classical music, western music and mainly jazz resulted in albums with my band Eishan Ensemble over the past seven years.
However, Fusion and blending is a never-ending journey. I’ve always had a lot of questions in my head; What is the best way of doing it? How loud or soft should my music be? Should it be structured or free-flowing? What does it mean to be authentic?
Empty Voices is about listening, lowering expectations, appreciating small moments and recognising the fragility of human being. Empty Voices celebrates the glory in the insignificance of life and it is about feeling empowered by valuing simplicity.
Also noteworthy: Hamad's 2023 album A Prelude To Silence
Read more ... Bandcamp
Outer Spaceways Incorporated - Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra
RED HOT ORG, CHRONOS QUARTET
Released 21 June 2024
Red Hot Org
*****
Another remarkable album from the Red Hot Org, this time commemorating the 110th pass around the Sun of the great Sun Ra - born May 1914.
Writing about the album on Kronos Quartet's we page, bandleader David Harrington says: “I wanted Outer Spaceways Incorporated: Kronos Quartet & Friends meet Sun Ra to honor Sun Ra’s creative genius. I believe the music of Sun Ra belongs in the same sentence as a few other composers who have totally enlarged American music such as Charles Ives, Duke Ellington, Terry Riley and Laurie Anderson. If I could have called Ives and Ellington, I would have. As it was, the first composers I spoke to regarding Red Hot’s offer to honor Sun Ra and use his original recordings and compositions as source material, were Terry and Laurie.
“Sun Ra lived his life always centered on possible next steps he could take in music and technology. It seemed very natural to bring in some of the most thrilling forces Kronos has worked with, such as Jlin, Nicole Lizée, Zachary Watkins, Trey Spruance, Victoria Shen and Jacob Garchik.
Collaborating musicians, composers, producers, emcees, include, in order of appearance): Kronos Quartet, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Jacob Garchik, Jlin, Laraaji, Marshall Allen, Laurie Anderson, Steven Bernstein, Sexmob, Doug Wieselman, Nicole Lizée, Zachary James Watkins, Corey Fogel, Raffi Garabedian, RP Boo, Armand Hammer, 700 Bliss, Trey Spruance, Secret Chiefs 3, Victoria Shen (Evicshen), Terry Riley, and Sara Miyamoto.
Harrington adds "Pretty soon there began to emerge a sonic picture of Sun Ra’s world that felt similar to the breadth of scope I aim for in the other Kronos albums we’ve made over the years."
Read more ... Kronos Quartet
Sonido Cosmico
HERMANOS GUTIERREZ
Released 14 June 2024
Hermanos Gutierrez / Easy Eye Sound / Concord
*****
While mostly pensive throughout, each moment on ‘Sonido Cosmico’ feels different from the other; each picture evoking something different from the imagination. It’s hard to find a track not to like here
Instrumental music always invites the listener to engage in acts of imagination. With guitar-slinging duo Hermanos Gutiérrez, the canvas teems with possibilities. Their last album ‘El Bueno Y El Malo’ rumbles and shimmers like the music of its titular inspiration Ennio Morricone. Appearances on guitar and production duties from The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, to which the brothers are signed to his Easy Eye imprint, heighten the record’s sumptuously melodic feel. Now with their third album, ‘Sonido Cosmico’ (translated in English as cosmic sounds), the brothers put their supernatural bond to the forefront and transcend to hypnotic new heights.
Coming by way of Switzerland and Ecuador, Estevan and Alejandro Gutiérrez may only be armed with six strings each. Yet their musical chemistry is ineffable. A tender moment between the pair during a live concert in a desert city in New Mexico last year inspired the otherworldly theme of their new album. Three songs into their set, with the attentive crowd hushed under their mesmeric playing, they looked at each other in tears. The emotional charge on that night and a connection to a place that exists beyond words made them feel like mediums, they mention in a press release. And with all of the emotion that pours out of ‘Sonido Cosmico’, they’ve certainly captured the essence of this moment to the full.
It’s also no surprise that the duo are touring with Khruangbin this year – their album flows with the same ease that their counterparts have mastered. But most impressive of all, the fact that two brothers create music of such depth playing nothing but their own guitars is astonishing.
If you fancy an exploration of the cosmos in desert guitar form, look no further.
Read more ... Clash
Alibai
EMMA VOLARD
Released 14 June 2024
The Operatives Records
*****
Alibi sees Emma stepping confidently into their own sonic world, expanding further on their introspective storytelling and pushing the limits of the future soul sound.
Emma Volard is one of Narrm’s | Melbourne's most enigmatic and staunchly authentic acts. Her music is entrenched in lavish harmonies, broken-beats and gut-wrenching lyricism, and has garnered attention from national and international tastemakers alike.
After the avalanche success of their debut album ‘Deity’ in 2022, future soul artist Emma Volard's sophomore album ‘Alibi.’ represents years spent honing a signature sound that encapsulates Naarm | Melbourne’s experimental neo-soul and jazz scene.
Emma has never shied away from being a warrior for inclusivity, and these themes are often at the forefront of their storytelling. This has placed them as a leader within the Naarm music community, and turned the heads of industry heavyweights such as Gilles Peterson, Jamz Supernova, Thundercat, Cory Henry and Zan Rowe.
Read more ... Bandcamp
A Sorcerer or a Madman (EP)
ABDULLAH MINIAWY,
BAPTISTE-FLORIAN MARLE-OUVRARD, GUILLAUME HUMERY (YOM)
Released 28 June 2024
Planetes Rouges / Phosphoric Passport
*****
This trio produces another astonishing work in which Miniaway's Arabic poetry, BFMO's pipe organ and Yom's clarinet are each given equal voice to soars free in majestic harmony.
Abdullah Miniawy born 1984 is an Egyptian expressionist poet, songwriter, musician, actor and activist who since 2019 has produced an extraordinary output of collaborative works, often with German trio Carl Gari (made up of musicians Jonas Yamer, Till Funke and Jonas Friedlich). The most recent release from this pairing was the acclaimed "Shoot the Engine", released only last month.
Now, for the evocatively titled "A Sorcerer or a Madman", Miniawy collaborates with French pipe-organist BFMO (Baptiste-Florian Marle-Ouvrard, the resident organist of the great organ of the church of St Eustache in Paris and the St Vincent-de-Paul church in Clichy-la-Garenne) and French clarinetist Yom (birth name Guillaume Humery).
No more information was available at the time of compiling this page.
Read more ... Abdullah Miniawy
Love Changes Everything
THE DIRTY THREE
Released 28 June 2024
Anchor & Hope
*****
To describe them is indescribable, but at a stretch, I’d call them post-punk-jazz. Music made with subtlety, freedom and empathy, that rides on waves, that narrates without the need for lyrics. There is a vibe…
Love Changes Everything comes 30 years after the trio's - violinist & pianist Warren Ellis, drummer Jim White and guitarist Mick Turner - self-titled (official) debut, though they weren’t harbouring hangovers this time around and they took more than a day and a half to create it, 5 in fact plus a year to mix it in Melbourne with Nick Huggins who had worked with the band previously.
All the compositions carry the album’s title, except the following numeral I-Vi, and as one would expect not a word is uttered.
So of course the question is how does Love Changes Everything sound… It sounds free, free for the three members of The Dirty Three to create without boundaries. There is a freshness that 12 years apart brings, Love Changes Everything harks back to discovering the band for the first time. That maniacal response to being able to listen to Jazz, but Jazz played by punk rockers and rastas has returned.
Read more ... 13th Floor NZ
Sentir Que No Sabes
MABE FRATTI
Released 28 June 2024
Unheard of Hope
*****
Guatemalan cellist and vocalist Mabe Fratti seems most interested in using her avant garde background as source material to make pop that’s completely devoid of cliches. Her songs are abundantly melodic and her melodies surprise without jarring. They travel smoothly in unexpected directions
Even after scanning Fratti’s inspirations, you struggle to come up with anything to pin her music to.
Talk Talk circa Laughing Stock? Only in so far as the brass arrangements, the work of Tosta, lean more towards jazz than rock or pop. Cult French post-punk artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux? There’s certainly a disjointed funk feel to some of the rhythms, but you wouldn’t have volunteered her name without Fratti’s own prompting.
The opening track seems to be named after Lenny Kravitz and features a distorted funk-rock bassline, but there the similarity seems to end. Under the circumstances, you might as well )chuck avante garde cellist, the late Arthur) Russell’s name into the ring: at least they share an instrument and a delightfully off-message approach to songwriting.
The latter aspect of what Fratti does feels important. It’s easy to read her press, conclude that she deals in austere experimentation and abstraction and decide on that basis whether her music is for you or not: phrases such as “electro-acoustic improv”, “collaboration with celebrated noise artist” and “experimental jazz” abound. There are scattered interludes when Sentir Que No Sabes sounds like what the advance publicity might lead you to expect, although the improvisation feels full-blooded and emotionally driven rather than an intellectual exercise. The drones of Elastica I give the impression that her cello is being heavily amplified, that she’s playing sparsely but at immense volume so that every movement of the strings is attended by squeals of feedback – with shades of John Cale’s treatment of his viola in the Velvet Underground.
Read more ... The Guardian
Things Are Getting Better
JINETTA ROSE &
THE VOICES OF CREATION
Released 3 July 2024
Day Dreamer
*****
A prolific collaborator with artists like Anderson .Paak and Angel Bat Dawid, Jimetta leads the choir, delivering new mantras for our times. Things Are Getting Better is an example of the power of music, faith, and community.
Jimetta Rose and The Voices of Creation's new album, Things Are Getting Better, via Day Dreamer Recordings, is a soul-stirring devotional that blends house, funk, soul, r&b and hip-hop influences. The album opens with the lead single 'Portals,' an invitation to a new way of thinking. With a shuffling groove and soaring vocals, it breaks traditional gospel molds, introducing soulful r&b runs and syncopated verses. Things Are Getting Better is fantastically crafted studio sound, evolving from their raw debut, How Good It Is. The album is composed of non-professional singers and embodies Jimetta's mission to demystify the ministry and spread faith in music's power for positive change. Featuring instrumentalists Isaiah Collier, Ryan Porter, and V.C.R., and recorded at Sunset Sound studios, it encapsulates Jimetta's vision of "Black spiritual classical music".
Read more ... Juno
Acts Of Faith
SAULT
Released 6 July 2024
Forever Living Originals
*****
Our Album of the Month is once again by the enigmatic collective SAULT - an album that delights us with its musical vision and confounds in almost equal measure, due to the manner of its release.
Acts of Faith is the eleventh studio album from the British R&B musical group and was originally previewed in December 2023 at a one-night only concert in London (which was the group's first public performance).
The album was released for free as a continuous single track, via digital distribution - a temporary WeTransfer link - on 6 July 2024 and it has not been released in a physical form or via the streaming platforms.
Hence, we have used a YouTube link, rather than Spotify, in this instance.
The live debut of Acts of Faith was met with positive reviews from critics and featured the musicians in masks, accompanied by ballet and fashion show performances, with this music accompanied by songs from across their career and a seven-song African Section that led into it.
The Daily Telegraph rated the show 5 out of 5 stars, stating that it was "part fashion show, part otherworldly escape, the first chunk of Sault’s near-three hour concert began with a handful of the collective’s more ethereal numbers as figures marched up and down the main runway".
The Evening Standard also gave this show 5 out of 5 stars, calling it the live event of the year, stating that "calling what unfolded next a plain old ‘gig’ feels disingenuous; like referring to an all you can eat buffet as a 'light snack', or calling the Sistine Chapel a decent bit of interior design".
The Guardian gave the show five out of five stars and wrote that "their eclecticism is dazzling but grounded in substance, their anthems aiming at the feet and the heart with equal accuracy" making for an "immersive, eclectic, astonishing three hours".
BrooklynVegan called this "yet another stunner" from the group that is "a joyous rumination on faith".
Radio New Zealand noted the religious themes and uplifting lyrics in the music and responded to the band's mystique by summing up, "everything on record is so substantive, and enriching, that the gimmicks feel justified".
Read more ... Wikipedia
No More Water
The Gospel of James Baldwin
MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO
Released 2 August 2024
*****
This is a work of complexity and depth, one that relies on repeated listens to gauge the many layers of its meaning but also one that can convey the sincerity of its instrumental ingenuity simply from its first sounds.
Marking the centenary of James Baldwin’s birth, Meshell Ndegeocello’s latest album for Blue Note, following 2023’s stellar Omnichord Real Book, takes the visionary black writer’s oeuvre as her inspiration. Across a sprawling 17 tracks, Ndegeocello draws on everything from Baldwin’s writings on race and the class struggle in America to suicide, sexual identity, Civil Rights and the artist’s responsibility to society. It is an involved and potentially overwhelming range of topics to improvise from, yet the strength of No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin lies in Ndegeocello’s capacity to subsume lofty ideas within the heartfelt thump of her groove.
While spoken word interludes from poet Staceyann Chin and critic Hilton Als take a more literal approach to Baldwin’s work, interpolating his writing into explorations of Black Lives Matter and contemporary politics, it’s in Ndegecello’s music that we get closest to the spirit of Baldwin’s urgency and vitality. From opener ‘Travel’, which weaves spoken word with syncopated funk, to the thundering hand drums and percussion of ‘Another Country’, the plaintive bass melodies of ‘What Did I Do?’ and the ecstatic West African polyrhythms of ‘Pride I’, Ndegeocello manages to instil each composition with a lively and emotionally-charged energy.
Read more ... Jazzwise
Ballades
JOHN ZORN, BRIAN MARSALLA,
JORGE ROEDER, CHES SMITH
Released 2 August 2024
Tzadik
*****
This third CD from the dynamic piano trio of Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder, and Ches Smith is a delightful surprise - and one of Zorn’s greatest achievements.
Exploring a wide variety of tempi, moods, and feelings the compositions dive deeply into the parameters of melody, harmony, rhythm, and texture, stretching the ballade format to its limits and beyond. The trio, three essential members of Zorn’s inner circle, performs with passion, imagination, virtuosity, and a telepathic improvisational interplay at the very highest level. A stunning collection of modern Ballades performed by three of the greatest young musicians in the Downtown scene. Essential!
Personnel:
Brian Marsella: Piano
Jorge Roeder: Bass
Ches Smith: Drums
Read more ... Tzadik
Lover, Other
ROSIE LOWE
Released 16 August 2024
Blue Flowers Music / [PIAS]
*****
This is a record that knows its history, but has an eye on the future too – but most of all, stylistic questions aside, it’s an individualist singer-songwriter stepping up to whole new levels of achievement.
Over the past decade, she’s shown a great amount of range, bringing experimental indie, post-classical composition and more into the mix – working with maverick talents like Little Simz, Jay Electronica and Duval Timothy – but always with soulful expression at the heart of everything. And on this, produced by Lowe with Harvey Grant and D’Monk, that’s come right to the fore for the most part. The opening salvo of the acapella “Sundown” and hazy, woozy “Mood to Make Love” rolling into the absolutely classic trip hop of “In My Head” is one of the most enticing album openers you’ll hear this year, for starters.
Head-nod tempo and velvety vocals predominate, but it’s not 90s retro by any means. Lowe’s production is done with the scientific precision of the greatest sampler-wranglers, bringing out both micro details of texture and a huge sense of space within her breakbeats and instrumentation. There are distinctly spicy moments too, like the jagged, panicky funk of “Berzerk” and the bittersweet Detroit techno-leaning chant-along “Something” but they’re so well placed in the mix that the underlying flow of the record continues inexorably.
Read more ... The Arts Desk
Bamako*Chicago Sound System
NICOLE MITCHELL, BALLAKE SISSOKO
Released 25 August 2024
FPE Records
*****
Ballaké’s post-traditional innovative writing leaves ample space for interpretation and breath, complementing Nicole's layered, complex otherworldly compositions.
“Bamako*Chicago” is a collaboration between two internationally esteemed composers: renowned flutist, former AACM (a non-profit organization and a collective of composers and musicians dedicated to nurturing, performing and recording high artistic level programs) chair, Nicole Mitchell, and innovative kora player, Bamako's (Capital of Mali) musical ambassador, Ballaké Sissoko. Both have defied conventions in their respective genres; Mitchell’s Afrofuturist sound and cosmic ethic and Sissoko's integration of guitar progressions into kora compositions. Both push traditional forms into new spaces. Both bring a rich history of collaboration across various genres.
"Ballaké was really open. We came together as equals, each with our compositions, creating collaborative music—an amazing feat considering traditional gender roles. It represents a much-needed unity in this dystopian world we live in." --Nicole Mitchell
The musical collaboration echoes fusion artists like Foday Musa Suso and Herbie Hancock, yet it forges a unique path with a blend of depth and frequency more closely relatable to Alice Coltrane's lesser-known blues/’occidental’ music, such as “Galaxy in Turia” and “Er Ra”, along with the nuanced and celebrated Journey in Satchidananda. Like Coltrane, this album is transformative, taking listeners to other worlds through sonic transference.
Read more ... Bandcamp
The Bird of a Thousand Voices
TIGRAN HAMASYAN
Released 30 August 2024
naive / Yergatum
*****
"The Bird of a Thousand Voices is an astonishing project, and as I listened and wrote, I weighed up the various superlatives. No other term sufficed. And, to describe it as a concept or a themed album would woefully undervalue it too. The depth and breadth of Tigran Hamasyan’s project is breathtaking and evaluating it requires fulsome engagement. I am not implying that it is unapproachable as there are delightful melodies as light as air, and exotic rhythms to engage, but underlying every note are other worlds, endlessly unfolding - worlds that beg exploration." jazzlocal32.com
The transmedia project The Bird of a Thousand Voices is the first of its kind to bring ancient Armenian folk tale Hazaran Blbul to life. Armenian composer & pianist Tigran Hamasyan and Dutch filmmaker & visual artist Ruben Van Leer are joining forces for a new live staged production that had its world premiere at the Holland Festival.
The mythical bird – whose thousand different songs travel the world to spread harmony – comes to life in an intriguing new kind of music theater, an online game, a kinetic art installation and a series of films - accessible via the bird1000.com website.
Read more ... Tigran Hamasyan
Wirlmarni
KANKAWA NAGARRA
Released 30 August 2024
Kankawa Nagarra
*****
Recorded live near her home in Western Australia, these twelve acoustic guitar and vocal tracks offer a glimpse of Kankawa's (also known as Olive Knight) far ranging humanity, humor, and lived experience. She shifts between musical styles and languages, backed by night bugs and the call of birds.
Born in the traditional lands of the Gooniyandi and Walmatjarri peoples (of the Eastern Kimberley region) of North Western Australia, Kankawa grew up with the tribal songs at cultural ceremonies. She was taken from her family to a Christian mission, where she was taught hymns and Gospel songs with the choir. On the pastoral lease where she was sent to work, Country music was everywhere. She first heard rock and roll on the station gramophone.
But it wasn’t until many years later her musical journey truly began, when she stopped to listen to a busker outside a shop in Derby, Western Australia. It was the first time she’d heard the blues, and it awakened something in her. Through it, she found a medium to express all her thoughts and feelings, and it inspired her to turn these into songs. The empathy of her message extends from those she sees struggling around her to the entire planet being ravaged for profit.
Recorded by Kankawa's longtime friend Darren Hanlon, the sessions are relaxed and warm. It's a true gift - the experience of hearing Kankawa on her own land, in her own words.
Read more ... Mississippi Records
Migratory
MASAYOSHI FUJITA
Released 6 September 2024
Erased Tapes Records
*****
Nature has always been a source of inspiration for Fujita, and on Migratory it takes centre stage. You can hear it on the album’s peaceful and considered field recordings, but most importantly, Masayoshi highlights – “nature is there as the image to be evoked by the listener from the music.”
Japanese vibraphonist and marimba player Masayoshi Fujita returns with Migratory, his masterful new solo album, where his sonic explorations into the unknown continue.
In 2020, after 13 years of living in Berlin, Fujita returned to his native Japan with his wife and their three children, fulfilling his life-long dream of living and composing music in the midst of nature. The family found their new home in the mountain hills along the coast of Kami-cho, Hyōgo, three hours west of Kyoto.
Once settled in, Fujita spent his time turning an old kindergarten into his own music studio, Kebi Bird Studio, which became the birthplace of Migratory. On his new album, the composer and producer masterfully reimagines and mesmerises with his trademark sounds of vibraphone, and resumes his experimentation with the marimba and synthesisers that he first incorporated on his 2021 album, Bird Ambience, which followed the release of his acclaimed vibraphone triptych: Stories (2012), Apologues (2015) and Book of Life (2018).
On Fujita’s ever-evolving list of collaborators, Migratory introduces vocals from Moor Mother on ‘Our Mother’s Lights’ and Hatis Noit on ‘Higurashi’, as well as shō and saxophone to its soundscapes.
Read more ... Bandcamp
A Sound Heart
JAUBI
Released 6 September 2024
Jaubi Music - Riaz Records
*****
Sometimes, when you want to take a step forward, you have to look back and reckon with and learn from the past. That’s what Jaubi has done and the effects are enchanting.
Three years after recording their breakthrough debut, 2021’s Nafs at Peace, Pakistani jazz trio Jaubi flew to London (with a short stopover in Poland resulting in In Search of a Better Tomorrow, a collaborative record with Polish jazz band EABS) to record its follow-up.
Accompanied by producer and multi-instrumentalist Tenderlonious, Polish keyboard and synth player Latarnik, and a slew of London jazz scene members - most notably bass guitarist Horatio Luna, drummer Tim Carnegie, and trumpeter Nick Walters - Jaubi (led by guitarist Ali Riaz Baqar) turned to modal and spiritual jazz and blended it with South Asian classical music.
A Sound Heart continues the story Jaubi began on Nafs at Peace.
Jaubi divided the record into two distinct sides: Dynamic, fast “Desire” and mellower “Devotion,” evoking late night jam sessions in New York clubs. On the latter, Latarnik turns into a piano crooner, leaving his signature synths aside. The title track, dedicated both to Bill Evans and Riaz Baqar’s father, offers a near-perfect blend of classic jazz and classic South Asian music. Sarangi mingles with piano; Tenderlonious’s flute sounds more like bansuri. Some tracks lean more into the South Asian elements - “Raga Bhairavi Todi” or “Forgive Me (Raga Parameshwari)” - and in those moments Jaubi feel at their strongest, most focused, and reflective.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Indsigt/Udsigt
(Insight/Outlook)
UDSYN
Released 6 September 2024
*****
Udsyn navigates smoothly within the jazz genre, avidly borrowing elements from classical, electronic, and alternative styles, which together constitute a cinematic soundscape inspired by minimalism and Nordic tonality.
Udsyn, the 5-piece Copenhagen ensemble features upright bass, drums/percussion, piano, electric guitar, synthesizer and draws upon a wide range of influences on this debut release.
Surprisingly (and disappointingly, we imagine, for the band) the album seems to have attracted almost no critical attention from the usual on-line suspects, the sole exception being a review by UK publication Marlbank.
This is a pity, because Udsyn has produced a sophisticated and engaging set of nine original compositions that are brimming full of musical ideas that flow from their clearly wide-ranging interests - neatly encapsulated by their brief Bandcamp bio (copied in italics above).
The track titles cover a correspondingly wide range of subjects: "Råbjerg Mile" (a migrating coastal dune in Denmark), "Calypso", "The best car ever", "Weight of today", "Kinoautomat" (a 1967 Czech black comedy), "Interlude", "It doesn't last", "Next departure" and title track "Insight/Outlook".
Although all five members of the band share Production, Composition and Songwriting credits and each has his own featured moments throughout the album, Ole Røndal Kjeldsen's piano and Marco Ceglarek's drumming provide the lead voices on most tracks and its defining character.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Rituals
ISHMAEL ENSEMBLE
Released 6 September 2024
Severn Songs
*****
Whereas ‘Visions of Light’ was born of the lockdown era; intimate, patient and brooding, ‘Rituals’ is the antithesis – celebrating the rush and energy of life back in the real world. The record sees Cunningham and his bandmates at their most free and adventurous.
Ishmael Ensemble’s third longplayer ‘Rituals’, marks a significant leap for the Bristolian musicians. With their live-instrumentation-meets-electronic merging of styles, the group were always broader than the ‘new UK jazz’ tag which they were often given, but here their scope and boundary-pushing ambition is more evident than ever before.
Still maintaining a blend of spiritual jazz, dub, experimental and electronic soundscapes, here those elements are vigorously whipped-up into huge cyclones of sound, more song-based and accessible
than before, but also almost psychedelic in its euphonic blend of colours, textures, facets and moods.
Formed in 2017 by producer and saxophonist Pete Cunningham, their debut LP ‘A State Of Flow’ was Contemporary Album Of The Month in The Guardian and gained radio plays from UK tastemakers Gilles Peterson, Tom Ravenscroft and Mary Anne Hobbs. However it was their 2021 album ‘Visions of Light’ hat saw the group reach wider acclaim – receiving glowing reviews in The Observer and Mojo, and the
accolade of Huey Morgan’s Album Of The Year on BBC 6 Music. This was followed by a solid 3 year run of international touring including shows in Mexico and the US, as well as multiple sold-out tours in the UK and EU.
Read more ... This Is Gorilla
Slang Spirituals
Lady Blackbird
Released 13 September 2024
Foundation Music / BMG
*****
Collaborating once again with her 2021 breakout album Black Acid Soul producer Chris Seefried, the pair produce a second album that not only embodies the freewheeling, emotive Lady Blackbird sound, but that also taps into deeply vulnerable lyrics that recount the singer’s challenging ascent to musical stardom.
Growing up in the small town of Farmington, New Mexico, Lady Blackbird was raised in a religious Christian household and began singing as soon as she could walk. “Once I entered my teenage years, I started to realise that religion was something that was put on me and it never felt right,” she says. “As I also began to develop my own identity as a queer woman, I felt judged as an outcast and labelled as a sinner. It was burying who I really was and I needed to find a way out.”
In taking charge of her own life and her own sound, Lady Blackbird walks a new path, making each note on Slang Spirituals a step in a radically different direction. Across 11 tracks Lady Blackbird puts her sweeping, cinematic vocal power to use on everything from the soulful orchestral fanfares of ‘Let Not (Your Heart Be Troubled)’ to the finger-picking folk storytelling of ‘Man On A Boat’, euphoric gospel empowerment of ‘Like A Woman’ and the seven-minute psychedelic soul instrumental of ‘When The Game Is Played On You’.
“This is my journey of becoming,” she concludes. “It’s me rewriting the book to show the world who I truly am. From being labelled a sinner to finding my acceptance.”
Read more ... MBC
The Making of Silk
ALLYSHA JOY
Released 13 September 2024
First World Records
*****
Riding on the waves of rich string arrangements, layers of vocal harmony and the raw poeticism she is known for, Allysha Joy's next album is embodying love.
Known for her solo work and as the frontwoman of 30/70, Allysha Joy's husky, soulful voice and exceptional Fender Rhodes skills make her a standout in the jazz-soul scene. She hails from Melbourne and is a singer, songwriter, producer, and keys player who has had big props from key figures.
Entirely self-produced and affectionately poured over, 'The Making of Silk' out on First Word Records, is about a new understanding of the meaning of love.
Joy says, "it's the kind of love that bell hooks writes about, that lives in the poetry of Mary Oliver, Hafiz and the passionate dreaming of a Koryusai painting. It's about a love that is compassionate, that lives in open conversation, deep listening, the front lines of social movement and would never seek to stifle the light in you. It's about accepting our aloneness, the impermanence of all things and still forever wanting to prove it wrong, to say that I understand that all things change, all things end, hurt exists, but I will love regardless."
Read more ... WorldwideFM
Túnel Acústico
MARCOS VALLE
Released 20 September 2024
Far Out Recordings
*****
The renaissance man of Brazilian pop, Marcos Valle return with a startling album that is both a career-spanning retrospective and a vital new chapter in an illustrious career. Valle is one of the very greatest and most important composers, arrangers, writers and performers in Brazilian history.
No one has lived a life quite like Marcos Valle. He became an overnight international sensation, fled a military dictatorship, dodged the Vietnam war draft, had his music sung by Homer Simpson, made enemies with Marlon Brando, and became an unsuspecting fitness guru for multiple generations. But to truly understand the great Brazilian composer, arranger, singer and multi instrumentalist, one must listen to his music.
Between the release of his first album in 1962 and today, Marcos Valle has released twenty-two studio albums traversing definitive bossa nova, classic samba, iconic disco pop, psychedelic rock, nineties dance and orchestral music. He has also had his songs recorded by some of the all time greats, including Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, Sergio Mendes, Elis Regina, and (last but not least), Emma Button of the Spice Girls. He has also had his music sampled by Jay-Z, Kanye West, Pusha T and many more.
With his twenty-third studio album Túnel Acustico, Valle set out to bring it all together.
“I believe my music is many things. It goes in different directions. I have many different ways of writing music, sometimes it’s melodies and harmony, sometimes the groove is the focus. But all the music I have made over my sixty year career is unified. It is all natural and it is all sincere. And this is what I wanted to bring to my new album.”
Read more ... Bandcamp
Dance, No One's Watching
EZRA COLLECTIVE
Released 27 September 2024
Partisan Records
*****
Written during a blistering 2023 which saw Ezra Collective tour the world, and become the first jazz act to win the Mercury Prize, Dance, No One's Watching is a documentation of the many dance floors they encountered.
From London to Chicago, Lagos to Sydney, dance and rhythm connect us. These songs are a testament to that spirit.
'Dance, No One's Watching' is an ode to the sacred, yet joyous act of dancing, an album that musically guides you through a night out in the city, from the opening of possibilities as a new evening spans out ahead, to dawn’s final hours as the night comes to a close.
The album was recorded at Abbey Road studios, where the band was surprised by a group of close friends and family, turning the sessions into a live communal celebration of love, music, and dancing.
'Dance, No One's Watching' is a record that speaks to the unifying power of dance. It is a powerful and distinctive addition to a catalogue that continues to blaze a bold new trail in contemporary British music.
Read more ... Bandcamp
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Soft Echoes (EP)
SHARADA SHASHIDHAR
Released 27 September 2024
Leaving Records All Genre
*****
Sharada Shashidhar is a Los Angeles based vocalist, composer and producer. Her soulful voice takes inspiration from jazz and Indian classical music, which influences her songwriting and productions.
Shashidhar’s elaborate harmonies and vocal creativity come together in a new beat-orientated spiritual jazz. Sharada has performed across the US and EU in spaces such as Le Guess Who? Festival, Badehaus Berlin, Zebulon and more. She has shared bills or collaborated with the likes of Carlos Niño, Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra, and Zeroh among others. Sharada graduated from the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City and released her debut EP, Rahu, on Leaving Records in March of 2020.
Read more ... Brownswood, Boomkat
symbiont
JAKE BLOUNT, MALI OBOMSAWIN
Released 27 September 2024
Smithsonian Folkways Records
*****
Amid rumbling synthesizer drones, the thrum of banjo, and the thwack of drum machines, a whisper of truth can be heard: this crisis has been unfolding for centuries.
Jake Blount is an award-winning interpreter of Black folk music who has charted an unprecedented course through sound archives. In defiance of genre categories, revisionist histories, & linear time, Blount uses the banjo, fiddle, electric guitar & synthesizer to fashion an “Afrofuturist folklore” that disintegrates the boundaries between acoustic & electric, artist & medium, & ancestor & progeny.
From the first notes of symbiont, the radical new collaborative album and document of Black and Indigenous futurism from Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin, the listener is met with rising tidewaters, massive droughts, and the appearance of an iconoclastic uprising amidst the world’s indifference. Questions of future or present tense swirl around the music as the duo unspools the intertwined threads of racial and climate justice.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Mighty Vertebrate
Anna Butterss
Released 4 October 2024
International Anthem
*****
Ultimately, each track on 'Mighty Vertebrate' could be excavated and studied or simply taken at face value. It’s a solid, mature, and endlessly fun glimpse into the world of an artist whose potential for growth is seemingly unlimited.
'Mighty Vertebrate' is the International Anthem leader debut from Adelaide, Australia-born bassist and composer Anna Butterss.
Butterss has steadily become a first-call for tour and studio work since moving to Los Angeles (after a stint in Bloomington, Indiana) in 2014. They’ve racked up credits with notables across the indie, jazz, and pop worlds alike – including Makaya McCraven, Phoebe Bridgers, Jason Isbell, Andrew Bird, and Daniel Villarreal – but their most notable contributions to the burgeoning West Coast creative music scene have been as a core member of both Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet and rising proto-trance supergroup SML, who Pitchfork says “represents the thrilling next phase of a vibrant L.A. community.”
Jeff Parker’s impact is hard to miss when discussing any forward-thinking, groove-oriented jazz and experimental music. Perhaps even more accurate in the case of 'Mighty Vertebrate' is the influence of Tortoise, the long running post-genre group of which Parker is a member.
Read more ... International Anthem,
Portrait
SAMARA JOY
Released 11 October 2024
Verve
*****
As on her past records, she strikes a pleasing balance between warm interpretations of the American Popular Songbook and jazz standards where she adds her own lyrics, transforming the song into something even more her own.
Samara Joy's fourth album, 2024's Portrait, is a lushly rendered octet showcase for the Grammy-winning singer's broad jazz virtuosity. Co-produced by Joy and veteran trumpeter Brian Lynch at New Jersey's legendary Rudy Van Gelder studios, the album finds Joy backed by her touring ensemble, featuring trumpeter Jason Charos, alto saxophonist/flutist David Mason, tenor saxophonist Kendric McCallister, trombonist Donavan Austin, pianist Connor Rohrer, bassist Felix Moseholm, and drummer Evan Sherman. The result is a little big band album in which Joy's shimmering, ascendent vocals are both framed by and nicely integrated into the octet arrangements.
While technically proficient, Joy is never too cool. Her voice is warm and enveloping, and cuts like her lilting take on "Autumn Nocturne" find her further coming into her own style while still evoking icons like Sarah Vaughan and Betty Carter. It doesn't hurt that she has surrounded herself with an equally talented band of instrumentalists who get plenty of room to add their own improvisational voices to the proceedings. Often, as in her blissful opening take on "You Stepped Out of a Dream," she sings the main lyric and then blends wordlessly into the band's arrangement, soaring in rich harmony, before letting a soloist take over. Central to the album is her bold reading of Charles Mingus' classic "Reincarnation of a Lovebird," retitled here with the added "(Pursuit of a Dream)." Where the original 1960 version has a swinging, bluesy quality, Joy transforms the song into a Baroque and noirish vocal sculpture. Central to her arrangement is an extended rubato introduction that she sings unaccompanied, her voice a pristine sine wave of linear harmony that builds to a bright falsetto sparking her band's entrance. Jaw-dropping in its sheer artistry, the performance, as with all of Portrait, underscores just how seemingly limitless Samara Joy's skills are.
Read more ... AllMusic
Blues Blood
EMMANUEL WILKINS
Released 11 October 2024
*****
Wilkins interlaces themes into a profound personal and political journey, using the language of jazz to express the struggles, triumphs and complexities of the contemporary African-American experience.
Blues Blood, the new album from 27 year-old saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, explores a range of deep, interconnected themes rooted in Black history, culture and the ongoing struggle for justice.
As a composer, musician and bandleader, Wilkins often infuses his music with insightful social commentary, and his latest release is no exception. His third Blue Note album to date, Blues Blood draws on the account of the Harlem Six or Blood Brothers - in part by weaving together emotional and historical elements of their experiences into its thematic narrative. The group of six young African-American men, who were wrongfully accused and convicted in New York in the mid-1960s, represent a significant episode of racial injustice in American history, and Wilkins’ music – known for its socially conscious themes and expressive nature – provides a powerful medium that alludes to their story. Again, the title itself evokes the painful legacy of racial oppression, with "blues" symbolising the suffering and endurance of Black communities throughout history.
As part of a multimedia project focused on ancestral connections, the music of Blues Blood embodies the spirit of resistance – both personal and collective – against social injustice. It also emphasises the importance of honouring cultural memories that may have been forgotten or left unspoken. For instance, Wilkins highlights the significance of family meals and the sharing of recipes as a form of cultural transmission, viewing these sensory experiences as artefacts passed from one generation to the next.
Read more ... PrestoMusic
All Species Parade
JENNY SCHEINMAN
Released 11 October 2024
*****
Wilkins interlaces themes into a profound personal and political journey, using the language of jazz to express the struggles, triumphs and complexities of the contemporary African-American experience.
Jenny Scheinman, an acclaimed violinist and composer, was for many years a stalwart of the New York jazz and creative music scenes. The New York Times wrote: “Scheinman [has] a distinctive vision of American music, suffused with plainspoken beauty and fortified by country, gospel, and melting-pot folk, along with jazz and the blues.” She returned to her native Humboldt County, California in 2012 where she has continued her artistic evolution, as heard on her recent albums Here on Earth (2017), Parlour Game (2019), and The Littlest Prisoner (2014).
For years, Scheinman nursed the idea of a musical homage to Humboldt, in particular the area known as the Lost Coast, a remote, earthquake- and mudslide-prone region of coastal northern California, where she was raised.
The all-original program is brought to life over the course of a double album, by pianist Carmen Staaf, guitar icons Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, and Julian Lage, and the revered rhythm team of bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen. It was recorded by Eli Crews, mixed by Tucker Martine, and mastered by Greg Calbi.
Scheinman’s playing is radiant, soulful, stamped with jazz vernacular and old-time fiddling tradition and buoyed by her superb lyrical poise and technique. Throughout we hear Frisell’s exploratory wisdom and evidence of his deep connection with Scheinman (whose side-person credits include nine Frisell albums).
Read more ... Jenny Scheinman
harp, beats & dreams
MARYSIA OSU
Released 18 October 2024
Brownswood Recordings
*****
The overall result is delicate, floaty, alternative fusion of jazz, folk and classical, every track infused with a different rather perfect, fragile hush, never hurried and perfectly weighted.
"hearts, beats & dreams" is a truly gorgeous experimental work by Marysia Osu, a harpist of Polish parentage and graduate of London’s Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.
As well as conventionally rippling the strings of her instrument, Osu creatively uses it with other effects, adds sea other nature sounds with electronica, with magical sprinkles of guest vocals, cello, woodwind and percussion.
The music is evocative of raindrops on forest leaves, especially in the delicious falling arpeggios of the unaccompanied harp on "cascades". Similarly, "Only u<3" is a particularly delicate and beautiful instrumental. "Until Tomorrow Continues" flitters on an old sounding piano, while "Despite Being In Love" brings a melancholy clarinet to the fore. Closing track "Meditation IV" see Osu interweaving the harp with cello and flute, all dancing like butterflies.
This is music for blissful solitude, utterly exquisite.
Read more ... Song-bar
Sonic Wires
DREAM HOUSE QUARTET
(BRYCE DESSNER, KATIA LABEQUE, MARIELLE LABEQUE, DAVID CHALMIN)
Released 25 October 2024
KML Recordings
*****
“They are immersing themselves in an increasingly youthful repertoire. The National’s Bryce Dessner (who recently wrote an entire album of music for them) and David Chalmin sit either side of the Labèques, who provide atmospheric flourishes. It’s the kind of funereal meditation that would have fitted nicely on A Moon Shaped Pool.” (THE GUARDIAN)
Founded in 2018, the Dream House Quartet is bringing classical and contemporary music into completely new forms as a matter of course. It consists of the two piano sisters Katia and Marielle Labèque who are joined by Grammy-winning guitarist, composer and founding member of The National Bryce Dessner, and composer, musician and producer David Chalmin, both on guitar. Their brand-new album entitled Sonic Wires features works by Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Bryce Dessner, David Chalmin, Sufjan Stevens, Caroline Shaw, Tino Andres, David Lang and Anna Thorvaldsdottir.
Formed in 2018, the Quartet fuses decades of musical mastery of classical and contemporary forms, featuring luminaries the Katia and Marielle Labèque on dueling pianos along with acclaimed composer-guitarists Bryce Dessner (The National) and David Chalmin (innocence, la terre invisible) performing radical new commissions from visionary composers and pivotal contemporary works of the last half century.
Read more ... High Res Audio
Songs Of A Lost World
THE CURE
Released 1 November 2024
Polydor Records
*****
So what is Songs Of A Lost World? It’s another Cure album, one could say. But I freely admit that always means something to me, and to many others, and knowing it’s also not quite like any other album they’ve done before, that means something again. We all journey towards ends, the past recedes. Yet perhaps, contrary to the opening song, we’re not entirely alone.
A suggestion for you, me, all of us: try the seemingly impossible. Ignore the length of time since the last album. Take away the crushing weight of comparisons as much as you can for everything that’s gone before, even if it can’t ever be truly done.
Songs is, to borrow an old Kurt Vonnegut phrase, unstuck in time, yet absolutely crushed by time too. It’s almost uncanny. . (Robert Smith's) voice is still that voice, and it sounds like nothing has changed at all, that it’s still that feeling of half-sob, half-caress, a yearning that can trip up your heart.
That voice sets itself into the arrangements but is never buried. It still wants to clearly connect.
But this isn’t the past. Those earlier contemplations across years and decades of finality, of endings, of fires burned cold and more besides were resonant but younger visions of melancholy; this is the work of older men. It’s not an album that feels like a certain sonic stereotype of age, relaxed ‘homespun’ bonhomie and wisdom, but it absolutely is not a pretense at youth either.
Read more ... The Quietus
Maujuda
PARVYN
Released 1 November 2024
Parvyn Bennett
*****
Parvyn Singh is a Punjabi Australian singer, dancer and musician based in Adelaide. Best known for her work as vocalist in cult psychedelic band The Bombay Royale. Her work is informed by electronica and jazz, her background in Sikh devotional music and her training in classical Indian music and dance. In addition, Parvyn has spent her life on stage touring internationally with her father Dya Singh.
Centred around finding one’s path in life, the 7 tracks explore different stories and perspectives in discovery and acceptance, opening with the first single and self love anthem ‘Free To Be Myself’.
Touching on the complexities of migrating to a new place, ‘Lay Awake’ is told through the story of her grandmother ‘bebeji’, with commentary on ‘how migrants sometimes hold on to their culture so tightly that it can cause a rift between generations, not realising that back in their homeland it has progressed and modernised’ describes Parvyn. The material includes moments of introspection in the new single ‘New Game’, and ‘Divine’, woven between instrumental improvisation from Parvyn’s husband Josh Bennett on electric guitar, and lyrics in Urdu/Punjabi in ‘Huna Lai Jio’ as the track touches on the importance of community and finding your people, and ending the musical voyage at album closer ‘Back to the Ocean’.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Vėjula
MEROPE
Released 5 November 2024
Stroom
*****
Merope's most experimental full length to date, Vėjula is a celebration of collaboration and playfulness, and features appearances from Shahzad Ismaily, Laraaji and Bill Frisell, among others.
Like its predecessors, the duo's fifth album still roots itself in Lithuanian folk forms, but sprouts out spiritedly from that point into unfamiliar landscapes, muddling ancient themes with contemporary philosophies, concepts and technology. Delicate instrumental sequences and ethereal vocals are woven into a rich tapestry of subtle synth work and evocative field recordings. On 'Kouma Lil', Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė and Bert Cools experiment with digital images of the kanklės (a traditional Lithuanian chordophone), and Jurgelevičiūtė's voice, blurring the boundary between the organic and the artificial, while on 'Spindulė, French percussionist Toma Gouband adds percussion from his custom-made sounding stones to Jurgelevičiūtė's gentle words and Cools' surreal, sensuous electronics.
'Vėjula' is an album that reaches into the unknown without loosing its tight grip on the past. Merope are in a new creative phase of their career, and they've never sounded quite so universal, or so vital.
Read more ... Bandcamp
The Old Country
More From The Dear Head Inn (1961)
KEITH JARRETT
GARY PEACOCK, PAUL MOTIAN
Released 8 November 2024
ECM
*****
Thirty years later, it was time to revisit the material. Keith Jarrett and Manfred Eicher selected the eight previously unreleased pieces that comprise The Old Country, a second volume from the Deer Head performance.
Keith Jarrett’s recordings from the Deer Head Inn have a special place among his recordings devoted to explorations of jazz standards and the American songbook. And The Old Country is a document of particular historical significance, from several perspectives.
The Deer Head Inn, situated in Pennsylvania’s Delaware Water Gap Region, has presented live music continuously since 1950, making it one of the US’s oldest jazz clubs. In 1961, the club gave Jarrett, then 16 years old, his first gig as leader of a piano trio. When owners Bob and Fay Lehr retired, handing the reins over to their daughter Dona and son-in-law Christopher Solliday, Jarrett offered to play there again, to honour the club’s ongoing commitment to jazz.
On September 16, 1992, Jarrett, joined by Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, played to a packed house. There had been no promotion, but news of the event had spread by word of mouth. The Deer Head is an intimate venue and the Allentown Morning Call paper subsequently reported that, “of the 130 people inside the club, 30 had to stand. On the porch outside, another 50 or 60 people stood.
”When At The Deer Head Inn was issued in 1994, the press agreed. “The music has the dash and the unabashed lyricism of Keith Jarrett’s best work,” wrote Stereophile.
Gramophone, meanwhile, spoke of “spellbinding” playing, and the Los Angeles Times hailed “a compendium of grace”.
Read more ... ECM
Complex Emotions
THE BAD PLUS
Released 8 November 2024
The Bad Plus, Mack Avenue Records
*****
Complex Emotions is an exciting album that stands out from the tradition-loving uniformity of most jazz recordings.
Jazz thrives on the unconventional, which is often interpreted as an intensification of the already familiar, almost as a counterpoint from the (jazz) basement to the fraying and exaggerated modernity of serious music on stage. The Bad Plus take a different approach and subscribe to song structures. On their latest album Complex Emotions, however, they have released the handbrake and sometimes take a surprisingly rough approach.
The quartet consisting of the two founding members Reid Anderson on double bass and synthesiser and Dave King on drums and synthesiser as well as Ben Moder (David Bowie Maria Schneider) on guitar and Chris Speed (Kurt Rosenwinkel, Tim Berne) on tenor saxophone create an immediate sound atmosphere on Complex Emotions that seems close enough to touch.
The way in which they line up melodic passages and play around them with scratchy accents, the way in which the drums inject musically useful overplay in places and the way in which the bass securely carries the structure make the new album a real experience.
Brett Bullion has fanned out and mixed the sometimes very dense sound structure of Complex Emotions in a way that is easy to hear through.
Read more ... Hi Res Audio
To The Rising Moon
STEPHAN MICUS
Released 15 November 2024
ECM
*****
To the Rising Moon is Stephan Micus’ 26th solo album for ECM. It features instruments from Colombia, India, Xinjiang (China), Bavaria, Cambodia, Egypt and Borneo, which have never before been combined in one composition.
People often call themselves a multi-instrumentalist when they play three or four instruments, but Stephan plays eight on this album alone and countless more since his first ECM album, Implosions, in 1977.
Here, there’s one that takes centre stage that he’s playing for the first time, the Colombian tiple. It’s a little smaller than a guitar and is considered the national instrument of Colombia. Although still frequently played in its traditional, highly-European influenced context, modern composers hardly make use of it. “For me this instrument has the quality of light, of something shining,” Stephan says. “It’s like these metal strings are sparkling and for me the tiple pieces have a very positive energy.”
The tiple has 12 steel strings in four triple courses and it’s a composition for two tiples, "To the Rising Sun", that opens the album with ringing strings.
Throughout the album the plucked tiple pieces alternate with more reflective tracks with bowed strings.
It’s only in the final track, "To the Rising Moon", that the two worlds of the plucked tiples and bowed strings finally come together. It’s like a hymn to something that is eternally up there in the night sky, something consistent while there is so much turbulence in the world below.
Stephan Micus’ last album Thunder (2023) paid tribute to thunder gods around the world and featured as its headline instrument the mighty, four-metre long Tibetan dung chen trumpet. The contrast between the cosmic blast of that album and the delicate intimacy of the plucked and bowed strings of this one makes it clear why Micus has produced such a wide range of music over nearly 50 years.
Read more ... ECM
The Way Out Of Easy
JEFF PARKER, ETA IVTET, ANNA BUTTERSS, JAY BELLEROSE, JOSH JOHNSON
Released 22 November 2024
International Anthem
*****
While deeply rooted in Havana's rich musical traditions, it transcends borders to blend the vibrant rhythms of the Caribbean with the gritty funk of Detroit and the soulful horns and bass lines reminiscent of New Orleans.
January 2nd, 2023. Aside from being the second of a new year, it was a pretty ordinary night at ETA (Enfield Tennis Academy) in Los Angeles, where guitarist Jeff Parker - alongside his ETA IVtet with saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose - had been holding down a regular Monday gig since 2016. At the time, nobody knew it was the first gig of the last year that ETA would be open for business.
Over seven years of holding down that residency, Parker’s ETA ensemble evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form (sometimes stretching out for 45 minutes or more) journeys into innovative, often uncharted territories of groove-oriented, painterly, polyrhythmic, minimalist and mantric improvised music.
With that musical growth, the crowds for Parker and his band at ETA grew across the years too. What started as a sparse gathering of weeknight drinkers, friends, family, and Chicago expats (coming to get a shot of nostalgia for the atmospheres Parker used to create at Rodan across the ‘00s and early ‘10s) grew into a Los Angeles nightlife staple with a packed house and a line down the block for every show.
By January 2023 interest in Parker’s music was stronger than ever, coming off successes with the December 2021 International Anthem/Nonesuch release of Forfolks – a collection of solo guitar works – and the October 2022 Eremite release of Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, a double LP chronicling the ETA IVtet’s distinct, expansive approach to improvisation across four side-length tracks recorded and mixed live by engineer Bryce Gonzales.
In early December of 2023, ETA co-owner Ryan Julio was forced to make a sudden announcement that the venue would permanently shutter at the end of the year. On December 23rd, Parker and the band played at ETA for the last time.
On July 22nd, 2024, the ETA IVtet gathered to perform together for the first time since then, playing for a sold-out crowd of several hundred listeners – a smiling Ryan Julio among them – at Zebulon in Los Angeles. Gonzales was there, recording with his compact analog setup just behind the band on stage. The space may be gone but its spirit lives and the music moves forward into new vessels.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Curyman II
ROGÊ
Released 22 November 2024
Diamond West Records
*****
11 songs that skip across the samba lexicon; gentle, funky, yearning, centred on hope and our connection to nature and the orixás (deities).
Forty seven is quite an age to make your international breakthrough, but on the 20th anniversary of his debut album, Rogê, this Brazilian singer-songwriter, born Roger José Cury, shows the value of persistence. At home, Rogê’s engaging, sandy vocals and choppy, soul-influenced guitar brought huge success, but in a tiny arena: a 10-year residency at the downtown Rio samba club Carioca da Gema. A wider audience proved elusive, even after he co-composed the theme for Rio’s 2016 Olympics. Alarmed by his city’s escalating violence, Rogê relocated his family to Los Angeles, where an encounter with US producer Tommy Brenneck proved instant chemistry. Brenneck knew little of Braziliana, but with a CV embracing Amy Winehouse and soulster Charles Bradley, he knew talent. Rogê’s master stroke was to coax hallowed arranger Arthur Verocai to overdub strings. Verocai is a veteran of the golden age of 70s tropicalismo and singers such as Jorge Ben and Caetano Veloso, and that era’s joyous spirit shines through on lush but sprightly pieces such as opener Pra Vida and Mistério da Raça. An exuberant, heartwarming creation.
Read more ... The Guardian
Small Changes
MICHAEL KIWANUKA
DANGER MOUSE, INFLO
Released 22 November 2024
Polydor
*****
As Kiwanuka’s focus has shifted, so has the shape of his music. He works again with Danger Mouse and Inflo, who help to conjure dreamier soundscapes still beholden to vintage soul, where the instruments always sound lush and fluid. Songs are unhurried, and there’s a hazy, languid feel throughout much of Small Changes.
Considering everything that has happened in the world in the five years since Michael Kiwanuka last released an album, his latest feels more like a reset than a follow-up. KIWANUKA in 2019 was a highly present LP full of sharp corners, softened by gorgeously rendered musical arrangements steeped in the sound of 1970s soul. Small Changes, by contrast, is more subdued, as though developments in his own life (two small children) and cultural upheavals (take your pick) have prompted Kiwanuka to recede into some interior emotional space.
KIWANUKA was rooted in the singer’s disillusion over the state of the world around him, prompted in part by how predominately white cultures treat non-white people. Small Changes is, instead, more interested in spiritual explorations of self. Kiwanuka here is examining the inner workings of his own mind, or soul.
Read more ... Bandcamp, Jazz St Louis
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Benhayyi Al Baghbaghan (Salute the Parrot) Remixed
MAURICE LOUCA
Released 28 November 2024
Simsara Records
*****
Two years in the making (to its release in 2014), Benhayyi Al-Baghbaghan (Salute the Parrot) landed as his most original work to date. His trademark whirlwind of percussion-based rhythms seamlessly intertwines with layers of jarring yet coherent compositions and improvisations, rendered by a host of Arab and international guest artists.
Now, a decade later Louca releases a remix album with seven of the original eight tracks reworked by contemporary artists.
Maurice Louca is one of the most exciting artists in the alternative music scene across the Arab world today.
Following years of collaborations and inconspicuous touring across Europe and the Arab world, Louca has become renowned for his powerful live shows. But those who have experienced earlier iterations of Benhayyi Al-Baghbaghan (Salute the Parrot) at one of Louca’s performances will hear an album that is far more complex and hard-hitting.
Inspired by many influences, from psychedelic to Egyptian shaabi, Louca shatters the confines of musical and cultural labelling with eight genre-defying tracks. Like a virtual voyage between the charged intensity of confined spaces and the tranquil vastness of open landscapes, the album lays out a trajectory where beautiful and mesmerising fragments sparingly punctate the full-blown pounding episodes.
For the album artwork, Louca collaborated with Egyptian visual artist Maha Maamoun, whose videos and photographs frequently explore the construction of images in mainstream culture and the various ways in which these images are personally re-appropriated. In her photographs, Maamoun toys with our perception and shifts our expectations through subtle interventions. Benhayyi Al-Baghbaghan (Salute the Parrot)’s artwork aptly conveys the influence of Cairo’s paradoxical subcultures and the microcosmic soundscape of Louca's work - in three subtle variations, one for each of the album’s formats.
We've spliced the two versions of the albums in our playlist this month, so that the remix follows the original.
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A monthly digest of innovative new music from around the world
especially Jazz, Contemporary, International, Folk, Avant-garde, Soul, R&B and Soundtracks
including album artwork, album reviews
and YouTube playlists, Spotify playlists.