Recent Reading

Music Database

Artist Search:

Browse

Website Search

Google:

Music Week [30 - 39]

Monday, August 4, 2025

August archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44630 [44592] rated (+38), 25 [18] unrated (+7).

Major personal news is that we bought a new car. I've been wanting to for several years, but we've traveled so rarely since 2020 that there's been little need. Still, over the last year the clutch has been so dicey I've been afraid of driving out of town, even for the day trips we like to offer our occasional visitors, or for checking in on the few friends and relatives within easy reasonable distance. By the time I got the car into the shop, it was barely drivable and deteriorating fast.

I like to do a thorough job of shopping for big purchases like cars, and had done a fair amount of research, but when the time came, we panicked and bought what I initially identified as the safe default choice. The good news is that it's done now, moving a fairly large project from pending to done. (Well, mostly done: we still have tags, taxes, insurance, not sure what else as there's a lot of new technology I don't fully understand; e.g., they're pushing some kind of AT&T "powerful Wi-Fi hotspot" subscription with a 2-day window for a 20% discount.) The bad news is that I'm still unhappy with the way it all unfolded.

Still, we drive so little we shouldn't let minor quibbles get the better of us. Laura is unhappy that the passenger seat is so low (and unadjustable for height, unlike the driver seat; why not offer that?). And I hate that I won't be able to play CDs in the car. I'm trying not to panic on that score. I have a lot to learn about the new media console system. For that matter, there is a lot I never learned about my fairly ancient cell phone, but may have to as the phone seems to be the nerve center of the car's media package. I've only now downloaded my streaming apps, but haven't tested them out yet.

While numerous trips to car dealers kept me away from other projects around the house, between closing on the car on Friday and picking it up today I managed to listen to a few albums (38 below), and write a fair chunk of the next Loose Tabs. In particular, I haven't done anything on the Substack-based Notes on Everyday Life I announced a couple weeks ago (other than my edit of their "Coming Soon" page, retitled Hello World, which offers an idea of what I had in mind. I'm pleased to note that despite no output, I have 29 free subscribers waiting. I expect to send them something in the coming week.

Whether that first message fits my plan or not isn't clear yet. My latest thinking is that while everything will land somewhere on the website, the timing will vary: some things will show up first in the newsletter, others on the website, with each referring to the other. Redundancy should encourage me to edit more, and possibly expand on items I rushed out. (I missed last night's deadline in posting this. Looking at it again this morning I've already made a dozen edits in the previous paragraphs.) While I have enough Loose Tabs to publish now -- and probably too much for most folk to digest -- I still have a lot of open tabs to get to. I'll probably hold that post back until I finish my rounds (in a week or so), then put it up on the website. I could then write a shorter digest for the newsletter, with links to featured pieces, with the whole post as context. On the other hand, a couple items are already big and/or important enough to extract, polish up a bit, and turn into newsletter items, so they may appear ahead of the Loose Tabs blog post.

I'm not sure where music might fit into this scheme of things. I'm conscious that most of my current subscribers come for the music tips, but my ability to write reviews is already stretched pretty thin. Still, I might come up with a framework to tack on some timely listening notes at the end, perhaps like Jeffrey St. Clair does in his "Sound Grammar" section. He also does one on books, which I could handle -- perhaps not just on what little I manage to read, but by advancing some items that would later appear in a Book Roundup?

My main source for records this week has been Phil Overeem's August 1 list, which I'm still working my way through, plus a few items from Chris Monsen's mid-year list. The main exception is probably the sampling of Holger Czukay. I found (and have since lost) a Chinese website that seemed to suggest a recent reissue of Der Osten Ist Rot, which got me started, although I didn't go very deep. But when I looked up what Christgau had to say about Czukay (very little), I was reminded that I never managed to find a copy of David Toop's Oceans of Sound 2-CD compilation (graded A). A quick check at Amazon shows the book still in print, but no evidence of the CDs.

I finished Chris Hayes' book, The Siren's Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource. I found it useful, generating a lot of interesting thoughts about technology, media culture, and capitalism. Like his previous two books -- Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (2012) and A Colony in a Nation (2017) -- he took a novel approach to framing a big problem, although this one is a bit more tenuous, making me think that attention may not be the best way of framing the problem. I was especially impressed by the depth of research. While he is clearly smarter than your average TV talking head, what finally came clear in the acknowledgments section was that he has some genuinely brilliant research assistance. I certainly didn't expect to see mention, let alone a learned discussion, of Alexandre Kojève. His discussion of Marx's early writings on alienation is also so spot on that he felt the need to insert a parenthetical "I am not a Marxist" disclaimer.

I've moved on to a book called How AI Works, figuring it's about time I get some fairly unbiased insight into such a superhyped technology. I knew a fair amount about AI back in the 1980s, but haven't followed it, so it wasn't clear how useful my past understanding was. I'll write more about this in the future. One notable thing is that this has gotten me thinking about more mundane matters of technology, like website development. I just ordered a book from the same publisher called The Modern Web, because it seems to cover a lot of details that I've never been able to quite grasp (e.g., the chapters on device-responsive CSS and flexbox layouts). On the other hand, I'm surprised to be ordering a book on web technology originally published over a decade ago (2013). But looking around, I'm not seeing anything newer that looks genuinely useful. Given that most of my web development was learned in 2001-03, maybe the best I can hope for is to advance in decade-sized chunks.

Or maybe I'm just thrashing, as everything we seem to try, or at least hope to try, is failing. Or maybe failing isn't the right word: just slipping further and further away.

New records reviewed this week:

Ilia Belorukov & Marina Džukljev: Everything Changes, Nothing Disappears (2022-23 [2024], Acheulian Handaxe): Russian alto saxophonist, based in Serbia, long list of albums since 2007, here in a duo with the Serbian pianist. B+(***) [sp]

Gina Birch: Trouble (2025, Third Man): British singer-songwriter, second solo album, but side credits go back to 1977, when she was a founder of the Raincoats. B+(**) [sp]

Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (2025, RCA): Country singer-songwriter, from Kentucky, self-released a good album in 2011, didn't follow it up until 2017 and has been superb ever since. A- [sp]

Doseone & Height Keech: Wood Teeth (2025, Hands Made, EP): Rapper/producer/poet/artist Adam Drucker, from Idaho, based in Santa Fe, first album 1998, long associated with Anticon, Wikipedia has a long list of musicians he's recorded with but omits the one that brought him to my attention: Buck 65. Baltimore rapper Dan Keech, aka Height, has a similar career and is also well into his 40s. Six "blistering" songs (12:13), "written and recorded in protest": "May all kind hearts feel seen in these songs. May all fascists, bigots and closed minded individuals feel stared at." Scratchy voice signified metal until the words became clearer. B+(***) [sp]

Eddy Current Suppression Ring: Shapes and Forms (2025, Cool Death, EP): Australian alt-rock group, five albums 2006-09, one more in 2019, and now this skinny EP (3 songs, one a Camper Van Beethoven cover, 6:55). B+(*) [bc]

Ex_libris: Ex_libris - 001 (2025, Ex_libris, EP): Electronica producer Dave Huismans, Discogs says based in Berlin but Bandcamp has Utrecht, Netherlands. New alias, but he started in 2006 with A Made Up Sound, alternating with 2562. Two EPs, this one 3 tracks (24:32). Ambient with a little extra. B+(**) [sp]

Ex_libris: Ex_libris - 002 (2025, Ex_libris, EP): Same day sequel, 3 more tracks (23:57). B+(**) [sp]

Fines Double: Espejismo (2025, self-released): Portland-based hip-hop producer/dj, second album, uses a long list of featured rappers (names I recognize: AJ Suede, Curly Castro, PremRock, Billy Woods). The words tend to scatter, but the music is intricate and sinuous, a nice flow with interesting quirks. B+(***) [sp]

Ben Lamar Gay: Yowzers (2023-24 [2025], International Anthem): Cornet player, sings, several albums since 2018, also plays synth, diddley bow, and percussion, with a diverse group that signifies exotica (flute, tuba, guitar, ngoni, percussion, several voices), in combinations that sometimes dazzle or beguile or just bewilder. B+(*) [sp]

Andreas Haddeland Trio: Estuar (2025, Tare): Norwegian guitarist, at least eight albums since 2003, with Lars Tormod Jenset (double bass) and Ulrik Ibsen Thorsrud (drums). B+(**) [bc]

Heat On: Heat On (2024 [2025], Cuneiform): Chicago group, two saxophonists -- Edward Wilkerson Jr. (tenor, best known for 8 Bold Souls) and Fred Jackson Jr. (alto) -- with bass (Nick Macri) and drums (Lily Finnegan), playing 8 tracks composed by the drummer. Finnegan started out in hard core punk band Deodorant, but also plays in Ken Vandermark's Edition Redux, and has a duo album with Gabby Fluke-Mogul. None of that background suggests how meticulously, or remarkably, this plays out. A- [dl]

Gilad Hekselman: Downhill From Here (2023 [2025], La Reserve/Diggers Factory): Israeli guitarist, moved to New York in 2004, dozen-plus albums since 2006, this a trio with Larry Grenadier (bass) and Marcus Gilmore (drums). B+(*) [sp]

Kjetil Husebø: Piano Transformed - Interspace (2024 [2025], Optical Substance): Norwegian pianist, twelve albums since 2010. This is solo, sometimes adding sampling and live electronics, spread over 2-CD (18 songs, 92:29). B+(*) [bc]

Mikko Innanen & Ingebrigt Håker Flaten: Live in Espoo (2025, Fiasko/Sonic Transmissions): Finnish saxophonist, alto is probably his first choice but also plays baritone, sopranino, tenor, and oboe here, fair number of albums since 2006, including some dandies. Duo here with the prolific Norwegian bassist, who gets a fair share of the mix and makes the most of it. A- [sp]

Karol G: Tropicoqueta (2025, Bichota/Interscope): Colombian singer-songwriter Carolina Giraldo Navarro, fifth album since 2017, all high on the US Latin charts. Technically a mix of styles, proudly "Latina Foreva," but those details, like the language, are lost on me. The beats break through first, but much more follows. The guest track for Manu Chao stands out, but by them I'm already sold. A- [sp]

Eric McPherson: Double Bass Quartet (2022 [2025], Giant Step Arts): Drummer, leads a group with Cuban pianist David Virelles and two bassists: John Hébert and Ben Street. One original each from three members, plus six covers, two from Andrew Hill. B+(**) [cd]

Memphis Metaphysics: Memphis Metaphysics (2023 [2025], Sonic Transmissions): Swiss pianist Margaux Oswald and Norwegian guitarist Hein Westgaard recorded this in Memphis with three Americans: Art Edmaiston (tenor sax), Ra Kalam Bob Moses (drums), and Kevin Cheli (percussion). The Europeans were thinking Memphis as in Egypt, the songs named after ancient spirits, with artwork to match. B+(**) [sp]

Pasquale Mirra/Hamid Drake: Lhasa (2022 [2025], Parco Della Musica): Italian vibraphonist, several albums since 2014, many more side-credits, in a duo with the drummer -- pictured on the cover with one of his frame drums. B+(*) [sp]

PAL: Under Your Radar (2025, self-released, EP): Cleveland group, Maureen Joyce (keys) and Jake Schott (guitar) the singers, tag line mentions "punk" five times, "skronk" three, "art" two, perhaps most acutely "angular," which they fit more than any band since Devo. Seven songs, 10:25. B+(***) [bc]

Alex Sipiagin: Daydream (2024 [2025], SkyDeck Muisic): Russian trumpet/flugelhorn player, moved to US in 1990, has a couple dozen albums since 2003, this one recorded in Italy with singers Giuditta Franco and Marta Frigo, guitar and piano, bass and drums. B [sp]

Alex Sipiagin: Reverberations (2024 [2025], Criss Cross Jazz): Trumpet/flugelhorn leader, with alto sax (Will Vinson), piano (John Escreet), bass, and drums, kicking off with three originals before breaking out the Mingus, Ellington, Tyner, and Strayhorn. Aubrey Johnson contributes a vocal I could do without. B+(*) [sp]

Sultan Stevenson: El Roi (2025, Edition): British pianist, second album, mostly trio with bass (Jacob Gryn) and drums (Joel Waters), three (of 8) tracks adding trumpet/flugelhorn (Josh Short) and tenor sax (Soweto Kinch). B+(*) [sp]

Bill Stewart: Live at the Village Vanguard (2023 [2025], Criss Cross Jazz): Drummer, a dozen-plus albums as leader since 1990, hundreds of side credits. Trio with Larry Grenadier (bass) and Walter Smith III (tenor sax), from a week-long stand. B+(**) [sp]

Three-Layer Cake: Sounds the Color of Grounds (2025, Otherly Love): Trio of Mike Pride (drums/marimba), Brandon Seabrook (guitar/banjo/mandolin), and Mike Watt (bass, some spoken word vocals). Second album. B+(**) [sp]

Premik Russell Tubbs/Margee Minier-Tubbs: Oneness-World (2025, Margetoile): Both compose and produce, Margee at the executive level, also claiming all the lyrics, vocals, and some percussion. Premik plays sax, flutes, and EWI. Others help out: the only name I recognize is Zack Brock (violin). I could pass on the music, but the spoken word was more than a little interesting, including a disquisition on fashion that didn't neglect the costs, both tragic and mundane. B+(*) [cd]

Meryl Zimmerman: Easy to Love (2024, Tuxedo Cat): Standards singer from New Orleans, only other credit I can find is a 2007 appearance in the St. Louis a cappella group Mosaic Whispers. "Selections from the Great American Songbook," backed by Kris Tokarski (piano), Nobu Ozaki (bass), and Hal Smith (drums). B [bc]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Master Wilburn Burchette: Master Wilburn Burchette's Psychic Meditation Music (1974 [2025], Numero Group): California-based mystic (1939-2023), "transfixed by the parapsychological, spending as much time reading books on Tibetan mysticism fundamentals as he did practicing guitar," he released seven albums 1971-77, "before abruptly burning and discarding everything related to his musical explorations." This was his fourth album, two LP-side pieces called "Yin" and "Yang," done on some kind of synth (unspecified). B+(*) [bc]

Electric Satie: Gymnopédie '99 (1998 [2025], In Sheep's Clothing): One-shot group, led by Mitsuto Suzuki, who arranged the French composer's pieces (adding one of his own) mostly for Moog. First track is a misdirection, with Ryoji Oba arranging and Silvio Anastacio guitar and vocal. B+(***) [sp]

Brian Eno/Holger Czukay/J. Peter Schwalm: Sushi. Roti. Reibekuchen (1998 [2024], Grönland): Live set from Bonn "at the opening reception of Eno's Future Light-Lounge Proposal Multimedia Installation." Title is from a menu, where the latter are German potato pancakes. The principles seem to be playing various electronics, but the first track (in particular) gains from live drums and bass. B+(**) [sp]

Hüsker Dü: Jan. 30, First Ave Pt. 1 (1985 [2025], Numero Group, EP): Minneapolis group, hardcore with just enough melodic sense to break through my resistance (actually, but me it was their 1983 EP Metal Circus, which I initially hated but eventually came around on), coming off their 2-LP magnum opus, Zen Arcade, and just before New Day Rising. This has been described as "their legendary homecoming concert," recorded to 24-track tape at the time for a possible live album, but shelved with new studio albums coming fast and furious. Thought lost in a 2011 fire, but now "restored completely." First sample: 5 songs (10:58), no idea how much more is left. I doubt I've played any of their records in this century, but a couple songs are so indelible I'm pleased to be reminded ("Books About UFOs," "Makes No Sense at All"). B+(**) [sp]

Hüsker Dü: Nov. 3, Salt Lake City (1985 [2025], Numero Group, EP): Another sample from the live audio archive, recorded November 3, five songs (17:45) that later appeared on Candy Apple Grey (1986) -- my second favorite of their albums, explaining why most of the songs sound familiar, but a bit muted. B+(*) [sp]

Old music:

Holger Czukay: Der Osten Ist Rot (1984, Virgin): Krautrock pioneer (1938-2017), born in Danzig (now Gdansk), Czukay was his Polish family name, but they went by Schüring, calculated to sound more Aryan, which got them expelled to Germany in 1945. He grew up in Duisburg, played bass, studied under Stockhausen, and was a founder of Can in 1968 (leaving after 1977), playing bass and adding samples and electronics, especially radio sounds. He recorded a solo album in 1969, and more from 1979 on, of which this is one of the more famous, with Jaki Liebzeit co-writing several songs (also playing drums, trumpet, piano, organ). A few interesting pieces here, but the effect is rather widely scattered. B+(*) [sp]

Holger Czukay: Rome Remains Rome (1987, Virgin): As scattered as its predecessor, but longer pieces sustain the interesting bits, while inflicting less whiplash. This was running a notch up until the 10:33 "Perfect World" swept me away, with its hints of Afrika Bambaataa and Kid Creole and anticipation of DJ Shadow -- albeit, sure, in a rather plastic way, but this could anchor a solid A album. That sent me back to recheck the Jah Wobble-powered funk pieces ("Hey Baba Reebop," "Hit Hit Flop Flop" and "Sudetenland"), the Pope-sampled "Blessed Easter," and the truly atmospheric "Music in the Air." A- [sp]

Fines Double: Flotar (2021, Filthy Broke): First album, only a few featured rappers (mostly Defcee and AJ Suede), so more emphasis on the rhythm tracks, which are pretty distinctive. B+(**) [bc]

Blaze Foley: Blaze Foley [The Lost Muscle Shoals Recordings] (1984 [2017], Lost Art): Alt-country singer-songwriter, actual name Michael Fuller, took his stage name from Red Foley and Blaze Starr, shot dead at 39 in 1989 with just this one album to his credit: original title, Blaze Foley, but "lost" due to "some trouble with the law" (most of 500 copies were confiscated in a DEA drug bust). A decade later he was mostly famous as the subject of songs by Townes Van Zandt and Lucinda Williams, with Gurf Morlix releasing a tribute album in 2011 (Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream, probably Morlix's best). Since then, various live scraps have appeared, which rarely live up to the legend. B+(*) [bc]

Hüsker Dü: Extra Circus (1983 [2017], Numero Group): Five extra tracks from the session(s) that produced their breakthrough 7-song, 18:57 Metal Circus EP. Total: 7:33 -- three tracks less than 1 minute each, the only one over 2 minutes is "Standing by the Sea," which you may know from Zen Arcade, so nothing revelatory, but pretty good while it lasts. B [sp]

PAL: PALS (2023, self-released, EP): First record, a 7-song EP (11:05), just a trio at this point, so singer-songwriter Maureen Joyce plays drums as well as keys. B+(**) [bc]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Nicole Glover: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Savant)
• Luigi Grasso: La Dimora Dell'atrove (LP345) [09-26]
• Andy Haas/Brian G Skol: The Honeybee Twist (Resonant Music) [08-01]
• Dylan Hicks & Small Screens: Avian Field Recordings (Soft Launch) [08-12]
• Lex Korten: Canopy (Sounderscore) [09-19]
• Linda May Han Oh: Strange Heavens (Biophilia) [08-22]: packaging only, no music (is this a joke?)
• Webber/Morris Big Band: Unseparate (Out of Your Head) [09-26]
• Simón Willson: Feel Love (Endectomorph Music) [09-25]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 28, 2025

July archive (finished).

Music: Current count 44592 [44557] rated (+35), 18 [16] unrated (+2).

I've had a disturbing week, leaving me all but paralyzed with fear, uncertainty, and doubt -- "FUD" if you're inclined to laugh at it, but right now I'm not. I suppose it started with a routine out-patient test at a local hospital, which has raised no alarms (although messages to visit the "patient portal" for reports have revealed nothing), but disrupted my day, setting off a series of bad choices: a stop at a new restaurant that disappointed, a bit of custard afterwards that I didn't need (while denying myself the "butter pecan concrete" I would have relished), some pricey and esoteric grocery shopping at Whole Foods, where I bought some skinny trout filets that forced me to fix an unplanned dinner (a sub-stellar trout almondine with sides of zucchini and oven fries). While objectively I've muddled through, I've remained out of sorts all week.

The low point came on the day when I spent a couple hours awkwardly leaning into the front porch door trying to reconnect a broken power wire to a doorbell camera. It's been broken for months, and for most of that time just too small and obscure to see how it could go back together. I finally got the wire in, only to have it pop out again when I tried to reconnect the clip. After that, it was impossible. I finally concluded I'd have to get someone out to if not fix it then suggest a different camera setup. Seems like I've been failing at a lot of these maintenance tasks lately. It's very discouraging. [PS: I did some further research moments ago, which suggests I misunderstood some things. Still probably not salvageable, but replacing the entire clip may be straightforward to someone with the right parts and equipment.]

I also spent a bunch of time this week doing research on buying a new car. I have a big table of models, but I'm still a long ways from figuring it all out. Meanwhile, the old car is on its last legs, or seems to be, and I need to get someone to look at it, because I no longer seem to understand how cars work. There was a day when my highest ambition was to become a mechanic (ok, a race car designer). Dreams like that die hard. (Although I had two cousins who did just that. One was already building and racing go-karts as a teen. Later he spent most of his life teaching mechanics, but wound up doing tricky plastics repairs in a body shop by then managed by the other.) Still, made some progress after months of spinning my wheels. Should be a major focus next week.

Many more projects on hold. The one most relevant here is the Substack newsletter, Notes on Everyday Life. I haven't sent anything out yet, but I've started to get some free subscribers, and I edited their original "Coming Soon" page as Hello World, the title taken from the original demo program in The C Programming Language. The edited text serves as a brief (6 paragraph) mission statement. I'll try to publish an initial post sometime in the coming week. No idea yet what will be in there. I do have one possibly serious problem with Substack so far: with Firefox, the dashboard controls are dead in the water. Thus far I've only been able to work on it through Chrome, which I almost never use. The problem also applies to other supposedly public web pages, like this one (from Chris Monsen's Listening Booth, a mid-year list that is probably very useful).

Probably more I should write about here, but it's gotten too late, so I might as well go ahead and post. One last thing I do need to mention is that I wrote up three answers today.

New records reviewed this week:

Arcade Fire: Pink Elephant (2025, Columbia): Canadian rock band, seventh album since 2004, the first several were huge critical as well as commercial hits, most I liked well enough but little remember now. So I had little enthusiasm for this when it came out, but must admit they remain a good band, and this album has some genuine appeal. B+(*) [sp]

Beach Bunny: Tunnel Vision (2025, AWAL): Indie pop band, Lili Trifilio the singer-guitarist, third album, "jam-packed bubblegum hooks and angsty riffs." B+(**) [sp]

Yaya Bey: Do It Afraid (2025, Drink Sum Wtr): R&B singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, raps some, several albums since 2016. B+(*) [sp]

Brian Charette: Borderless (2024 [2025], SteepleChase): Organ player, working solo, evidently his third such -- starting with Borderline in 2013, then Beyond Borderline in 2019 -- which puts him in mind of church music, but when his own pieces run out, he drops in some Jobim, Booker T, Huey Lewis, "Willow Weep for Me," "Tadd's Delight," "Moody's Mood for Love." With a couple vocals. B [sp]

Brian Charette: Working Out With Big G (2024 [2025], SteepleChase): The attraction here is tenor saxophonist George Coleman, 89 at the time, but the typography on cover and spine tells me to credit this solely to the organ player, while noting support from Paul Bollenback (guitar) and George Coleman Jr. (drums) -- a sequel to their 2017 album. All standards, starting with Charlie Parker and ending with Irving Berlin. Coleman still sounds fine, but he seems pretty relaxed. B+(***) [sp]

Eric Church: Evangeline vs. the Machine (2025, UMG Nashville): Country singer-songwriter, debut 2006, went multi-platinum with 2011's Chief. Seems to be moving beyond his arena rock phase. B+(*) [sp]

Clipse: Let God Sort Them Out (2025, Roc Nation): Hip-hop duo from Virginia Beach, brothers Gene and Terrence Thornton, aka No Malice and Pusha T, big album in 2002 (Lord Willin'), but this is their first since 2009 (both released solo albums in 2013, with Pusha T adding three more through 2022). More drug trade than I'd like, but they steer away from gangsta by treating it more as a calling, a prism for a world view, interesting on its own terms. A- [sp]

Chick Corea/Christian McBride/Brian Blade: Trilogy 3 (2020 [2025], Candid): Piano/bass/drums trio, their initial 2014 3-CD album documented 2010-12 tours, a second 2-CD from 2018 picked up scraps and added a 2016 tour. This one, from a 2020 tour -- the pianist died in 2021 -- fits on a single CD, although the 2-LP is probably the point. B+(*) [sp]

Paquito D'Rivera & Madrid-New York Connection Band: La Fleure De Cayenne (2025, Sunnyside): Cuban clarinet and alto sax player, debut 1975, moved to US in 1981, many albums, group here mostly Cubans based in Madrid (piano/bass/drums/percussion) with a vibraphonist (Sebastian Laverde) from Colombia. B+(*) [sp]

Dawn Patrol Jazz Band: A Tribute to Benny Strickler and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band (2024-25 [2025], self-released): Band led by drummer Hal Smith, who's been a major figure in the trad jazz world since 1979, so no direct connection to the Yuerba Buena Jazz Band (1940-59). Strickler (1917-46) was a trumpet player who briefly played with them c. 1942 (although none of the 6 sides they recorded together are reprised here). Group here with Rick Holzgrafe (cornet), Steve Drivon (trombone), two clarinets, piano, banjo, and tuba. B+(**) [bc]

McKinley Dixon: Magic, Alive! (2025, City Slang): Rapper, from Maryland, based in Chicago, fifth album since 2016 (first two self-released). B+(**) [sp]

DJ Haram: Beside Myself (Hyperdub): DJ/producer based in Philadelphia, Zubeyda Muzeyyen, part of duo 700 Bliss with Moor Mother, first album after a mixtape, several guest rappers including Bbymutha, Moor Mother, and Armand Hammer. B+(**) [sp]

Open Mike Eagle: Neighborhood Gods Unlimited (2025, Auto Reverse): Underground rapper, from Chicago, debut 2008, more than a dozen albums, this one sneakier than most. A- [sp]

The Haas Company Featuring Jerry Goodman: Thirteen (2025, Psychiatric): Fusion group led by drummer Steve Haas, each volume featuring a guest, here playing electric violin. B [cd] [08-01]

Jasper Høiby: Fellow Creatures: We Must Fight (2025, Edition): Danish bassist, started in Phronesis in 2007, other groups include Planet B, Three Elements, and Fellow Creatures -- a 2016 title recycled here but with a different group: Alex Hitchcock (sax), Ketija Ringa Karahona (flute), Saled Silbak (oud), Luca Caruso (drums), Xavi Torres (piano). B+(**) [sp]

Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals: A City Drowned in God's Black Tears (2025, Phantom Limb): Music by the former, aka Tariq Ravelomanana, from Tanzania but moved in childhood through several African countries before settling "as a junior high student" in Baltimore. Has a couple albums on his own, as does lyricist Ennals, before teaming up for their third album here. Some sharp politics, but also some fuzzy music. B+(**) [sp]

Rico Jones: Bloodlines (2024 [2025], Giant Step Arts): Tenor saxophonist, from Colorado, based in Harlem, "a rising star and one of the most accomplished saxophonists of his generation," which judging from his biography (which doesn't give a birthdate or age, but is pretty details "from the age of 13") would put him in the 24-28 range, here with his first album. Not many in his cohort I could contrast him with, but Zoh Amba (b. 2000) has 7 + 4 albums in my database. No one else really pops to mind, as it's unusual for jazz musicians to lead albums before they turn 30. Hyperbole aside, this is pretty impressive: original pieces, starting with a 30:21 suite, plus four more pieces that add up to another 31:15. Quartet with guitar (Max Light), bass (Joe Martin), and drums (Nasheet Waits). B+(***) [cdr] [07-25]

Kokoroko: Tuff Times Never Last (2025, Brownswood): British septet, led by Sheila Maurice-Grey and Onome Edgeworth, slotted as jazz but strikes me as too soft-edged even for Afrobeat. B [sp]

Lil Wayne: Tha Carter VI (2025, Young Money/Republic): New Orleans rapper Dwayne Carter, Wikipedia counts 14 studio albums and 29 mixtapes since 1999, most of the former, especially his Tha Carter series, big hits. Considerable craft here, but little I actually care about; e.g., "I'm alone in the studio with my gun." B+(*) [sp]

Niontay: Fada<3of$ (2025, 10k): Rapper, last name Hicks, born in Milwaukee, grew up in Florida, now in Brooklyn, second album. Some esoteric groove music. B+(*) [sp]

Pink Siifu: Black'!Antique (2025, Dynamite Hill): Rapper Livingston Matthews, albums since 2019, this one hews close to the underground for an excessive 77 minutes. B+(*) [sp]

Altin Sencalar: Unleashed (2024 [2025], Posi-Tone): Trombonist, "California-born, Texas-raised, New York-based," "drawing on his Mexican and Turkish heritage," second album, with Greg Tardy (tenor sax/clarinet), Behn Gillece (vibes), Boris Kozlov (bass), and EJ Strickland (drums), plus on three tracks Bruce Williams (alto/soprano sax/flute). B+(*) [sp]

Slikback: Attrition (2025, Planet Mu): "UK bass" or "deconstructed club" or something along those lines, by Freddy M Njau, from Nairobi, Kenya, who seems to have done a lot of this sort of thing since 2019. B+(*) [sp]

Hal Smith's San Francisco Jazz All-Stars: Live at the International Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival '24 Sedalia, MO [Vol. 1] (2024, self-released): Trad jazz drummer, many albums since 1979, cover print here includes a "featuring:" of song titles, and a full list of "all-star" names: Tom Bartlett (trombone/vocals), John Otto (clarinet), Brian Holland (piano), John Gill (banjo/vocals), Dan Anderson (tuba). Gill is by far the most famous in my book, and (along with Bartlett and Smith) provides a link to Turk Murphy, who following Lu Watters put San Francisco on the trad jazz map in the 1940s. [bc]

Junior Smith and His Remote Rangers: Junior Smith's Remote Round Up (2025, self-released): Trad jazz drummer Hal Smith, with much of his usual crew, playing western swing, inspired by Bob Wills' Tiffany Transcriptions, featuring vocalists Alice Spencer and Katie Shore (who also plays fiddle). B+(*) [bc]

Snowpoet: Heartstrings (2025, Edition): British duo, Lauren Kinsella (vocals) and Chris Hyson (keyboards), fourth album since 2016, plus bass, drums, and some saxophone, on a jazz label but their "depth, sonic richness, and lyrical honesty" is very niche-specific. B+(*) [sp]

Laura Stevenson: Late Great (2025, Really): Singer-songwriter from Long Island, started playing keyboards in a group called Bomb the Music Industry, first solo album 2008, this makes seven. B+(*) [sp]

Kelsey Waldon: Every Ghost (2025, Oh Boy): Country singer-songwriter from Kentucky, tenth album since 2010. The Gold Mine (2014) was the first I heard, and I was very taken with the voice, the songs, the deep country vibe. Everything she's done since then has been very good, and this is no exception, even if it seems like my enthusiasm is waning. B+(***) [sp]

Wet Leg: Moisturizer (2025, Domino): British rock duo, actually from Isle of Wight, second album, first was one of 2022's top-regarded albums, I never quite got the excitement then, even less now. B+(**) [sp]

Jessica Winter: My First Album (2025, Lucky Number): Pop singer-songwriter, don't know much about her, but it mostly works. B+(**) [sp]

Wu-Tang X Mathematics: Black Samson, the Bastard Swordsman (2025, 36 Chambers/DNA Music): Latter is DJ/producer Ronald Bean, a Discogs entry under Allah Mathematics, with a dozen variants, and ten releases since 2003, and 101 production credits since 1994, with many Wu-Tang affiliates starting with Method Man in 1998, and the whole Clan in 2000. So soundwise, he is them, and vice versa. "Clan" was dropped on their 2017 The Saga Continues, but that seems to have less to do with attrition -- ODB died in 2004; all nine others are still on board here -- than with consolidating their brand: a business strategy, which is probably all the "Final Chamber" tour is, or the "Las Vegas Residency," or the album they recorded for a private auction, or the "cooperative action RPG." In this case, note that I'm playing the 12-cut stream, as opposed to the 11-track LP or the 13-track digital or the 26-track "deluxe" or whatever's on the CD or 2xCD, let alone the instrumental version, or the 2x12" 45RPM Record Store Day special. A- [sp]

Brandee Younger: Gadabout Season (2025, Impulse!): Harp player, albums since 2011, third major label deal on Impulse. Lot of guest spots, including some prominent names, but ultimately they don't add much. B+(*) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Sly & the Family Stone: The First Family: Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967 (1967 [2025], High Moon): Very early, only one original piece ("I Ain't Got Nobody"), but it clearly points toward their debut album, A Whole New Thing later that same year. After that it's all covers: Otis Redding and Motown, "St. James Infirmary" and "Funky Broadway." Probably fun to witness at the time, but nothing to write home about. B [sp]

Sly & the Family Stone: Sly Lives! (Aka the Burden of Black Genius) [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] (1967-73 [2025], Sony/Legacy): Tie-in to Questlove's documentary, baited with "seven rare and previously unreleased mixes and alternate versions, along with three new edits," dates not given but begins with two songs from A Whole New Thing and ends with "Que Sera" from Fresh. I'm not finding this very useful, but if if you're starting from scratch, this could be a good introduction. There certainly are moments of genius. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

Joe Sanders: Introducing Joe Sanders (2011 [2012], Criss Cross Jazz): Bassist, American but based in Paris, first of three albums, many more side credits (Discogs counts 68 since 2000). He wrote 5 (of 10) songs here, including a vocal shared with Gretchen Parlato. With Will Vinson (alto sax), Luis Perdomo (keyboards), and Rodney Green (drums). Nice variety, worth noticing the bass. B+(**) [sp]

Grade (or other) changes:

New York Dolls: In Too Much, Too Soon (1974, Mercury): I always favored their second album, perhaps because I got to it first, but possibly not for a year or two after the fact, by which point the CBGB scene was exploding, with all sorts of new wonders. When I went back over the A+ lists, this was one that gave me a pause. When I finally got around to replaying, it easily satisfied my criteria: every cut bursting with ideas, flowing inexorably into a complete album, capped by the magnificent "Human Being." [was: A] A+ [cd]

Rechecked with no grade change:

New York Dolls: New York Dolls (1973, Mercury): Also replayed their first album, New York Dolls, several times, and left it at A. Several really great songs, especially "Subway Train," but doesn't quite have the complete flow of the second album. One thing I was struck by was how much the ballad ("Vietnamese Baby"?) anticipated the Go-Betweens -- another recent replay -- but A+ albums shouldn't have odd songs out (at least ones that aren't sui generis). A [cd]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet: El Muki (Saponegro) [08-15]
• Adegoke Steve Colson & Iqua Colson With Andrew Cyrille/Mark Helias: Glow: Music for Trio . . . and Voice (Silver Sphinx) [08-22]
• Eric McPherson: Double Bass Quartet (Giant Step Arts) [07-25]
• PlainsPeak: Someone to Someone (Irabbagast) [08-15]
• Ned Rothenberg: Looms & Legends (Pyroclastic) [09-05]
• Charlie Rouse: Cinnamon Flower: The Expanded Edition (1977, Resonance) [09-19]
• Miguel Zenón Quartet: Vanguardia Subterranea: Live at the Village Vanguard (Miel Music) [08-29]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 21, 2025

July archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44557 [44524] rated (+33), 16 [16] unrated (-0).

I never really bought the idea of a Reagan Revolution. Although the long-term consequences of the 1980 election were profound, the immediate impact was fairly mild, in part because they still felt the need to disguise what they were doing, in part because the institutions that came out of the New Deal, WWII, and the postwar era up through Johnson and in some cases even Nixon were still pretty robust. Reagan himself remained a sunny tonic, personally much more popular than his policies, although I never even for a moment fell for him. My stock line about the 1980s was that the only growth industry in America was fraud. No surprise that the president himself was one huge, paper-thin charlatan, but he got away with it, mostly because the media and Democrats like Clinton and Obama wanted in on the graft.

On the other hand, the first six months of Trump's second coming does feel like revolution, especially if, like me, you've gotten past the old left sentiment that revolutions advance us toward more just societies. A more clinical view of revolution is that it's a time when the old order turns brittle and cracks, allowing some new parties a sudden rush to unconstrained power. I've been thinking about these issues for most of my life, and I think I have a distinctly different take on the moment. I came out of the 2024 election with the sense that something profoundly weird had just happened. At this point, I think we can start to clarify what that was, why it happened, what it means, and where it's likely to go.

I don't know that I can write all that up, but my plan is to give it a few weeks and see what comes out. Worst case I add it to all the other failed book outlines I've cranked out since the 1990s (or maybe the 1970s, when I had lots of book ideas, but definitely not the 1980s, when the only one was a threaded novel about what killed my wife). I have some ideas about how to put it together. But first, after my immersion in the Francis Davis Poll, I figured I should take a few days and knock out a Loose Tabs piece. I did, after all, have some scraps saved up, plus a good number of open tabs. That wound up taking up all of last week.

This week, I have this Music Week today, and some (probably pointless) medical tests tomorrow, but after that I intend to knuckle down, with several other tasks available for breaks. Some of this is leftover or continuing house work. I figure I should start doing some preliminary Poll work in September: reviewing voter lists, rebuilding the website. The only other thing I feel like mentioning here is that I've set up a Substack newsletter, which I'm calling Notes on Everyday Life -- a name that some friends used for an underground/new left tabloid circa 1972-74. I've held a domain name to that effect for some time now, perhaps hoping to reunite the band, but these days it seems to just be me. My idea now is to demolish the current WordPress blog on the website and replace it with some kind of Mediawiki, that I can use for a topic sort of my scattered writings. I don't know how soon that can happen -- unlikely in the next month or two, unless I can find some help -- but while I see it as eventually related to the newsletter, it's not a precondition.

The newsletter, at first anyway, will offer periodic reports on my projects and thinking. I hope to send my debut "hello world" post out by the end of the week, but I'm pleased to note that I already have two subscribers, so I can rest assured that someone will read whatever I come up with. As this is the first time I've actually mentioned it, perhaps some more of you will sign up by the time I roll out? To keep thing simple, I haven't set up a paid tier, nor am I likely to anytime soon now. I started a planning document, but it's way too messed up to share at this point. I will have one at some point, as I figure things out. Meanwhile, I'd welcome any questions and/or comments.

I will say that what I'm looking/hoping for with Substack is:

1. A way to send push notices out on demand, without the personal hassle of having to manage my own email list.
2. A more concrete sense of how many people are reading, both based on the mailing list and statistical tools
3. More feedback through a comment forum, which again should require a fairly minor amount of my time to monitor.

Those are all points that I didn't see any other easy method of implementing on my own. They mostly address my insecurity as a writer, which goes to motivation. I'm not a fan of the basic Substack paradigm, which is: everyone go into your own room and mount a soapbox no one else will ever notice. If I had a grant (not as a content provider, but as an ISP) I'd design something very different. Still, I probably wasted a lot of time considering alternatives, which only started to differentiate once one had commercial ambitions.

One nice thing from Substack so far: I wrote a comment to Robert Christgau's Xgau Sez, and was surprised to get 9 likes and 1 thoughtful reply -- 2-3 times the best I do on X or Bluesky. The comment was about grading A+ records, and took a bit of research to prepare for.

The research led me to add (or revalue) grades in my database for several items I had missed. As both of our databases were constructed over many decades of listening, both have a fair number of obsolete editions -- long out-of-print and/or superseded by later editions, often with new names/covers (like the Motown set). I never bothered listing the Ray Charles set before, because it was so long gone, but I did have (and love) it -- it was basically my first real overview of his work (although I certainly knew singles from much earlier). However, one of the things you can do with our datasets is explore similarities and divergences, as I did in my notebook. Having the same albums in both facilitates that. I've gone out of my way to listen to most of his A-list albums. I have a list somewhere of items I still haven't heard, which must run well over 100, but the A+ subset is small, so I figured I should close out that gap. I drew a line, however, at doing cover graphics, in each case for its own reason, which you can probably guess.

First non-jazz A- records this week in quite a while, to some extend diminishing returns after all the jazz finds that surfaced in the Poll, but also because I needed a break. Four (of five) come from the June and July Consumer Guides, and they are all strong records by old-timers. The fifth (James McMurtry) could also have been, as Christgau has gone A- or higher on him 5 times since 2004. In this case, however, I got my tip from Christian Iszchak, who also pointed me to Hailey Whitters, Youssou N'Dour, and Little Simz.

I still expect to write up some notes on the DownBeat Critics Poll, but for reasons unknown I haven't gotten my hard copy of the magazine yet. I have found a link to the online edition, but figured I'd wait until I could see better. I mentioned this in yesterday's Loose Tabs (which also includes a couple other music-related sections). I inevitably find more items to add there, but haven't had time today to make more than a couple minor edits.

PS: I was playing Hailey Whitters' Corn Queen when I initially posted this. A few minutes later, I decided to bump the album up a notch, from B+(***) to A-. I think I caught all the tables, but didn't edit do a thorough edit, so things like the A-list count may be off. The Springsteen album was another late add, not reflected in the rated count, but included in the A-list count.

New records reviewed this week:

Michael Arbenz Meets Andy Sheppard: From Bach to Ellington: Live (2025, self-released): Swiss pianist, studied classical, twin brother of drummer Florian Arbenz, has a couple albums from back around 2001. His brother got real active during the Covid lockdown with various long-distance encounters, and he eventually got sucked into several of those, then spun out on his own, with an album on Ellington, and another called Classicism. Duo with a British saxophonist, perhaps best known for collaborations with Carla Bley (notes also mention Gil Evans and George Russell, which makes for a nice trifecta). B+(**) [bc]

Elia Aregger Trio: Live (2025, Unit): German guitarist, seems to be his/their first album, with Marius Summer (bass) and Alessandro Alarcon (drums). B+(*) [sp]

Willi Carlisle: Winged Victory (2025, Signature Sounds): Folk/country singer-songwriter, based in Arkansas, fifth album since 2018 (counting a recent self-released set of covers I should probably check out). Minor tidbit from his bio that looms surprisingly large here is that his father was a "polka musician." That's just one of many oddments I find amusing but can't quite make sense of. Possibly worth a revisit, but not yet. B+(***) [sp]

Dawn Clement/Buster Williams/Matt Wilson: Delight (2024 [2025], Origin): Pianist, sings some, several records since 2003, most recently in Esthesis Quartet, also played on Matt Wilson's Good Trouble. Great rhythm section here. B+(**) [cd]

Marco Colonna: Icarus Falling: To Mosab Abu Toha (2025, self-released): Saxophone trio, the leader, with a fairly long list of credits since 2011, on baritone, with Renato Ferreira (tenor) and Simone Alessandrini (soprano), the album dedicated to the Palestinian poet. B+(**) [bc]

Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr. & the Wild Magnolias: Chip Off the Old Block (2025, Strong Place Music): As Mardi Gras Indians go, my top pick has always been the Meters-powered The Wild Tchoupitoulas (1976), but the Wild Magnolias, led by Bo Dollis (1944-2015), beat them to the punch in 1974, and they were fun too. Both groups still exist, the Tchoups lately led by Flagboy Giz, with the somewhat more prolific Magnolias backing Bo Jr. B+(*) [sp]

Lafayette Gilchrist & New Volcanoes: Move With Love (2025, Morphius): Pianist, based in Baltimore, first came to my attention with David Murray around 2004 but seems to have had albums as early as 1999. Has a previous live album with this group from 2011, and another in 2018 (billed as "EP," but the 5 tracks add up to 54:50). This was live, no date given, an octet with trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, guitar, bass guitar, drums, and percussion, plus two extra saxophones on 4 (of 6) tracks: the one that repeatedly caught my ear was Christian Hizon's trombone, amid much good-natured funk and revelry. B+(***) [cd] [07-25]

Kali Trio: The Playful Abstract (2022-23 [2025], Ronin Rhythm): Swiss trio of Raphael Lohrer (piano), Urs Müller (guitar), and Nicolas Stocker (drums), each with related electronics, third album, follows the rhythm-centric schema of producer Nik Bärtsch. B+(*) [sp]

Hélène Labarrière: Puzzle (2025, Jazzdor): French bassist, more than a dozen albums since 1988, this a quintet with Catherine Delaunay (clarinet), Robin Fincker (sax), Stéphane Bartelt (guitar), and Simon Goubert (drums). Some very powerful stretches here, but rough in spots. B+(**) [bc]

José Lencastre/Flak: Cloudy Skies (2025, Phonogram Unit): Portuguese duo, tenor sax and guitar, the latter aka João Pires de Campos -- the latter started in the rock band Rádio Macau in 1984, but since moved into jazz with String Theory and numerous collaborations. B+(**) [bc]

Adrianne Lenker: Live at Revolution Hall (2024 [2025], 4AD): Singer-songwriter, leader of Big Thief, has several albums on the side, 2024's Bright Future was widely touted as one of the year's best. I had a lot of difficulty with it, something I summed up as "hard to hear," meaning it took much more effort than it seemed to reward, while conceding there was something in it for those who stuck with it. That goes double for this live spinoff, "audio from 3 days of the 2024 Bright Future tour," an intimate live setting with all the ambiance (and audience), an unobtrusive band (maybe just piano and violin), some songs (if you can hear them, which for me is random enough to suspect there may be more if I bothered), running on through 43 tracks to 126 minutes, digital only (aside from limited edition double-cassette). B+(**) [sp]

Peter Lin/AAPI Jazz Collective: Identity (2024 [2025], OA2): Trombonist, born in Louisiana, traces his heritage back to Taiwan, AAPI stands for Asian-American and Pacific Islander, a quintet with Erena Terakubo (alto sax/flute), Mike Bond (piano), Daseul Kim (bass), and Wen-Ting Wu (drums), plus guest spots for Mỹ Tâhn Huynh (vocals, 3 tracks) and Brandon Choi (trumpet, 4 tracks). Nice swing feel, vocals included. B+(***) [cd]

Little Simz: Lotus (2025, Little Simz): British rapper Simbi Ajikawo, sixth album since 2015. Good reputation, and I've been impressed in the past, but seems like a lot of work to connect with this. What am I missing? B+(*) [sp]

David Lord: Forest Standards Vol. 4 (2022 [2024], BIG EGO): Guitarist, fourth album since 2018, with alto sax (Alex Sadnik), bass clarinet (Brian Walsh), bass (Billy Mohler), and drums (Chad Taylor). B+(*) [sp]

Emi Makabe: Echo (2025, Sunnyside): Japanese singer-songwriter, based in New York, second or third album, also plays shamisen and flute, filed under jazz but I'm not feeling it (even though I'm impressed with the credentials of the band, a trio of Vitor Gonçalves, Thomas Morgan, and Kenny Wollesen, with guest spots for Bill Frisell and Jason Moran). A bit of spoken word sounds promising. B [sp]

James McMurtry: The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy (2025, New West): Singer-songwriter from Texas, father a famous novelist, started recording his songs in 1989, may have always had a knack for storytelling but real breakthrough was in 2005 with Childish Things, and he's rarely disappointed since. This took a bit, but "Sons of the Second Sons" caught my attention -- not many other songs about primogeniture, but the word I noticed was "genocide" (as in "products of genocide" leading up to "in search of a Caesar"). A- [sp]

Youssou N'Dour: Éclairer Le Monde - Light the World (2025, self-released): Senegalese superstar, 41st album (by one count). B+(***) [sp]

Pat Petrillo: Contemporaneous (2024 [2025], Innervision): Drummer, has a previous Pat Petrillo Big Rhythm Band album (2022), gets more with less here. Ambition is: "a mashup of Snarky Puppy and the Brecker Brothers, jamming with Weather Report at Grover Washington Jr's backyard barbecue in Philly." When those are your terms, it's hard, and perhaps pointless, to quibble over whether you succeeded or not. B+(*) [cd]

Public Enemy: Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025 (2025, Enemy): I noticed that Chuck D had a new album out in May, and gave it a cursory spin, but wasn't aware of this one until it showed up in Christgau's Consumer Guide. The sound is definitely there, and they have lots to be angry about, so this seems right for the times. "God ain't on your side . . . this time!" A- [sp]

Stefan Schultze/Peter Ehwald/Tom Rainey: Public Radio (2024 [2025], Jazzwerkstatt): German pianist, several albums since 2011, one previous with this trio (tenor sax, drums), more group work with Ehwald. Front cover lists Ehwald first, but most other sources start with the pianist. B+(**) [sp]

Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band: Land of Hopes & Dreams (2025, Columbia): Live "EP" from a May 14, 2025 concert in Manchester [UK] (31:39, 4 songs + 2 "introductions"), rushed out for a moment of clarity, against the tide. I wince at the bit about "allies," and I feel less chauvinist and less righteous, but I can still join in saying: Amen. A- [sp]

Dlala Thukzin: 031 Studio Camp 2.0 (2025, Dlala): South African amapiano DJ, Discogs comes up short but Wikipedia lists eight albums since 2020, and this is the fifth in my file. B+(***) [sp]

Tropos: Switches (2024 [2025], Endectomorph Music): Brooklyn-based quartet, at least one previous album, all members contribute songs: Ledah Finck (violin), Yuma Uesaka (clarinet/bass clarinet), Phillip Golub (piano), Aaron Edgcomb (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Hailey Whitters: Corn Queen (2025, Big Loud/Pigasus): Country singer-songwriter from Iowa, fourth album since 2015, second to get some big label distribution. This is catchy, appealing, with solid songs and sound. A- [sp]

Sarah Wilson: Incandescence (2024 [2025], Brass Tonic): Trumpet player, "(12)" in Discogs, three previous albums (2006, 2010, 2021), sings some but not here, a postbop sextet with alto sax, trombone, guitar, bass, and drums. B+(*) [cd]

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts: Talkin to the Trees (2025, The Other Shoe/Reprise): After 3-4-5-? retreaded new albums in the last year, he surprises us with a really new one. Not that the music sounds very new, but the lyrics (or rants, if you prefer) are ripped from today's headlines (and some fine print). No doubt this belongs in his voluminous second tier, but three plays in and that seems good enough. A- [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Manu Dibango: Dibango 82 (1982 [2025], We Want Sounds): Saxophonist from Cameroon (1933-2020), played in Paris with Joseph Kabasele before leading his own groups, scoring a big hit in 1972 with "Soul Makossa." Previously unissued session. B+(**) [bc]

John Lee Hooker: The Charcot Sessions (1969 [2024], Southern Echoes): Major blues guitarist-singer, d. 2001, sources divided on his birth (1912 or 1917), by which time he seemed even more ancient than he was -- a topic of a running joke in Robert Christgau's reviews. He did his major work starting with "Boogie Chillen" in 1948, and he just got deeper as he aged until he became such a monument he could build albums out of casual duets (e.g., The Best of Friends). These Paris sessions were previously released on obscure labels (America, Carson, Blue Moon; most on a 1970 French LP I Wanna Dance All Night), collected together here for 2-CD or 3-LP. Nothing spectacular, but consistent as ever. B+(***) [bc]

Grace Potter: Medicine (2008 [2025], Hollywood): Singer-songwriter from Vermont, solo debut 2002, also recorded as Grace Potter & the Nocturnals (2005-13), went unnoticed by me until her 2023 album Mother Road made my A-list. This one was recorded as a solo album in 2008 by T-Bone Burnett, but shelved, with 8 of 12 songs appearing on her 2010 Grace Potter & the Nocturnals album. Pretty solid album. B+(***) [sp]

Old music:

Billie Holiday: Ken Burns Jazz: The Definitive Billie Holiday (1936-58 [2000], Verve): I found this on Christgau's A+ list, and was surprised to find it not even in my database -- I thought I had all of the Ken Burns Jazz titles. If you want a single-disc career-spanning overview, this should do the job, but by the time this came out, I may not have seen the point. I was by then inclined to eschew mixing her early Columbias (1936-42) and late Verves (1952-58) -- both have their virtues, as distinct as early and late Elvis, but still as unbalanced -- while respecting but not loving much of her in-between Commodore and Decca sides, and flat out hating the terminal Lady in Satin. Straddling worked brilliantly for the Burns edition of Ella Fitzgerald, but I'm less happy with this one. [NB: Spotify skips 3 songs.] A- [sp]

KADEF: KADEF (2023, RR Gems): Acronym for: Karma, Agape, Discernment, Enactment, Freedom. Montreal group, suggested genre: Gnawa Jazz Krautrock, the former drawing on vocalist Zaid Qoulail, and possibly from various combinations of guembri, qraqeb, and/or oud, but I filed it in jazz under producer Devin Brahja Waldman (saxes, drums, electric bass), a familiar name from many other projects. B+(***) [sp]

Motown Classics: Gold (1960-72 [2005], Motown, 2CD): A Christgau A+: no need for me to recheck it, as it's just a repackage of 2000's Motown: The Classic Years, which I keep handy in my travel cases and replay frequently, only slightly favoring the first CD. Just barely tiptoes into the 1970s, where you can see signs of, uh, maturity: "Ball of Confusion," "War," "The Tears of a Clown," "What's Going On," "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." They (especially Stevie Wonder) weren't done, but it's a good dividing line. A+ [cd]

Grade (or other) changes:

Ray Charles: A 25th Anniversary in Show Business Salute to Ray Charles (1954-71 [1971], ABC): Not technically a grade change, as I never wrote down the previous grade: I have a section in the scratch file for LPs I used to have and think I remember well enough to assign a grade to. I rarely use it, especially as these days it's usually possible to recheck such an item using streaming. This one went out of print almost immediately. I bought a copy as a gift -- actually, I owed an apartment mate some money, and offered to pay it off over time in expertly-selected LPs, so I also enjoyed my purchases for a while. This was, at the time, canonical, with a superb selection both from Atlantic and from ABC, plus a few later cuts that were probably weaker but didn't spoil the deal. When CDs came around, the Atlantics got the full box treatment, while the Charles-owned ABC masters showed up in half-assed compilations -- my favorite was called Uh Huh: His Greatest Hits, named after his Pepsi commercial jingle (I don't recall whether it was included), but I have several more (often marred by his Beatles covers). This was an A+ for Christgau at the time, and that's how I remember it, but after all these years, I should hedge a bit. I've never gotten into building my own playlists, let alone burning them, but I could see doing that with Charles, and probably coming up with something much like this one. A [ex-lp]

Chuck D: Chuck D Presents Enemy Radio: Radio Armageddon (2025, Def Jam): Public Enemy majordomo retains his signature sound, which sounds as hard-edged as ever, but the impact is blunted by the radio concept, which chops and screws everything. That, at least, was my initial take. Play it more and find more. And while this isn't especially long (35:50), it's so jam-packed I doubt one could ever get to the bottom of it all. [was: B+(*)] A- [sp]

Louis Jordan: Five Guys Named Moe: Vol. 2 (1939-55 [1992], MCA): Another Christgau A+ item, I originally capped this at A in deference to its predecessor, simply The Best of Louis Jordan, which came out on 2-LP in 1975 and on CD in 1989, and still is my first call pick. But both volumes are in my travel cases, and this one never fails to delight me. [was: A] A+ [cd]

PinkPantheress: Fancy That (2025, Warner, EP): British pop singer-songwriter Victoria Walker, one album, second mixtape, just 20:28. Seemed slight, but sustains multiple replays, getting better without overwhelming. [was: B+(*)] B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Rez Abbasi Acoustic Quintet: Sound Remains (Whirlwind) [06-27]
• David Bailis: Running Through My Mind (Create or Destroy) [08-15]
• Ron Blake: Scratch Band (7Ten33 Productions) [08-09]
• Hannah Delynn: Trust Fall (self-released) [09-09]
• Mike Freeman Zonavibe: Circles in a Yellow Room (VOF) [07-24]
• Steve Tintweiss and the Purple Why: Live in Tompkins Square Park 1987 (Inky Dot Media) [08-07]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 14, 2025

July archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44524 [44492] rated (+32), 16 [18] unrated (-2).

Last week's Music Week was delayed until Tuesday, as I was trying to wrap up my essay and a bunch of last-minute corrections for the Mid-Year 2025 Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. So this week's report only covers six days, although it feels like much longer. I handed my essay with standings in on Wednesday, and Arts Fuse published it on Friday, with an improved title: Sharing What We Know at Mid-Year. Jon Garelick also wrote a complementary essay, Listomania! Confessions of a Bad Voter. I unlocked the website so you could see the complete results: New Jazz Albums (441); Rara Avis (134), and all of the voters/ballots.

Once the poll went up, my next job was to get the word out, and I kind of fumbled the ball there. I did post tweets on X and Bluesky. I even posted on Facebook, and shared that with two groups there. And I blasted off a letter to the voter email list. Arts Fuse also sent out their usual notices. But that's about it. I got a couple of letters back, but not many. And when I searched for acknowledgments, I found very little (but I collected notes on what I found; see link below).

At the time, I thought the most useful thing I could do would be to write up my own blog post. I didn't expect to write a lot, but I was feeling cramped by character count limits, and somewhat nauseated by the fleeting artifice I was seeing everywhere in social media. I wound up writing well into Saturday (although the initial Friday post date still stands). I started with my original essay title, Our Second Mid-Year Critics Poll, and started out with the table of essential links. What followed was less about the poll winners and also-rans than it was about the work behind it, and how I saw that work in the present world context.

By the time I finished, I was feeling exhausted, or at least weary. I find my writing increasingly lapsing into memoir -- a feeling I need to explain everything in terms of how it affected me personally, perhaps some kind of fear of losing oneself as you get old and increasingly irrelevant, or just because I'm more aware than ever of how far estranged I feel from the majority. But I do want to make one thing clear here: I'm not disappointed with the reception the poll has received. I'm pretty satisfied with what we've done. And I'm looking forward to doing it again this fall. But I might be a bit relieved that I don't have to keep plugging it right now.

No doubt part of this is because the feedback I have gotten makes up in quality what it lacks in quantity. For instance, this email, from one of our voters, popped up while I was writing the above:

Want to compliment you for an informative Mid Year Poll. Your commentary was insightful and the results exceptionally enlightening. But most importantly, I want to thank you for your dedication to this project. Trying to imagine the countless hours you spent on this makes my head swim.

I also got one letter in the questions queue from a reader in Toronto:

Really enjoy reading your blog and getting new lines of inquiry for jazz.

Can't get into the political side too much as it drives me to the brink of madness, how human beings can be so stupid, but, I guess we're wired that way, I suppose. Social norms just took a turn somewhere back in our forebears time and it just went downhill from there.

I always keep in mind that homo sapiens were always fighting for food, lodging, etc.

Can't escape our animal instincts, it seems.

Anyway, keep up the good work and keep the polls going.

I'm sure that, even though people might not acknowledge you or your work, it is doing some good.

The jazz part is kind of like triage, where you quickly sort through the bodies to pick out a few worth rescuing, even as you know you simply don't have the time or energy to give so many others anything approaching the respect they no doubt deserve. The political/philosophical questions interest me more: I've found myself favoring "philosophical" over "political" recently, because I'm more concerned with how people think, and less so about the distribution of power -- the limits of power might be something else, leading us back to philosophy. I'm not sure my ideas have achieved any real clarity yet, but it does occur to me that much common thinking is profoundly and/or pathetically atavistic, governed by concepts that once seemed valid but are no longer viable, and in some cases plainly ridiculous.

One example is the habit of gravitating toward the leader who shows the most self-confidence in a crisis (e.g., the 90% approval ratings of GW Bush after 9/11, even though he was obviously wrong in every conceivable aspect; I saw that at the time, so why did so few others?). One thing I've thought a great deal about lately is how much the world has changed in my lifetime (which gets us back to 1950), and in the several generations before me (my parents' grandfathers fought in the Civil War, against the Slave Power). At some point I radically reoriented my own thinking to break with theirs, and to take a fresh look at the changed world. Exploring that would be the point of delving deeper into my memories, as I seem to be doing. Along the way I've heard a lot of music, so that's necessarily part of the story, but only part.

When I did another search for jazz poll references today, I only came up with one more piece: Nate Chinen: Take Five: Midsummer Magic. He mentioned that DownBeat's Critics Poll[*] came out the same day as our poll, and admitted that he hadn't voted in either of them: "it has been a challenging season for work-life balance, and I simply got overwhelmed and missed the deadlines." Chinen's essay ends early with only one album under his "Take Five": perennial poll favorite Cécile McLorin Salvant's Oh Snap, which according to my notes isn't due for release until Sept. 19 -- far enough out that no one in our poll jumped the gun (although we did get votes for several August releases)[**]. Supposedly there's more for paid subscribers: we're entering into Substack here. Although he promises he's going to vote in our year-end poll, he wouldn't be the first jazz writer to take his thoughts and bottle them up out of sight and mind.

I don't mean to grouch. I figure everyone's entitled to their own business plan. I'll be unveiling one in the next week or two, although I'm not sure it qualifies as business. I signed up for a Substack account today, and did a bit of preliminary configuration, but haven't written much less published anything yet. The name is "Notes on Everyday Life": a few of us published a political rag named that back in St. Louis in the early 1970s. I registered a domain name like that a fair while back, but I never did much with it. I have some new ideas, where the domain name hosts a sprawling pile of writing about everything, and the Substack offers a view into the pile. The main value I see is:

1. A system for push notifications.
2. A fairly reliable email list that I don't have to host and/or maintain.
3. A comment system that should be fairly safe and manageable.
4. Some statistical measures of how much interest there is in my writing.

I'm fairly agnostic about the monetization features, which I haven't set up, and may quite possibly never try to use. I'm moving slowly through the various configuration options, trying to figure out what to use, and how to use it. I think it's still premature to publish the URL and solicit subscribers. When I'm ready, I'll announce it first through Bluesky, then here. One bit that I will share here and now is the "Publication short description" -- not really a plan, just something that popped into my head when asked:

Fifty-some years ago I discovered that the personal is political, and wrote about that under this name. Now I'm trying to make it personal again, or at least anti-political.

I'll leave you to ponder what that means. I do expect to write something on it within the week.

After two mammoth weeks for A-list jazz, this week came up pretty short. Perhaps diminishing returns, or flagging energy. Maybe it's time to play something other than jazz -- despite my essay's recommendation that jazz is what the world needs in these perilous times.

[*] I'm not finding a useful link, although Chinen offered this one, which gives you a cover scan featuring Anthony Braxton, who won their Hall of Fame category this year, and touting other winners, like our 2024 album of the year (Patricia Brennan, Breaking Stretch) and rara avis runner-up (Alice Coltrane, The Carnegie Hall Concert). The most interesting claim for me is "it's the largest & most comprehensive Critics Poll in Jazz History" -- largest has been our claim for several years (177 last year; last time I counted theirs was a couple years back, at something like 113, so when I saw Frank Alkyer bragging about the size of his poll, I was skeptical. But according to Chinen, 251 ballots were cast, which is indeed impressive. I'll be interested in seeing who all voted, and how many new names they pulled off of our lists. Also how the larger electorate shifts their various standings. Aside from Brennan and Coltrane, two other major category winners (James Brandon Lewis and Mary Halvorson) have always fared better in our poll than in theirs. I've voted in DownBeat's poll for many years now, and have usually taken copious notes when doing so (see mine for 2025).

By the way, let's also link to All About Jazz's Best Jazz Albums of 2025: All-Star Break Edition. This is also AAJ's second mid-year poll: their first was hastily thrown together after I sent out invites to ours, and this one is much larger, although still only 3 albums deep per voter. I don't know whether our poll spurred these others on, but I'd be happy if it did.

I made a preliminary pass at creating a Best Jazz Albums of 2025 list. I only pulled out the A/A- albums so far, leaving the B+(***) Honorable Mention section empty, as well as the Notes section, which lists records with lesser grades. But I did manage to collect all of the still unheard albums from the Mid-Year Poll into the Recommended but Unheard list: 166/441 new music albums (37.6%), 42/110 rara avis (38.1%; poll listed 134 albums, but 24 are new reissues of albums I've previously heard, so shouldn't count here). I had previously mention that half of the albums receiving votes were ones I hadn't previously heard of. That's not disproven here, as I've spent the last month whittling that list down as it's been growing.

New records reviewed this week:

Eric Alexander: Chicago to New York (2024 [2025], Cellar Music Group): Mainstream tenor saxophonist, well establish since 1995, also plays some soprano here, leading a quartet with Mike LeDonne (piano), Dennis Carroll (bass), and George Fludas (drums). Back in prime form. B+(***) [sp]

Andy Biskin/Peter Hess/Mike McGinniss/Sam Sadigursky: Reed Basket (2025, self-released): Clarinet quartet, everyone plays Bb and bass clarinet, but you also encounter Eb, alto, and contra-alto. Biskin has a few albums going back to 2000, including such deep Americana as a Stephen Foster set and Songs From the Alan Lomax Collection. Mostly vintage fare here, I think, but I was pleased to hear "A Walk on the Wild Side" in the mix. B+(**) [sp]

Ingi Bjarni: Hope (2023 [2025], Losen): Pianist from Iceland, last name Skúlason, several albums since 2019, this a quartet with guitar (Hilmar Jensson), bass (Anders Jormin), and drums (Magnús Trygvason Eliassen). B+(**) [sp]

Jane Ira Bloom: Songs in Space (2024 [2025], Outline): Soprano saxophonist, 20+ albums since 1980, this a quartet with Dominic Fallacaro (piano), Mark Helias (bass), and Bobby Previte (drums), playing original pieces plus two standards ("I Could Have Danced All Night," "My Foolish Heart"). B+(**) [sp]

Antonio Borghini & Banquet of Consequences: Resta Chi Va (2024 [2025], We Insist!): Italian bassist, debut album 2004, group name continues from his 2023 title. With Tobias Delius (tenor sax/clarinet), Pierre Borel (alto sax), Rieko Okuda (piano), Anil Eraslan (cello), and Steve Heather (drums). This is a good setting, especially for Delius. A- [sp]

Vilhelm Bromander Unfolding Orchestra: Jorden Vi Ärvde (2024 [2025], Thanatosis): Swedish bassist, many side credits since 2008, first album as leader 2016. I count 13 musicians here, only 2 brass but an all-star sax section (Martin Küchen, Alberto Pinton, Christer Bothén, Elin Forkelid), with Alex Zethson (piano) and Mattias Ståhl (vibraphone/marimba). Intimations of grandeur, not my favorite mode, but impressive nonetheless. B+(**) [bc]

Milena Casado: Reflection of Another Self (2025, Candid): Trumpet player from Spain, studied at Berklee, based in New York, first album, produced by Terri Lyne Carrington and Morgan Guerin, hype sheet drops some big guest names without pinning down details. Some soft fusion grooves, and scattered vocals. B+(*) [sp]

Theo Croker: Dream Manifest (2025, Dom Recs): Trumpet player, from Florida, sings some, appeared in 2006 and is closing in on a dozen albums, with his electric keyb grooves he's passed over into pop jazz with some redeeming funk. B+(*) [sp]

Theon Cross: Affirmations: Live at the Blue Note New York (2025, New Soil): British tuba player, started with credits in Sons of Kemet, Moses Boyd Exodus, SEED Ensemble, and has a couple albums as leader since 2019. No date or credits I can find for this, other than "featuring standout performances by Isaiah Collier, James Russell Sims, and Nikos Ziarkas." Hard to follow, but I always loved the put-put-put of a tuba, and the sax finally emerges toward the end. B+(**) [sp]

Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari: Journey to Nabta Playa (2025, Spiritmuse): Born in Atlanta, parents were missionaries, moved to Kenya when she was 7, eventually back to Chicago. Plays clarinet and piano, electronics, sings, fourth album since 2019. Nefertari ("aka Karlsson") seems to come from England, is credited with various keyboards, flutes, vibes (and other percussion), vocals, and harp. The drags on a lot, like it should at least be interesting, but can't keep attention. B [sp]

John Ellis: Heroes (2023 [2025], Blue Room Music): Saxophonist, albums since 1996, leads a quintet through eight originals: Michael Rodriguez (trumpet), Gary Versace (piano), Reuben Rogers (bass), and Kush Abadey (drums). Ends with a nice African-style piece. B+(**) [sp]

Elliot Galvin: The Ruin (2023 [2025], Gearbox): British pianist, several albums since 2012 as well as groups like Dinosaur and side-credits. Some trio with bass and drums, some with string quartet, some with both, with Shabaka Hutchings playing bamboo flute on one track, shakuhachi on another. B+(*) [sp]

John Hart: Love Is (2023 [2024], SteepleChase): Guitarist, more than a dozen albums since 1990, trio here with Kirk Knuffke (cornet) and Carlo DeRosa (bass). More fine work, espcially from Knuffke. B+(**) [sp]

Ryan Keberle & Collectiv Do Brasil: Choro Das Aguas (2023 [2025], Alternate Side): Trombonist, has some big band experience (notably with Maria Schneider and Pedro Giraudo), his own albums start in 2007 with several rotating projects, this his second with a Brazilian group: Felipe Seviera (keyboards), Felipe Brisola (bass), and Paulinho Vicente (drums). Eight songs from Ivan Lins, plus two originals. Good spotlight for his trombone. B+(***) [cd] [07-18]

Joe McPhee: I'm Just Sayin' (2025, Smalltown Supersound): Avant-sax legend since the late 1960s, 85 now, only credited with "voice and poetry" here, his accompaniment from Mats Gustafsson, credited with "baritone and bass sax, flutes, piano mate, piano harp, organ, fender rhodes and live electronics." B+(**) [sp]

Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind (2023 [2025], Red Hook): Pianist, has also played a fair amount of organ, originally from Arkansas, moved to Chicago in the 1960s, involved in AACM, moved on to New York, recording her first albums 1979-80, but not many. Still, she got a lot of attention for last year's duo with Wadada Leo Smith, and for this solo piano effort. B+(**) [sp]

Qasim Naqvi: Endling (2024 [2025], Erased Tapes): Pakistani drummer, based in New York, known for the trio Dawn of Midi, has several albums, including a recent trio with Wadada Leo Smith and Andrew Cyrille. This is something else, synthesizer with a centerpiece vocal from Moor Mother. B+(*) [sp]

Camila Nebbia: Rastro O Vacío (2025, Lilaila): Tenor saxophonist, from Argentina, based in Berlin, has been prolific lately. Solo here, 17 mostly short pieces (only 2 over 4:03, and only 2 more over 3:07), a little rough in spots but impressively bold. B+(**) [bc]

Gilbert Paeffgen Trio: Der Mann Auf Dem Trampolin (2024 [2025], Rabbit Hill): Swiss drummer, also plays hammered dulcimer (prominent here), has mostly trio albums since 1994, this one with Claude Meier (bass) and Fabian M. Mueller (piano). B+(***) [cd]

Evan Parker/Bill Nace: Branches (2024 [2025], Otoroku): A founding figure of the European avant-garde, plays soprano sax here, his distinctive style built largely out of circular breathing. Nace is from New Jersey, mostly a guitarist, active since 2008, plays "electric two-string tashiōgoto" here, generating a lot of harmonic fuzz that seems well matched to Parker's buzz. One 40:11 piece. B+(*) [bc]

Eric Scott Reed: Out Late (2025, Smoke Sessions): Mainstream pianist, learned in his father's church, joined Wynton Marsalis in the 1990s, has several dozen albums, this the first to use his middle name, a quintet with Nicholas Payton (trumpet), Eric Alexander (tenor sax), Peter Washington (bass), and Joe Farnsworth (drums). The saxophonist is most notable here. B+(**) [sp]

Toms Rudzinskis: Interception (2023 [2024], Jersika): Alto saxophonist, from Latvia, has a couple previous albums back to 2014. Quartet with piano, bass, and drums, plus a string quartet on the side. B+(***) [sp]

Aki Takase/Daniel Erdmann/Kazuhisa Uchihashi: Tanto (2022 [2025], Innocent): Trio of piano, tenor/soprano sax, and guitar/idiophone, recorded in Japan, although the pianist has long been based in Berlin, and has a half-dozen recent albums with Erdmann. B+(***) [bc]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Gato Barbieri: Standards Lost and Found 1 (1968 [2024], Red): Tenor saxophonist (1932-2016) from Argentina, moved to New York in the 1960s and produced an impressive series of free jazz albums for Flying Dutchman, followed by another powerful set Latin-tinged albums for Impulse! in the 1970s, but won a Grammy for the soundtrack to Last Tango in Paris and wound up recording pop-jazz fare for Herb Alpert. This is an early set, recorded after his first album, recorded in Italy with Franco D'Andrea (piano), Giovanni Tommaso (bass), and Pepito Pignatelli (drums), half of the eight "standards" from Miles Davis (3) or Herbie Hancock (1), 2 from the band (D'Andrea and Tommaso), plus "Lush Life" and "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise." B+(***) [bc]

Gato Barbieri: Standards Lost and Found 2 (1968 [2025], Red): Same group, probably same session ("Spring 1968"), eight more "standards": covers of Charlie Parker, Ahmad Jamal, two each from Monk and Ornette, plus two Barbieri originals. B+(***) [bc]

Blackbyrds: City Life (1973-74 [2025], Craft): Jazz-funk fusion group, released seven albums 1974-80, trumpet player Donald Byrd played on their first album, was listed as producer here, the band a quintet of keyboards (Kevin Toney), sax (Stephen Johnson), guitar (Orville Saunders), bass (Joe Hall), and drums (Keith Kilgo), with other musicians thanked but not properly credited. This was their first (of three) gold records, charted at 1 (jazz), 3 (r&b), and 16 overall. This seems pretty slight, but the extras include a version of "Rock Creek Park" long enough to win me over. B+(*) [sp]

Jaki Byard: Blues for Smoke (1960 [2025], Candid): Pianist (1922-99), first recorded album but wasn't released until 1971 in Japan, later (1988?) in US. Solo, original pieces, some sparkling. Went on to record some outstanding albums -- The Last From Lennie's (1965) is a favorite, but my sampling has been limited. B+(**) [sp]

Walter Davis Jr: A Being Such as You (1979 [2025], Red): Pianist (1932-90), worked with Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Max Roach, and others; released an album, Davis Cup, on Blue Note in 1959, but nothing else until he started showing up on European and Japanese labels in 1978. He recorded two albums in Italy in quick succession, Blues Walk half trio, half added trumpet, then this set of solo piano. B+(*) [bc]

Dexter Gordon: Landslide (1961-62 [2025], Blue Note): Tenor sax great, made his mark on bebop with "The Chase" (1947), recorded major albums for Savoy in the 1950s, but really hit his stride in his 1961-65 run on Blue Note. This was cobbled together from three sessions in 1980, and is finally getting the fancy vinyl treatment. I'm streaming, and they sound like scraps, but they couldn't be anyone else's. B+(**) [sp]

Green Cosmos: Abendmusiken (1981-82 [2025], Frederiksberg): German group, recorded this one album, a quartet of Michael Boxberger (soprano/tenor sax), Benny Düring (piano), Ulrich Franke (bass), and Alfred Franke (drums/kalimba). Draws nicely on the spiritual dimension of Coltrane. B+(**) [sp]

Sun Ra: Uncharted Passages: New York Piano Soliloquies 1977-79 (1977-79 [2025], Modern Marmonic): Solo piano, nine tracks from July 1977 -- same studio and month as the solo album St. Louis Blues, but the only titles repeated here ("St. Louis Blues," "Honeysuckle Rose") are in longer versions -- plus four tracks (three standards) from a later date. Two vocals by June Tyson, which I regard as a plus. B+(**) [sp]

Sun Ra: On Jupiter (1979 [2025], Saturn/Strut): Originally released on El Saturn in 1979, credited to Sun Ra and His Arkestra, three tracks, with a live take of "UFO" added to the 2021 CD reissue. This keeps the live track, returns to the original artwork, and cuts the credit back down to just Sun Ra. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

• None

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• None

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Friday, July 11, 2025

The Arts Fuse published our second mid-year jazz critics poll today. You can read all about it here:

• Tom Hull: Sharing What We Know at Mid-Year
• Jon Garelick: Listomania! Confessions of a Bad Voter
• New Jazz Albums
• Rara Avis
• The Voters

I say "our" guardedly. The 2024 mid-year poll was originally my idea, although based on my experience in helping Francis Davis with his annual year-end poll, especially the last several years, as his health worsened. And while he didn't actually participate in it, he allowed my use of his name, mailing list, and website (which I had built from scratch years ago). So I could say "our" in the sense of "Francis and me," except that he died in April, so his contribution to our project has now become intangible. Still, he seemed pleased when I offered to keep his annual tradition going, in what is now our 20th year. But after his death, I only did so with the blessing and encouragement of his widow, Terry Gross, so now she, too, is a critical component of "we."

But there are larger circles of "we," without which my own efforts would be much poorer, or perhaps impossible. First there is the dozen or so volunteers so serve as my sounding board as I think my way through this fairly complex project, and who often provide invaluable help with specific tasks. Some are old personal friends, but most are voters who stepped up when I asked for help -- or in a couple cases, offered to help even before I asked, and one was a previously unknown reader who caught a mistake on the website and went on to give the whole thing a very thorough proofreading. (I am a notoriously lousy proofreader, so I really appreciate help on that score.) I won't name them all here, but Jon Garelick wrote the keynote essay, freeing me to just focus on the technical details. And William Marx finished the editing and presentation at The Arts Fuse, which gave us a professional look that I seem to be incapable of achieving.

The next larger circle of "we" is the 113 critics who voted in the poll. Without them, we would literally have had nothing to say. These are all remarkable people, who have spent countless hours searching out and listening to the deluge of new jazz, and to sharing their discoveries in print, radio, and/or digital media. It's been a pleasure and an honor to have gotten to know them, and to work with them. And that also includes dozens more who politely declined to send in their lists, mostly because they lacked time and/or felt uncomfortably unsure of their choices. (I sympathize, as a critic who's guessing so often he's gotten used to not letting uncertainty bother him.)

But "we" also extends to the hopefully much broader circle of readers, who find this and other polls interesting and useful in exploring and understanding the vast and dauntingly complex world of jazz and more or less related music. This poll is by some of us, but for all of us. Although I can't say as we ever talked about it -- Francis and I weren't exactly "pals" as one voter recently put it, so much of what we gleaned from one another was between the lines, for which now you only have my word -- but my initial take was that Francis started a poll of his friends mainly to drum up some content for his annual best-of piece, only to find to his delight that it opened doors to an ever-widening community of critics and fans.

And once he saw his creation, he deemed the poll a cause worth continuing, even at personal cost. After he left the Voice, he had no need to crank out year-end pieces. (Or perhaps I should say after the Voice left us. I also wrote for the Voice back then, and had gotten involved with the poll when their IT department scoffed at Francis's insistence on publishing complete ballots -- something they had done for Robert Christgau's much more commercially viable Pazz & Jop poll). But even in those early days the poll was finding a much broader and more demanding range of postmodern jazz than was featured in narrower (but supposedly more popular) publications like JazzTimes and DownBeat. JazzTimes ran a year-end poll of their own writers, and Francis took great interest in comparing their results to ours. Their poll skewed much more commercial than ours, even with most of their writers also voting in ours. Some of this may be ascribed to Francis vetting critics according to his own taste -- not that he didn't respect and entertain other viewpoints. (I'm probably less picky, or maybe just less discerning than he was, possibly because I'm less convinced of my own opinions, and maybe because I'm too aware of how idiosyncratic my views are to expect others to share them.)

One thing I thought about mentioning but didn't find a way to work it into my essay was how much I've missed not having Francis looking over my shoulder, overseeing the project, even batting down my crazy ideas, imparting an air of stability and dignity to the whole affair. I'm not normally inclined to defer to authority, but I held Francis in exceptionally high esteem, and wanted to please him, perhaps because I couldn't imagine actually impressing him. I especially wanted not to fail him, where an obvious metric would have been losing voters. No doubt many of my ideas annoyed him, but I rarely pressed a point, or let my frustrations sour the relationship. Over time, I got better at anticipating and internalizing his way of thinking. I'm still not smart enough to answer the question, "what would Francis think?" But I'm not totally clueless or careless either.

I had written some rock reviews in the mid-1970s, including 10-12 for Robert Christgau at the Village Voice. Some friends had egged me into sending him a sample of my samizdat, and he took me under his wing, as he did a number of bright young writers during the 1970s.[*] In some ways, Christgau was as imposing a figure even then as Davis was when I encountered him much later, but I noticed less at the time, or cared less: probably some mix of arrogance and naivete, not uncommon in one's mid-twenties but something one grows out of with age. We became friends, and remained in touch. He talked me into writing my first piece on jazz reissues in 1996, and several more pieces in the early 2000s. I talked him into letting me build him a website in 2001. I had written some Consumer Guide-style pieces back in the 1970s, and returned to the format for an oldies column I started writing for Michael Tatum in 2003, Recycled Goods. I knew nothing technical about music, so I always felt like an impostor as a jazz critic, but I knew a lot of history, I had a voracious appetite for new music, and by then I had heard enough of it to develop an ear for what was distinctive and interesting. I had pretty systematically explored many references, especially The Penguin Guide, but also the collected works of Gary Giddins and Francis Davis. So when Giddins left the Voice, I wasn't surprised that they would look to Davis to fill his shoes. (Davis had filled in when Giddins took a sabbatical, which was when I first encountered his work.) I was surprised when Christgau asked me to write a Jazz Consumer Guide, but jumped at the chance. I figured the idea was that with Davis doing the big, quality reviews, I could fill in with quantity. And with neither of us were based in New York, they could use freelancers to fill occasional live coverage. It worked pretty well until the Voice went to hell. They fired Christgau in 2006, but Rob Harvilla kept us working up to 2010, when he too split. After that it was effectively over.

By then, Francis needed me to make sure that the ballots would be published in full. He used to collect everything on his own, then dump the whole pile on me when it was done. I wound up spending more time checking his work than it would have taken me to count the ballots in the first place. Somewhere along the line, I managed to make myself indispensable, so every poll started with an email asking whether I would be available to help out, and making it seem like without me the poll would end. For reasons too embarrassing to explain here, I always was. Sometimes I would nominate a voter, or write a bit on the side, and he was usually open to that. But he was something of a control freak: not unreasoning, arbitrary, or cruel, but very much in charge. I could respect that. He was a great man, and I was pleased to be able to help him. Later, as his health failed, he needed more and more help, and eventually had to cede everything to me. But he had that commanding air about him, even as he became nearly helpless in the last poll, when I finally had effective control, and started inviting almost totally unvetted European critics just to mix things up (and make my numbers: I was proud of that record 177 in 2024). And he actually was pretty gracious, so perhaps my insecurity had gotten out of hand.

At some point along the way, one of our voters made a reference to "the Francis Davis poll," and I latched onto that idea. At first it seemed like a harmless bit of flattery, a way of keeping him engaged as he was slipping away. But he didn't object, and once thanked me for "turning him into a brand." But the name now feels like a legacy to maintain, as well as an inspiration to carry on. How long I can continue isn't clear. While Davis seemed like much the senior figure, I'm only four years younger than him. My present plan is to run a 20th Annual Poll in November, then we'll see.

I'd like to, in the meantime, significantly redesign the website. The present one, at least since 2016 or so, has been cobbled together by tacking each new year onto the end: I start with a copy of the previous year, then edit some dates, tweak the programs, and build up a new set of data files. The top level is just an index of polls. And the early years are just scattered files that originally appeared elsewhere, as they predate the software I wrote to generate the web pages. A better solution would be to consolidate the history at the top level: the bits that have changed over time can be documented as such, while the continuities only need to be written up once. I tried to write some of this up in 2022, in an essay I don't recall him as being very happy with. Since he can no longer correct me, it would be good to go back through his files to check what he was thinking: a big and no doubt fascinating project.

The second thing would be to consolidate the data in a database. This would allow us to construct queries that cross poll boundaries: for example, we could see how a critic voted from year to year, or how an artists' albums fared each year. Those are simple things I frequently wonder about, but only scratch the surface. The biggest problem here is dealing with the rule changes over time. I suspect we will also find errors made long ago, and will have to explain them one way or another. I don't have a detailed design here, but I do have a fairly good feel for the data, to help organize it in more useful form.

This is conceivably a large amount of work -- even if I don't seriously consider any of the "blue sky" notions that keep popping into my head, like community and resource development -- and I'm not sure I'm really up to it. I've always had a pretty solid work ethic (runs in my family) but I never developed the discipline to really see my ideas through, let alone to satisfy standards that have been diagnosed as perfectionist. Consequently, much of what I do is driven by my personal desire to help friends (also runs in my family), driven by their needs and limited by satisfaction -- which is probably why the Christgau and Davis websites are good enough to serve their purposes, but not nearly as good as they could (or should) be, and also why my own website (and for that matter much of my life) remains a rambling, incoherent mess.

It seems like one area where I always come up short is in getting the word out. When the essays were published on ArtsFuse, I put out my usual notices on X, Bluesky, and also one on Facebook (with further shares to two groups). I also sent mail to all of the voters (not that gmail necessarily delivered it all). I hoped people would take notice and spread the word. So when I later searched through Google, I was rather disappointed at how little I found:

• Avant Music News [07-12] The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll Mid-Year 2025 Results
• Bebop Spoken Here [07-11] Press release: Francis Davis Jazz Critics Mid-Year 2025 Poll
• Jeffrey St. Clair [07-09] Francis Davis and the Best Jazz of 2025, So Far
• Phil Overeem [07-01] Death Don't Have No Mercy: My Mid-Year Francis Davis Memorial Jazz Critics Ballot
• Nate Chinen [07-14] Take Five: Midsummer Magic: Didn't vote, but gives us a mention.
• Also this by poll winner Steve Lehman on Instagram.

I also have a few personal thanks in my inbox (4 in response to the group email, a few more elsewhere). I will likely find more in the days to come, but not much. Previous polls produced more feedback, but not a lot more. Nothing really does. Some of this is probably my fault: I don't make it especially easy to comment or to contact me. My engagement in social media is fairly minimal. Perhaps my style and airs put people off? Or maybe the world is just so saturated with demands for attention that everyone is turned off. The season may even have an effect.

I fairly regularly throw out questions on the off chance that someone might take an interest and answer, but they rarely do. At some point during my ruminations on the poll, I asked for tips on how to get noticed, and I did get one answer back on that. The suggestion was that we needed a logo, so the poll could be used as branding in the promotion of winning albums. And with this logo, we could get publicists to promote their winning albums, and thereby propagate the brand without having to pay for out own PR. I'm not dead set against this strategy. I'm on pretty good terms with quite a few publicists, and I usually try to keep them informed and interested (although I've been remiss so far in notifying them). And while I'd say I'm a "no logo" kind of guy (and not just because of the politics of this), I don't doubt that a little more graphic design would spruce up the website (and possibly seduce the aggregators into giving us a bit more presence). But I was thinking more in terms of trying to get more people (especially voters) to write up their own takes on the poll (or at least blast their own ballots out). That was part of the reason for inviting Jon Garelick to write his essay. (He's a regular Arts Fuse writer, so we already had leverage there.) I even toyed with the idea of offering interviews, which isn't really in my nature, but I know enough about the poll I could probably muddle through. Still, it's not too late to try again. After this post, I'll pivot back to publicity again.

But the logo idea got me thinking about the big difference between our poll and more famous others, ranging from small potatoes like the JJA Jazz Awards to big-time publicity rackets like the Grammys. It's not just the logo that we don't have. We also don't have trophies. Nor do we have dinners, where we can wear formal dress and hobnob with celebrities. Steve Lehman can brag about his win, but it's not going to get him a subway pass or a hot dog or much of anything else tangible. It's not even going to get him the chance to meet some of the critics who admire his work. And the further down the list you go, the less you have to brag about -- although in my book making the list at all is some kind of honor.

If someone approached me with some pro bono graphic design or publicity work, I'd seriously consider it, because I think the poll does good work, and more people should find out about it. But if someone offered to turn it into a spectacle, I'd probably just walk away in disgust. It's true that I've made a little bit of money off my work here, but that was never my reason, and I'm pretty sure that was never Francis's reason either. I've been fortunate in my later years is that I've been able to write and do what I want with virtually no regard to earning an income. That's a rare luxury in a world where there is actually very damn little correlation between the social worth of work and its remuneration. It's about as good a definition of freedom as you can find. So I don't see any point in sacrificing that just to toil in someone else's circus. I'd rather keep doing things that are actually interesting for their own sake, and helpful in a world where everyone is becoming enraged by the growing fear of forces trying to rip you off.

[*] If Trish Romano reads this, follow up your oral history of the Village Voice with one that focuses just on the music section in the 1970s. That was the golden decade for New York rock and roll, and especially for rock crit, and Christgau wouldn't have called himself "the dean of American rock critics" without sensing the centrality and importance of the moment. And delay risks running out of time. Christgau gave up the post of Music Editor early in the 1980s, which allowed him more time to work on his own writing, but the section languished -- or so it seemed to me, but having stopped writing and moved away from New York it could be that I wasn't paying attention, or had just passed the once ominous milestone of a 30th birthday.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

July archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44492 [44435] rated (+57), 18 [23] unrated (-5).

Music Week got pushed out a day this week, extending an already bountiful list even more. The reason was that I needed Monday to work on my intro essay to the Mid-Year 2025 Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. Voting shut down on July 4, with 113 ballots counted, yielding 437 distinct New Jazz Albums and 134 Rara Avis. About half of those albums weren't in my tracking file before polling, but are now. Nearly everything below comes from checking out albums that received votes. This has overwhelmed my ability to post links on Bluesky to newly discovered A-list albums. The idea there was to gin up interest in the coming Music Week, so there's little point in trying to catch up now. But I will note that had I heard it earlier, The Ancients would have made my ballot (published here last week). As a rule of thumb, I figure it takes an average of 3 weeks after filing a ballot to find another album that was good enough to make it -- and more like 3 days to find a contender, but this week shows how a poll can accelerate that process. I have, by the way, cobbled together a Best Jazz of 2025 file (jazz only, and only the A-list portions).

The poll should be published at The Arts Fuse this week, at which point I'll unlock all the totals and ballots on my archival website. Already you can see the voter list and unranked lists of all the albums that received votes. I'm not perfectly happy with the state of the notes files on the website, but beating them into shape has been a very tiring task, and there's little evidence that people read them anyway. The other thing I would like to do is to set up some sort of framework for data analysis, but that too will likely have to wait. The poll seems to repeatedly go through a cycle of three phases: before voting starts, no real urgency to work on it; once voting starts, no time; and once it closes, no energy left.

I tried to minimize wear and tear this time by cutting back on how much I needed to write at the end, I asked one of Arts Fuse's regular writers, Jon Garelick, to write the keynote essay, while I just write an introduction to the tables and voter list. While the website could still use more work, the essays are basically ready to go.

I had some vague ideas about trying to publicize the poll, including a fairly open invite to let other people see the results in hopes they would write their own explorations. To date, nobody's taken me up on that offer. So, as exhaustion sets in, I'll probably wait until November before going into panic mode again.

In the meantime, I have lots of other projects to work on. After I hit a minor milestone, I stopped working on the woodpile project. Not a lot more to do there: some final sorting, some cleaning, and construction of my recycling kiosk. If the heat isn't unbearable, that's probably a week. I also have parts to build a new computer for my wife. That's maybe an afternoon. But mostly I need to get back to my planning, especially for writing, but also website development.

I'm leaning towards restarting the political book project. I'm sufficiently upset with the state of the world to bring some heat. The old outlines are all in the dustbin. The new one is what I call the "weird" book, because something weird happened in the 2024 election, and I think I can make sense of it now. The trick will be to write as much as I can as fast as I can, which means almost totally off the top of my head. It will be somewhat cryptic, and will need a subsequent fact-check phase, but I want to go all the way through the ultimate utopian/dystopian scenarios. It will mostly be about how I think, and how I think you should think. History offers evidence, but we need to bring mentality and psychology to the fore, because that's where the struggle actually is.

If I can knock out 80-120 pages in 4-6 weeks, I have little doubt that it can be fleshed out into a respectable book. I may look for help then, or may struggle on my own. One difference this time is that I feel very little pressure to moderate my views to establish some sort of common front with pro-business Democrats. I can go back to my early radicalism, which offers the sharpest critique of all political parties.

And if I can't write that much, it shows I lack the willpower and discipline, and might as well give up (again). I can always go back to writing bits about music and everyday life, to running polls, to hacking on websites, to entertaining occasional guests, and sorting out my stuff. Plenty to do on those accounts, and not exactly worthless or unpleasant, either.

But before diving into that, I figure I should write up a little Loose Tabs, just to get back into the swing of things. How far out of it I've been is possibly shown by my finding an article called A Tale of Two BBBs and wondering what the Better Business Bureau has been up to lately.

In books, note that I finally finished Greg Grandin's monumental America, América: A New History of the New World. The last couple chapters were so sharply critical of US policy in the region that my next book had to be Noam Chomsky's The Myth of American Idealism (co-written by Nathan J Robinson). I haven't ordered it yet, but the next logical choice would be John Cassidy's Capitalism and Its Critics: A History From the Industrial Revolution to AI. Zachary Carter has been recommending the book, and I'm curious about how wide-ranging the critiques are.

Lately I've been taking a fairly narrow view of capitalism, as the system where owners of capital get all the profits, and thereby accrue extraordinary power. The alternative doesn't have to be a system of communal ownership. Basically, any scheme that distributes profits and/or prevents the conversion of profit to power counteracts the dangers inherent in capitalism. I can think of a dozen, at least, including ones that sustain nearly all of the benefits of personal freedom, independent firms, and open markets.

New records reviewed this week:

Rez Abbasi Acoustic Quintet: Sound Remains (2024 [2025], Whirlwind): Pakistani guitarist, grew up in Los Angeles, based in New York, albums from 1993, mostly plays electric fusion with Indo-Pak airs, but has two 2010-15 Acoustic Quartet albums with Bill Ware (vibes), Stephan Crump (bass), and Eric McPherson (drums), adding extra percussion (Hasan Bakr) here. B+(**) [sp]

Alchemy Sound Project/Sumi Tonooka: Under the Surface (2024 [2025], ARC): Credit from spine. Front cover reads more like: Under the Surface: Alchemy Sound Project Performs the Music of Sumi Tonooka. Group is basically a composers collective, with a previous album from 2018, playing one or two pieces from each of their members: Erica Lindsay (tenor sax), Samantha Boshnack (trumpet), Salim Washington (tenor sax/bass clarinet/flute), David Arend (bass, replaced here by Gregg August), and Sumi Tonooka (piano) -- also on board here are Johnathan Blake (drums) and Michael Ventoso (trombone). Tonooka, from Philadelphia, has a distinguished but not very prolific career going back to the 1980s, well deserving of this showcase. B+(***) [cd]

Arild Andersen: Landloper (2020 [2024], ECM): Norwegian bassist, one of the generation heavily influenced by George Russell in the early 1970s, has a major career. This is solo, with effect pedals but recorded live, supplementing his own pieces with standards, including "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," "Ghosts" (Ayler), and an Ornette Coleman/Charlie Haden medley ("Lonely Woman"/"Song for Che"). B+(**) [sp]

Arashi With Takeo Moriyama: Tokuzo (2019 [2024], Trost): Free jazz trio of Akira Sakata (alto sax, clarinet some vocals), Johan Berthling (bass), and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums), fifth album since their namesake release in 2014, joined here by a second drummer, who has a long history with Sakata (both were b. 1945). Some powerful sax runs. B+(***) [sp]

Omer Avital: New York Now & Then (2023 [2025], Zamzama): Bassist, originally from Israel, long based in Brooklyn, recorded this live with trumpet/flugelhorn, two saxes, trombone, piano, drums, and justly excited crowd noise. "IDKN" seems to be his song, but sounds a lot like Horace Silver to me. And there's much more like that. Also a Lucy Wijnands vocal. A- [sp]

Sasha Berliner: Fantôme (2025, Outside In Music): Vibraphonist, from Los Angeles, debut album 2019, also credited here with synths, congas, and percussion, six tracks with Harish Raghavan (bass) and Jongkuk Kim (drums), plus keyboards (Taylor Eigsti or Lex Korten) and a couple horn spots. B+(**) [bc]

Dee Dee Bridgewater + Bill Charlap: Elemental (2025, Mack Avenue): Née Denise Garrett, from Memphis, grew up in Flint, married trumpet player Cecil Bridgewater, recorded some scarcely remembered disco albums in the 1970s, remade herself as a jazz singer with 1989's Live in Paris -- the first of a string of Grammy-nominated albums (with wins for tributes to Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday). First album since 2017, just her and the pianist for eight standards, kicking off with Ellington's "Beginning to See the Light," giving her a lot of opportunity to scat. The ballads don't, but she nails them too. A- [sp]

Alan Broadbent: Threads of Time (2025, Savant): Pianist, from New Zealand, 78, started with a big band in 1979. I first really noticed him arranging strings for Charlie Haden, but he's a fluid pianist with a number of solo and trio albums. Info on this is scarce, but it's a sextet, with names on the cover: Sam Dillon (tenor sax), Scott Wendholt (trumpet), Eric Miller (trombone), Harvie S (bass), Lucas Ebeling (drums). Lush, of course. B+(**) [sp]

Kevin Brunkhorst: After the Fire (2023 [2025], Calligram): Guitarist, UNT graduate, old enough to remember seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, has a previous Bicoastal Collective album with Paul Tynan. Postbop quintet with trumpet, sax, bass, and drums. B [cd]

Nanna Carling: Melodies for Two (2024 [2025], The End): Swedish singer, also plays soprano sax, second album, part of a rather large family act that goes back to 2002, when she was 5 -- the one I'm familiar with is trombonist-singer Gunhild Carling, front and center on a 2004 album cover that also cites Max, Gerd, Ulf, Aina, and Hans, with Nanna still not listed on their 2023 album, only appearing on Idun Carling's 2024 album. Starts in the family's trad jazz vein, but loses a bit of swagger. B+(*) [sp]

Joe Chambers/Kevin Diehl/Chad Taylor: Onilu (2023 [2025], Eremite): Percussion trio, each with a long list of credits, although Diehl (leader of Sonic Liberation Front) specializes in batá drums, and Chambers plays conga and idiophones and is well established on marimba/vibraphone, which Taylor also plays, as well as mbira and piano. Title is from Yoruba, which pins down the center of their map, extending everywhere. A- [dl]

Chaos Magick: Through the Looking Glass (2024 [2025], Tzadik): Sixth album by a quartet formed in 2021 to play John Zorn compositions, consists of Matt Holenberg (guitar), Brian Marsella (Fender Rhodes), John Medeski (organ), and Kenny Grobowski (drums) -- Discogs credits the albums to non-player Zorn (common practice with him), but Tzadik credits group name. B+(*) [sp]

Etienne Charles: Gullah Roots (2025, Culture Shock): Trumpet player, from Trinidad, teaches in Miami, ten albums since 2006, several with "Creole" in the title. Leads a sextet, with a large number of guests (mostly singers, not my favorite part). B+(**) [cd]

Chris Cheek: Keepers of the Eastern Door (2024 [2025], Analog Tone Factory): Tenor saxophonist, from St. Louis, albums since 1997 as well as considerable side work. Also plays soprano here, with Bill Frisell (guitar), Tony Scherr (bass), and Rudy Royston (drums). B+(*) [sp]

Chicago Edge Ensemble: Paradoxes in Freedom (2024 [2025], Lizard Breath): Fourth group album since 2017, led by Dan Phillips (guitar), with Jeb Bishop (trombone), Josh Berman (cornet), Krzysztof Pabian (bass), Avreeayl Ra and/or Steve Hunt (drums). B+(***) [bc]

Laura Cocks: FATHM (2025, Relative Pitch/Out of Our Heads): Solo flute, not a promising proposition, but the concept is "space holding the possibility of everything and nothing, a breath that hasn't yet exhaled." Sort of, if you have the patience for that. B [sp]

Coco Chatru Quartet: Limbokolia (2024 [2025], Trygger Music): Swedish quartet, second album, group named for a "legendary Swedish adventurer, inventor and actress," bassist Håkan Trygger seems to be the principal, with 5 (of 10) song credits, "design," and his name on the label, but the other members also contribute songs: Linus Kåse (alto sax), Charlie Malmberg (baritone sax), and Daniel Kåse (drums), ending on an Ellington. B+(***) [lp]

Isaiah Collier/William Hooker/William Parker: The Ancients (2023 [2025], Eremite): Up-and-coming tenor saxophonist -- first appeared in Ernest Dawkins Young Masters Quartet (2016) -- along with relatively ancient wise men on drums and bass. Effectively a blowing session, but a really impressive one. This would have made my mid-year ballot as I gotten to it in time. A- [dl]

Eight Dice Cloth: The Songs and Arrangements of Armand J. Piron (2024 [2025], self-released): New Orleans trad jazz band, released an EP in 2015 and three numbered albums since, and now this tribute to the little-recorded violinist and bandleader (1888-1943; Discogs shows a compilation of 1923-25 recordings, not much more as a performer but lots as writer and arranger). B+(***) [bc]

Peter Evans/Petter Eldh: JazzFest (2023-24 [2025], More Is More, EP): Trumpet and bass, normally, but someone seems to be working some electronics in, perhaps in post-production. Short: 6 tracks, 21:02. B+(**) [sp]

Freedom Art Quartet: First Dance (2025, self-released): Group founded in 1991 by Lloyd Haber (drums) and Omar Kabir (trumpet/flugelhorn/sea shells/didgeridoo), released an album in 2003 (with Abraham Burton and Jaribu Shahid), returns here with Alfredo Colon (alto sax) and Adam Lane (bass), playing eight Haber originals. Fast and furious freebop. A- [bc]

Sinsuke Fujieda Group: Fukushima (2025, SoFa): Japanese tenor/soprano saxophonist, first Group album, side-credits back to 2003. Group includes piano, bass, drums, extra percussion, and violin. Starts out shades of Coltrane, replete with "spiritual jazz" hype, then gets even catchier. A- [sp]

Champian Fulton & Klas Lindquist: At Home (2025, Turtle Bay): Piano-playing standards singer, has recorded quite a bit since 2004, in a duo with a Swedish clarinetist who has very compatible tastes and skills. B+(***) [sp]

Renaud Garcia-Fons: Blue Maqam (2024, Sound Surveyor Music): French bassist, twenty-some albums since 1993. This one has vocals by Solea Garcia-Fons, with Jean-Luc Du Fraya (drums/percussion) and Stéphan Caracci (vibes/marimba). B+(**) [sp]

Nicole Glover: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (2025, Savant): Tenor saxophonist, several albums since 2015, recently appeared in the supergroup Artemis. Cover offers more names: Tyrone Allen II (bass), Kayvon Gordon (drums), adding "with Lester St. Louis" (cello). B+(**) [sp]

José Gobbo Trio: Confluence (2025, Calligram): Brazilian guitarist, based in Chicago area, With Max Beckman (bass) and Jay Ferguson (drums). B+(**) [cd] [07-11]

Mats Gustafsson/Ken Vandermark/Tomeka Reid/Chad Taylor: Pivot (2024 [2025], Silkheart): Tenor sax joust, backed by cello and drums, the principal switching off to baritone, Bb and bass clarinets, and flutes. They met in the late 1990s, when Vandermark recorded with the Aaly Trio, and were part of the sax trio Sonore with Peter Brötzmann, who was not what you'd call a moderating influence, but even he slowed down with age -- or just got more crafty. I don't hear much from Vandermark these days -- he has a subscription service neatly tucked behind a paywall -- but he is certainly still one of the greats. B+(***) [bc]

Hearts & Minds: Illuminescence (2023 [2025], Astral Spirits): Chicago trio with Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Paul Giallorenzo (keyboards), and Chad Taylor (drums), third album after a self-titled 2016 debut and a second album in 2018. B+(**) [bc]

Arve Henriksen/Trygve Seim/Andmers Jormin/Markku Ounaskari: Arcanum (2023 [2025], ECM): Norwegian trumpet player, established since 2000, in a quartet with sax, bass, and drums, also name players. B+(*) [sp]

Fred Hersch: The Surrounding Green (2024 [2025], ECM): Pianist, many albums since 1984, in his element here in a trio with Drew Gress (bass) and Joey Baron (drums). B+(**) [sp]

History Dog: Root Systems (2024 [2025], Otherly Love): Brooklyn quartet of Shara Lunon (voice/electronics), Chris Williams (trumpet/electronics), Luke Stewart (bass/electronics), and Lesley Mok (drums/percussion). Interesting words-on-noise mix, with possible roots in Patti Smith and New York No Wave. B+(***) [sp]

Chris Jonas: Backwardsupwardsky: Music From the Deserts (2022-23 [2025], Edgetone, 2-LP): Saxophonist, plays soprano and tenor, based in Santa Fe, Discogs lists a couple albums (first from 1999), but mostly group credits (back to 1991), including a saxophone quartet with Anthony Braxton and big bands led by Cecil Taylor and William Parker. Three sessions here: two trios with bass and drums, mixed in with a quartet recorded in Bologna with Luca Serrapiglio (baritone sax/contra alto clarinet). This latter session is exceptional, and mixed in as it is elevates the trio work, interesting in its own right. A- [lp]

Kaze & Koichi Makigami: Shishiodoshi (2024 [2025], Circum/Libra): One of Satoko Fujii's groups, with two trumpets (Natsuki Tamura and Christian Pruvost) and drums (Peter Orins), joined here by the Japanese vocalist, who also plays shakuhachi and more trumpet. This can get seriously noisy, or fill in with scratchy minimalism and cartoonish voice -- far from sure bets with me, but for once I find it all delightful. A- [cd]

Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys: Mutiny in the Parlor (2024 [2025], self-released): Trad jazz singer, recorded Come Into My Parlor in 1998, and found her band name, ten or so albums later. Formula is simple enough: "12 tunes from the 1920s and 1930s that will delight and soothe your soul!" That works for me. B+(***) [bc]

Joachim Kühn: Échappée (2023 [2025], Intakt): German pianist, from Leipzig in the East, founding a trio in 1964, but moved to Hamburg in 1966 and started recording the next year. This one is solo, a double (13 songs, 96:13) drawn from five dates. B+(**) [sp]

Jim Kweskin: Doing Things Right (2025, Jalopy): Folkie, founded his Jug Band in 1963, kicking off the careers of Geoff & Maria Muldaur. Sat out the '80s and '90s, but kicked up again around 2003. Cover legend here is: The Berlin Hall Saturday Night Revue Presents: Doing Things Right with Jim Kweskin, featuring: Samoa Wilson, Cindy Cashdollar, Annie Linders, Racky Thomas, Matt Leavenworth. B+(***) [sp]

Los Angeles Improvisation Ensemble: Insubordinate Lunar Transgressions (2021 [2025], Denouement): Despite taking a name representing a city of 3.8 million people (metro area 12.9 million), this is just four musicians: primarily Louis Stewart (piano), with Robert Hardt (woodwinds), Andrew Shulman (cello), and Michael Valerio (bass), which makes it a pretty typical chamber jazz outfit: the cello in particular gives it a classical feel, without triggering my usual aversion. B+(*) [cd]

Chad McCullough/Gordon Spasovski/Kiril Tufekcievski/Viktor Filipovski: Transverse (2024 [2025], Calligram): Trumpet player, based in Chicago, ten or so albums since 2009, here with a piano-bass-drums trio he met by chance in Skopje, Macedonia, and kept in touch with. A very elegant little record. B+(***) [cd] [07-11]

Tyreek McDole: Open Up Your Senses (2025, Artworks): Haitian-American jazz singer, won a prize named after Sarah Vaughan ("only the second male to do so in its 12-year-history"), first album. Runs the gamut here with touchstones from Joe Williams and Pharoah Sanders. B+(*) [sp]

Ava Mendoza/Gabby Fluke-Mogul/Carolina Pérez: Mama Killa (2024-25 [2025], Burning Ambulance): Guitarist, strictly electric, brings hard rock volume into avant-jazz contexts, but that may be oversimplifying things: I've never really gotten into any of the half-dozen albums I've heard. This one also adds violin (they also perform as the duo AM/FM) and drums: the latter's background is in death metal bands (Hypoxia, Castrator). B+(**) [dl]

Camila Nebbia/Dietrich Eichmann/John Hughes/Jeff Arnal: Chrononaux (2024, Generate): Tenor saxophonist from Argentina, impressive last couple years, with the German pianist (specifically credited with upright), bass, and drums, for one long improv (25:37) and another longer one (63:34). Both pieces are terrific. A- [bc]

Joshua Redman: Words Fall Short (2025, Blue Note): A major label tenor saxophonist since 1993, probably more famous than his father -- Dewey Redman, remembered for key work with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett as well as Old and New Dreams and his own signature albums -- but this also slipped into the poll window with scarcely a ripple. Quartet with piano (Paul Cornish), bass (Philip Norris), and drums (Nazir Ebo), with one-track guest spots for Melissa Aldana (sax), Skylar Tang (trumpet), and Gabrielle Cavassa (vocals). This one is simply very nice, including (or perhaps especially) the closing vocal. B+(**) [sp]

Claire Ritter: Songs of Lumière (2024 [2025], Zoning): Pianist, from North Carolina, record label name from Mary Lou Williams, has a dozen-plus albums since 1987, several collaborations with Ran Blake, claims over 300 compositions. Solo, originals sprinkled with a few distinctive standards. I'm not a big fan of the format, usually responding only to a lot of flash and/or a "left hand like God," neither of which apply here, but she keeps my interest throughout. A- [cd]

Kathy Sanborn: Romance Language (2025, Pacific Coast Jazz): Jazz-identified singer-songwriter, previous albums from 2011 and 2017, favors languid ballads with Brazilian airs. B+(*) [cd] [07-11]

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (2024 [2025], Corbett vs. Dempsey): Useful abbreviation here TSORPM, first album, quartet of Gabriele Mitelli (piccolo trumpet/electronics/voice), Mette Rasmussen (alto sax), Mariam Rezael (turntables), and Lukas Koenig (drums/amplified cymbals/bass synth), from all over but recorded in Vienna. This can be tough going, but it's not like it was ever going to be easy to stand up to the monsters. B+(***) [bc]

Something Blue: In the Beginning (2024 [2025], Posi-Tone): Mainstream label founded by Marc Free, released its first albums in 1995, has a long-established stable of players, occasionally formed into house band projects like this one, back for its third album with Art Hirahara (piano), Boris Kozlov (bass) and Rudy Royston (drums) returning from the first album; Alton Sencalar (trombone) and Willie Morris (tenor sax) from the second; and first appearances from Diego Rivera (tenor sax) and Langston Hughes II (alto sax). Title refers to the early days of the label. B+(*) [sp]

Sons of Ra: Standard Deviation (2025, Free Electric Sound): Chicago prog/fusion group, unlikely to have much appeal to Sun Ra fans (which doesn't mean that they aren't), four EPs since 2016, this their first full album. Power trio with Erik Oldman (guitar/bass/synth), Keith Wakefield (bass guitar/tenor sax/synth), and Michael Rataj (drums). Some jazz composers in their repertoire (Coltrane, Carla Bley, Don Ellis), and take an interesting change-of-pace swing at "Nature Boy." B+(*) [sp]

Tessa Souter: Shadows and Silence: The Erik Satie Project (2025, Noanara Music): English jazz singer, based in New York, sixth album since 2004, seems like I've also seen her name on critic bylines. I have very little to say about Satie, who remains inscrutable, as are her lyrics, but the ending with "Ne Me Quitte Pas" is a nice touch. Some notable musicians, too: Nadja Noordhuis (trumpet), Steve Wilson (soprano sax), Luis Perdomo (piano), Yasushi Nakamura (bass), and Billy Drummond (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Larry Stabbins/Mark Sanders: Cup & Ring (2024 [2025], Discus Music): British alto saxophonist (also bass clarinet, flutes), b. 1949, not much as leader but Discogs lists 77 performance credits since 1971 (especially with Keith Tippett). Recent duo here, with drums. B+(**) [sp]

Pat Thomas: The Bliss of Bliss (2024 [2025], Konnekt): British avant-pianist, started appearing in the early 1990s but has become very prolific of late, especially in groups he's given Arabic names to (like Ahmed and ISM). Solo free improv here, a title piece of 41:27 and two short bits. Bill James came up with the idea of "similarity scores" as a way of finding patterns among baseball careers with few if any true comparables. I'm not sure exactly how that concept would work with jazz musicians, but a rough fit would say that the most similar pianist to Thomas is Matthew Shipp, and vice versa. This is remarkable, my only reservation being my impatience with solo piano. B+(***) [bc]

Triology Featuring Scott Hamilton: The Slow Road (2024 [2025], Cellar Music Group): Trio of Miles Black (piano), Bill Coon (guitar), and Jodi Proznick (bass), not the first group to settle on this name -- (4) in Discogs -- with a previous album from 2014, joined here by the "young fogey" tenor saxophonist, now 70. Nice but not much more. B+(**) [sp]

Uroboro: As in an Unpicking of Time's Garment (2023 [2024], Discus Music): Group, one previous album, presumably English (but I'm finding too little to be sure), principally Keith Jafrate, who plays sax, opens with spoken word, and wrote all the pieces, while backed by keyboard (Matthew Bourne), guitar (Anton Hunter), bass (John Pope), and drums (Johnny Hunter), with a vocal from Sylvie Rose. A- [bc]

Jeff Walton: Pack Animals (2023 [2025], Jules): Tenor saxophonist, quartet with Santiago Leibson (piano), Ed Heath (bass), and Chase Elodia (drums). B+(**) [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Frank Kimbrough: The Call (2010 [2025], Sunnyside): Pianist (1956-2020), was at the center of a very influential cluster of postbop musicians, mostly working with Matt Baltisaris at Palmetto. Recently discovered solo tape from that period, the sort of thing that those who knew and revered him will fall for completely. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

Nanna Carling: That's a Plenty (2022, Solters): First album, plays alto as well as soprano sax, also clarinet, and just lets the trad jazz band rip on the title cut. That's a real strength. B+(**) [bc]

Janet Klein: Come Into My Parlor (1998, Coeur De Jeanette): First album, plays ukulele and sings 26 "sweet, naughty and lovely tunes from the 1910's, 20's, and 30's," backed by John Reynolds (guitar) and Robert Loveless (mandolin, harmonica and accordion). B+(**) [sp]

Klas Lindquist: The Song Is You (2015, Do Music): Swedish clarinetist, accompanies Champian Fulton on her latest album, strikingly enough I wanted to look into his back catalog. Also plays alto sax here, in a quartet with guitar (Erik Söderlind), bass (Svante Söderqvist), and drums (Jesper Kviberg). I'm not seeing song credits, but mostly swinging standards. B+(**) [sp]

Klas Lindquist: Handle With Care (2024, Yellow Car): Fifth release as leader, some originals, more standards (including "Tea for wo," "Cry Me a River," "Stardust," "Cherokee," "Come Sunday"), just alto sax here, backed by piano, bass, and drums. B+(**) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Dawn Clement/Buster Williams/Matt Wilson: Delight (Origin) [07-18]
• Roger Glenn: My Latin Heart (Patois) [08-22]
• Kelly Green: Corner of My Dreams (La Reserve) [08-22]
• Rico Jones: Bloodlines (Giant Step Arts) [07-25]
• Peter Lin/AAPI Jazz Collective: Identity (OA2) [07-18]
• Gilbert Paeffgen Trio: Der Mann Auf Dem Trampolin (Rabbit Hill) [05-24]
• Pat Petrillo: Contemporaneous (Innervision) [07-11]
• Premik Russell Tubbs/Margee Minier-Tubbs: Oneness-World (Margetoile) [08-01]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 30, 2025

June archive (done).

Music: Current count 44435 [44388) rated (+47), 23 [24] unrated (-1).

This will be another premature post, put up early so I can get back to working on my major project at the moment, which is wrapping up the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: Mid-Year 2025. Deadline is tomorrow, July 1. While one wants to appear hardass about deadlines, you probably know by now that I'm a big believer in counting every vote, so I've always welcomed a few late ballots. Moreover, I figure that, like normal Americans, ArtsFuse will be taking July 4 off to enjoy the holiday. As a fairly abnormal American, I'll probably be hunkered down, working, playing music, trying to drown out sounds of fireworks and gunfire I once enjoyed but now have grown to despise.

I did manage to steal a few moments to compile a Loose Tabs last week. I posted it on Friday, but kept adding things over the weekend, so the expanded version (12549 words) will appear at the same time as this post. I haven't really dumped everything I have into it: a couple things figuring I should write more on them later. I also didn't do an obituary trawl, but there have been quite a few worth noting since the last time I did a section (May 14), including Brian Wilson and Sly Stewart, and most recently, Louis Moholo-Moholo. One item of possible interest here is my list of mid-year music lists. I haven't had time to do an exhaustive list of such, but I have incorporated these lists into my metacritic file (which otherwise I've struggled to find time to keep current).

A week ago, I was impressed by how many albums our poll critics were voting for that I hadn't heard or in many cases hadn't even heard of. But as I rushed to check out the most promising -- at least those most readily accessible -- I found that most were indeed quite interesting, but few made my A- grade. That changed big time this week, with one album crashing my ballot list, and another that quite likely could if I could afford to give it another spin. (The former is by Rodrigo Amado; the latter is by another Portuguese group, Motian & More.) Still much more I haven't gotten to. I've been especially remiss on following up on download links, and I'm afraid I've also neglected two vinyl albums I was generously gifted. (They don't fit in the physical queue, and I play LPs so rarely it's rather inconvenient to even get to the turntable. I will at least get to them this week.)

What I can do for now is disclose my own ballot (which may at least inhibit me from fiddling with it further):

NEW JAZZ ALBUMS

1. Steve Lehman Trio + Mark Turner, The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi)
2. Archer, Sudden Dusk (Aerophonic)
3. Rodrigo Amado & Chris Corsano, The Healing: Live at ZDB (European Echoes)
4. Deepstaria Enigmatica, The Eternal Now Is the Heart of a New Tomorrow (ESP-Disk)
5. Larry Ochs - Joe Morris - Charles Downs, Every Day → All the Way (ESP-Disk)
6. James Brandon Lewis Trio, Apple Cores (Anti-)
7. Russ Anixter's Hippie Big Band, What Is? (self-released)
8. Cosmic Ear, Traces (We Jazz)
9. Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio, Dream a Dream (Libra)
10. Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp String Trio, Armageddon Flower (TAO Forms)

RARA AVIS (REISSUES/ARCHIVAL)

1. James Moody, 80 Years Young: Live at the Blue Note March 26, 2005 (Origin)
2. Jimmy Lyons, Live From Studio Rivbea: 1974 & 1976 (NoBusiness)
3. Charles Mingus, Mingus in Argentina: The Buenos Aires Concerts (1977, Resonance)
4. Horace Tapscott's Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971 (The Village)
5. Cecil Taylor & Tony Oxley, Flashing Spirits (1988, Burning Ambulance)

At present, I have 69 ballots counted, plus another half-dozen or so in my inbox. My best guess is that we'll wind up somewhere in the 85-100 range. Last year's mid-year poll wound up with 90 ballots, far short of the 177 who voted in the year-end poll. While many critics keep running lists and/or can rattle one off the top of their heads -- which is something I try to encourage, possibly because I'm one of them -- others insist on preparation and review, so were unprepared for my late invite to a somewhat less solemn affair. Still, we already have accumulated a huge store of information on how the year is developing, and I think that anyone with the slightest concern to keep up with the state of the art will find much of interest here, both at the highly competitive tops of the charts and on the far fringes.

I will probably update this post later, or maybe offer a separate one on the poll. I've done minimal work to open up a new July Streamnotes archive, postponing the usual indexing. Other projects are worth talking about, but no time here.

New records reviewed this week:

Rodrigo Amado/Chris Corsano: The Healing: Live at ZDB (2016 [2025], European Echoes): Tenor sax and drums duo, the first of a promised series of archival tapes fallen by the wayside, but barely falls within our 10-year New Music window. Terrific straight out the gate. A- [bc] [08-01]

Benny Benack III: This Is the Life (2024 [2025], Bandstand Presents): Jazz singer, also plays trumpet, several albums since 2017, has one of those hipster styles (with a lot of scat) that I rarely enjoy (cf. Kurt Elling), but he makes it more fun than most. Live set, runs long, with Mathis Picard (piano), Russell Hall (bass), Joe Peri (drums), "with special guest" Benny Benack Jr. (tenor sax, presumably his father) noted on the cover. B+(***) [cd]

Antonia Bennett: Expressions (2025, self-released): Standards singer, daughter of Tony Bennett and actress Sandra Grant, has a couple of previous albums. Backed by a piano trio led by Christian Jacob. Caught my attention with an ebullient "Comes Love," followed by a song in French, and a jaunty "Right on Time." Several more bright spots here. B+(**) [cd]

Christer Bothén 3: L'Invisible (2024 [2025], Thanatosis): Swedish bass clarinetist, b. 1941, not a very large discography but established himself in the 1980s, and again since 2016 (notably in the new group Cosmic Ear). Also credited with "inside piano" here, in a trio with Kansas Zetterberg (bass) and Kjell Nordeson (drums), for two tracks (17:11 + 19:54). B+(***) [sp]

BROM: Чёрная голова [Black Head] (2023 [2025], Addicted Label): Russian free jazz group, Discogs lists 10 albums since 2008, longest term member Dmitriy Lapshin (bass), here with Ivan Bursov (tenor sax), Fesikl Mikensky (electronics), and Bogdan Ivlev (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Michael Buckley: Ebb and Flow (2025, Livia): Irish tenor saxophonist, has a trio album from 1998, at least one more, mainstream, nice tone, backed by piano-bass-drums. B+(**) [sp]

Terri Lyne Carrington & Christie Dashiell: We Insist 2025! (2025, Candid): Drummer, first album in 1981 was very impressive, but was followed by widely-spaced albums in 1989 and 2002 before more regular releases, which ranged enough to snag Grammys in 2012 and 2014 and top a DownBeat poll in 2020. Here she updates Max Roach's 1961 We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, with Dashiell the featured singer -- a role originally filled by Abbey Lincoln. Front cover also mentions as "featuring": Weedie Braimah (congas/djembe), Milena Casado (trumpet/electronics), Morgan Guerin (bass), Simon Moullier (vibes/marimba, Matthew Stevens (guitar); while the fine print mentions a few more names (mostly vocals), plus "special gueset" Julian Priester (trombone on one track). B+(***) [sp]

Daniel Carter/Ayumi Ishito: Endless Season (2023 [2025], 577): Saxophone duo (also trumpet, clarinet, flute, and piano for Carter), recorded this as an acoustic set, then Ishito dubbed in synth beats and effects. The latter are quite pleasing, although the straight duets hold up rather well. B+(***) [bc]

Anita Donndorff: Thirsty Soul (2022-24 [2025], Fresh Sound New Talent): Standards singer from Buenos Aires, debut album 2021, moved to New York, this draws on sessions before and after the move, includes one original, and lands on a Jobim. B+(***) [cd]

Drank [Ingrid Schmoliner/Alexander Kranabetter]: Breath in Definition (2023 [2025], Trost): Duo, prepared piano and trumpet/electronics, four tracks, with guest marimba on one, voice on another. B+(***) [bc]

Marty Ehrlich: Trio Exaltation: This Time (2024 [2025], Sunnyside): Alto saxophonist (tenor one track), has an impressive discography since the mid-1980s, tends to produce tricky postbop but returns to basic here, in what is basically a blowing session, backed only by bass (John Hébert) and drums (Nasheet Waits), not that anyone could ask for more. Group name goes back to a 2018 album. Album cover can be parsed multiple ways. A- [sp]

David Grollman/Andy Haas/Sabrina Salamone: SCRT (2025, self-released): Improv trio, drums, saxophone, violin, with some spoken word poetry written by the drummer's late wife, Rita Stein-Grollman. Beyond its own merits, the poetry provides some focus, which sharpens the surrounding music. A- [cd]

Noah Haidu: Standards III (2023 [2025], Sunnyside): Pianist, based in New York, third volume in a series recorded closely together, mostly trio with Gervis Myles (bass) and Charles Goold (drums), with some cuts substituting the more famous collaborators from the previous volumes: Buster Williams and Peter Washington (bass), Billy Hart and Lewis Nash (drums), with Steve Wilson (alto sax) on one track. Haidu also claims three songwriting credits, but they touch on standards (e.g., "Stevie W."). B+(***) [cd]

Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts (2024 [2025], Nonesuch): Guitarist, student of Anthony Braxton, started producing interesting records around 2004, got her first A- in my book with Dragon's Head in 2008, and has moved on to effective stardom in the postmodern jazz world, with a major label contract, a MacArthur "genius" grant, and a Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll win with Amaryllis (2022). This reconvenes her stellar Amaryllis Sextet, with Adam O'Farrill (trumpet), Jacob Garchik (trombone), Patricia Brennan (vibes), Nick Dunston (bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums), adding saxophonists Immanuel Wilkins (alto) and/or Brian Settles (tenor) for four tracks each (three in tandem). This is dazzling as long as you keep your attention focused to pick up the myriad ever-shifting details. But it's not so compelling that I notice much without thinking to focus. I'm not sure that's even a knock. It may just be my own personal limitation. By the way, she's also having a terrific yet in side-credits. A- [cd]

Hanging Hearts: Where's Your Head At (2023 [2025], Ropeadope): Chicago-based sax trio, leader Chris Weller plays tenor and bass saxophones, with Cole DeGenova (keys, synth, synth bass) and Quin Kirchner (drums). First album was Chris Weller's Hanging Hearts (2014). B+(*) [sp]

Sun-Mi Hong: Fourth Page: Meaning of a Nest (2025, Edition): Korean drummer, based in Amsterdam, first album was Page 1 (2017). Meticulously layered post-bop quintet with trumpet (Alistair Payne), tenor sax (Nicolò Ricci), piano (Chaerin Im), and bass (Alessandro Fongaro). B+(*) [sp]

Jason Kao Hwang: Myths of Origin (2022 [2025], True Sound): Violinst, born in US but also has a solid grounding in Chinese classical music, subtitle here is "for improvising String Orchestra and Drum Set," I'm counting: 10 [more] violins, 5 violas, 4 cellos, 3 guitars, 1 bassist (Ken Filiano), and one drummer (Andrew Drury). Live set from Vision Fest, every bit as glorious as you'd expect. A- [cd] [07-07]

Jane in Ether: Oneiric (2023 [2025], Confront): Trio of Miako Klein (recorders), Magda Mayas (piano), and Billana Vouitchkova (violin, voice). Effectively a drone album. B+(*) [bc]

Sven-Åke Johansson Quintet: Stumps (2022 [2025], Trost): Swedish drummer (1943-2025), played with many avant-jazz figures since 1972, especially Schlippenbach. An earlier version of this material was recorded at Au Topsi Pohl in 2021 and released in 2022, but these are previously unreleased, from a set at Haus der Berliner 6.11.2022. Quintet with Pierre Borel (alto sax), Axel Dörner (trumpet), Simon Sieger (piano), and Joel Grip (bass). The little figures that begin and end each piece seem awkward, but each develops into a 12-17 minute extravaganza. B+(***) [bc]

Stefan Keune/Sandy Ewen/Damon Smith: Two Felt-Tip Pens: Live at Moers (2023 [2025], Balance Point Acoustics): German saxophonist (sopranino/alto), fair number of albums since 2002, mostly free jazz contexts, this one with guitar and bass on edge. B+(***) [sp]

Maruja: Tír na nÓg (2025, Music for Nations, EP): Punk/jazz band from Manchester, or post-rock in the sense of heavy instrumental riffing in place of improv, EPs from 2017 with one LP, this 4 songs, 22:07, title from Gaelic refers to underworld, the jazz component coming from a saxophone, but I'm unclear on credits, or much of anything else. B+(**) [sp]

Roscoe Mitchell: Gratitude: One Head Four People (2024 [2025], Wide Hive): Art Ensemble of Chicago founder and mainstay, plays bass saxophone here, with guitar (Sandy Ewen), bass (Damon Smith), and drums (Weasel Walter). Rather sketchy. B+(*) [sp]

Motian & More: Gratitude (2022-23 [2025], Phonogram Unit): Portuguese quartet, bassist Hernâni Faustino seems to be the leader, with José Lencastre (tenor sax), Pedro Branco (bass), and João Sousa (drums), opens with "Misterioso" (Monk), followed by four Paul Motian pieces, with "Mandeville" a very choice cut, and that's just a warm up for the finale. A- [bc]

Eva Novoa: Novoa/Kamaguchi/Cleaver Trio Volume 2 (2020 [2025], 577): Spanish pianist, from Barcelona, debut 2012 on FSNT, trio with Masa Kamaguchi (bass) and Gerald Cleaver (drums), follows a 2023 release from the same session. B+(**) [bc]

Potsa Lotsa XL: Amoeba's Dance (2024 [2025], Trouble in the East): Band led by German saxophonist Silke Eberhard, originally a quartet of brass and reeds for an Eric Dolphy tribute (2009-10), later augmented beyond Plus to XL (a tentet here). Original pieces, interesting but tends to slip away. B+(**) [sp]

The Quantum Blues Quartet: Quantum Blues (2025, Ropeadope): New fusion group: tempted to say "supergroup," as everyone involved is long established in their own right: Tisziji Muñoz (guitar), Paul Shaffer (keyboards), Jamaaladeen Tacuma (bass), and Will Calhoun (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Resavoir & Matt Gold: Horizon (2025, International Anthem): Resavoir is basically Will Miller, wide range of side credits (like from Whitney to SZA), third album since 2019, mostly plays keyboards here, while Gold plays bass, guitar, and drums, with others coming and going, bits of vocals. B [sp]

Matthew Shipp: The Cosmic Piano (2024 [2025], Cantaloupe Music): One of the major pianists in jazz history, many albums since 1988, I've written a whole Consumer Guide about his work, which was a substantial task 20 years ago and would have to be more than doubled today. Along the way, he's recorded well over a dozen solo albums, with this the latest, and this is one more. I've never been a huge solo piano fan, but this is clearly pretty remarkable, in ways that make him instantly recognizable. A- [sp]

Mark Solborg: Tungemål: Confluencia (2025, ILK Music): Danish/Argentinian guitarist, side-credits from 2001, albums from 2007, quartet here with Susana Santos Silva (trumpet), Simon Toldam (keyboards), and Ingar Zach (percussion). A little slow. B+(*) [sp]

Kevin Sun: Lofi at Lowlands (2024 [2025], Endectomorph Music, EP): Tenor saxophonist, impressive debut in 2018, has a deep understanding of history and lore. Trio with Walter Stinson (bass) and Kayvon Gordon (drums), short at 23:13, but pulls nine fragments from six live sets, and experiments: this is "Sun's initial foray into the seemingly limitless possibilities of post-production, for the first in a projected series drawn from the same sources. B+(*) [sp]

Sun & Rain: Waterfall (2022 [2025], Out of Your Head): Quartet of Nathaniel Morgan (alto sax), Travis Laplante (tenor sax), Andrew Smiley (guitar), and Jason Nazary (drums). Morgan has a fairly long list of side-credits since 2012 (69 per Discogs), but nothing under his own name. Smiley started with the avant-noise group Little Women. The others I've run across more often. B+(**) [sp]

Transcendence: Music of Pat Metheny (2025, FMR): Trio of Bob Gluck (keyboards), Christopher Dean Sullivan (electric bass), and Karl Latham (drums), playing five pieces by Metheny plus one each from Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett. I've never been much of a fan of Metheny's more popular albums, although I've noticed that he occasionally strays toward the margins, with mixed but sometimes interesting results. Gluck, on the other hand, has written a book on Metheny's music, and comes up with some unexpected twists. B+(**) [cd]

Terry Waldo & the Gothim City Band: Treasury Volume 2 (2025, Turtle Bay): Ragtime pianist, learned from Eubie Blake, who said that Waldo reminds him of Fats Waller. He first recorded in 1969 with his Gutbucket Syncopators, and introduced his Gotham City Band in 1984. Unclear how old these recordings are, or for that matter who's playing what, but at 80 he appears to still be active. I like modern (and for that matter postmodern) jazz just fine, but for me "real jazz" will always be pre-bop, and this really hits that mark. A- [sp]

Wheelhouse: House and Home (2024 [2025], Aerophonic): Trio of Dave Rempis (saxophones), Jason Adasiewicz (vibes), and Nate McBride (bass). Sort of the avant-garde's version of a chamber jazz group. The saxophonist remain supreme in any setting. A- [cd] [07-22]

Brandon Woody: For the Love of It All (2025, Blue Note): Trumpet player, from Baltimore, first album but on a major label, with a band of similar unknowns (keyboards, bass, drums, one vocal). B+(**) [sp]

John Yao and His 17 Piece Instrument: Points in Time (2024 [2025], See Tao): New York-based, originally a trombonist, albums from 2004, here just a big band composer/arranger (with Mike Holober co-producing). B+(**) [cd] [07-11]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Anthony Braxton: B-X0 N0-47A (1969 [2025], BYG Actuel): Early album, 2nd in Discogs' list, 4th for Wikipedia (where the title is rendered as Anthony Braxton, the latest of many reissues deriving this title from the graph Braxton used to title his 2nd side composition. First side has two pieces by band mates Leo Smith (trumpet) and Leroy Jenkins (violin) -- all have long lists of miscellaneous instruments, including percussion, which is mostly Steve McCall. B+(**) [sp]

Marco Eneidi Quartet: Wheat Fields of Kleyehof (2004 [2025], Balance Point Acoustics): Alto saxophonist (1956-2016), born in Portland, was associated with William Parker in the late 1980s, later based in Vienna. Improv quintet with Darren Johnston (trumpet), John Finkbeiner (guitar), Damon Smith (bass), and Vijay Anderson (drums). B+(***) [bc]

Bill Evans: Further Ahead: Live in Finland 1964-1969 (1964-69 [2025], Elemental Music): Three trio sets: 1964 with Chuck Israels (bass) and Larry Bunker (drums); 1965 with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Alan Dawson, with Lee Konitz (alto sax) in for the last cut; and 1969 with Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell. B+(**) [sp]

Charles Kynard: Woga (1972 [2025], We Want Sounds): Soul jazz organ player from St. Louis (1933-79), recorded for Pacific Jazz and Prestige in the 1960s, with this the middle of three 1971-73 albums for Mainstream, with a larger group -- two each trumpets and trombones, electric guitar and bass, and drums -- arranged and conducted by Richard Fritz. B+(***) [sp]

David "Fathead" Newman/Ellis Marsalis/Cornell Dupree: Return to the Wide Open Spaces (1990 [2025], Amazing/Steady Boy): Reissue of a live album recorded in Fort Worth's Caravan of Dreams, the headliners (alto sax/flute, piano, guitar) joined by James Clay (tenor sax), Dennis Dotson (trumpet), Leroy Cooper (baritone sax), Chuck Rainey (bass), and George Rains (drums) -- all cited in smaller print on the cover. B+(**) [sp]

Kristen Noguès/John Surman: Diriaou (1998 [2025], Souffle Continu): Celtic harp player (1952-2007), French but sings in Breton, released an album in 1976, several more in the 1990s. This a duo with the English saxophonist, mostly playing bass clarinet. This is really lovely, a unique item. A- [bc]

Ray Russell Quartet: The Complete Spontaneous Event: Live 1967-1969 (1967-69 [2024], Jazz in Britain): British guitarist, b. 1947, so was pretty young when these six BBC radio sessions were recorded: 6 tracks were released in 2000, expanded here to 20 tracks, 133:33, the with Roy Fry (piano), Alan Rushton (drums), and either Dave Holland or Ron Mathewson on bass. This is closer to classic bebop guitar jazz than to the avant/fusion strains developing around John McLaughlin, but is remarkably cogent and flat out enjoyable. A- [bc]

Louis Stewart: I Thought About You (1977 [2025], Livia): Irish guitarist (1944-2016), enjoying a reissues boomlet, recorded this studio session with John Taylor (piano), who was also in Ronnie Scott's band, and two Americans who were touring with Cedar Walton at the time: Sam Jones (bass) and Billy Higgins (drums). B+(**) [bc]

Sun Ra: Nuits De La Fondation Maeght (1970 [2025], Strut): Set at an art museum, opened in 1964, in France near Nice, this title is shared by much reissued live albums by Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor. Sun Ra's original came out in two volumes in 1971, finally expanded here to over 4 hours in what is surely the most definitive packaging ever. The usual mix of marvelous and corny, much too much to sort out. B+(***) [sp]

Sun Ra: Stray Voltage (1970s-80s [2025], Modern Harmonic): This is a sampler of "Ra's electronic peregrinations during the 1970s and '80s," with or (mostly) without Akrestra. Nothing I can find on exact recording dates, but the LP cover scans suggest some juicy technical details on the synths -- I'm guessing because I can't make out the words. B+(**) [sp]

Clifford Thornton: Ketchaoua (1969 [2025], BYG Actuel): Trumpet/cornet player (1936-89), started with Sun Ra in the early 1960s, then with Pharoah Sanders (1963-67). First album as leader (although some of his earlier work eventually panned out). Four tracks, starts as an octet (with Archie Shepp, Grachan Moncur III, Dave Burrell, and Sunny Murray), but the second side slims down, ending with just cornet and two bassists. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

None.

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Antonia Bennett: Expressions (self-released) [06-13]
• Kevin Brunkhorst: After the Fire (Calligram) [07-11]
• Etienne Charles: Gullah Roots (Culture Shock) [06-30]
• Lafayette Gilchrist & New Volcanoes: Move With Love (Morphius) [07-25]
• José Gobbo Trio: Confluence (Calligram) [07-11]
• Bonnie J Jensen: Rise (MGM Metropolitan Groove Merchants) [08-01]
• Lili Maljic: The Nearness of You: In Loving Memory of Jim Rotondi (Pacific Coast Jazz) [09-12]
• Chad McCullough/Gordon Spasovski/Kiril Tufekcievski/Viktor Filipovski: Transverse (Calligram) [07-11]
• Sarah Wilson: Incandescence (Brass Tonic) [07-18]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 23, 2025

June archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44388 [44357) rated (+31), 24 [27] unrated (-3).

I've got a ton of work to do today, and tomorrow, and probably well into the near future. Music Week is one part of that work, the one that's most tightly scheduled -- is supposed to be done each and every Monday -- but not as important as urgent work on the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: Mid-Year 2025. I sent a batch of invitations out to my jazzpoll [at] hullworks.net list a week ago (back on June 13) offering July 1 as the deadline for submitting lists. I had meant to do list and website maintenance before the mailing, but things got out of hand, so I figured I should go ahead and send out what I had to the list I had (210 members), and catch up later. I'm still working on that. So what I figured I'd do here is to post a Music Week stub, so I can scratch that off my todo list today, and update it later, at which point (probably not today) I'll have more definitive news on the Poll, possibly other projects as well.

I'm omitting the reviews for now. They're all in the June archive. (The Bandcamp pages for my pick hits are also linked on my Bluesky feed.) It wouldn't be a lot of work to dig them out at this point, but their absence underscores that this is just a stub. On the other hand, I thought I could use this space to organize my thoughts on what I need to do today on the Poll. Otherwise I just have this cloud of thoughts clashing around in my brain -- which needless to say is already agitated over the beyond-insane Netanyahu-Trump attack on Iran, probably not the worst thing either has done but the most performatively pointless exercise in self-delusion . . . well, I can't think of a comparison.

But back to basics: Of those 200+ invites, I've received and counted 20 ballots so far. I'm not sure how that compares with past polls, but it doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the invites have been received much less taken seriously. I like this particular mail list because with it all I have to do is compose one message and hit "send" and it goes to everyone. But the list has been a massive headache in the past, because many email providers regard the messages as spam, so they get routed to rarely-checked spam folders and sometimes flat-out rejected. Moreover, it's impossible for me to monitor how much mail is delivered and read, which allows considerable operating room for my paranoia. I had some hope that this year would be better because the list is hosted on a new server and the vendor has a system for maintaining its reputation. But again, I have no metrics showing that is the case. (That is something I need to look into, but that will also be take a lot of time.)

I have an alternate method for sending out invites, which is to use the Thunderbird MailMerge utility to generate individualized emails, which I can then send out one-by-one -- a process which takes several very tedious hours. These messages are much more likely to be delivered. Given the large number of people who never got invites because I hadn't updated the list, I've reluctantly decided I have to do this again this week. I should also resend invitations to the initial list members who have not voted. The largest piece of work here was to figure out who's missing from the two lists. That much I largely got done yesterday -- leaving aside the question of whether invitations should be extended to new people (which is not something I'm terribly worried about). That leaves for today:

1. I need to edit the standard long-form invitation to produce a short-form version. The short-form gets straight to the point, trying to be less intimidating, with less emphasis on the fine points of rules and points, and fewer links that can add to spam scores. The short-form will be the basis of today's mass mailing.

2. I need to check a couple more website files, to make sure the information in them is consistent and coherent. At this point I'm not going to worry about the "-notes" files, which try to provide very detailed explanations of everything. I will still need to work on them after today. I also need to make a programming change to reflect the decision to sort totals on votes and tie-break with points, a reversal from past polls, but that can wait, as the totals aren't public yet. The key point here is that when someone receives an invitation, they need to be able to access the website for further information, including a reference copy of the invite. That's the point of the update.

3. Next thing is to write an email message based on the short-form invite, and run it through MailMerge, which will generate and queue up about 300 messages. (Although the program can send the mail, my ISP will start rejecting messages if sent too quickly. There may be a delay mechanism, but it's unclear how to tune it. Plus there is an advantage to not sending everything automatically.) I can then go through the folder and delete messages to people who don't need them. I can also individually edit the messages, not that I want to. The sent messages can also be used as templates for later invites. I usually send 5-8 messages in series, then take a break for a minute or two before sending the next batch. It takes several hours to send 200 messages.

4. Next I will compose and send a message to the jpadmin mail list, which consists of volunteers who have taken an interest in the Poll. I write to them whenever I do a website update and/or have significant news to share and/or want them to look at something. In this case, it will be the updated website, and the prospective voter list. I can send further invites based on their feedback, as well as my own further research.

5. Finally, I will need to update this Music Week post. More then. Maybe I'll get around to mentioning other projects. Perhaps I'll even come up with my own ballot.

New records reviewed this week:

Sophie Agnel/John Butcher: Rare (2024 [2025], Les Disques Victo): French pianist, released a solo album in 2000, a couple dozen albums since are nearly all shared with other free jazz figures, this the second I see with the British saxophonist. B+(**) [sp]

Sophie Agnel: Song (2022-24 [2025], Relative Pitch): Solo piano, seven songs simply numbered, 41:05 total. B+(*) [sp]

Yves Brouqui: Mean What You Say (2024 [2025], SteepleChase): French guitarist, has several albums since 2002, including a tribute to Horace Silver. This is a quartet with piano (Spike Wilner), bass, and drums, playing three originals, seven standards, including "Besame Mucho," "Caravan," and the title piece from Thad Jones. B+(**) [sp]

Gerald Clayton: Ones & Twos (2025, Blue Note): Pianist, debut 2009, father and uncle are famed as the Clayton Brothers as well as individually (John, Jeff). Title refers to two LP sides and a "turntablist concept" I neither understand nor can hear. Clayton also plays synths and organ, with trumpet (Marquis Hill), vibes (Joel Ross), flute (Elena Pinderhughes), drums (Kendrick Smith), and percussion/post-production by Kassa Overall. B [sp]

Michel Doneda/Lê Quan Ninh/Núria Andorrà: El Retorn De L'Escolta: A La Memòria De Marianne Brull (2023 [2024], Fundacja Słuchaj): French soprano saxophonist (also sopranino here), has a substantial discography going back to 1985, but little I have heard. One 53:32 piece with two percussionists. Brull (1935-2023) was a Swiss-born publisher of anti-Franco literature, who eventually wound up living in Barcelona. B [bc]

Signe Emmeluth/Ingebrigt Håker Flaten/Axel Filip: Hyperboreal Trio (2023 [2025], Relative Pitch): Alto sax, bass, drums trio. Distinctive tone, reminds me of Jackie McLean. B+(***) [bc]

Alon Farber Hagiga: Dreams | Dream (2024 [2025], Origin): Israeli saxophonist (soprano/alto/tenor), came to my attention in 2005 with a FSNT release as Hagiga Quintet but had previous albums back to 1996, and continues to use the band name for this sprightly quartet, backed with piano, bass, and drums. B+(**) [cd]

Paul Flaherty: A Willing Passenger (2021 [2025], Relative Pitch): Avant-saxophonist, discography starts in 1982, is fairly substantial by now but he remains a pretty obscure figure. Bandcamp page has a story about a revelatory 2005 duo set with drummer Chris Corsano as part of a protest against GW Bush's second inaugural, called "Noise Against Fascism." This one is solo, alto & tenor, which can be rough going and is unforgiving: as I was my grading of Braxton's legendary For Alto (a D: "perhaps the ugliest thing I've ever heard"). B+(*) [bc]

Danny Grissett: Travelogue (2025, Savant): Mainstream pianist, tenor so albums since 2006, frequent side work (especially with Tom Harrell and Jeremy Pelt). Trio with Vicente Archer (bass) and Bill Stewart (drums), playing his originals and a couple standards. B+(**) [sp]

Kneebody: Reach (2025, GroundUP Music): Jazz group founded by former Eastman students Adam Benjamin (keyboards), Shane Endsley (trumpet), and Ben Wendel (tenor sax), plus Nate Wood (drums, also bass after Kaveh Rastegar left in 2019; this is their first album without him), debut 2005. Not exactly what I would call fusion, but doesn't distinguish itself clearly. B [sp]

Littorina Saxophone Quartet: Leaking Pipes (2024 [2025], NoBusiness): Four saxophonist from the Baltic Sea region: Maria Faust (alto), Mikko Innanen (alto, soprano, baritone), Fredrik Ljungkvist (soprano, tenor), and Liudas Mockunas (sopranino, soprano, bass, lugging the latter on the cover pic). All contribute pieces, and they keep them sweet and succinct. B+(***) [cd]

K. Curtis Lyle/George Sams/Adi Du Dharma Joshua Weinstein/Damon Smith/Ra Kalaam Bob Moses/Henry Claude: 29 Birds You Never Heard (2022 [2024], Balance Point Acoustics): Spoken word by the poet, who has a previous album from 1971, two new ones in 2024, a book from 1975, not much more I can find, but he's been around, knows a lot, and has his way with words. Also with music here, backed by trumpet (Sams), bass (Weinstein & Smith), percussion (Moses & Claude). Reminds me of Conjure. A- [bc]

Joe Magnarelli: Concord (2024 [2025], SteepleChase): Mainstream trumpet player, started on Criss Cross in 1998, has close to 20 albums, lots of side credits where he frequents big bands (going back to Buddy Rich and Toshiko Akiyoshi, recently with Mike Holober and Dannyh D'Imperio). Quartet with Victor Gould (piano), Paul Sikivie (bass), and Rodney Green (drums), half originals, half standards. B+(**) [sp]

Mark Masters Ensemble: Dance, Eternal Spirits, Dance! (2024 [2025], Capri): Big band arranger/leader, debut was Early Start in 1984, features tenor saxophonist Billy Harper playing his own compositions -- they go back, at least to 1991. B+(***) [cd]

Mark Masters Ensemble: Sam Rivers 100 (2023 [2025], Capri): Big band tribute to Sam Rivers (1923-2011), playing his songs on his centennial birthday, with tenor saxophonist Billy Harper again prominent among the soloists. B+(***) [cd]

Camila Nebbia/Kit Downes/Andrew Lisle: Exhaust (2025, Relative Pitch): Tenor saxophonist from Argentina, has been prolific since 2015, joined here with piano and drums. B+(***) [bc]

Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp String Trio: Armageddon Flower (2024 [2025], TAO Forms): Avant-saxophonist from Brazil, based in New York, albums start around 1989, recording pace picked up considerably, probably 8-12 albums per year over the last decade. The pianist is his most frequent collaborator, stating with a duo in 1996, plus a trio that year adding William Parker. The string section here consists of Parker and Mat Maneri (viola), who also has duos and trios with Shipp and/or Parker going back to the late 1990s. A- [cd]

Andrew Rathbun: Lost in the Shadows (2025, SteepleChase): Canadian tenor saxophonist, based in Brooklyn but teaches in Kalamazoo, started on Fresh Sound New Talent in 1999, has been a regular here since 2006. Tenth album, a quartet with Nate Radley (guitar), Jay Anderson (bass), and Billy Drummond (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Felipe Salles: Camera Obscura (2024 [2025], Tapestry): Saxophonist (soprano/tenor plus various clarinets/flutes) from Brazil, teaches at UM Amherst, debut 2007. Original pieces, backed by piano (Nando Michelin), bass, drums, and string quartet. B+(**) [cd]

Frank Paul Schubert/Dieter Manderscheid/Martin Blume: Spindrift: Trio Studies (2022 [2025], Jazz Haus Musik): German saxophonist (alto/soprano), with bass and drums. Group has a 2020 album Spindrift, and it was a close judgment call whether to take "Spindrift" as the group name here, or as part of the title (the three artist names follow on a second line; I took the colon on the top line as a hint). B+(***) [sp]

Julian Shore Trio: Sub Rosa (2024 [2025], Chill Tone): Pianist, albums since 2009, trio with bass (Martin Nevin) and drums (Allan Mednard), playing originals plus a couple covers, including one from Brian Wilson. B+(**) [cd]

Ches Smith: Clone Row (2024 [2025], Otherly Love): Drummer, also vibes and electronics, roughly a dozen albums since 2006, last couple on this label have polled well, more side credits, many in interesting circles (Tim Berne, Marc Ribot, John Zorn). Quartet with two guitarists (Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman) plus bass (Nick Dunston). Some remarkable guitar herein, tricky rhythms, etc., so not sure what's holding me back. B+(***) [cd]

Ches Smith: The Self (2023 [2025], Tzadik): "One of the most versatile and in-demand percussionists in the Downtown scene" is a plausible boast. Solo, credit reads: drums, vibraphone, timpani, glockenspiel, chimes, tam-tam, percussion. B+(*) [sp]

Inés Velasco: A Flash of Cobalt Blue (2025, self-released): Composer, from Mexico, studied at Berklee, based in New York, first album, arranged for big band, with narration (title comes from a poem) by Jorge Esquinca and a vocal by Catey Esler. B+(*) [cd]

Dan Weiss Quartet: Unclassified Affections (2024 [2025], Pi): Drummer, composer, many side credits, has led albums since 2008, mostly postbop confections I didn't much care for -- although his 2024 album, Even Odds, proved the exception. He goes for interesting chemistry here, matching last year's poll-winning vibraphone player, Patricia Brennan, with former MOPDTK trumpet player Peter Evans and guitarist Miles Okazaki. B+(***) [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Misha Mengelberg/Sabu Toyozumi: The Analects of Confucius (2000 [2025], NoBusiness): Piano and drums duo, recorded in Japan, on the latter's home turf. Coming in my playlist right after dazzling piano from Cecil Taylor and Irène Schweizer, this took a bit longer to sort out, but in the end he won me over. I suppose it's a bit like comparing Monk and Peterson (or maybe even Tatum), an analogy he would most likely find flattering. A- [cd]

Irène Schweizer/Rüdiger Carl/Johnny Dyani/Han Bennink: Irène's Hot Four (1981 [2025], Intakt): Swiss pianist (1941-2024), an astonishing player, especially in her duos with various free jazz drummers -- the ones with Bennink are among the best, but not alone. She started in the 1970s with Carl playing saxophones, clarinet, and accordion. A- [sp]

Cecil Taylor/Tony Oxley: Flashing Spirits (1988 [2025], Burning Ambulance): "Pioneering avant-garde pianist" (1929-2018), holds the record for most 4-star albums in Penguin Guide, partly because they're so consistent they're hard to sort among, partly because at any given moment the one you're listening to is likely to sound uniquely brilliant. It's easy to pick 1988 as his peak, not least because he recorded so much in Berlin that year. Duo with drums, one of many that year but Oxley was the one he worked with most in later years, and good reasons for that. A- [bc]

Old music:

Kenny Burrell With Art Blakey: On View at the Five Spot Café (1959 [1960], Blue Note): Guitarist, made his debut in 1956, recorded intensively through the 1960s and regularly up to 2016, at which point he was 85. Live album here was expanded for its 1987 CD, and has just reappeared in a 2-CD/3-LP Complete Takes set, but this stream just covers the 1960 LP release. With Tina Brooks (tenor sax), Ben Tucker (bass), the featured drummer, and either Bobby Timmons or Roland Hanna on piano. B+(*) [sp]

K. Curtis Lyle: The Collected Poem/For Blind Lemon Jefferson (1971, Mbari): Poet, from Los Angeles, in 1966 a founding member of the Watts Writers Workshop, later moved to St. Louis, where he met Julius Hemphill, who accompanies him on this, the only album attributed to him before two new ones in 2024. (Turns out he has a few side credits on albums by Hemphill, Baikida Carroll, and Oliver Lake.) B+(**) [yt]

Grade (or other) changes:

Wolf Eyes X Anthony Braxton: Live at Pioneer Works, 26 October 2023 (2023 [2025], ESP-Disk): Edit to artist credit/title/recording date, reflecting some fine print I had missed. Original review is here. May deserve a revisit. Turns out this is not their only recording together. B+(*) [cd]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Jacob Garchik: Ye Olde 2: At the End of Time (Yestereve) [08-29]
• The Haas Company Featuring Jerry Goodman: Thirteen (Psychiatric) [08-01]
• Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts (Nonesuch) [06-13]
• Jason Kao Hwang: Myths of Origin (True Sound) [07-07]
• Kaze & Koichi Makigami: Shishiodoshi (Circum/Libra) [07-11]
• Billy Lester Trio: High Standards (Ultra Sound) [09-12]
• Los Angeles Improvisation Ensemble: Insubordinate Lunar Transgressions (Denouement) [03-26]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

June archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44357 [44332) rated (+25), 27 [32] unrated (-5).

I made the cutover in reasonable time on Monday, but didn't get anything written until late, so this will be posted late. Big thing I've been doing is a fairly massive reorganization of what I refer to as the woodpile. We did a major renovation of the kitchen/dining area roughly 15 years ago, and it produced a lot of scrap wood that's been piled up in the basement ever since. Moreover, there is quite a bit of wood in the garage: one wall as a rack for stick lumber, and the opposite wall has a cage that I built that holds 4x8 sheets (plywood, MDF, underlayment, paneling, etc.), and there are lesser scraps of everything. As the woodworking tools are mostly in the garage, I wanted to move the wood from the basement to the garage and a nearby shed. That's involved building more storage for odd bits. I've averaged several hours a day on this for a couple weeks. Progress is slow, as everything gets harder the older one gets. But I'm hopeful of getting the wood sorted and moved by the end of the week. Next step beyond that will be building a kiosk that can be used as a staging area for recycling. Other storage projects are likely to follow, as well as a serious effort to sort the tools and hardware. And books and CDs, which are by far the largest categories.

Meanwhile, I've sent out a round of invitations to the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: Mid-Year 2025. I'm still way behind on cleaning up the website, and perhaps more urgently on checking the mailing lists, which I suspect are missing a number of 2024 voters. I have three ballots counted so far, but another 10-12 sitting in my inbox. Deadline is June 30, so we still have a fair amount of time. I'm already finding new records I wasn't aware of. [PS: Trying to close this Tuesday evening, I have 10 ballots counted, with 2 more uncounted, and a similar number of promises, plus 2 notes from usually reliable voters regretting (or perhaps just thinking) they'll skip this round. Thus far we have votes for 106 albums (75 new, 31 old), 29 of which weren't previously in my tracking file, which previously stood at 502 jazz albums. The 2024 jazz tracking file wound up with 1572 albums.]

Two upgrades this week from Robert Christgau's Consumer Guide. I already had the Buck 65 and Willie Nelson albums at A-, and Tune-Yards at B+(*). I still have more work to do there (Arcade Fire, Ghost Wolves, Girl Scout, Justin Golden, Eli "Paperboy" Reed, Bruce Springsteen). I've added the MY lists at AOTY into my Metacritic file, but haven't yet gone looking for more trouble. One list I'm aware of but haven't catalogued yet is the set from RiotRiot: Albums (30-11); Albums (10-1); and Songs.

I got rained out on Tuesday. We had a pretty severe storm blow through around 5 AM, which took down a lot of small limbs. The rain finally let up when I got up around 9, so after breakfast I opened the garage/shed up to work, but wound up spending a couple hours just picking up limbs, cuting them up, and packing them into the newly emptied trash can. I quit when I ran out of space, having not even started on the back yard. I broke for lunch, counted a few ballots, kept meaning to get back to it, until I heard thunder and had to pack everything back up. Still raining as I write this.

Tomorrow's going to be disrupted by a dentist appointment, and whatever I feel like doing after as opposed to coming home to work. I did manage to listen to some stuff today, kicking off with three straight A- albums under old music. They're not in Music Week yet, but are in the June archive if you care to go there (link up top). What I will do is refer you to the Loose Tabs draft file, which has two long sections, one on Israel as a revolutionary experience, another on the "abundance" political pitch.

So much shit is happening in the world these days that it's hard to just ignore it all, especially when it's so easy to see the delusions people in power are acting on. There is absolutely no sense to be made out of Israel's attack on Iran, nor is there any sense to be made out of Trump's willingness to take credit for starting the war. Netanyahu is effectively demanding that Iran finally fulfill his prophecy and build and use the nuclear weapons he claims he's trying to safeguard against. Still, the only realistic defense against nuclear war is peace, which is the one option Netanyahu is unwilling (or unable) to consider. Sure, it's possible that Iran will never take the bait, but who's going to admit that just proves how wrong Netanyahu has always been.

The real message that Israel is sending is their intention to do things so horrific that other nations will be so repulsed they may be driven to unthinkable measures just to stop them. The last time any nation has worked so hard to turn the world against them was Germany and Japan in starting WWII. (Even there, it is sobering to note that it wasn't genocide against Jews that motivated the UK, USSR, and USA to fight Germany and Japan, but direct attacks against their own imperialist interests.) It will be much harder for Israel to provoke devastating reaction this time, because most sensible people are wary of entering into war, especially to stop an arsenal of nuclear weapons. That seems to be part of their calculation for aggression.

When we look back at all this, we should realize that BDS was an opportunity to peacefully but firmly remind Israel that there must be limits to abusing the powers of a nation to inflict suffering on one's own people and others. It failed because Israel was able to organize corrupt support from the US and Europe, and in doing so, especially with "blank check" support from Trump and Biden, has only fed the arrogance of Israeli politicians, including some who were until recently regarded as criminals within Israel -- not a coincidence that America installed another escaped criminal as president.

PPS: Just as I was getting ready to post this late Tuesday evening, the internet went out, pushing this post into Wednesday. It stayed out all night, but was working by noon today. By then, I took a look at what I had written, and decided to add a few more words on Israel and Trump. One more point: both are convinced that the harder they get hit, the more their people will rally to their support -- a conceit that makes they especially reckless, especially given their inability to see that Iran's leaders understand that just as well. It was, after all, Hitler who turned Stalin and Churchill into heroes, erasing their long and lamentable histories of misrule.

New records reviewed this week:

Aya: Hexed! (2025, Hyperdub): British electronic music producer, last name Sinclair, second album under this name, released a previous one as Loft. Leans into metal toward the end. B [sp]

Hannah Cohen: Earthstar Mountain (2025, Bella Union/Congrats): Singer-songwriter from San Francisco, based in New York, fourth album since 2012. B+(*) [sp]

Michika Fukumori: Eternity (2023 [2025], Summit): Japanese pianist, moved to New York in 2000, fourth album since 2004, a trio with Steve Whipple (bass) and Adam Nussbaum (drums). Opens with seven originals, then stretches out with some covers (Kurt Weill, Fats Waller, a mashup of Chopin and Jobim, "Be My Love"). B+(***) [cd]

Ms. Ezra Furman: Goodbye Small Head (2025, Bella Union): Singer-songwriter, led band albums 2007-11, solo efforts since then, some seemed notable at the time although I can't say as I recall any of them. Too much of a mixed bag for me to try to sort out, but some interesting stuff if you care. (One track reminds me that Furman wrote a 33-1/3 book about Lou Reed's Transformer album.) B+(**) [sp]

Alexander Hawkins: Song Unconditional (2024 [2025], Intakt): British pianist, quite a few albums since 2008, this one solo. B+(**) [sp]

Izumi Kimura & Gerry Hemingway: How the Dust Falls (2025, Auricle): Japanese pianist, based in Ireland (which she's incorporated into past work), a second duo with the drummer -- they also have two trios with Barry Guy, all recommended. B+(***) [cd]

James Brandon Lewis Quartet: Abstraction Is Deliverance (2024 [2025], Intakt): Poll-winning tenor saxophonist, well-established quartet with Aruán Ortiz (piano), Brad Jones (bass), and Chad Taylor (drums) -- their fifth album. This starts out sounding like a hitherto unknown Coltrane masterpiece. It doesn't develop much beyond that level, but how much can anyone ask for? A- [sp]

Carol Liebowitz/Nick Lyons: The Inner Senses (2023 [2025], SteepleChase LookOut): Piano and alto sax duo, both very measured and precise. B+(***) [cd]

Lifeguard: Ripped and Torn (2025, Matador): Indie/postpunk band from Chicago, Asher Case the singer-bassist, second album. B [sp]

Ramon Lopez: 40 Springs in Paris (2024 [2025], RogueArt): Spanish drummer, moved to Paris in 1985, has dozens of co- and side-credits since 1992, including a solo album in 1998. This, again, is solo. B+(**) [cdr]

Momma: Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025, Lucky Number/Polyvinyl): Dream pop band, led by Etta Friedman and Allegra Weingarten (both guitars, vocals, "additional instrumentation"), fourth album since 2018. Pretty much what I imagine the new Garbage album will sound like. B+(**) [sp]

Greg Murphy: Snap Happy (2024 [2025], Whaling City Sound): Pianist, eighth album since 2004, mostly trio with Obasi Akoto (basses) and Steve Johns (drums), plus guitar (Mark Whitfield) on three tracks, and a vocal (Sy Smith) on one. B+(**) [cd]

Billy Nomates: Metalhorse (2025, Invada): English singer-songwriter Tor Maries, first album (2020) was clearly influenced by Sleaford Mods, third album here is much more easy-going. B+(**) [sp]

Ploy: It's Later Than You Think (2025, Dekmantel): British tech house producer Sam Smith, second album, other releases and mixes going back to 2016, hits a nice spot and sticks there. B+(**) [sp]

Scowl: Are We All Angels (2025, Dead Oceans): Postpunk band from Santa Cruz, Kat Moss is the singer, second album after a couple of EPs. This has some real heft. B+(***) [sp]

Sherelle: With a Vengeance (2025, Method 808): Last name Thomas, first album after several singles/EPs/DJ mixes. Experts tab this as a cross between footwork and jungle. I'm not one, but that sounds about right. One vocal piece shows some potential that could be extended, but the hard fast beats suffice. B+(***) [sp]

Bartees Strange: Horror (2025, 4AD): American singer-songwriter, grew up in Oklahoma, originally Bartees Cox Jr., third album. B+(*) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

African Jazz Invites O.K. Jazz (1961-70 [2025], Planet Ilunga): Vintage Congo soukous, designed for 4 LP sides, 28 tracks total, two batches credited to L'O.K. Jazz (Franco Luambo), one to L'African Jazz (Joseph Kabasele, aka Le Grande Kallé), the batch called "The African Jazz school - Style Fiesta 1961-1970" the only one with pieces that stretch beyond 3:00. B+(***) [bc]

Dave Burrell/Sam Woodyard: The Lost Session: Paris 1979 (1979 [2025], NoBusiness): Avant pianist, known on occasion to look back with delight, at the moment he was coming off an excellent Plays Ellington and Monk and a Lush Life I haven't heard, and would later go on to The Jelly Roll Joys. Here he's in a duo with Ellington's longtime drummer, whose name rarely shows up in sluglines. Mostly originals, some of which could be vintage rags, but they work in "Lush Life," "Sentimental Lady," and "Embraceable You." A- [cd]

Jimmy Lyons: Live From Studio Rivbea: 1974 & 1976 (1974-76 [2025], NoBusiness): Alto saxophonist (1931-86), best known for his work with Cecil Taylor, but his own albums are almost all worth checking out, and this one is crackling: two improv sets (27:52 and 26:10), the first with Karen Borca (bassoon), Hayes Burnett (bass), and Henry Letcher (drums), the second with Syd Smart (drums) and Burnett again. A- [cd]

Motoharu Yoshizawa/Kim Dae Hwan: Way of the Breeze (1993 [2025], NoBusiness): Japanese bassist (1931-98), credited here with "homemade electric vertical 5-strings bass," duo with Korean free jazz percussionist (1933-2003), who takes charge early with one of the most striking drum solos I've heard lately. Gets more complicated further on. A- [cd]

Old music:

Docteur Nico: Dieu De La Guitare (1954-70 [2018], Planet Ilunga): Famed Congolese guitarist Nicolas Kasanda (1939-85), started with Joseph Kabasele's L'African Jazz, split in 1963 with Rochereau to lead L'Orchestra African Fiesta. He left a couple hundred singles under variations of his nickname. B+(***) [bc]

Muriel Grossmann: Universal Code (2022 [2023], RR Gems): Saxophonist (soprano/alto/tenor), born in Paris, parents Austrian, based in Ibiza, heavily influenced by Coltrane's spiritual jazz tangent, a formula hard to resist. I missed this one, backed with guitar (Radomir Milojkovic), organ (Llorenç Barceló), drums (Uros Stamenkovic), and bass (Gina Schwarz, 3 of 9 tracks). B+(**) [bc]

Resilient Vessels: Live at the Cell (2020 [2021], RR Gems): Live set, from a residency organized by visual artist Josh Werner, who also plays bass here in a quartet with James Brandon Lewis (sax), Patrick Holmes (clarinet), and Ches Smith (drums). Pretty scintilating -- an element I missed in Lewis's new, but otherwise excellent, album. A- [bc]

Grade (or other) changes:

Robert Forster: Strawberries (2025, Tapete): Australian singer-songwriter, one of two in the Go-Betweens (1978-90), went solo after that, and seems to have excelled at recapturing the group's sound since Grant McClennan's death in 2006. This hits the spot more often than not. [was: B+(***)] A- [sp]

Lambrini Girls: Who Let the Dogs Out (2025, City Slang): British punk duo, started by others but here a duo of Phoebe Lunny (lead vocals/guitar) and Lilly Macieira-Bosgelmez (bass guitar/backing vocals), plus drums. First album after several singles and an EP I liked, 11 songs (29:25). This got enough hype I noticed it right away, but obviously didn't pay enough attention. Sound alone should have been good for a boost, even before deciphering the earned rage. [was: B+(*)] A-

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Alchemy Sound Project/Sumi Tonooka: Under the Surface (ARC) [06-27]
• Ryan Keberle & Collectiv Do Brasil: Choro Das Aguas (Alternate Side) [07-18]
• Wheelhouse: House and Home (Aerophonic) [07-22]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, June 9, 2025

June archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44332 [44300) rated (+32), 32 [23] unrated (+9).

I published a Loose Tabs on Wednesday, June 4. I've added an article index, which is useful if you want to link to a specific section. I've fixed a couple typos, edited a tiny bit, and added some more reviews of the Jake Tapper book, although nothing I find all that revealing. [PS: I added some more reviews/notes on 06-10.] If I did have to do the research, the question I'd want to find an answer to is how the people advising Biden fail to recognize that his persistent low polling after leaving Afghanistan -- which should have been a big plus after 20+ years of repeated failure -- was a problem that Biden simply wasn't articulate and/or empathetic enough to talk his way out of.

I've really avoided working up any new material since posting, so the current scratch file doesn't have much, and isn't likely to for a while. There is so much really dreadful crap going on that it's hard to know where to begin, and harder still to decide when to stop. I will say that overhearing some 10-15 minutes of Fox News spin on Trump's deployment of national guard to quell "riots" in California was enough to convince me that Trump is picking this fight because he believes it generates reactions that he believes will help him (and hurt Democrats) politically. And it's not really even immigration policy where he thinks he has the advantage. What turns him and his fans on is the action, underscored by the performative cruelty. It doesn't really matter how many people he deports -- Biden and Obama generally topped his counts -- but how people perceive his commitment and toughness.

Not much to say about music here. I got a lot of the records below from Phil Overeem's list, plus the latest batch of reviews by Dan Weiss, and what I've picked up from the first few mid-year lists that I've factored into my metacritic file:

• Consequence [06-02] [AOTY] The 30 Best Albums of 2025 So Far
• Exclaim [06-02] [AOTY] Exclaim!'s 25 Best Albums of 2025 So Far
• Rolling Stone [06-05] [AOTY] The Best Albums of 2025 So Far
• Stereogum [06-02] [AOTY] The 50 Best Albums of 2025 So Far

New today and not counted yet: The Fader; Paste; Spin. Rolling Stone started off their list in typical form: "What a year it's been for great music -- as opposed to, say, everything else." But looking at my metacritic file, I'm not all that impressed: while my tastes rarely align with the critical consensus, the current top five strike me as exceptionally weak: FKA Twigs (*), Bon Iver (**), Japanese Breakfast (*), Horsegirl (**), Lady Gaga (***). Beyond that: Julien Baker & Torres (***), Mogwai (*), Black Country New Road (B), Lambrini Girls (*), Sharon Van Etten (*). Granted, I have five A- records between 14-20 (Lucy Dacus, The Delines, Craig Finn, Billy Woods, Jason Isbell). But my scale is skewed to favor records I like (also Robert Christgau and some of his close followers), and he has all but the thus-far-unreviewed Woods at A- or higher.

Speaking of mid-year polls, I'm thinking about running a jazz critics one, as I did in 2024. If so, I really should get invites out this week, with a June 30 deadline and an early-July publication date. Setting up the website should be easy enough, and firing off the mail list is easy if it works. (Last year it didn't work very well, but I have a new server this time, and supposedly it comes with a better reputation, although over-aggressive spam filters are still a risk.) One good reason for doing this would be to force me to do some prep work for the end-of-year poll.

Downside is that a lot of people who will vote in the annual poll aren't really up for a mid-year poll. But we got 90 ballots last year -- albeit only after a lot of laborious nagging -- and that produced some very useful information. And while I'm unimpressed with the non-jazz so far this year, this seems to be shaping up as a typically solid year for new jazz releases (although maybe not yet for rara avis). I haven't split my 2025 list into jazz and non-jazz yet, but I have a healthy 56 A/A- albums so far, which on first pass are evenly split 28-28.

I've been putting a fair amount of time into household tasks, which will continue for the foreseeable future. Big project this week has been to clean and reorganize the garage and shed, where along with much junk I have a lot of scrap lumber. I'm making slow but fairly steady progress, but it's taking a lot of time from my listening and writing, so things like the planning documents have been suffering.

New records reviewed this week:

Yugen Blakrok: The Illusion of Being (2025, IOT): South African rapper, third album since 2013. B+(***) [sp]

Car Seat Headrest: The Scholars (2025, Matador): Indie band from Virginia, principally singer-songwriter Will Toledo, 13th album since 2010 per Wikipedia (first 8 were DIY, so 5th album on Matador since 2015 is more like it, with one of those a dupe from early days). Billed as a "rock opera," running 70:32 (or 127:47 deluxe), so no surprise that that I'm not able to focus enough to follow or care, but this is pretty consistently listenable, and may merit more serious consideration. B+(**) [sp]

Central Cee: Can't Rush Greatness (2025, CC4L/Columbia): British rapper Oakley Caesar-Su, first studio album after a couple mixtapes. Can't just idle around either. B+(**) [sp]

Sarah Mary Chadwick: Take Me Out to a Bar/What Am I, Gatsby? (2025, Kill Rock Stars): Singer-songwriter from New Zealand, based in Melbourne, 11th album since 2012 (per Discogs), one noted by Christgau in 2021. This one barely, with slow speak over spare piano, barely registers . . . until "I'm Not Clinging to Life," where she fights back. Interesting character, but music not so much. B [sp]

The Convenience: Like Cartoon Vampires (2025, Winspear): Indie rock guitar/drums duo from New Orleans, Nick Corson and Duncan Troast, second album, moves along. B+(**) [sp]

Cosmic Ear: Traces (2025, We Jazz): New free jazz group, mostly well known Scandinavians remembering and revering Don Cherry: Christer Bothén (bass/contrabass clarinet, ngoni, piano); Mats Gustafsson (tenor sax, flutes, clarinets, electronics, organ, harmonica); Goran Kajfes (trumpets, electronics); Kansan Zetterberg (bass, ngoni); Juan Romero (percussion, berimbau, congas); with "special guest" Manane N Lemwo (kangnan). A- [sp]

Amalie Dahl: Breaking/Building Habits (2024 [2025], SauaJazz): Danish alto saxophonist, based in Oslo, has several albums with her group Dafnie, this a quartet with guitar (Viktor Bomstad), vibes (Viktoria Holde Søndergaard), and drums (Tore Ljøkelsøy). The percussion is especially striking here. A- [bc]

Dickson & Familiar: All the Light of Our Sphere (2024 [2025], Sounds Familiar): Glenn Dickson (clarinet) and Bob Familiar (synthesizer) create ambient music that is complex and radiant, and possibly a bit tiresome. B+(**) [cd]

DJ Shaun-D: From Bubbling to Dutch House (2025, Nyege Nyege Tapes): As best I can tell, a Dutch electronica producer, born in The Hague, father Dutch, mother "Caribbean," may have some records as Shaun D and/or DJ Shaun -- De Schuurman, whose 2024 Bubbling Forever has much the same appeal, cites him as an influence, so presumably he's a bit older. B+(***) [sp]

Rocio Giménez López/Franco Di Renzo/Luciano Ruggieri: La Forma Del Sueño (2023 [2025], Blue Art): Pianist, from Argentina, fifth album since 2017, with bass and drums, playing a selection of jazz classics from Rollins, Parker, Coleman, Coltrane, Peacock, Monk, and Ellington. B+(***) [sp]

K. Curtis Lyle/Jaap Blonk/Alex Cunningham/Damon Smith/Kevin Cheli: A Radio of the Body (2024, Balance Point Acoustics): Lyle is a poet, originally from Los Angeles, was a founder of the Watts Writers Workshop in 1966, moved to St. Louis and recorded an album in 1971 with Julius Hemphill, but that seems to be all until this and another 2024 album. Blonk is a well-known Dutch vocalist and electronics/sound artist, and the others play violin, bass, and drums. B+(***) [sp]

Madre Vaca: Yukon (2025, Madre Vaca): Originally a quartet from Jacksonville, sixth album, now styles itself as a collective, but still a quartet on this sixth album, with three founders -- Jarrett Carter (guitar), Jonah Pierre (keyboards), and Benjamin Shorstein (drums) -- joined by Thomas Milovac (bass), who wrote 3 (of 8 songs; Carter 3, Pierre 2). B+(***) [cd]

Mean Mistreater: Do or Die (2025, Dying Victims Productions): Hard rock/heavy metal band from Austin, second album, cover couldn't be anything else even if the most conspicuous metal is just calcium. Janiece Gonzalez is the singer, with two guitars, bass, and drums. B+(*) [bc]

Ela Minus: Día (2025, Domino): Singer-songwriter from Colombia, studied at Berklee, now based in Brooklyn, second album, electropop (more or less), the catchiest refrain going "I'd love to save you but you've got to save yourself." B+(**) [sp]

MonoNeon: You Had Your Chance - Bad Attitude (2025, Floki Studios): Bassist Dywane Eric Thomas Jr., from Memphis, more than a dozen albums since 2012, some experimental/jazz, but this one is a set of eight idiosyncratic funk tunes (29:30) -- imagine Swamp Dogg starting with Prince instead of Muscle Shoals. B+(*) [bc]

Joe Morris/Elliott Sharp: Realism (2023 [2025], ESP-Disk): Two guitarists, the former also credited with "effects," the latter with "electronics," both have been on the fringe since it was called "avant-garde" (hype sheet says since 1983 and 1979, respectively). This sums their life's work up admirably. A- [cd]

Mourning [A] BLKstar: Flowers for the Living (2025, Don Giovanni): Cleveland group, formed 2015 by RA Washington and LaRoya Kent, fifth album, has soul and gospel in its history, jazz and electronics in its toolkit. B+(**) [sp]

Nao: Jupiter (2025, Little Tokyo): English neo-soul singer-songwriter Neo Jessica Joshua, fourth album since 2016. Choice cut: "Happy People." B+(***) [sp]

The Onions: Return to Paradise (2025, Hitt): Pop/rock band from Columbia, Missouri, (3) in Discogs, second album after a 2015 debut, the kind of band that would cover "Wonderful Wonderful" as surfer or maybe bubblegum but owes more to Les Baxter than to Chuck Berry. C+ [bc]

Sverre Sæbo Quintet: If, However, You Have Not Lost Your Self Control (2025, SauaJazz): Norwegian bassist, has a couple side credits but this looks to be his first as leader. All original pieces, quintet with three horns -- Heidi Kvelvane (alto sax/clarinet), Aksel Røed (baritone/tenor sax/clarinet), Andreas H. Hatzikiriakidis (trumpet) -- and drums (Amund Nordstrøm). B+(**) [bc]

Samia: Bloodless (2025, Grand Jury): Indie pop singer-songwriter, full name adds Najimy Finnerty, after parents who are actors of some note. Third album. B+(***) [sp]

The Sharp Pins: Radio DDR (2025, K/Perennial Death): Young (20) singer-songwriter from Chicago, also records as Lifeguard Dwaal Troupe, and A Towering Raven; this, after a couple DIY releases, seems to be the jangle pop project. My first impulse was to reject it, but then I started hearing things -- derivative, perhaps, not enough to stick with, but there could be something here. B+(*) [sp]

Deborah Silver/The Count Basie Orchestra: Basie Rocks! (2025, Green Hill): The singer has a previous album from 2016 called The Gold Standards, which are indeed good ol' good 'uns. The ghost band is directed by Scotty Barnhart these days, but no names jump out at me, at least until I find Patience Higgins in the "additional musicians," but the featured musicians are well known, including George Coleman and Wycliffe Gordon. I also recognize the songs, which run (chronologically) from "A Hard Day's Night" to "Every Breath You Take," most swung mightily to little avail -- "Tainted Love," "Band on the Run," "Joy to the World," and "Fly Like an Eagle" are beyond help, and "Paint It Black" is worse. Only song where they came up with a revealing new take was "Life's Been Good." B [cd]

Um, Jennifer?: Um Comma Jennifer Question Mark (2025, Final Girl): New York-based indie rock duo, Fig and Eli, offer "love-drunk and hate-fueled hallucinations," but also "a whimsical view of transness." B+(**) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

The Bitter Ends: The Bitter Ends (2022 [2025], Trouble in River City): St. Louis garage rock band, although I'd pinpoint their origins in 1960s punk, still richer melodically than 1970s punk or 1980s hardcore because they listened to AM and knew a hook when they stole one, but were definitely heading toward a rowdier and noisier future, with no real sense of how postmodernism would relativize everything. Most of this would fit right into Nuggets. Originally self-released, so technically a reissue. A- [bc]

Mazinga: Chinese Democracy Manifest: Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 (2024 [2025], Rubber Wolf?): Punk band from Ann Arbor, Discogs credits them with one previous album (1999), some singles/EPs (1997-2000, 2008). Bandcamp has some more singles/EPs from 2012 and 2024, as well as a 1996-2008 compilation. This looks like another comp: I can source 5 (of 10 songs) to 2024 releases, leaving 5 more unaccounted for (total 26:11). B+(***) [sp]

Sweet Rebels: The Golden Era of Algerian Pop-Raï: The Ecstatic Electro Sound of Original Raï Cassettes 1986-1991 (1986-91 [2025], We Want Sounds): Algerian music, dates back to the 1920s but developed explosively in the 1980s, especially in Oran, before Islamic fundamentalism and civil war tore Algeria apart (1991-2002), driving many musicians abroad. I was first introduced to the music with Earthworks' 1988 compilation, Raï Rebels, which includes several of the artists here, in this compilation of eight rare cassettes that works just as well. B+(***) [bc]

Old music:

Amalie Dahl/Henrik Sandstad Dalen/Jomar Jeppsson Søvik: Fairytales for Daydreamers (2022 [2023], Nice Things): Danish alto saxophonist, based in Oslo, free jazz with bass and drums. A 43:41 piece called "Chapter I" and a 12:05 encore called "Chapter II." B+(*) [sp]

Amalie Dahl: Memories (2023, Sonic Transmissions): Alto saxophonist, first solo album, four tracks, 32:15. B+(*) [sp]

Amalie Dahl/Jomar Jeppsson Søvik/Henrik Sandstad Dalen: Live in Europe (2023 [2024], Nice Things): Two trio sets a week apart, one from Prague (March 3), the other Brussels (March 10). B+(**) [sp]

Andy Haas/David Grollman: Act of Love (2023, Resonant Music, EP): Saxophone and percussion duo, Grollman also credited with balloon and voice -- reading poems written by his late wife, Rita Stein-Grollman, who died early 2023 from "the cruelties of the [Early Onset] Alzheimer's Disease." Short (7 tracks, 17:34) and rather harrowing, or perhaps cathartic. B+(*) [bc]

Les Rallizes Denudés: Blind Baby Has It's Mothers Eyes ([2003], bootleg): Japanese experimental noise band, formed in 1967, active through 1988 and again from 1993-96, parts of their discography have appeared on Temporal Drift since 2021, including a live tape I've heard, Citta' '93, and evidently there is much more in the works: AOTY has a list of "86 Bootlegs (+7 unsorted dates/audience recordings), of which this item has been singled out by Phil Freeman for a AMG review (****), and which popped up on a Phil Overeem list, and is accessible on YouTube (full album, no track information or dates, 54:06). Presumably this was recorded somewhat earlier -- shortly before or after their hiatus is a fair guess. The historical uncertainty and lack of commercial packaging bothers me, as that's necessarily a part of my job reviewing, so I'm inclined to hedge. Also I'm not wild about the closing amplifier feedback, but for a long while, you could describe this as drawing a line from the Velvet Underground through Pulnoc and on toward oblivion, and that's interesting both as concept and revelation. B+(***) [yt]

Mazinga: Mazinga (1999, Reanimator): Ann Arbor punk group, first album after a couple singles/EPs, recorded less after 2000, with more singles/EPs in 2008, 2012, and 2024. Fifteen fast ones, 37:30, including a cover of "Mongoloid" (Devo), although I'm less happy that it's followed up with one called "That Yellow Bastard," but the closer ("No Rewards") helps. B+(*) [bc]

Deborah Silver: The Gold Standards (2016, Deborah Silver): Last heard fronting the Basie ghost orchestra in their romp through a batch of rock-era pop songs that will never become jazz standards, she presented the voice and phrasing of a capable standards singer, so I thought I'd check out this debut (and so far only other) album, where the standards are indeed golden -- "The Nearness of You," "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Slow Boat to China," "My Heart Belongs to Daddy," "I Could Write the Book," etc. Alan Broadbent plays piano and arranged for a big band that's short on brass but long on reeds. She's about as good as I expected, but still this comes up a bit short. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Benny Benack III: This Is the Life (Bandstand Presents) [06-27]
• Dave Burrell/Sam Woodyard: The Lost Session: Paris 1979 (NoBusiness) [05-02]
• Ran Blake/Claire Ritter: Eclipse Orange (2019, Zoning)
• Anita Donndorff: Thirsty Soul (Fresh Sound New Talent) [06-06]
• Noah Haidu: Standards III (Sunnyside) [06-06]
• Izumi Kimura & Gerry Hemingway: How the Dust Falls (Auricle) [05-20]
• Litorina Saxophone Quartet: Leaking Pipes (NoBusiness) [05-16]
• Jimmy Lyons: Live From Studio Rivbea: 1974 & 1976 (NoBusiness) [05-02]
• Misha Mengelberg/Sabu Toyozumi: The Analects of Confucius (2000, NoBusiness) [05-02]
• Claire Ritter: Songs of Lumière (Zoning) [01-01]
• Jeff Walton: Pack Animals (none) [06-27]
• John Yao and His 17 Piece Instrument: Points in Time (See Tao) [07-11]
• Motoharu Yoshizawa/Kim Dae Hwan: Way of the Breeze (1993, NoBusiness) [05-02]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

prev -- next