Food, Music, and Ramblings South of the Hill
Amaranth by Icepick.
This trio of Chris Corsano, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and Nate Wooley has maybe THE best band name ever.
Drums, bass, and trumpet. Well, -ish.
The players here are serious practitioners of extended technique, so I am often not quite sure who is playing what, (my favorite moments in listening to any improv). The track “Rare Rufescent” is particularly gnarly.
Outstanding.
#TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #ChrisCorsano #IngebrigtHåkerFlaten #NateWooley #Icepick #Amaranth #MonofonusPress
Dem Ones by Binker and Moses.
This album was mentioned in a recent @thewiremagazine article about Shabaka Hutchings as a crucial disk of “New British Jazz”. Sax and drum duos of varying styles, from a Rollins-esque St Thomas-ey romp, to a couple ballads, and finishing with a bit of free squonk.
More and more I feel like Horace Silver is the patron saint of the young Jazz cats in the US and abroad. While still adhering to most Jazz traditions, Binker and Moses’ swinging soul inflected Jazz owes more to Hard Bop than anything else.
#BinkerAndMoses #DemOnes #BinkerGolding #MosesBoyd #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack
Contra/Fact by the Matthew Lux Communication Arts Quartet.
Atmospheric improvised music roughly in the neighborhood of Jazz.
I really enjoyed this, most songs are more about setting a mood or feeling than being specific compositions with changes.
Very evocative and reminiscent of different late night periods in my life, from smoky noir-esque evenings in a bar to no wave radio in the 80s.
Cool.
#MatthewLux #BenLaMarGay #MikelPatrickAvery #JayveMontgomery
II by Sunwatchers.
Sunwatchers’ second album starts with a blast of guitar and sax frenzy and just keeps rolling through to the last song.
Sunwatchers are still experimenting a bit with their formula, but for the most part this is an energetic and frenetic exercise in kinetic string, reed, and drum sculpture.
Put it on and get some stuff done.
#TodaysCommuteSoundtrack #Sunwatchersband #Sunwatchers
PISSING STARS BY EFRIM MANUEL MENUCK.
Efrim is one of the fellow travelers in the bands Godspeed You Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion.
He released his first album, “Plays ‘High Gospel’”, under his own name in 2011, and it was one of my favorite albums of that year. This is his second release under his own name and, so far, it is one of my favorite albums of this blighted year.
Menuck’s solo albums tend to be a bit more sonically adventurous than those of Godspeed or Thee Silver. Moving from moments of abrasive noise to choruses of pure beautiful harmonic chords.
The inspiration for this album came from the, “brief romance between American television presenter Mary Hart and Mohammed Khashoggi, the son of a Saudi arms dealer.” He says, “this strange intersection – the televisual blonde and the rich saudi kid with the murderous father; it got stuck in me like a mystery, like an illumination – this vulgar pairing that was also love. these privileged scions of death and self-alienation, but also love.” Though, ostensibly, the theme is more like this quote found in the liner notes, “In this troubled world there’s just two things that are sure: The beauty of children and the war against the poor”
Whether that is a sentiment which rings true to you or not, this is a ugly beautiful album. Or maybe a beautiful ugly album. Your choice. Your world.
#EfrimManuelMenuck #ConstellationRecords #CSTRecords #TodaysCommuteSoundtrack
