On The Turntable

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    Yo La Tengo

    Yo La Tengo :: I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass

    “Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind” begins with Hubley’s drums over which a snippet of studio chatter can be heard, including a laugh as if they are saying, “Wait until they’ll get a load of this song.” Immediately, McNew commences with a perfect six-note bass riff that powers the song through to the end like the scientifically-tuned Formula 1 car engine.

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    Numün

    Numün :: Opening

    New York’s numün never quite fit into the ambient country mold associated with founder Bob Holmes’s other group SUSS. The team-up with Joel Mellin and Christopher Romero of Balinese music ensemble Gamelan Dharma Swara meant numün was always going to be about finding the common ground between big sky drift and eastern drone. Their third album Opening positions them somewhere between Bruce Langhorne and Popul Vuh. But it also shows them capable of whipping up a slow-motion psychedelic boogie whenever the mood hits.

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    Miles Davis

    Miles Davis :: Agharta

    We just did a monster roundup covering the 50th anniversary of the release of the Davis live documents Agharta and Pangea — a pair of double live LPs recorded at the Osaka Festival Hall, February 1, 1975. You can read that, here, but for the uninitiated looking for a taste, go ahead and dig into Agharta en totale.

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    Bonnie “Prince” Billy

    Bonnie “Prince” Billy :: The Purple Bird

    The Purple Bird is more overtly country than the last few Bonnie “Prince” Billy albums, certainly more so than the droning, mesmeric Lungfish homage in Hear the Children Sing the Evidence from 2024 or even the campfire folk communal Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You from 2023. Of course, threads of rural traditions in country, bluegrass and shape not singing have always woven through Oldham’s work, so it’s not a dramatic departure. Still, this is an album made in Nashville with Nashville musicians and a celebrated Nashville producer, and the twang factor is high.

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    Jantar

    Jantar :: Background Moods

    This latest album from the ambient ensemble Jantar evokes Jon Hassell’s fourth world sound, Laraaji’s ecstatic meditations, and, of course, the motherlode, the ambient soundscapes of Brian Eno.

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    Big Bend

    Big Bend :: Last Circle In A Slowdown

    The third album from pianist/singer Nathan Phillips’ Big Bend project blends experimental methods with time-tested tradition. Working with avant-jazz master Shahzad Ismaily and a varied ensemble including Jen Powers of Rolin/Powers Duo and violinist Zosha Warpeha, Phillips transforms delicate folk songs into strange collages and elliptical ballads.

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     Total Blue

    Total Blue :: S/T

    The Los Angeles-based trio of Nicky Benedek, Alex Talan, and Anthony Calonico have been making music together in various configurations for well over a decade. Their newest project, the outstanding Total Blue, takes the ingredients of smooth jazz and world fusion–fretless bass, muted horns, piles of synthesizers, global rhythms–and vaporizes them into a shimmering mist. The result is one of the most alluring things to come out of LA’s adventurous post-jazz scene.

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    Sam Amidon

    Sam Amidon :: Salt River

    The big news about Salt River is the collaboration with Sam Gendel, a celebrated jazz saxophonist who has worked with Amidon in various roles since 2017. However, aside from an extended reedy flight of fancy in “Tavern,” Gendel’s role as producer is primarily to get out of the way, and let Amidon be Amidon, his folky experiments haloed by an aura of extraordinary clarity.

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Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz :: The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985-1990

The RVNG Intl label comes through yet again with an absolutely uncategorizable, absolutely essential archival collection. The Invisible Road gathers a host of valuable tracks from the duo of Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz, whose adventurous sound blends caffeinated downtown minimalism, traditional Middle Eastern modes, almost Kate Bush-y avant-garde synth pop and more.

Erik :: Look Where I Am

An absolute one-off of the purest grade.  Erik Heller dropped in with Look Where I Am in 1967 and immediately vanished. The Vanguard LP came out of nowhere. A fleeting artifact that has outlived its creator, Heller can’t be found in another band, has no prior recordings, and nothing would surface down the road. There isn’t a clear picture of Heller’s background, how the record came about, or even a list of the studio musicians that prop up much of the LP.

Tobacco City :: Horses

Tobacco City formed around Chris Coleslaw and Lexi Goddard, both singers, both guitarists, whose vocal interplay recalls the swirling laments of Oakley Hall. They are especially fine together in anthemic “Time,” where Coleslaw’s keening lead collides with the buzzing sweetness of close harmonies. But while they set up these songs’ structures, pedal steel guitarist Andy “Red” PK adds color in the wailing, crying, yearning tones of his pitch-shifting instrument.

Richard Dawson Is Walking The Path :: On The End of the Middle

“I’m trying to convince people that I’m a wizard and she always helps,” Richard Dawson chuckles, over Zoom, acknowledging the presence of his adorable and aptly named cat Trouble, who has cozily curled herself around the crook of the songwriter’s neck, perfectly poised like a luxurious scarf. She mostly remains in that position while Dawson speaks about the various themes and influences that provided a strong foundation for his excellent eighth studio album, The End of The Middle.

Transmissions :: Lucy Sante

The great writer Lucy Sante joins us on Transmissions to talk about her latest book, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition, Bob Dylan, fashion, the early days of music journalism, The Velvet Underground and more: “I didn’t meet anybody who listened to The Velvets, until I got to college in ‘72. But it felt then there was a secret society of us all over the globe. It’s like that Eno quote about ‘everybody who heard the first album went out and started their own band.’ Well, everybody who heard the second album, I don’t know. I guess we all turned into other kinds of weirdos.” Plus, Scott Bunn of Recliner Notes joins us in the intro to discuss Sante’s singular way with words.

Circuit des Yeux :: Halo On The Inside

Haley Fohr wrote Halo on the Inside at night, alone, gripped by an obsession with transformation, with Ovid-style metamorphosis from animal to human, from human to tree, from god to beast. The horns she wears on the album cover evoke Pan, the god of nature, fertility, music and spring, and the music inside, likewise, pushes relentlessly through the dirt, finding light and life and purpose in the struggle towards the light.

monde ufo :: Flamingo Tower

On their third album, Flamingo Tower, LA’s monde ufo feel stranger, darker, and heavier than ever before – a damning and ghostly document of erosion, malaise, and decay. With a recurring psalm theme and atmospheric operatic vocals from Kathryn Tabachnick, the album’s groggy, spiritual cacophony feels perpetually on edge, with bandleader Ray Monde’s hushed spells mired in an occult dread constituted by propulsive, free-jazz psychedelia, hallucinatory bossa nova, and possessed, lo-fi garage rock.

Takuro Okada :: The Near End, the Dark Night, the County Line

The stateside debut of a versatile Japanese guitarist focuses on mostly solo work, largely recorded at home over a period of years. Encompassing ambient ECM mellowness, electronic urgency and tangy noir, The Near End, the Dark Night, the County Line shows us an eclectic musician stubbornly chasing tranquility and always restlessly on the move.

The Lagniappe Sessions :: Adeline Hotel

Under the moniker Adeline Hotel, New York-based musician Dan Knishkowy has spent nearly the last decade releasing one fantastic album after another. A benchmark identity of the project is that no release ever repeats quite the same sonic foray, a deliberate approach taking creative inspiration from the likes of Jim O’Rourke and Arthur Russell, the musician revealed to AD last year. After hearing that sound mutate from fingerpicking guitar to the jazzy orchestral pop of Hot Fruit to last year’s personal concept album Whodunnit, Adeline Hotel’s inaugural Lagniappe Session reveals everything on full display.

The Lagniappe Sessions :: Yves Jarvis

Reviewing Yves Jarvis’ All Cylinders, we wrote, “Where once was a loose attempt at art gospel or chopped-up soul, now there is a conscious, sincere engagement with the classics Jarvis clearly adores—Paul McCartney, Love, Stevie Wonder, and Prince.” Those are clearly classic touchstones, but Jarvis does more than tap into them: he taps into their spirits and synthesizes them into something brand new. Jarvis is a melodic polymath, which is made clear by his first ever Lagniappe Session, which finds him covering material from Porter Robinson, John Mayer, and a standard from Frank Sinatra.

Dub Syndicate :: Out Here On The Perimeter 1989-1996

Continuing the drive to get the On-U Sound catalogue back out there and following on from the ’80s Dub Syndicate box set Ambience In Dub, the label presents the Out Here On The Perimeter box set – with a title that makes no effort to hide the label’s otherness from usual dub fare – collating four Dub Syndicate records spanning 1989-1996. As a special bonus, a fifth recording is included entitled Obscured By Vision, on which Sherwood reworks rhythms from the period.