Out of print on vinyl since 1977, Bennie Maupin’s solo debut, The Jewel in the Lotus, makes its welcome return to the format this month via ECM’s Luminessence reissue series. A counterpoint to the playful funk of Hancock’s Headhunters, The Jewel in the Lotus swings the pendulum well beyond Mwansishi’s heady explorations into more earthy, deeply spiritual turf.
A true headphone journey and an aural balm for a world that’s spinning a bit too fast.
Cut in Muscle Shoals, AL and produced by Swamper David Hood, the s/t record is easy to find, inexpensive, and a low key gem. Expect slices of nocturnal folk, southern-fried boogie romps, lonesome choir ballad excellence, and a touch of the choogle.
2024 heralded the 50th anniversary of this seminal dub record – one of the first of its kind – and it’s no exaggeration to say this release from Jamaican producer Keith Hudson remains one of the genre’s high-water marks. Recorded in a nascent scene, Pick A Dub‘s edges are rough, but the riddims are pure and shot straight from the heart boasting a simplicity and honesty that is nothing short of enchanting.
If there exists a more perfect reggae album than Rastafari to symbolize the rejuvenating, re-energizing power of spring we have yet to hear it. Turning 50 this year, this is far more than sound-system music, this is reggae as art form.
A just-about perfect collection of guitar reveries from Cameron Knowler. The simultaneously timeworn and fresh qualities of Knowler’s playing initially felt kinda Norman Blakean. But maybe CRK is kinda William Blakean, too, in a quietly visionary way. This record, recently released on the extremely reliable Worried Songs label, is pristinely recorded, as well, Knowler’s guitar upfront and dazzlingly clear.
Laid down on a four-track recorder over two sessions at the Ras Hotel ballroom in Addis Ababa in 1976, Ibex Band’s Stereo Instrumental Music is a foundational, if little-heard, document of Ethiopian music.
Phi-Psonics is a spiritual jazz collective headed by Los Angeles-based composer and acoustic bassist Seth Ford-Young, whose prolific session work can be heard on releases such as the recent stunner by Takuro Okada. The uninhibited, meditative soundscapes of previous studio offerings The Cradle and Octava quickly made waves after catching the attention of Manchester jazz label Gondwana, flashing nods to A Love Supreme and a lush framework playing off of Ford-Young’s Mingus-inspired upright bass, lifting woodwinds and the Wurlitzer piano of Mitchell Yoshida.
Charif Megarbane’s prolific schedule of releases via his independent imprint Hisstology looks like a set of Borgesian fantasies or little musical toys that tap into all possible musical traditions. His releases on the much more selective Habibi Funk label, though, are another beast entirely, distilling that beautifully demented potpourri to their essence. Hawalat, the follow-up to 2023’s wondrous Marzipan, is a cosmo-cosmopolitan craftwork, a world tour through a lysergic miniature model.
Out of print on vinyl since 1977, Bennie Maupin’s solo debut, The Jewel in the Lotus, makes its welcome return to the format this month via ECM’s Luminessence reissue series. A counterpoint to the playful funk of Hancock’s Headhunters, The Jewel in the Lotus swings the pendulum well beyond Mwansishi’s heady explorations into more earthy, deeply spiritual turf.
A true headphone journey and an aural balm for a world that’s spinning a bit too fast.
In his delightful, dizzying, and surrealist take on the romantic comedy—2002’s Punch-Drunk Love—the writer and director Paul Thomas Anderson infuses a number of elements that both support and subvert the audience’s expectations around the love story at the center of the film. These include the repeated and persistent use of the color blue and the idiosyncratic score by Jon Brion. Another such component is a series of so-called “time-based paintings” by visual and digital artist Jeremy Blake, which are deployed as interstitial moments throughout the film as well as a backdrop for the closing credits.
Witchi tai to. Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W
Via their 1972 self-titled debut, Smith Perkins Smith’s “Say No More” was highlighted by Board Of Canada’s Marcus Eoin as part of his Campfire Mixtape. Spanning John Denver to Joni MItchell, the 10 selections that constitute Eoin’s imaginary cassette were intended to serve as a rough guide of aesthetic touchstones that informed the vibe of their forthcoming record. As a song cycle it works, with the inclusion of the Perkins tune being both the highlight and most enigmatic of the bunch…
2024 heralded the 50th anniversary of this seminal dub record – one of the first of its kind – and it’s no exaggeration to say this release from Jamaican producer Keith Hudson remains one of the genre’s high-water marks. Recorded in a nascent scene, Pick A Dub‘s edges are rough, but the riddims are pure and shot straight from the heart boasting a simplicity and honesty that is nothing short of enchanting.
On the cover of Deerhoof’s new album, Noble and Godlike in Ruin, is an image of the band’s lineup—Satomi Matsuzaki, Ed Rodriguez, John Dieterich, and Greg Saunier—collaged together into one strange visage. Given that the album’s title is drawn directly from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this cobbled together assemblage makes sense, but it also doubles as a handy metaphor for Deerhoof’s identity as a band. Together, they equal more than the sum of their parts; working together in radical co-operation, they become one art rock organism.
Like a lot of traditional art forms, zydeco is regularly reinterpreted by oncoming generations of hot shot musicians. Younger artists blend the form with hip hop, jazz, rock and pop, using electric instruments and booming amps. But Jeffrey Broussard likes his zydeco unadulterated. You can equally imagine these tunes blasting out of a remote juke joint in Louisiana’s swampy hinterlands or drifting out onto the cobblestones in the French Quarter.
Grails has never been afraid of big moments—David Axelrod’s bold, dramatic arrangements come to mind. However, Miracle Music isn’t all crescendo and climax. There’s a subtlety and sensitivity at work here, an attention to detail that pays off enormously. And though the group leans towards the darker side of things, there’s a lot of joy to be found as well, musicians doing exactly what they want to do and generously sharing the goods with the rest of us. And speaking of sharing, Grails’ Emil Amos, Alex Hall and Ilyas Ahmed have put together a useful listening guide of crate digs that inspired and informed their latest masterpiece.
Dim the lights. Chill the glasses. Loosen your tie; kick off your heels. For the latest installment of our “Midnite Jazz” column, we look at Billy Strayhorn’s The Peaceful Side (1963), a ghostly offering of sparse jazz standards that showcase Strayhorn not as Duke Ellington’s right-hand man, but as a formidable solo artist in his own right.
Just like the early MPB of Marília Medalha, Nara Leão, and Elis Regina, Janine Price’s music comes from the theater tradition, where she built her musical persona and developed warping intonation techniques. Just like their early MPB too, her music is centered on the tenor vocal range, which prepares grand orchestrations to a sequence of unexpected soft landings.
Composers Wadada Leo Smith and Vijay Iyer are inveterate collaborators. Compile their past work together and you’re staring down a list that includes Bill Frisell, Jack DeJohnette, Pauline Oliveros, DJ Spooky, John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, and more. But something singular and deeply special happens when they work one on one, as they do on the recently released Defiant Life. “We just create,” Smith says. “You could call it ‘composition’ or ‘spontaneous composition’ or ‘spontaneous improvisation’ or some kind of stuff like that. But the truth is, all the serious documents about humans on this planet refer to creation.”
With a tight full band setup reminiscent of his own version of Crazy Horse, the sophomore effort from Alabama-based musician Cash Langdon brings a rugged, heavy country rock feel. Langdon’s muse of forthright melodic songcraft however still delivers the melodic goods, capturing a gritty power pop sensibility. Dogs is an increasingly impressive work, from the uniquely southern identity in the lyrics to electric, shambling song frameworks that hit exactly as hard as intended.
Florry, from Philly and now headquartered in Burlington, VT, makes a tipsy, slurry, utterly fetching variety of country rock, the notes wobbling all over the place but fizzing with unstoppable electric energy. The band spins out songs like a country joyride, rattling, banging, jolting hard on the ruts, but full of unfussed beauty. Sounds like a good time? Sounds like Florry.
