On The Turntable

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    Jeff Parker ETA IVtet

    Jeff Parker ETA IVtet :: Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy

    Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy offers up four sidelong pieces recorded live in Los Angeles over the past few years. Here, we get to eavesdrop on Parker, bassist Anna Buttterss, drummer Jay Bellerose and saxophonist Josh Johnson in full freedom flight. It’s an uncommonly intimate live recording — the players seem to be extremely at ease in this small club setting.

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    Bill Connors

    Bill Connors :: Swimming With a Hole In My Body

    Released in 1979 on ECM, the gentle guitar soli of Swimming With A Hole In My Body would’ve been just as at home on Windham Hill. While Bill Connors might be known to some as a fusion shredder with Return to Forever, this stuff is pure atmosphere, right down to the eerily surreal cover photo.

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    Joropop: Psych Pop & Folk in Venezuela, 1968-1976

    Joropop: Psych Pop & Folk in Venezuela, 1968-1976 ::

    The Madrid-based Munster Records and its sister label Vampisoul have become house favorites over the last few years. The latter released one of our favorite reissues of the year in Cartao Postal, the 1971 MPB masterclass from Brazilian singer Evinha, and Munster Records is keeping that momentum strong with Joropop: Psych Pop & Folk in Venezuela, 1968-1976, a compilation that hasn’t strayed far from the speakers since its summer release.

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    Jorge Ben

    Jorge Ben :: A Tábua de Esmeralda

    In the middle of the heaviest years of a military dictatorship, Ben Jorge wanted, in his own words, to “bring peace of mind and tranquility” to Brazilians. He wanted happiness and imagination, visions of utopia, the quickening of the heart. A Tábua de Esmeralda espoused this ideal of absolute joy through its sweet and comic gestures, making reference at the same time to saints and soccer clubs, Medieval magicians and cartoon characters, as if they all belonged to the same semantic realm …

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    Secular Music Group

    Secular Music Group :: Volume 2

    Making good (and then some) on the promise of their debut, Secular Music Group’s Volume 2 is a gorgeous jazz fantasia that beautifully brings together Sun Ra, Jewel in the Lotus and the European Library Music tradition under one expansive umbrella. The Chicago-based ensemble records everything analog, live and direct to a four-track machine — an approach that might seem unnecessarily fussy at first. But the results are impossible to argue with.

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    Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin

    Oren Ambarchi / Johan Berthling / Andreas Werliin :: Ghosted III

    On their third album, the trio of Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin continue to condense and refine their approach, with the rhythms as mesmeric, the riffs as repetitive and the tones as mysterious as ever. But Ghosted III also breaks up the pattern, with more songs, shorter tracks and delicate shifts in approach. Minimal jazz, avant-rock, experimental groove, modal funk — whatever you want to call it, it’s mutating before our very ears, and growing stranger and more powerful with every installment.

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    Shrunken Elvis

    Shrunken Elvis :: S/T

    Shrunken Elvis—the Nashville based trio of Spencer Cullum, Sean Thompson, and Rich Ruth—ignite a mind-meld of pedal steel, synths, and guitars on their self-titled debut, a slyly adventurous and immersive album that fuses languid soundscapes and kosmische vistas with elements of krautrock, spiritual jazz, and ambient & electronic music. Embracing touchstones such as Harmonia, Alice Coltrane, Pat Metheny, and Ashra, to name a few, the trio embark on sonic excursions that move through pastoral, tropical, and celestial realms.

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    Guru Guru

    Guru Guru :: Känguru

    Känguru feels less a product of its circumstances and more like a beam from some kosmische asteroid: four songs of heady, rapturous, meandering rock. They’re jammy but structured, punctuated by climaxes and build-ups, vibe shifts and open space. But it’s about the journey, not the destination: get on the ice floe and float along, man…

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Maxine Funke :: Timeless Town

Maxine Funke gifts us yet another quietly stunning release in Timeless Town. Across nine songs (including two instrumentals) of homespun folk and lo-fi pop, the New Zealand-based singer-songwriter crafts music that is intimate, starry, and wistful. Leaving her guitar in its case this time, she surrounds her hushed, dusky vocals with various keyboards and analog synth effects, as well as a melodica and pocket operator, and the sparsest touch of cello.

Carson McHone :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

In her vividly descriptive lyricism, which comes alive across all her albums, but especially on her latest release, Pentimento, Carson McHone is a natural artist. Written on paintings and postcards, McHone deftly utilizes color, texture and movement in these exceptionally compelling and immersive arrangements. “Tell me if you want to, what colours I should use?” McHone posits on “Winter Breaking”, an immediate highlight that bustles with a Beatles-like swing and delicately embellished with birdsong carried over from the intro featuring a contemplative spoken delivery of an extract from a letter 1840 letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Margaret Fuller. Wrapped in those two opening tracks of Pentimento, McHone, demonstrates how the door hads been left ajar for collaboration between audience and artist, and, crucially, art with art. There may be almost 200 years separating Emerson and McHone’s poetic phrasing, and the worlds in which they were penned, but the works are connected through a sense of humanity and the importance of trying to remain hopeful in dark times. 

Ramsey Lewis :: Them Changes

For anyone who frequents their local record store, the term “cheap heat” is likely a familiar one. Often its own section, the cheap heat bin usually contains copies of iconic records in dubious condition, lesser-known titles by major artists, and maybe most importantly, overlooked records that either never fully caught on, or for one reason or another, never found their audience. The problem with some of these titles is that while the cheap part is generally accurate, the ‘heat’ is sometimes over-promised. Not the case with Ramsey Lewis’ 1970 funky soul jazz gem Them Changes, a record we’ve never seen priced higher than $10 that burns hot.

Jens Kuross :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Before recording Crooked Songs, Jens Kuross was making cabinets, teaching children how to play the piano, and having a lot of difficult conversations with himself. After a series of disappointments following the release of his 2020 LP The Man Nobody Can Touch resulted in his return to Idaho to lead a quieter life.

Joropop: Psych Pop & Folk in Venezuela, 1968-1976

The Madrid-based Munster Records and its sister label Vampisoul have become house favorites over the last few years. The latter released one of our favorite reissues of the year in Cartao Postal, the 1971 MPB masterclass from Brazilian singer Evinha, and Munster Records is keeping that momentum strong with Joropop: Psych Pop & Folk in Venezuela, 1968-1976, a compilation that hasn’t strayed far from the speakers since its summer release.  

First & Last: Angura (A Mixtape)

An introduction to Japanese folk in 1970s Japan, the following mix was created as a companion to the article on Modern Bible and the story of Gekidan Buraiha. It brings together a selection of early Japanese folk, protest songs and Angura recordings from the same era, providing additional context and atmosphere for the world the little theatre movement troupe emerged from.

Double Bass: 10 For Danny Thompson

“The only thing I cared about was if I liked it or not, and if I liked it, then I was going to play it. Simple as that.” We’re all lucky Danny Thomson had that attitude. The English double bassist, who passed away in late September at the age of 86, made glorious eclecticism his MO for well over 60 years, building up an astonishing discography that includes several of the greatest records ever made, alongside dozens of lesser-known gems. Like a beloved character actor, Thompson’s very presence elevated every session and every show; by nature, he stayed in supporting roles primarily, but his vibe was always unmistakable / irreplaceable. Although you could spend the rest of your days plumbing the depths of great Danny Thompson moments, here are 10 highlights from across the decades.

The Byrds :: The Notorious Byrd Brothers

The many vantage points in which one can dissect the legacy of the Byrds can feel simply boundless. While the studio innovations utilized on The Notorious Byrd Brothers (released the same year as country rock blueprint Sweetheart of the Rodeo) wouldn’t necessarily be confused with that of Pet Sounds, it’s a primary signifier of the record that never sufficiently got its due. Despite all of the mythos and legendary inner turmoil that reduced the band’s lineup to a duo during the sessions, the record’s spacey psychedelic folk is a time and place never to be replicated.

Transmissions :: The Autumn Defense

This week on Transmissions, we’re toasting harvest season with John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of The Autumn Defense, who release their first album in a decade this week. It’s called Here and Nowhere, out October 10 on Yep Roc Records. You might know John and Pat from their work in Wilco; Stirratt is a founding member, and Sansone joined in 2004. But the duo’s work in the Autumn Defense stretches all the way back to 1999, when they formed the Laurel Canyon-style folk rock band in New Orleans. 

Animal, Surrender! :: A Boot For Every Bane

Not sure how many eight-string bass / pipe organ / drums trios there are out there, but I’m going to go ahead and declare the Brooklyn-based Animal, Surrender! as the very best of them all. On their second LP, A Boot For Every Bane, bassist Peter Kerlin (Sunwatchers, Solar Motel Band), organist Curt Sydnor (Greg Saunier, Yonatan Gat) and drummer Rob Smith (Gray/Smith, Rhyton, Pigeons) make this unusual configuration sound as natural as can be.

M. Sage :: Tender / Wading

The Colorado-based M Sage resides in the liminal zone, finding endless inspiration in the in-between. Between natural and digital, stillness and motion, silence and noise, innocence and experience, waking and dreams. These aren’t binaries, mind you — because fuck a binary — but blends. And on his latest LP, Tender / Wading, Sage delights in exploring these blends, blurring the edges, eagerly and earnestly mixing the colors into something brand new.

Shrunken Elvis :: S/T

Shrunken Elvis—the Nashville based trio of Spencer Cullum, Sean Thompson, and Rich Ruth—ignite a mind-meld of pedal steel, synths, and guitars on their self-titled debut, a slyly adventurous and immersive album that fuses languid soundscapes and kosmische vistas with elements of krautrock, spiritual jazz, and ambient & electronic music. Embracing touchstones such as Harmonia, Alice Coltrane, Pat Metheny, and Ashra, to name a few, the trio embark on sonic excursions that move through pastoral, tropical, and celestial realms.