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Name Yourself :: Remembering Marianne Faithfull

Marianne FaithfullPosted on

A reflection on the late Marianne Faithfull: What does it mean to simply keep living, making, and getting older? To do that the “right” way? What does it mean for a woman known for being exquisitely beautiful? A woman who was first only allowed one version of being but refused to be held in amber? A woman constantly called a muse while she was collaborating and making her own work . . .

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James Brandon Lewis :: Apple Cores

James Brandon LewisPosted on

On his second album for Anti, tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis has a new trio of old hands and a fresh outlook. Celebrating the giants of free jazz via dubby grooves, sticky funk and monstrous hip-hop beats, Apple Cores is a vibrant celebration of tradition dressed as an urgent manifesto of the new. With a keen intellect and an emotional acuity, Lewis imagines a boisterous multiplicity of sounds, eras and even cities that all happen to coexist in the same place, right here, right now . . .

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Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai :: S/T (1975)

Seikatsu Kōjyō IinkaiPosted on

Recorded slap bang in the middle of the 1970s is this free US/Japanese free jazz behemoth Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai, which translates to 'Lifestyle Improvement Committee' – a jocular reference to the reference to the Marxist discourse doing the rounds among radical students at the time. The record involves the coming together of key figures of the New York (William Parker, Ahmed Abdullah and Rashid Sinan) and Tokyo (Kazutoki "Kappo" Umezu and Yoriyuki Harada) scenes . . .

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Posted on Seikatsu Kōjyō Iinkai

Total Blue :: S/T

Total BluePosted on

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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Bridget Hayden And The Apparitions :: Cold Blows The Rain

Bridget HaydenPosted on

Bridget Hayden made her name in experimental circles, collaborating with woolly, droning out-there ensembles like Vibracathedral Cathedral, Telescopes and Sunburned Hand of the Man. But this Yorkshire artist is also in touch with the deepest of cores, the mournful, elementally simple human resonance of traditional British folk, Appalachian hill music and the blues. This eight song EP reinterprets old songs with fresh heartache, paring them back to the essentials: fiddle, banjo, accordion and Hayden’s clarion soprano . . .

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Paul Desmond :: Glad To Be Unhappy (1965)

Midnite Jazz Paul DesmondPosted on

Our Midnite Jazz series returns. Intended by RCA Victor to plug into the jazzy side of the budding mood music market of the 1960s, Glad To Be Unhappy is at its best when Desmond's light, melodic tone on the alto sax takes the lead line — a signature tone that Desmond once described as "trying to sound like a dry martini . . .

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Posted on Midnite Jazz Paul Desmond

Sun Swept :: Germinations

Sun SweptPosted on

Denver multi-instrumentalist Sarah Christiansen is cautious about labeling the processed flute music she makes as Sun Swept "new age." She's probably right to be. Sun Swept's beautiful debut album Germinations takes the formula of an old new age cassette tape and comes up with something altogether more haunting . . .

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Jakob Bro :: Taking Turns

Jakob BroPosted on

Recorded in 2014 but somehow only released late last year, this multi-generational session delivers ensemble playing and collective improvisation at an extraordinarily high level. Danish guitarist Jakob Bro is joined on Taking Turns by a murderer’s row of talents — Lee Konitz (alto/soprano sax), Andrew Cyrille (drums), Bill Frisell (guitar), Jason Moran (piano) and Thomas Morgan (double bass) — for seven marvelously moody pieces . . .

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Bert Jansch :: Nicola

Bert JanschPosted on

Tis the season. As those chilly winds pick up, the sonic migration toward the isles is near unavoidable. While any Bert Jansch LP is certainly fitting this time of the year (and any time of the year, mind you), one in particular deserves its time in the limelight during the shorter days. It may be the most overlooked of Bert’s early run of classic records, but Nicola is certainly worthy of a bit of reappraisal. Maybe it was the strings? The electric guitar? The horns? Whatever, the reason, the record rarely comes up in the Jansch conversation . . .

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The Power of Zeus :: Uncertain Destination

The Power of ZeusPosted on

Another gem from the heavy rock underground brought to light by the fuzz lords at Ancient Grease Records, Uncertain Destination unearths a batch of previously unheard demo recordings that revisits, reframes, and rewrites the legend of Motor City heavy psych quartet Power of Zeus. These recordings got the group signed to Motown’s fledgling Rare Earth imprint in 1970, and led to their lone album the same year, The Gospel According to Zeus, which soon became a cut-out bin mainstay . . .

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Posted on The Power of Zeus

The Aquarium Drunkard Show: SIRIUS/XMU (7pm PST, Channel 35)

SIRIUSPosted on

Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. 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 . . .

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Julie Beth Napolin :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview

Julie Beth Napolin The AD InterviewPosted on

At its best, art develops its own associations as it moves through the world. With Only the Void Stands Between Us on Silver Current Records, Julie Beth Napolin delivers a singular debut, one that cuts new trail through the cosmic and the colloquial wilds while adding to the amorphous canon of psych-folk . . .

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Posted on Julie Beth Napolin The AD Interview

Dorothea Paas :: Think Of Mist

Dorothea PaasPosted on

A constant figure in the Toronto music scene, it's a bit surprising that Think of Mist is only Dorothea Paas' second solo record following 2021's post-folk odyssey, Anything Can Happen. As an album, its 10 tracks present as wholly mature, fully-formed and intentional---a dense but highly replayable, bubblegum baroque record. She calls it "choral freak folk," with reference to Judee Sill and Linda Perhacs, but one could describe it as a Weyes Blood for that fertile group of Canadian pop experimentalists that includes Joseph Shabason, Thom Gill, Sandro Perri, and many others . . .

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Jantar :: Background Moods

JantarPosted on

“Moly Snowdrop” is not so much a musical composition as an ecosystem, a shimmering, vibrating garden teeming with sonic life. The 19-minute centerpiece of this latest album from the ambient ensemble Jantar ripples still surfaces of liquid sound, with musical tones like bells and vibraphones and soothing but indefinite textures that mimic the rush of surf, the chittering hum of insect life. The track 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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Agharta Deluxe: Live Miles in Japan, 1975

Miles DavisPosted on

The Miles Davis septet’s 1975 tour of Japan produced the bandleader’s final definitive statements of his electric era with the Agharta and Pangaea double live LPs. Until a Bootleg Series entry celebrates the tour with a much-deserved box set, unofficial tapes of the 3-week run remain our deepest look into this expanded universe. Here’s a primer on the best of the lot. The shows that burned the hottest and those that explored the furthest reaches of terrain to which no artist has returned . . .

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Posted on Miles Davis