For the Record: August 2, 2024.
An arresting new David Torn album arrives without fanfare or forewarning, plus a lightning round of new arrivals and upcoming releases.
For the Record rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community: contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined, on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.
This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social-media posts, and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change. (Links to Amazon, used when all else fails, do not imply endorsement.)
These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! To submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, email information to nightafternight@icloud.com.
All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not express the views of any employer.
The lead-in.
For reasons I haven’t been able to determine, I don’t receive notifications when guitarist, composer, and producer David Torn drops new releases on Bandcamp. So I’m grateful to Torn collaborator and compadre Tim Berne for drawing attention to sway the palms, Torn’s third Bandcamp exclusive, which just arrived today. The session, according to Torn, is “another substantially non-directional movement in this series of improvised compositions, which i’d re-started in earnest in 2019.”
Each piece begins with a solo improvisation for guitar and electronics; afterward, Torn adds further contributions recorded by himself and, in this case, by other musicians. “The few additions i might make to one of these piece’s arrangement -post-facto- are not presented as ‘sweeteners’, but as deepeners,” Torn writes.
The first piece, “Lost and Found and Lost at Sea,” includes two alto saxophone parts recorded by Berne; the third, “Keen Ear to the trbs,” doubled drums by Gerald Cleaver. You hear Torn’s distinctively jittery looped vocabulary in “autumn,” and a throatier tone in “Brothers.” But it’s the title track – which moved Torn to write and recite his own original poetry – that’s struck me most in my first complete play-through.
New this week.
Sophie Agnel et Jérôme Noetinger - Un clavier bien tempéré (scatterArchive)
ayrtbh - Synthetic Weather Reporter (Aloe)
Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concert at Galeria Bonino New York April 1974 (Finders Keepers)
Zack Clarke - Plunge (Orenda)
Elliot Cole - Hashflowers (Long Echo)
Hubbub - abb abb abb (Relative Pitch)
Roland Kayn - Textures (Reiger-records-reeks; recorded 2005)
Evan Lindorff-Ellery - Cymbals and Night (Aloe)
The Merian Ensemble - The Book of Spells - compositions by Clarice Assad, Nicole Chamberlain, Jennifer Higdon, Mary Kouyoumdjian, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Soon Hee Newbold, Kimberly R. Osberg, and Lynne Plowman (Navona)
Onceim - Laminaire (Relative Pitch)
Quiet Music Ensemble - whole body like a mouth - compositions by Michael Pisaro-Liu, Jesse Ronneau, John Cage, and Andrew Crossley (farpoint recordings)
isaac io schankler - “ h.i.t.e.m.” (self-released)
Darian Donovan Thomas - A Room With Many Doors: Night (New Amsterdam)
David Torn - sway the palms (self-released)
Pat Thomas & BleySchool - Where? (577 Records)
Jacob Wick Ensemble - Something in Your Eyes (Full Spectrum)
Upcoming releases.
August 24
Rebecca Bruton & Jason Doell - a root or mirror, blossom, madder, cracks; together - Quatuor Bozzini & junctQín (Collection QB)
August 30
Paola Prestini, Royce Vavrek & Karmina Šilec - The Old Man and the Sea (VIA Records)
September 6
Sophie Agnel/John Edwards/Steve Noble - Three on a Match (OTOROKU)
Steve Baczkowski - Cheap Fabric (Relative Pitch)
Pat Thomas - The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir (OTOROKU)
October 18
Ryan Keberle & Catharsis - Music Is Connection (Alternate Side)
Wolfgang Muthspiel - Etudes/Quietudes (Clap Your Hands)
October 25
Rich Halley 4 - Dusk and Dawn (Pine Eagle)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Thank you for the Torn heads-up. FYI, I’m not receiving Bandcamp emails regarding Torn either. I’m really looking forward to checking this release out.