For the Record: Dec. 1, 2023.

Is this the last Bandcamp Friday ever? Here are a few strong recommendations and loads of listings for new and upcoming releases to help you with your shopping.

Dec 01, 2023

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.

Is today the last Bandcamp Friday ever? There’s no way to know. And yes, we’re all feeling precarious about the platform lately, but one thing remains certain: Anything you buy via Bandcamp today is going to put a little bit more cash into the pockets of the artists and labels who need it most. It’s a great time to get a jump on holiday shopping, and you’ll find plenty of fresh ideas down below.

But first, some recent developments…

After holding out longer than I should have, I deleted my Twitter account earlier this week. I’d stopped posting there some time ago, and even before that removed everything I’d posted during 2022 and 2023—though honestly, that was more for personal reasons than some futile gesture of protest.

I’d had such strong positive memories of better times at the platform – where I’d recruited new colleagues, made enduring real-world friendships, and watched the world changing in real time, repeatedly – that I’d clung to my profile in hopes we might all outlast the present owner. But when the antisemitic reply heard ’round the world was followed in close succession by a racist-porn meme and a Pizzagate post, there simply was no point hanging around anymore.

As for alternates, I didn’t warm to Mastodon or Threads, but I’m definitely spending time on Bluesky. Best to look there for news and noodling.

Don’t mistake what I just said for some kind of tirade… I have no business telling anyone else where they should or shouldn’t be. After all, following a brief stint on Ghost – which was both condescending and prohibitively expensive – I’m back on Substack just in time for Jonathan Katz to weigh in with an Atlantic article bluntly titled “Substack Has a Nazi Problem” (gift link). Here’s a troublesome sample:

Some Substack newsletters by Nazis and white nationalists have thousands or tens of thousands of subscribers, making the platform a new and valuable tool for creating mailing lists for the far right. And many accept paid subscriptions through Substack, seemingly flouting terms of service that ban attempts to “publish content or fund initiatives that incite violence based on protected classes.” Several, including [Richard] Spencer’s, sport official Substack “bestseller” badges, indicating that they have at a minimum hundreds of paying subscribers. A subscription to the newsletter that Spencer edits and writes for costs $9 a month or $90 a year, which suggests that he and his co-writers are grossing at least $9,000 a year and potentially many times that. Substack, which takes a 10 percent cut of subscription revenue, makes money when readers pay for Nazi newsletters.

Katz has written more on the subject on his newsletter—which, you guessed it, is hosted by Substack.

The Racket

More on Substack's Nazis

I have a new article in the Atlantic. It builds on reporting I did earlier this year about Substack corporate’s promotion of an openly bigoted “public intellectual”—an intellectual who, during that process, got outed as a formerly(?) genocidal racist…

a year ago · 93 likes · 6 comments · Jonathan M. Katz

Marisa Kabas is organizing a writers’ letter of protest to Substack’s leaders—one of whom, Katz points out, got his start working for Elon Musk. I’ve not made up my mind yet about next steps… I’m loathe to relocate again, and disappointed by the prospect of once more forsaking the best platform/U.I. for newslettering I’ve yet encountered. On the other hand, the company you keep, etc., etc.

Hey, let’s talk about music!!

Guy Klucevsek (Photograph: Eleonora Alberto)

The Starkland label doesn’t pump out records in massive quantities, but instead showcases a selective group of idiosyncratic, eclectic artists in whose work label head Tom Steenland believes fervently. Beneficiaries of Steenland’s zeal have included eminently worthy originals like Tod Dockstader, Charles Amirkhanian, Philip Bimstein, Tim Brady, Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, and Kotoka Suzuki.

Add to that tally one more crucial name: Guy Klucevsek, who’s maintained a towering profile in the downtown NYC music scene for decades. As a virtuoso accordionist, Klucevsek opened new vistas of creative opportunity to John Zorn, Laurie Anderson, Dave Douglas, Robin Holcomb, and David Garland, among many others. As a composer, he’s infused his output with whimsy, generosity, and all the vernacular idioms you’d associate with his squeezebox.

Klucevsek has also been a significant presence in the dance and theater worlds. And, I was surprised to learn, he’s played a prominent role on the soundtracks of Steven Spielberg’s films The Terminal, Munich, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and The Adventures of Tintin.

Klucevsek retired from performance in 2018, and wrote much of the music on Hope Dies Last since then; all but two tracks are available here for the first time. In addition to performances by Klucevsek, the album features accordion mavericks like Alan Bern, Will Holshauser, and Nathan Koci, and substantial contributions from violinist Todd Reynolds, pianist Jenny Lin, NYC accordion ensemble Bachtopus, and California string duo The Smudges.

Everything on Hope Dies Last, is instantly and insistently appealing, from the homespun solo songs and dances that open the album to a hypnotic multi-tracked violin realization of Flying Vegetables of the Apocalypse (an extraordinary bit of folksy minimalism Klucevsek originally recorded years ago with Diane Monroe and Tom Cora for an album of the same title), and the dizzying A Little Madness in the Spring, a Rube Goldberg contraption for jangling toy piano.

Klucevsek’s music can also pack a quietly intense emotional punch. For evidence, cue up the squeezebox threnody String of Garlands, and then carry on through the playfully evocative strings-and-whistling duet Just Plain Folk and the cutely titled, gently ecstatic Music of Chants.

All told, here is a collection certain to prompt admiring smiles, and a substantial tribute to an artist who warrants wider recognition and deeper investigation.

Martin Arnold (Photograph: Mani Mazinani)

Since I didn’t publish a freestanding “For the Record” column last week, but instead listed the titles I knew about on Wednesday ahead of the long holiday weekend, I missed out on one crucial arrival last Friday: Flax, an extended work for solo piano by Canadian composer Martin Arnold as performed by pianist Kerry Yong, newly released on the consistently rewarding label Another Timbre.

The piece was commissioned in 2020 by Philip Thomas, a brilliantly gifted pianist well known among Another Timbre aficionados—not least for his essential 2019 survey of Morton Feldman’s piano music. But a calamitous health crisis prevented Thomas from playing and recording the piece. He passed the privilege along to Yong, who recorded the spare, contemplative 79-minute work on a piano Thomas had frequently used, and then presented its live premiere late last month during the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

Listening to Flax is exactly the kind of uniquely memorable experience that has made Another Timbre an essential label to follow closely. The piece is quietly demanding, and probably paradoxically strenuous to play, in its way; Yong does Arnold and Thomas proud.

P.S. Another new release from the same label – Screens, the latest in a series of valuable recordings devoted to the music of English composer Frank Denyer – is for me today’s most essential acquisition.

Kris Davis. (Photograph: Peter Gannushkin/downtownmusic.net)

’Tis the season as well for year-end lists… only so far I’m just not feeling it, given the overwhelming busyness and concurrent malaise of recent weeks. Reckon I’ll shake it off when the time comes; until then, you’ll find some excellent suggestions on George Grella’s recently published Best Recorded Jazz 2023 list.

Kill Yr Idols

Best Recorded Jazz 2023

Make Way I can say with confidence, it’s been a very good year, and it started with the formation above marching in on New Year’s Day. First, let me start with something should be obvious: I am fully aware that today is November 21, I am fully aware that there are six or so weeks left in the calendar year…

a year ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · George Grella

I’ll gladly endorse pretty much all the titles on George’s list that I’ve heard, and look forward to discovering the selections I’ve not yet encountered. And he’s followed that tally with a timely Best of Bandcamp 2023 survey.

Kill Yr Idols

Best of Bandcamp 2023

The last-Bandcamp-Friday-of-the-year, mouth-where-my-money-is edition. Everything on this list I spent money on. I get a lot of promos (many through downloads on the Bandcamp platform), but not as many as a lot of other critics. You might be surprised by the jazz and classical releases I DO NOT get via promo, despite being a highly active music critic wi…

a year ago · George Grella

“Mouth where my money is”—I like that.

I find George’s writing consistently edifying, and thus worth paying for even when I’m cutting corners nearly everywhere else.

“Believe me when I tell you that your $5 a month isn’t beer money, it will literally, crucially make the difference on whether I can pay December rent and sustain the basics into the month,” he writes, candidly. He’ll be sending two more Best of 2023 lists out in the coming weeks—exclusively to his paid subscribers.

New this week.

Derek Bailey/Simon H. Fell - At Sound 323 (Confront; 2001 recording, newly remastered vinyl LP edition)

Lea Bertucci - Of Shadow and Substance (Cibachrome Editions)

Cut the Sky (Alex Roth, Wacław Zimpel, Hubert Zemler) - Esz Kodesz (Aion)

Greg Davis - BCA (01/28/2017) (self-released)

Elton Dean Quartet - Seven for Lee Variations: On Italian Roads, Vol. 2 (British Progressive Jazz; recorded 1979)

Frank Denyer - Screens - Octandre Ensemble (Another Timbre)

Chris Fisher-Lochhead - Wake Up the Dead - performances by Ben Roidl-Ward, Ensemble Dal Niente, JACK Quartet, Quince Ensemble (New Focus)

Gilded Form (Nick Millevoi, Otto Kokke, René Aquarius) - Gilded Form (Burning World)

Ben Goldberg/Todd Sickafoose/Scott Amendola - Here to There (Secret Hatch)

Guillermo Gregorio - Two Trios (ESP-Disk’)

Roland Kayn - La Ranar (Reiger Records Reeks)

Guy Klucevsek - Hope Dies Last - performances by Guy Klucevsek, Todd Reynolds, Alan Bern, Nathan Koci, Will Holshauser, Jenny Lin, Bachtopus, The Smudges, and Jerome Kitzke (Starkland)

Jo Kondo - Works for Piano 2015-2020 - Satoko Inoue (Now-ezz-thetics)

Daunik Lazro, Benjamin Duboc, Mathieu Bec - Standards Combustion (Dark Tree)

Matt McBane - Groundswell (single edit) - Sandbox Percussion (Cantaloupe)

Sergio Merce - Prayer to Humanity (Kvieto)

John Oswald - Sound of Sighs (FONY; available Dec. 1 only)

Charlemagne Palestine - DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz!!!!!!! (Blank Forms)

Prism Quartet with Arturo O’Farrill and Tony Arnold - Mending Wall - compositions by Arturo O’Farrill, Martin Bresnick, George Lewis, and Juri Seo (XAS)

Remembrance Quintet featuring Daniel Carter - Do You Remember (Sonboy)

Steven Schick - Weather Systems II: Soundlines – On Language and the Land - compositions by Iannis Xenakis, Vivian Fung, George Lewis, Lei Liang, Frederic Rzewski, Vinko Globokar, Roger Reynolds, and Sarah Hennies (Islandia)

Elliott Sharp - Occam’s Machete (Zoar)

tarotplane - Improvisations for Echo Guitar (self-released)

Dave Wilson - Ephemeral (Thelonious)

Wrest (Jack Wright, Evan Lipson, Ben Bennett) - Yaw (Palliative)

Yan Jun - contradictions (plays lu xun, žižek, baudrillard and beckett) (Reading Group)