For the Record: Jan. 26, 2024.
A fiery new album in tune with the times from Tim Berne, plus dozens of listings for new 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.
EDIT Jan. 28, 2023: I’ve added a significant clarification to the end of this post.
No matter how closely I try to keep tabs on all the music and news that comes my way, every now and then something slips between the cracks. An email goes astray, or there’s a place to be and a train to catch, or whatever. It’s a special cause for facepalm, even headdesk, when it involves an artist whose work I’ve admired and championed for decades.
So, let the record show that saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Tim Berne released an absolute rager of an album last Friday on the Swiss label Intakt. Titled Candid, it’s the debut recording from Sunny Five, a fiery outfit that flanks Berne with not just one but two of his most frequent and effective guitar foils, Marc Ducret and David Torn. The band is completed by Devin Hoff on electric bass and Berne’s steadiest go-to percussionist of late, Ches Smith.
Candid includes four pieces, two of which – “Scratch” (19:03) and “Floored” (35:12) – qualify as epics of the sort that emerged during the Bloodcount days of yore. The other two, “Piper” (9:01) and “Craw” (8:41) are bagatelles, by comparison.
Despite the heavy presence of two decidedly electric guitars, there’s plenty to distinguish Ducret, who I reckon is playing the squiggly lines in the left channel, and Torn, presumably responsible for the flood of texture to the right. Nothing’s really that cut-and-dried, though; as guitarist Brandon Ross observes in the liner notes, “There are moments in the music where it may be impossible to tell who's doing what... and by what means...”
Maybe that’s the point. Perhaps a record filled with uncertainties is ideally suited to our uncertain times. Candid feels very much in tune with the the moment of its arrival: Even when players lay out and there’s more space in the sound field, the predominant mode is heavy. But don’t be in a hurry to characterize the album as primal scream therapy—along with the gut-busting, and characteristic of any Berne project, come moments of sheer catharsis, like the anthemic tone he strikes not quite 10 minutes into “Scratch,” which comes hard on the heels of some of the densest ensemble scree he’s ever committed to record. The same tune’s scorched-earth aftermath is a thing of haunted, desolate beauty.
Not to suggest there are no instant pleasures; in fact, they’re found throughout this merrily apocalyptic session, in individual players’ gestures, serendipitous collusions, and ensemble moves like the itchy skeletal funk that opens “Craw,” the tub-thumping rumble halfway through “Floored,” and the genuinely freaky industrial-dub portion that creeps up around 24 minutes into that same track.
But Berne’s always been more about long-term relationships than instant crushes, producing records that reveal more and more as you come back to them not just over subsequent days, but over months and years. Candid is a tough nut, even by the standard of an artist who’s never found an envelope he didn’t want to push. (Insert joke about shoving stacks of self-released albums in bubble mailers through endless mail slots.) But give the record the time it’s due, and Berne’s arcane designs become more evident.
EDIT Jan. 28, 2023: After I sent out this newsletter on Friday, Tim Berne got in touch to clarify that Candid is not actually a Berne record per se, but a collective project.
Berne’s clarification indicates that the mode of musical decision-making was more shared than dictated, but my fulsome praise for the results remains intact.
New this week.
Dante Boon - Dreamings - Nicolas Horvath (Collection 1001 Notes)
Celer - Gems I (Room40)
Robert Dick & Stephan Haluska - Crop Circles (Infrequent Seams)
Jürg Frey - String Quartet No. 4 - Quatuor Bozzini (Collection QB)
Philip Glass - Philip Glass Solo (Orange Mountain Music)
Old Mountain feat. Tony Malaby - Another State of Rhythm (Clean Feed)
Carlos Simon - Tales: A Folklore Symphony - National Symphony Orchestra/Giandrea Noseda (NSO Media)
Taku Sugimoto - Since 2016 (Full Spectrum)
Alan Tomlinson - at the Red Rose (scatterArchive)
Sam Weinberg Trio - Plays Quarter Notes and Other Notes (self-released)
Rebeka Rusjan Zajc - Prelude (Clean Feed)
Upcoming releases.
January 29
Jason Eckardt - Passage - JACK Quartet (Kairos)
January 30
Wadada Leo Smith & Joe Morris - Earth’s Frequencies (Fundacja Słuchaj)
February 16
Matthew Goodheart & Broken Ghost Consort - Five Apparitions (Infrequent Seams)
March 6
Luc Vitk - Environment (Infrequent Seams)
March 15
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis - The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis (Impulse!)
Michael Vincent Waller - Moments Remixes (play loud! productions)
March 22
Christopher Hoffman - Vision Is the Identity (Out of Your Head)
Jessica Meyer - I long and seek after (New Focus)
Dustin O’Halloran - 1 0 0 1 (Deutsche Grammophon)
Bill Orcutt - Four Guitars Live (Palilalia)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.