For the Record is a weekly column that 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! If you’d like to submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, please email information to nightafternight@icloud.com. (Streams and downloads preferred.)
All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect the views of my employer.
Topspin.
New essays and takes continue to bubble up in the wake of The New York Times reassigning four prominent arts critics. The latest is from Richard Brody in The New Yorker, whose essay “In Defense of the Traditional Review” addresses the matter of its title intelligently and passionately.
I learned about the Brody essay from my longtime friend and colleague, New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, whose old-school blog, The Rest Is Noise, buzzes along productively without the assistance of algorithms, social-media debate, or Substack. (Increasingly I think he’s got the right idea.) As he reminds us, he took up the same subject himself in 2017, in a New Yorker essay titled “The Fate of the Critic in the Clickbait Age.”
Both Brody and Ross turn to past masters to help make their points. Brody quotes Pauline Kael: “Without a few independent critics, there’s nothing between the public and the advertisers.” Similarly, Ross cites Virgil Thomson, who famously called criticism “the only antidote we have to paid publicity.”
All of which said, it feels vaguely augurous to see in the same week another New Yorker staff writer and cultural critic, David Denby, mulling aloud about a certain veteran record reviewer-turned-unlikely and ubiquitous YouTube personality: “Can Dave Hurwitz Save Classical Recording?”
For whatever reason, I’m suddenly reminded of what the great trumpeter Lester Bowie said in “Jazz Death,” a composition on Congliptious, a 1968 album by the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble. The track begins with a question spoken aloud: “Is jazz as we know it dead?” Bowie plays around seven minutes of hair-curling unaccompanied trumpet, then drolly replies, “So you see, it all depends on what you know.”
The record I’d intended to highlight this week has been delayed for a bit, leaving me unprepared to go on about anything else. Instead, I’ll mention briefly that the new releases by John Also Bennett (meditative), Bitterviper (ruminative), and Shelley Burgon (contemplative) are all very special indeed. The ear-opening anthology The Alien Territory Archives: A Collection of Radical, Experimental, & Irrelevant Music from 1970s San Diego – the audio companion to a 2023 book by Bill Perrine – delivers precisely what the title describes, rewardingly. If you’re shopping on Bandcamp and you can stand to wait, add these titles to your wishlist now, and then come back and buy them next week on August 1, the next Bandcamp Friday.
Speaking of Bandcamp: this being the last Friday in July, 10 more titles from the Edition Wandelweiser back catalog have been added to the label’s Bandcamp page, including excellent releases by Antoine Beuger, Eva-Maria Houben, Craig Shepard, Tom Johnson, and Christian Wolff. Next month, the label will issue a batch of new albums for the first time since December 2023; included are promising discs from Houben (played by Nate Wooley), Michael Pisaro-Liu, and the duo of Christine Tavolacci and Katie Porter. The albums, listed below, will be available individually on August 17; before then, you can pick up all six for the discounted price of just 40 Euros; details here.
New this week.
Teddy Abrams - Preludes (New Amsterdam)
Agnostic Luddites - Music for Physically Modeled Piano - compositions by Brian Abbott, Manuel Morales, and Paul Newman (Redshift Music)
John Also Bennett - Στον Ελαιώνα / Ston Elaióna (Shelter Press)
Bitterviper (Nikos Veliotis, Taku Unami, Sarah Hennies, David Grubbs) - Bitterviper (Blue Chopsticks)
Shelley Burgon - The In Between (Thin Wrist)
Editrix (Wendy Eisenberg, Steve Cameron, Josh Daniel) - The Big E (Joyful Noise)
Aaron Helgeson - As I Write This: Songs & Solos of Aaron Helgeson - performances by Ryan Townsend Strand, Karina Kontorovitch, Modney, Donald Berman, Eric Umble, and Sharon Harms (New Focus)
Incapacitants - Chwalfa (Otoroku)
Kimmig-Studer-Zimmerlin - And George Lewis (Now-ezz-thetics; recorded 2018)
Tania León - Horizons, Raíces (Origins), Stride, Pasajes - London Philharmonic Orchestra/Edward Gardner, Karina Canellakis, Dima Slobodeniouk (London Philharmonic)
Sarah Nemtsov - Tzimtzum - Ensemble Nikel, WDR Sinfonieorchester/Peter Rundel (bastille musique)
oneL Sextet - Wild With Life (Orenda)
Ryan Packard - Garden Variety (Dinzu Artefacts)
Ivo Perelman - A Modicum of the Blues (Fundacja Słuchaj)
Tobias Picker - Nova - performances by Peter Serkin, The Manhattan Quartet, Emmanuel Ax, Lynn Harrell, Fred Sherry, and others (Bright Shiny Things)
Ramon & Jessica - Roses Are Blue (Infrequent Seams)
Rapoon - Collected Eclectic (self-released)
Brad Rose - A Life We Once Lived (quiet details)
Shelter Collective feat. Peni Candra Rini - Improvisations 1 (Out of Your Head)
Six Microphones - Environmental Studies (Line)
Pat Thomas - Sufi Women (scatterArchive)
Various artists - The Alien Territory Archives: A Collection of Radical, Experimental and Irrelevant Music from 1970’s San Diego - compositions and performances by Pauline Oliveros, Harry Partch, Diamanda Galas, Warren Burt, David Dunn, Robert Turman, Joji Yuasa, KIVA, Ernie Morgan, Peter Gordon, Kathy Acker, Alexina Louie, Kenneth Gaburo, and more (Nyahh)
Upcoming releases.
August 1.
Wayne Horvitz - Live Forever, Vol. 4: Pigpen: Berlin 94 (self-released)
August 8.
Marja Ahti/Manja Ristić - Transference (Erstwhile)
Leo Chadburn - Sleep in the Shadow of the Alternator (Library of Nothing)
Éric La Casa/Jérôme Noetinger - Off Tracks (Erstwhile)
August 15.
Giuseppe Ielasi/Jack Sheen - The Vestige (Black Truffle)
Zeena Parkins - Modesty of the Magic Thing (Tzadik)
August 17.
John Cage - Variations VI - Ensemble Daswirdas (Edition Wandelweiser)
Pierre Gerard - Incolore Blue (Edition Wandelweiser)
Eva-Maria Houben - Chanting Ballads - Nate Wooley (Edition Wandelweiser)
Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard, Michael Pisaro-Liu - Fata Morgana (Edition Wandelweiser)
Rahma Quartet - Mercy Is Called Down by Mercy to the Last (Edition Wandelweiser)
Christine Tavolacci & Katie Porter - Malosma (Edition Wandelweiser)
August 22.
Richard Carr - The Escarpment (Infrequent Seams)
August 29.
Jake Heggie/Gene Scheer - Intelligence - Janai Brugger, Jamie Barton, J'Nai Bridges, Houston Grand Opera/Kwamé Ryan (Houston Grand Opera)
September 5.
Fieldwork - Thereupon (Pi Recordings)
Arlene Sierra - Arlene Sierra, Vol. 4: Birds & Insects - Stephen Beck, Sarah Cahill (Bridge)
September 12.
Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson - Clavis Metrica - Ensemble Adapter (Col Legno)
September 19.
Weston Olencki - Broadsides (Outside Time)
Patrick Shiroishi - Forgetting Is Violent (American Dreams)
September 26.
Henry Threadgill and Listen Ship - Listen Ship (Pi Recordings)
October 10.
Ellen Fullman and The Living Earth Show - Elemental View (Room40)
The Necks - Disquiet (Northern Spy)
October 17.
Ted Hearne - Farming - The Crossing/Donald Nally (Deathbomb Arc)
October 31.
claire rousay - a little death (Thrill Jockey)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Thanks, Steve!