For the Record: June 21, 2024.
More vital Julius Eastman from Wild Up… new must-hear albums from Matthew Shipp, Scott Wollschleger, Byron Westbrook, and more… plus listings for dozens 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.
Album of the week.
There’s an especially mystical quality about the latest installment in the ever-illuminating Julius Eastman series the bicoastal new-music band Wild Up has been recording for the New Amsterdam label: three out of four pieces on the album deal explicitly with religion or religiosity. In the opening work, Our Father, a regal, multitracked Davóne Tines sings a chantlike duet over somber strings.
Tines also provides a robustly proclamatory performance of Prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc, prefacing an intensely focused rendition of The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc by cellist Seth Parker Woods, also multitracked.
Pianist Richard Valitutto is featured in the album’s final work, Piano 2, a chromatic fantasy quite unlike its companion pieces, ranging in tone from contemplative to heroic. Its inclusion makes the album all the more illuminating, and Valitutto’s essay about coming to know, admire, and champion Eastman’s music is a rewarding companion.
If you’re reading this on Friday, June 21, you can stream this entire album today at 2pm EST on Bandcamp, accompanied by a live chat with Wild Up members; details here.
Bonus tracks.
There’s not just been a lot of Matthew Shipp music lately; there’s been a lot of outstanding Matthew Shipp music lately. The Data is a two-disc solo recital from RogueArt, a vital Parisian label that not only has documented Shipp’s music, but also has documented the documentation of Shipp’s music, exploring and contextualizing the growing portion of the pianist’s substantial canon on the label with Singularity Codex, a richly fascinating book by Clifford Allen.
Shipp has recorded solo before, but this session is, no pun intended, singular; maybe recording on Merkin Hall’s mellow Steinway made Shipp mindful of several centuries’ worth of ghosts. I hear Bach and Duke and Monk, a lineage Shipp illustrates his fitness to join. Together with Magical Incantation, his most recent duo with saxophonist Ivo Perelman, and New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz, his latest trio session with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker, The Data completes a hat trick of essential recent Shipp.
If I’ve comparatively less to say just now about Between Breath, the newest album by composer Scott Wollschleger, chalk it up to a feeling that I’ve yet to give this collection its temporal due—which is fine, really, since Wollschleger has always been an artist whose creations reveal themselves fully over time.
That’s not to say the four pieces on the album don’t make an immediate impression, especially as delivered by the assemblage of champions at hand: you can’t fail to register the bristling violin/viola duo Violain; the visceral thump and howl of the titular composition, for piano and trombone; the enigmatic voice-and-piano piece Anywhere, where threads go, it all goes well, or the staggering violin monodrama Secret Machine no. 7.
According to a note by New Focus label boss Daniel Lippel, Wollschleger envisioned these disparate works coming together as a single extended narrative. The more I listen, the more I grow convinced. It’s not music for casual backgrounding, but give it your full attention and you’ll be amply rewarded.
Several years have passed since we last heard from Byron Westbrook, an electronic composer and sound artist who longed played a vital role in New York City’s musical ecosphere. He’s based in Los Angeles now, which might explain a dearth of updates, but Translucents, new today on the consistently fascinating imprint Shelter Press, is a major statement.
Begun in 2016, the 41-minute composition “is rooted in the experiential phenomena of time; more specifically the cohabitation of multiple temporalities within a single piece,” Westbrook explains in a note. His assemblage of sonic vignettes is theatrical, architectural, and unfailingly musical; whether you’re well versed in his music or a complete newcomer, you’ll be well-served by an encounter with this arresting project.
Clearing, the newest instrumental meditation from Powers/Rolin Duo – Jen Powers on hammered dulcimer, Matthew J. Rolin on guitars and sounds – is a thing in which to get swept up blissfully, abandoning worldly concerns… something Will Oldham says with words more numerous and evocative in a text that accompanies the album’s release. Minimalists, New Agers, and folk freaks will all find common cause herein.
Last but not least, Stífluhringurinn is the newest creation from Icelandic composer Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson, a charter member of the foundational Reykjavik experimental-music cadre S.L.Á.T.U.R. Gunnarsson is well versed in Icelandic folk music, improvisation, extended techniques, alternative tuning systems, and so on, all of which implies there’s some manner of formal rigor underpinning the sensations of gentle chaos and companionable anarchy his music tends to exude. The recording is available to download, of course, but Gunnarson has also packaged it in extremely limited editions on CD with handmade art, and on LP in one-copy-only bespoke “upcycled” sleeves. Irreducible and magical.
Now if you’ll excuse me, must go dive into this new surprise drop from Tim Berne, Aurora Nealand, and Mark Helias…
New this week.
David Birchall, Kate Carr and Tullis Rennie - Zippered Time, Winged Dialogue (Flaming Pines)
Black Decelerant - Reflections, Vol. 2: Black Decelerant (RVNG Intl.)
Kate Carr - Midsummer London (self-released)
Mark Dresser - In the Shadow of a Mad King (Tzadik)
Benjamin Duboc - Oratorio - Jeanne Benameur, Ensemble Icosikaihenagone (Dark Tree)
Eve Essex - The Fabulous Truth (Soap Library)
Giocomo Fiore - Lost Horse Wash Drone (Other Minds)
Charles Gayle/Milford Graves/William Parker - WEBO (Black Editions; recorded 1991)
Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson - Stífluhringurinn (Carrier)
Eva-Maria Houben - breathing practices (Kvieto)
Bill Laswell - Akashic Bassmatter Chapter 2 (self-released)
Lucy Liyou - +82 K-Pop Star (self-released)
Andy Moor, Marta Warelis - Escape (Relative Pitch)
Aurora Nealand, Mark Helias, Tim Berne - Live at the 188 Club (Screwgun)
Powers/Rolin Duo - Clearing (Astral Editions)
David Rosenboom - Future Travel (Black Truffle; originally issued 1981)
Elliott Sharp, Sally Gates, Tashi Dorji - Ere Guitar (Intakt)
Matthew Shipp - The Data (RogueArt)
Stemeseder Lillinger Quartet - Umbra II (Intakt)
Manfred Werder - für eine(n) oder einige ausführende(n) - Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (Kvieto)
Byron Westbrook - Translucents (Shelter Press)
Wild Up - Julius Eastman, Vol. 4: The Holy Presence (New Amsterdam)
Scott Wollschleger - Between Breath - performances by andPlay, Anne Rainwater, William Lang, Lucy Dhegrae, Nathaniel LaNasa, and Miranda Cuckson (New Focus)
Charles Wuorinen - Electric Quartet - Bodies Electric (New Focus)
John Zorn - Her Melodious Lay - Julian Lage, Gyan Riley (Tzadik)
Upcoming releases.
June 26
Christopher Hoffman - Chicago (Out of Your Head)
June 28
Sachi Kobayashi - Lamentations (Spirituals)
July 5
Nick DePinna - Nexus Music, Vol. 2 (Orenda)
Fotina Naumenko - Bespoke Songs - compositions by Jonathan Newman, Jennifer Jolley, Carrie Magin, and Benedict Sheehan (New Focus)
July 12
Ted Byrnes & Michael Foster - Solfège (Torn Light)
Rebecca Lloyd-Jones - Between Structures (Populist)
Object Collection - HOUSECONCERT (A Wave Press)
Natsuki Tamura & Satoko Fujii - Aloft (Libra)
July 15
Joëlle Léandre - Lifetime Rebel (RogueArt)
July 19
Elori Saxl - Drifts and Surfaces - Third Coast Percussion, Tigue, Henry Solomon, Robby Bowen, Elori Saxl (Western Vinyl)
SORBD (Edith Steyer, Mia Dyberg, Rieko Okuda, Isabel Rößler, Sofia Borges) - Wild Peacock in Transit (Relative Pitch)
July 26
Devin Maxwell - Timebending (Infrequent Seams)
Raphael Rogiński - Žaltys (Unsound)
August 2
Hubbub - abb abb abb (Relative Pitch)
Onceim - Laminaire (Relative Pitch)
August 9
Leo Chadburn - The Primordial Pieces (Library of Nothing)
August 16
Jessica Ackerley - All of the Colours Are Singing (AKP Recordings)
Chuck Johnson - Sun Glories (Western Vinyl)
August 30
Laurie Anderson - Amelia (Nonesuch)
September 1
Eventless Plot/Yorgos Dimitriadis - Entanglements (Innovo Editions)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.