For the Record: June 25, 2021
For the Record is a weekly round-up of new and upcoming 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.)
After publication, new listings are incorporated into For the Record: The Master List, a continuously updated resource exclusively accessible to paying Night After Night subscribers, found here.
These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! To submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, email information to nightafternight@icloud.com.
Please note that all opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not express the views or opinions of my employer.
Album of the Week.
Gabriella Smith/Gabriel Cabezas
Lost Coast
(Bedroom Community)
<a href="https://gabrielcabezas.bandcamp.com/album/lost-coast">Lost Coast by Gabriella Smith, Gabriel Cabezas</a>
I can't imagine a scenario in which Lost Coast doesn't stand as one of my favorite albums of 2021 at year's end. This extraordinary recording is simultaneously a paean to nature, a lament for ruin wrought by wildfire devastation and climate change, and a celebration of friendship among its makers—composer Gabriella Smith, cellist Gabriel Cabezas, and producer Nadia Sirota.
Smith is a consistently fascinating creator, an artist beloved and boosted by the likes of Steve Reich, John Adams, and Gabriel Kahane. (Read and hear more here.) Cabezas is a versatile, resourceful instrumentalist, and a member of the chameleonic chamber band yMusic. Sirota is a tremendous violist, a yMusic member alongside Cabezas, a justly award-winning podcast host, and a generous, insightful curator.
The music, created by Smith not only for Cabezas but also with him, is novel, noble, and gripping. Also? The opening track is something completely new for both artists—and a total banger.
All of which said, I can't tell you anything more, because I'm going to be writing and talking just a wee bit about the album and its arresting opener, "Bard of a Wasteland," for my present daytime employer. I'll keep you posted.
Sacred Songs.
Michael Harrison
Seven Sacred Names
Michael Harrison, Roomful of Teeth, Ina Filip, Ashley Bathgate, Tim Fain, Caleb Burhans, Ritvik Yaparpalvi
(Cantaloupe Music)
<a href="https://michaelharrison.bandcamp.com/album/seven-sacred-names">Seven Sacred Names by Michael Harrison</a>
Since I couldn't review the recording I just proclaimed Album of the Week, I'll make it up to you by sharing a tiny review I wrote for the Goings On About Town section in the July 5 issue of The New Yorker, about an outrageously gorgeous album by composer and pianist Michael Harrison, released last week by the Bang on a Can imprint Cantaloupe Music.
This review is online now, and will be in the print issue arriving on Monday.
New This Week
Rose Bolton - The Lost Clock (Cassauna)
The City of Tomorrow - Blow - compositions by Franco Donatoni, Hannah Lash, and Esa-Pekka Salonen (New Focus)
Robert Curgenven - Tailte Cré-Umha (Bronze Lands) - Live at Cork Midsummer Festival (Recorded Fields Editions)
Angel Bat Dawid - Hush Harbor Mixtape Vol. 1: Doxology (International Anthem)
Nick DePinna - Nexus Remixes, Vol. 1 (Orenda)
Matt Evans - touchless (Whatever's Clever)
Adaya Godlevsky and Haggai Fershtman - Sonia (Chant)
Matthew Goodheart - Presences: Suite for Five Performers and Nine Instruments - Broken Ghost Consort (Infrequent Seams)
Keiji Haino - An unmistakably mistaken subject now in use (Superpang)
Tom Hall - Failed Attempts at Silence (Superpang)
Jim Haynes - When the Sky Burned (SIGE)
Eli Keszler - Icons (LuckyMe)
Adrian Knight - Nudes (Skyfiles 001) (Pink Pamphlet)
Konx-om-Pax - Cabin Fever EP (Superpang)
Min Xiao-Fen with Rez Abbasi - White Lotus (Inside Out Music)
Motion Sickness of Time Travel - If We Were Landscapes (self-released)
Jason Nazary - Spring Collection (We Jazz)
Steve Noble - solo (Empty Birdcage)
~Nois - Night Music - composition by Emma O'Halloran, remix by Darian Thomas (Records to Burn)
Joachim Nordwall - The Search for Intelligent Life on Earth (TakuRoku)
Passepartout Duo - Daylighting (AnyOne)
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog - Hope (Northern Spy)
Gyan Riley - Silver Lining (Tzadik)
Caroline Shaw & Sō Percussion - Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part (Nonesuch)
Laura Sinnerton - Inner Voices - compositions by Jimena Maldonado, Anselm McDonnell, Sarah Lianne Lewis, Carlijn Metselaar, Patrick Ellis, and Emily Abdy (Birmingham Record Company)
Gabriella Smith/Gabriel Cabezas - Lost Coast (Bedroom Community)
Taku Sugimoto - G major (2, 3, 5, 7 / III, IV, V) / VII / G major (2, 3, 5, 7 / III, IV, V) (TakuRoku)
Wayne Robert Thomas - Canticles of Bliss (Past Inside the Present)
Various artists - Harmonic Series II - compositions by Kali Malone, Duane Pitre, Catherine Lamb, Tashi Wada, Byron Westbrook, and Caterina Barbieri (Important)
White People Killed Them (Raven Chacon, John Dieterich, Marshall Trammel) - White People Killed Them (SIGE)
Leanne Zacharias - Music for Spaces - compositions by John Cage, Andrew Norman, Michael Oesterle, Emily Doolittle, and Eugene Friesen (Redshift Music)
Denny Zeitlin & George Marsh - Telepathy (Sunnyside)
Just Announced
July 1
Mattie Barbier - 146A (self-released)
July 2
Simon H. Fell/Alex Ward/Mark Wastell - Bailey: With Apologies to G. Brecht (Confront)
Jordan Munson - Make a Killing Year (self-released)
July 9
Vijay Gupta - When the Violin - compositions by Reena Esmail, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Johann Sebastian Bach (Vidya Projects)
July 16
Linda Buckley - Azure - Icebreaker (Rookery Hill)
Pluto Juice - Pluto Juice (Contagious Music)
Julius Eastman - Three Extended Pieces for Four Pianos - Melaine Dalibert, Nicolas Horvath, Stephane Ginsburgh, Wilhem Latchoumia (Sub Rosa)
July 20
alejandro t. acierto - we continue to sustain ourselves (Parlour Tapes+)
July 23
Martin Scherzinger - Scherzinger Etudes - Bobby Mitchell (New Focus)
John Zorn - Parables (Tzadik)
July 30
Matt Mitchell & Kate Gentile - Snark Horse [Box Set] (Pi Recordings)
Also in July
John Cage - Number Pieces - Apartment House (Another Timbre)
August 6
Borderlands Ensemble - the space in which to see - compositions by Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Jay Vosk, Vivian Fine, Charles Daniels, Alejandro Vera, and more (New Focus)
David Fulmer - Sky's Acetylene - New York Philharmonic (New Focus)
John Medeski - Crawlspace (Tzadik)
John Zorn - Nostradamus: The Death of Satan (Tzadik)
August 13
Danielle Eva Schwob - Out of the Tunnel - performances by PUBLIQuartet, Simon Boyar, Nathalie Joachim, Ashley Jackson, Kristi Shade, Wei-Yang Andy Lin, Michael Nicolas, and Orion Weiss (Innova)
Prism Quartet - Heritage/Evolution, Vol. 2 - compositions by Matthew Levy, Ravi Coltrane, Joe Lovano, and Chris Potter (XAS Records)
August 20
Jeremiah Cymerman - Citadels and Sanctuaries (5049 Records)
August 27
Douglas J. Cuomo - Seven Limbs - Nels Cline, Aizuri Quartet (Sunnyside)
orquesta del tiempo perdido - traantjes (Astral Editions)
September 3
Logan Strosahl with the Charles Rosen Ensemble - Book II of Arthur: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Sunnyside)
September 10
Jessica Ackerley and Daniel Carter - Friendship: Lucid Shared Dreams and Time Travel (577 Records)
Sarah Davachi - Antiphonals (Late Music)
David Grubbs & Ryley Walker - A Tap on the Shoulder (Husky Pants)