For the Record: June 7, 2024.
In praise of Peter Margasak and Bandcamp, fresh discoveries, and ineffable flow… 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.
The lead-in.
Anyone who reads my broadsides regularly almost certainly already knows about the monthly Best Contemporary Classical column veteran writer and concert curator Peter Margasak writes for Bandcamp Daily. It’s a reliably excellent survey of significant and appealing recent releases available on the popular music e-sales platform, accompanied with detailed, evocative prose.
What I hadn’t really grokked until this month’s tally is that the column actually doubles as a pretty choice playlist… you just press the play button that appears under the byline. Whether Margasak sequences particular pieces with intent or if it’s pure serendipity, the way the hallucinatory wobble of Du.0 sets up the blown-out grind of Modney, which sighs into the J. Pavone String Ensemble and onward to the delicate mechanics of Sarah Hennies… well, it feels a lot like volition.
Everything included herein is a hit for me – not invariably the case from month to month, but happily more often than not – including a wonderful discovery by composer Sophia Jani and violinist Teresa Allgaier, a crackpot holler from Jennifer Walshe & Tony Conrad, and an incredible Mara Winter project I’d somehow missed. When the list ends with a melancholy new opus from Catherine Lamb, I’m ready to go back and press play all over again.
I presume you’re already receiving Margasak’s Substack publication, Nowhere Street, a robust mix of reporting, conversation, and reviews rooted in Berlin but with branches extending to Chicago and points beyond. If not, best get to it.
Toby Driver, a composer and performer whose work intersects with and enriches myriad artistic communities – contemporary classical music, improvisation, experimental metal and more – has initiated a GoFundMe campaign essentially to perform an exorcism on one of his own past albums. Driver is most widely known for his work in the enigmatic avant-metal outfit Maudlin of the Well and its chameleonic successor, Kayo Dot; new-music cognoscenti might be more familiar with the chthonic rumble and autumnal glow of Bloodmist, the electroacoustic improv trio of Driver, Jeremiah Cymerman, and Mario Diaz de Leon.
Driver’s campaign is meant to raise funds that will let him buy his gorgeous, enigmatic 2018 song cycle They Are the Shield back from the label that issued it. Driver intends to remove the album from circulation, remix and remaster it, and alter one song in a manner he deems necessary.
“They Are the Shield” had quite a bit of bad luck and bad energy surrounding it throughout its life, and I’m hoping to repair some of that spiritual damage. I ask for your kind wishes, prayers, and energetic avatars to lift this music from its hole. If you can help in any way, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Since sharing his campaign on social media yesterday, Driver already has met and slightly exceeded his initial goal, and has pledged to direct all surplus funds to the performers on the album: violinists Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris (a.k.a. String Noise), keyboardist Kelly Moran, and drummer Brian Chase.
Read more about the campaign, its cause, and its goals here.
Album of the week.
This week’s don’t-miss album is from composer, violist, and Pulitzer Prize finalist Leilehua Lanzilotti, an artist who has come up for praise frequently around these parts. Her new release on the Innova label, the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky, comprises three compositions inspired by the bronze bells, ceramic rattles, and other creations of artist Toshiko Takaezu, the subject of a touring exhibition co-curated by Lanzilotti, Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within, currently on view at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City through July 28.
The album, available on translucent blue vinyl and in various download formats, features the exciting trio Longleash in For Toshiko, an elusive meditation for violin, cello, and piano, and the focused, versatile Sō Percussion in Sending Messages, a beautifully tactile quartet by turns hypnotic and shimmering.
The long title track, the audio component of a video installation included in the exhibition, features Lanzilotti playing with palpable focus on eight of Takaezu’s closed-form constructs. The audio is meant to let exhibition visitors hear the artist’s objects activated, but the overtone-rich sonic experience proves valid and engaging in isolation, too.
Grab the album today, see the exhibition if you can, and read more about both in an interview published by Art Currently, here. And don’t forget, if you visit the Noguchi Museum this Sunday, June 9, you can catch a performance by guitarists David Grubbs and Wendy Eisenberg at 3pm; details and tickets here.
New this week.
Altus - Mythos (Biophilia)
a0n0 - Exploders_We (Dinzu Artefacts)
Children of the Sun - Ofamfa (moved-by-sound; originally released 1971)
Léo Dupleix - Resonant Trees (Black Truffle)
John Escreet - The Epicenter of Your Dreams (Blue Room Music)
Billy Gomberg - Nanahari Edit (Dinzu Artefacts)
Devin Gray - Most Definitely (Rataplan)
Lisa Illean - arcing, stilling, bending, gathering - performances by Explore Ensemble, Juliet Fraser, GBSR Duo, and Sydney Symphony Orchestra (NMC Recordings)
Alexi Kenney - Shifting Ground - compositions by Angélica Negrón, Eve Beglarian, Salina Fisher, and Matthew Burtner, with additional music by Nicola Matteis, Nicola Matteis Jr., J.S. Bach, Robert Schumann, and Joni Mitchell (Bright Shiny Things)
Adrian Knight - Solo Keyboard Words (Skyfiles 004) (pink pamphlet)
Charlie Kohlhase’s Explorers Club - A Second Life (Mandorla Music)
Leilehua Lanzilotti - the sky in our hands, our hands in the sky - performances by Leilehua Lanzilotti, Longleash, and Sō Percussion (Innova)
Frank London & The Elders - Spirit Stronger Than Blood (ESP-Disk’)
Michelle Lou and Stefan Maier - Live at UCSD (Dinzu Artefacts)
Ada Rave - In search of a new world (Relative Pitch)
The Rhythm Method - Pastorale - compositions by Paul Pinto, Marina Kifferstein, and Lewis Nielson (New Focus)
Akio Suzuki - Stone (Room40; originally issued in 1994)
Asher Tuil - duos (self-released)
Kojiro Umezaki & Hub New Music - a distance, intertwined - compositions by Takuma Itoh, Chad Cannon, Kojiro Umezaki, Sun-Young Park, and Angel Lam (In a Circle)
Upcoming releases.
June 14
Andy Akiho - BeLonging - Andy Akiho, Imani Winds (Aki Rhythm Productions)
Michael Mizrahi - Dreamspace - compositions by Andrea Mazzariello, David Werfelmann, Mark Dancigers, Joanne Metcalf, Evan Williams, Yiheng Yvonne Wu, Chiayu Hsu, and Alan Shockley (Sono Luminus)
Spencer Zahn - Live at Unheard (Pique-nique)
June 21
Mark Dresser - In the Shadow of a Mad King (Tzadik)
John Zorn - Her Melodious Lay - Julian Lage, Gyan Riley (Tzadik)
June 28
Ensemble Volcanic Ash - To March Is To Love (Cuneiform)
Kenneth Gaburo - Elegy and The Widow - University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra/James Dixon, Nina Steefel, Burr McWilliams, William Leyerle, others unidentified (Neuma)
Janel and Anthony - New Moon in the Evil Age (Cuneiform)
Zachary Mezzo - Proximity (cmntx)
July 9
Anastasia Clarke - SELF/WORK (Soap Library)
July 19
Morten Duun - Code Breaker (cmntx)
John Zorn - Ballades - Brian Marsella, Jorge Roeder, Ches Smith (Tzadik)
John Zorn - Hannigan Sings Zorn, Volume One - Barbara Hannigan, Stephen Gosling (Tzadik)
July 23
Cristina Altamura and Adam Sliwinski - the bitKlavier Commissions - compositions by Pascal Le Boeuf, Annika Socolofsky, Jenny Beck, Bora Yoon, Chris Douthitt, Noah Fishman, Nate May, Molly Herron, and Lainie Fefferman (Many Arrows Music)
Dan Trueman - Preludes for bitKlavier - Cristina Altamura and Adam Sliwinski (Many Arrows Music)
August 2
Pat Thomas & BleySchool - Where? (577 Records)
August 9
Bosque Vacio (Leena Lee and Guillermo Guevara) - Cantera Oriente (Flaming Pines)
August 21
John Blum Quartet featuring Marshall Allen - Deep Space (Astral Spirits)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Gonna pile on the love for Peter Margasak and "Nowhere Street" - a Dada model since his days at the Reader for how to engage and write about community.