For the Record: Nov. 17, 2023.
A last-minute listing for a gig you can see wherever you are, a head-turning album from an unpronounceable act, and 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.
Before we get to this week’s new and upcoming recordings, a quick bump for a concert listing that arrived just after I sent out Tuesday’s missal. I added this gig to the web version of that newsletter, as well as the Master List, but here’s one more timely nudge cos it’s special… and if you’re not in NYC, there’s a stream available.
Trevor Watts & Jamie Harris
Jazz Gallery
1158 Broadway, 5th floor, NoMad
Saturday, Nov. 18 at 7:30 and 9:30pm; $33–$44, livestream tickets $22
jazzgallery.org
The Robert D. Bielecki Foundation hosts a rare New York City appearance by a bona fide legend of British jazz and free improvisation: saxophonist Trevor Watts, co-founder of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and longtime member of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra. Since the 1980s, Watts has pursued a passion for rhythm-driven styles from Africa and South America; here, he plays with percussionist Jamie Harris, a driving force behind Watts’s Celebration Band and his partner on the stripped-down, infectious 2022 release, Live in São Paulo.
Until this morning, I’d never encountered ⎤⎤⎤, the duo of Chantal Michelle and Grace Villamil. But three things made me pay attention to their self-titled debut release, out today on Superpang. The first was the label, an Italian imprint that consistently issues experimental music and sound art worth hearing. The second was a note the label sent with its Bandcamp solicitation: “the first week proceeds will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières.” The last was the participation of Patrick Shiroishi, who offers a re-worked version of the 29-minute title track. (Shiroishi, whose superb solo album I was too young to hear silence came out last Friday, is also on a high-energy blowing session released today, Diminished Borders, on Cacophonous Revival.)
“Working across performance and installation, they examine processes of sound obliteration through synthesis, electronics, found sounds, and vocalization,” the duo’s mission statement says. The self-titled collaboration that opens their album builds slowly from a low rumble of feedback, gradually accumulating new features and textures – some clearly voices, others less identifiable – as it proceeds inexorably towards its power-noise climax and subsequent denouement. Working in noisy processes can be exhilarating live but hit or miss on record; here, a sense of consideration, proportion, and balance leads to persuasive results.
The Shiroishi remix is fascinating in similar and different ways. Again, there’s a sense of direction and momentum embedded in all the ambiguity; Shiroishi retains textures and contours from the original source, but makes them intensely personal through what he adds, right from an opening that sounds very much like a needle coursing the grooves of a ancient shellac recording.
(Skip the next bit if you want to avoid spoiler-esque details.)
A bell tolls over a gently pulsing din, and children’s voices follow; a music box plays Bach, and voices distort as if broadcast from a considerable distance in space and time. Sounds evoking distress, both human and mechanical, preface a snatch of Cecil Taylor at the piano; a sudden silence creates a space for Shiroishi to whisper urgently lines of prose about a grandmother during wartime. A saxophone keens sweetly, as if wafting in from a parallel universe; a voice barks through a loudspeaker, the tone signifying authority: possibly military, possibly religious.
It’s presumably Shiroishi himself playing the fiery soliloquy at 16:20, a layer of muzzy distortion tipping meters into the red. Another Shiroishi, perhaps, offers distant, plaintive counterpoint 20 minutes in. The recorded choral hymn that emerges from the din five minutes later assumes an arresting ambiguity in context; the ending feels a bit like a nail driven in.
(If you skipped ahead, start reading again here.)
Shiroishi provides what seem to be strong leading clues concerning a critical piece of history, but renders things loosely enough for a listener to relate to their own past experiences. It’s a rigorous experience, and a cathartic one. If the source material from Michelle and Villamil resembles a journey, the Shiroishi remix feels more like an exorcism. Both reward patient, careful, and close listening—and even though it’s not a Bandcamp Friday, you know your payment is going to a worthy cause.
Don’t miss.
Another example of deeply beautiful, intensely personal sound art is out today: A Field Guide to Phantasmic Birds, by Kate Carr, on Lawrence English’s vital Room40 label. Carr, a sound painter of ceaseless ingenuity, describes this session as “All the birds I never recorded, and some I did.… Alive, unassailable; in a world we haven't ruined. In a field recording I never made.” I could say more, but do you need more?
The recorded encounters between master improvisers Derek Bailey and Paul Motian issued by Frozen Reeds as Duo in Concert – one in pristine audio and the other a noisy artifact – are an absolute thrill, the partners exactly as nimble and gracious as you’d hope. When the Roses Come Again, the newest serving of mountain music-concrète from multi-instrumentalist Daniel Bachman, is a prime example of an album that makes an instant impression, and yields more with each return pass. Spencer Zahn’s beautifully dreamy Statues II is available on its own as a download, or bundled with his previously released, similarly gorgeous Statues I (issued as a DL in August) as a double-LP.
Albums I look forward to spend more time with include Azure, by Jessika Kenney & Eyvind Kang; Seize the Means of Complexity, by Mattin; and Trances, by Jules Reidy. As yet unheard is Spider Season: Live at Roulette, a digital-only release from Nick Dunston.
Cxn.
Setting the record straight: Myra Melford’s new RogueArt release, Hear the Light Singing, which I cited among the new arrivals last week, evidently was bumped to today. (I won’t complain about an excuse to mention it again.)
New this week.
⎤⎤⎤ - ⎤⎤⎤ (Superpang; 2023)
Niko-Matti Ahti - Looking for a Ruler (Dinzu Artefacts)
Anenon - Moons Melt Milk Light (Tonal Union)
Daniel Bachman - When the Roses Come Again (Three-Lobed)
Derek Bailey & Paul Motian - Duo in Concert (Frozen Reeds; recorded 1900-91)
J.R. Bohannon - J.R. Bohannon Plays Vince Guaraldi (Astral Spirits)
Kate Carr - A Field Guide to Phantasmic Birds (Room40)
Drazek/Fuscaldo/Drake/Aoki/Jones/Abrams - June 22 (Astral Spirits)
Nick Dunston - Spider Season: Live at Roulette (Out of Your Head)
Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy - New Rudiment Candidates for Snare Drum (Dinzu Artefacts)
Samuel Goff/Camila Nebbia/Patrick Shiroishi - Diminished Borders (Cacophonous Revival)
Robert Gross - Penumbra - performances by Anna McKennon, Shana Oshiro, Drew Hosler, Matthew Salvaggio, and Cordova String Quartet (New Focus)
Hu Vibrational - Timeless (Meta)
Kenneth Jimenez - Sonnet to Silence (We Jazz)
Jessika Kenney & Eyvind Kang - Azure (Ideologic Organ)
Mattin - Seize the Means of Complexity (Xing)
mingjia - star, star (New Amsterdam)
Kelly Moran - Vesela (Warp)
ellen o - sparrows and doves (Gold Bolus; new vinyl issue of 2014 release)
Fabio Perletta - Nessun Legame con la Polvere (Room40)
Jules Reidy - Trances (Shelter Press)
salad - Riverside Ishiyama (Dinzu Artefacts)
Loren Stillman - Time and Again (Sunnyside)
Joshua Van Tassel - The Recently Beautiful (Backward Music)
Spencer Zahn - Statues II (Cascine)
Upcoming releases.
November 23
Lawrence English/Werner Dafeldecker - Tropic of Capricorn (Hallow Ground)
November 24
Sam Dunscombe - Two Forests (Black Truffle)
January 12
Julius Eastman - Femenine - Talea Ensemble, Harlem Chamber Players (Kairos)
February 2
Ches Smith - Laugh Ash (Pyroclastic)
February 9
Kali Malone - All Life Long (Ideologic Organ)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
Strongly recommend the new Daniel Bachman release. It’s a long form recording that perfectly melds his field recordings with his more familiar guitar/banjo/acoustics instruments in a seamless and atmospheric manner. It builds on the sonic approach of its precursor, Almanac Behind.