For the Record: October 11, 2024.
A powerful statement that goes down smoothly from Immanuel Wilkins—plus dozens more 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.
Immanuel Wilkins
Blues Blood
Blue Note (CD, LP, DL)
Saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Immanuel Wilkins is an artist whose new albums consistently prompt anticipation, and Blues Blood, the new album he’s released today, is among the most absorbing projects I’ve heard all year, a mixture of poised, animated playing – and singing, too, courtesy of Ganavya, June McDoom, Yaw Agyeman, and Cécile McLorin Salvant – with sampled noises and voices, smoothly integrated.
Blues Blood the album is only part of the story: an audio-only presentation of a multimedia performance piece that Wilkins has been working on for some years now… check out the integration of onstage culinary artistry in this 2021 Roulette performance, for instance.
That said, the album has no trouble standing up on its own. Writing for BOMB, Brent Hayes Edwards positions Blues Blood in the exalted company of such epochal statements as Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige, Sonny Rollins’s Freedom Suite, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln’s We Insist!, and Wynton Marsalis’s Blood on the Fields—“what Ellington called a ‘social-significance thrust,’ music explicitly designed as a ‘tone parallel’ to the black experience,” Edwards writes.
Posterity will judge, of course, but there’s no denying Wilkins has demonstrated his vision and ambition resoundingly. What’s more surprising, as Edwards also goes on to suggest, is the new project’s poise and reserve, especially compared to more incendiary prior statements. He cites “Ferguson–An American Tradition” from Wilkins’s 2020 debut album, Omega, while I thought instantly of the rousing, roiling “Rise” from the 2022 follow-up, The 7th Hand.
There’s no denying the fiery intensity of Wilkins’s playing on “AFTERLIFE RESIDENCE TIME,” but on the whole, surfaces here are polished so smooth that the intricacy of the conception and arrangements creeps up on you rather than grabbing you by the collar. “Blues Blood feels airy and celestial, meant to be a soothing balm for anyone searching for peace, and for Black people trying to reconcile history in a country that tries to erase it,” the album bio says. Let it wash over you in its own manner, and fill you up with its soulful profundity.
Bonus tracks.
Is The Susceptible Now, the new Tyshawn Sorey Trio release on Pi Recordings, an album comprising four long pieces, or a single symphonic-length conception in four conjoined movements? The segues from one track to the next beg the question; either way, it’s a master class in grand design expressed through elemental means, with Sorey, pianist Aaron Diehl, and bassist Harish Raghavan all contributing in equal measure.
Dawn, the new debut recording from the duo Grand Electric, is an instantly appealing new showcase for Mark Dancigers on electric guitar and Aaron Wunsch on piano, each providing original compositions meant to move the combination of these two instruments into new territory. Think of post-minimalist patterns à la recent Steve Reich or Marc Mellits, wedded to an airy, exhilarating melodicism and harmonic sophistication reminiscent of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays – yep, second time I’ve evoked that duo lately; see also here – and you’re in the right ballpark. I especially admire how Dancigers goes toe-to-toe with Wunsch in using his pedals expressively. New Yorkers, take note: Grand Electric plays Wunsch’s free concert series Music Mondays on Monday, Oct. 14, appearing alongside ModernMedieval Voices and flutist Alex Sopp; you can read more and make reservations here.
New this week.
October 11
Christian Dillingham - Halcyon (Greenleaf Music)
Luc Ferrari - Complete Works 08 (Maison ONA)
Grand Electric (Mark Dancigers and Aaron Wunsch) - Dawn (Bright Shiny Things)
Tim Kinsella & Jenny Pulse - Broken Aquarium/The Viscosity (Astral Editions)
Angel Lin - All of These Are in Me (Full Spectrum)
Russ Lossing - Inventions: A Suite of Improvisations (Aqua Piazza)
Rob Mazurek Quartet - Color Systems (RogueArt)
John McCowen - Mundanas VII-XI - John McCowen, Madison Greenstone (Mengi)
eldritch Priest - Dormitive Virtue (Halocline Trance)
Jason Robinson - Ancestral Numbers II (Playscape)
Jenny Scheinman - All Species Parade (Royal Potato Family)
Craig Shepard - On Foot: Aubervilliers (Infrequent Seams)
Tyshawn Sorey - The Susceptible Now (Pi Recordings)
Immanuel Wilkins - Blues Blood (Blue Note)
Upcoming releases.
October 15
Frank London - In the City of God (Borscht Beat)
October 25
Patrick Yim - One: New Music for Unaccompanied Violin - compositions by Ilari Kaila, Juri Seo, Takuma Itoh, Páll Ragnar Pálsson, Matthew Schreibeis, and John Liberatore (New Focus)
November 15
David Dunn - Music, Language and Environment: Environmental Sound Works 1973–1985 (Nyahh)
Foster Bennett Wick - Carne Vale (Relative Pitch)
Ethan Iverson - Playfair Sonatas - performances by Miranda Cuckson, Makoto Nakura, Carol McGonnell, Mike Lormand, Taimur Sullivan, and Tim Leopold (Urlicht AudioVisual)
Philip Jeck - rpm - contributions from Fennesz, Gavin Bryars, Chris Watson, Rosy Parlane, Cris Cheek, Claire M Singer, Faith Coloccia, David Sylvian & Hildur Guðnadóttir, Jah Wobble & Deep Space, Drums Off Chaos, Chandra Shukla, and Jana Winderen (Touch)
Zeena Parkins - Dam Against the Spring Tide (Relative Pitch)
Trance Map (Evan Parker & Matthew Wright) - Horizons Held Close (Relative Pitch)
November 18
michaela turcerová - alene et (mappa)
November 22
Haptic - Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions (Line)
Jeff Parker ETA IVtet - The Way Out of Easy (International Anthem)
November 29
Passepartout Duo - Argot (self-released)
December 6
Adam Tendler - Inheritances - compositions by Laurie Anderson, Missy Mazzoli, John Glover, Pamela Z, Scott Wollschleger, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Timo Andres, inti figgis-vizueta, Nico Muhly, Marcos Balter, Mary Prescott, Ted Hearne, Angélica Negrón, Christopher Cerrone, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Devonté Hynes (New Amsterdam)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.