For the Record: September 27, 2024.
Saxophonist and composer Travis Laplante connects with a place of innocence on 'The Golden Lock'—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.
Travis Laplante
The Golden Lock
New Focus (CD, DL)
There are quite a few major releases out this week – see Bonus tracks. below for evidence – but the album bending my ear more than any other is The Golden Lock, by saxophonist and composer Travis Laplante, whose name should be familiar for his work with Little Women and Battle Trance. Even for listeners well versed in that first band’s lacerating hardcore gnarl and the intricately textured walls of sound produced by the latter, The Golden Lock likely will surprise—not least because Laplante plays with such naked directness and emotion.
The project started during a 2021 stay at an artist retreat in Maine, Laplante reveals in a program note. “I believe it was because of the energetic container of the residency that I was able to begin composing from a place of innocence and oneness, without my self-critical mind interfering as much as if we were at home,” he states. “I felt vulnerable enough to compose simple melodies and harmonies without feeling the need to demonstrate technical skill to prove myself as a musician or to feel self-worth.”
What resulted was a substantial, through-composed chamber piece for a quintet of improvisers, with Laplante’s tenor surrounded and supported by an unorthodox complement of pianist Erika Dohi, harpist Charles Overton, bassist Lizzie Burns, and Eduardo Leandro on hand drums and percussion. The players achieve a thrilling equipoise, Laplante first among equals and everyone sharing in the lyrical labor. Seven movements are designated, gathered on the record into two long tracks of three movements apiece plus a coda.
I hope it’s taken as the extraordinarily high compliment I mean when I say I sometimes was reminded of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays: not in terms of idiom, precisely, but rather in a sense of dramatic pacing, melding of written and improvised materials, balance of simplicity and intricacy, and openhearted lyricism I associate with Metheny/Mays. Latter-years Michael Brecker also crossed my mind, likely for the plainspoken potency of Laplante’s playing. And while feels somehow inappropriate to single out any one member of this consistently fine supporting cast, I feel compelled to cite Dohi’s especially breathtaking grace and sympathy.
I’ve been admiring The Golden Lock ever since Laplante sent it my way in July, and I’ve listened again three times in succession this morning, appreciation growing each time. If you’ve read this far, stop now and listen to the closing track, Part 7 of the composition, which distills the album’s specific sound world and balletic grace into just five minutes. You will not regret it.
Lastly, Laplante & Co. will celebrate their new release next Thursday, Oct. 3, at Roulette in Brooklyn. More than a release party, the show amounts to a full-blown composer portrait, including premiere performances of recent Laplante pieces by JACK Quartet, Sō Percussion, and the duo of Laplante and Dohi.
Bonus tracks.
There’s a new album today from Thumbscrew, titled Wingbeats—a self-recommending proposition since guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Michael Formanek, and drummer Tomas Fujiwara comprise one of the best working creative-music bands around. I haven’t heard it yet, but no question it’s mandatory—it’s Thumbscrew.
Pianist Kris Davis also has a must-hear trio album with bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake, Run the Gauntlet, out today. Davis is hosting a Listening Party on Bandcamp this afternoon at 5pm EST if you’re eager to hear the entire album and not just the preview tracks—but the whole thing is streaming already on the usual platforms.
One more must-hear today: Planetarium, by guitarist and composer Ben Monder, from whom we’ve heard too little in recent years… maybe because this triple-CD epic was already underway. I’ve barely begun to plumb its depths, but everything I’ve heard suggests Monder has unlocked new levels of prowess and achievement.
New this week.
Buechi–Hellmüller–Jerjen - Pink Mountain Sagas (Intakt)
Tim Brady - Imagine Many Guitars (Redshift Music)
Bruce Brubaker - Eno Piano 2 (InFiné)
Kevin Corcoran & Andrew Weathers - peripheral residue (Editions Glomar)
Cosa Brava (Fred Frith) - Z Sides (Klanggalerie)
Kris Davis - Run the Gauntlet (Pyroclastic)
Roger Eno - The Skies: Rarities (Deutsche Grammophon)
Bill Frisell/Andrew Cyrille/Kit Downes - Breaking the Shell (Red Hook)
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s (Exit) Knarr - Breezy (Sonic Transmissions)
Travis Laplante - The Golden Lock (New Focus)
Ben Monder - Planetarium (Sunnyside)
Michael J. Park - Performing Memories (Redshift Music)
Tam Thi Pham/Yukiko Shiina Sakurazawa/Minami Takei/Masahide Tokunaga - Farri Gathering (Meenna)
Quiet Music Ensemble - sour, shiny, glinting, shuddering - compositions by Irene Murphy, Danny McCarthy, and Mick O’Shea (farpoint recordings)
Michael Ranta, Takehisa Kosugi - Multiple Musics (Metaphon; recorded 1987)
Raphael Rogiński - Plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes (Unsound; 2015 recording, expanded reissue)
Dave Seidel - Post-Orientalism No. IV: Dream Inside a Dream (Post Orientalism Music)
Sun Yizhou - 110v, 220v (Hitorri)
Ohad Talmor - Back to the Land (Intakt)
Thumbscrew (Mary Halvorson, Michael Formanek, Tomas Fujiwara) - Wingbeats (Cuneiform)
VONDISY (Chris Child & Micah Frank) - VONDISY 1 (Foil)
Yngel - Silva (130701)
Upcoming releases.
October 2
Ben Diamond - Voyage: Music for Guitar and Electronics - compositions by Luke Blackmore, Krists Auznieks, Andrew Staniland, Amy Brandon, and Marco Neri (Redshift Music)
October 4
Joshua Roman - immunity - compositions by Joshua Roman, Allison Loggins-Hull, Caroline Shaw, Mark Summer, George Crumb, Johann Sebastian Bach, Krzysztof Penderecki, Leonard Cohen, and Kerry Livgren (Bright Shiny Things)
October 18
Jihye Chang - Boston Etudes - compositions by Dan VanHassel, Eun Young Lee, Yu-Hui Chang, Ketty Nez, Marti Epstein, John McDonald, William David Cooper, and Stratis Minakakis (New Focus)
October 25
Alex Cunningham and Eli Wallace - The Terrible Habit of Theatre (Storm Cellar/Personal Archives)
Roland Dahinden - Theatre of the Mind - Gareth Davis (Moving Furniture)
Snowdrops (Christine Ott, Mathieu Gabry) - Singing Stones (Volume 1) (Gizeh)
October 26
Ariel Horowitz - hearth - compositions by Ariel Horowitz, Ede Poldini/Fritz Kreisler, William Grant Still, and Karol Szymanowski (Bright Shiny Things)
November 1
Works (Michel Gentile, Daniel Kelly, Rob Garcia) - Scouring for the Elements (Connection Works)
November 8
Sarah Davachi and Dicky Bahto - Music for a Bellowing Room (Late Music)
Day Dream (Steve Rudolph, Drew Gress, Phil Haynes) - Duke & Strays Live (CornerStoreJazz)
November 15
John Hollenbeck - Colouring Hockets - John Hollenbeck, Patricia Brennan, Marcio Doctor, Matt Moran, NDR Bigband/JC Sanford (Flexatonic)
Oaagaada - Music Of (We Jazz)
Kate Soper - The Romance of the Rose - Ty Bouque, Phillip Bullock, Ariadne Greif, Anna Schubert, Devony Smith, Kate Soper, Lucas Steele, Wet Ink Ensemble/Eric Wubbels (New Focus)
November 20
Mauricio Moquillaza - Mauricio Moquillaza (Buh)
November 22
Squanderers (Wendy Eisenberg, David Grubbs, Kramer) - If a Body Meet a Body (Shimmy-Disc)
November 29
Evan Parker - The Heraclitean Two-Step (False Walls)
December 6
Alvin Curran - ARCHEOLOGY // ARCHEOLOGIA (Room40)
Ethel with Allison Loggins-Hull - Persist - compositions by Allison Loggins-Hull, Xavier Muzik, Migiwa Miyajima, Sam Wu, and Leilehua Lanzilotti (Sono Luminous)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.
I’ve been a fan of Travis Laplante since I caught Battle Trance at Fast Forward Austin about 10 years ago. They performed Palace of Wind in its entirety. I had never heard anything like it.