Jazz Recommendations – 2018

Feb 1 2019

Album of the Day: “BEAK” by Jordan Glenn

 

Artist:  Jordan Glenn

Album:  Beak

Label:  Geomancy Records

Style:  Avant-groove

Favorite Track: “Coda 2 – This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things”

Music from:  Oakland, CA.

What I like about it:  I like how catchy melodic fragments disappear into a fog of dissonance and electronic chaos, and how sometimes that chaos is synthesized down to murmurs and slight agitations of motion.  I like how much fun this recording is, and how that holds true even when the music intrigues me to the precipice of deep contemplation.  Any album with a tuneful persona but so massively wild that it makes me think what the hell is this even the first time I hear it is going to get a write-up.

Your album personnel:  Jordan Glenn (conductor), Karl A.D. Evangelista (guitar), Will Northlich-Redmond (guitar, kalimba), Mark Clifford (vibraphone, marimba), Max Judelson (acoustic bass), Robert Woods-LaDue (percussion), Robert Lopez (percussion) and Geneva Harrison (drums).

Available at:  Bandcamp

Listen to more of the album on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Be sure to check out the artist’s site.

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Jan 31 2019

Album of the Day: “You Have Options” by Houle, Hawkins and Eisenstadt

 

Artist:  François Houle, Alexander Hawkins and Harris Eisenstadt

Album:  You Have Options

Label:  Songlines Recordings

Style:  Ghost of jazz past

Favorite Track:  “The Pitts”

Music from:  Vancouver, Canada & Oxford, UK & Brooklyn, NY.

What I like about it:  I like that this music has a tone that borders on haunting, and how its drifting presence gives it an ethereal feel.  I like that way it echoes a more traditional sound of a bygone jazz era as the trio channels the music into something that is very present day.  I like how a melodic perspective remains intact no matter how determinedly the trio pulls things apart into a mere resemblance of its first volley of notes.  I like how the music possesses an innate peacefulness, even though the music becomes unsettled and agitated.

Your album personnel:  François Houle (clarinet), Alexander Hawkins (piano) and Harris Eisenstadt (drums).

Available at:  Amazon

Be sure to check out the artist’s site.

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Jan 23 2019

Bird is the Worm 2018 Album of the Year: Bobby Previte – “Rhapsody”

 

Every year, without fail, one of the top albums of the year will be in possession of a lyricism that is positively epic, as if existing in some primal state of mythology.  It’s the kind of things one can imagine viewed by an ancient community sitting on rock ledges in a makeshift theater on the edge of the forest, as actors orate timeless tales of the gods and their impact on humanity on an otherwise ordinary day.  This particular album will hint strongly of a narrative arc.  Despite the odds against it, the album will attain a cohesion in the face of its wild nature.  A sharp intelligence will act as an undercurrent to implausible plot twists and otherworldly conflicts.  The album will conjure up the uncommon magic that lies at the heart of mundane events and seemingly ordinary times.

In recent years, we’ve seen John Ellis’s 2014 release MOBRO and Michael Blake’s 2016 release Fulfillment fill this role.  They are recordings that put their imprint on their respective years of release, but more importantly, they belong to a lineage of music projects that possess the wild abandon and creative courage required of epic tales.  It’s no small thing, and it can never be overvalued in the context of any art form, any life.  For 2018, the album to achieve these heights is Rhapsody by Bobby Previte.

It’s a story about traveling.  It’s about a life in motion, and about the state of existence in between.  When you’re no longer in the place you were and not yet in the place you are headed, you exist in a perpetual state of transition, where what was old is being shed and what will be new has not yet been embraced.  These changes may only be momentary and impermanent, but it’s during a state of flux that all of the rules of expectations and understanding may be warped and broken and bled.  It is during these moments that the greatest upheavals may occur and the most sublime segues.  Bobby Previte’s ensemble of guitarist Nels Cline, pianist John Medeski, harpist Zeena Parkins, vocalist Jen Shyu, and alto saxophonist Fabian Rucker exploit every instance of those opportunities for the most dramatic, thrilling, expressive and fun recording of 2018.  This is what it sounds like when a creative vision is completely unleashed.

Rhapsody is The Bird is the Worm 2018 Album of the Year.

Released on RareNoise Records.

Listen to more of the album on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Music from New York City.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon

Read more about the album on Bird is the Worm.

I also wrote about the album for The Bandcamp Daily.

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Jan 21 2019

Best of 2018 #2: Walking Distance – “Freebird”

 

It’s not unlike experiencing Charlie Parker again for the first time.  Not necessarily the sound per se, but that highly charged reaction to high voltage music.  As I wrote for The Bandcamp Daily about Freebird, “There’s a giddy euphoria that comes with the discovery of the music of Charlie Parker- the thrilling experience of hearing crisp melodies formed under the pressure of high speeds of swing.  That same response is the best proof of Freebird’s success.”  As if taking a clipping and planting it into new soil, the Walking Distance quartet (along with a superb guest spot from Jason Moran) embrace passages from Parker’s tunes and then release them as something quite new.  But the newness isn’t a measure of the jazz age the music most sounds like.  It’s about capturing that joyful spirit of Parker’s music, and the power and grace it possesses to launch a person’s heart and soul into space.  It’s also about music’s ability to inspire, a timelessness that continues to affect minds and hearts long after the creator has passed, and to ignite in future generations a desire of their own to take that spark and create fires of their own, burning bright.  Everything about this album is representative of everything that is great about jazz.

Released on Sunnyside Records.

Music from New York City.

I wrote about the album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Available at:  Amazon | Bandcamp

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Jan 21 2019

Best of 2018 #3: Quin Kirchner – “The Other Side of Time”

 

When this album was released, a year ago January, I wrote for The Bandcamp Daily that “it’s way too early to be saying things like this is the best thing I’ve heard all year,” and then naturally went on and declared, “but this is the best thing I’ve heard all year.”  As it turned out, too soon was predicative of now’s the time.  The Other Side of Time is both a throwback to a past era of spiritual and free jazz and a symbolic proclamation of the pounding heartbeat of the modern scene.  In that way Quin Kirchner achieves a communion between his own modern pieces and renditions of past works by Mingus, Sun Ra, Cohran and Motian, the seamless flow of thoughts and theory and imagery between jazz eras brings to mind that of blood through the circulatory system, and the inescapable sense that there is no past and present eras, but simply a common language that perpetually reveals more of itself in coordination with our changing perception of time.

Released on Astral Spirits Records.

Music from Chicago, IL.

I wrote about the album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon

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