014: Free jazz, avant-garde, romance, chamber music, etc.
Some things you might want to check out: six new albums, one reissue, and a record from 1980.
Welcome new subscribers! My last two posts were warmly received and that was incredibly heartening to me. An extra special thanks to everyone who read and shared my favorite jazz albums of 2022! I tend to overthink what I’m doing here so let’s just share some stuff I’ve been enjoying lately, most of which is fairly new. I hope you find something that compels you! Thank you for reading.
Art Ensemble, The Sixth Decade: From Paris to Paris
If you’re reading this, I assume that you need no introduction to the Art Ensemble of Chicago. (Would that be the opposite of mansplaining?) Anyway, it’s enough to state that they are a free jazz institution who have been gracing us with untold amounts of brilliant, creative, great Black music since the late 1960s. This album is a live set recorded in 2020 at the Sons D’Hiver in Paris, a return to the country where the moniker Art Ensemble of Chicago became official in 1969; hence the title, immediately situating this album in time and place.
“Leola” is a completely stunning opening; Moor Mother is perfectly matched with the Art Ensemble, her poetry and voice bringing a fresh vitality to music that has never lost its own. “Stormy Weather,” “New Coming”, and “I Greet You With Open Arms” are some of my favorite individual tracks, but the album as a whole is a nice approximation of actually experiencing a live Art Ensemble performance. When Roscoe Mitchell introduces the band on “Odwalla” you get goosebumps; if I were there, I would have cried.
Christina Galisatus, Without Night
Christina Galisatus is a pianist and composer, accompanied by a full band here, including tenor sax, bass clarinet, guitar, bass, drums, and a vocalist sometimes, which I don’t usually love in jazz but it works for me on this album. If you listened to my recent show on Radio Free Aquarium Drunkard, you heard and probably liked this! I invite you to check it out in full because it’s so, so lovely; folk-inspired chamber jazz, or maybe jazz for fans of Joanna Newsom.
Vanessa Wagner, Mirrored
Solo piano is not my fave but this album rules. The art drew me in, but so did her choice of composers to reinterpret: Philip Glass, Moondog, and Ryuichi Sakamoto – what a mix! The results are exactly as intriguing, moving, and cinematic as you want them to be. You heard the Moondog piece on RFAD, if you listened!
Trina Basu & Arun Ramamurthy, Nakshatra
Violin acrobats moving within and among South Indian ragas, Western chamber music, jazz, and folk. Cinematic and roving and shockingly expansive for only being two of the same instrument. This is so good!
The Necks, Travel
I am super duper late to the Australian avant-garde jazz of the Necks but this new album seems like a fine place to have started, huh? Travel is remarkable, moody kraut-jazz. I have a lot of catching up to do! If this is also true of you, here is a thread of recommendations that will help.
En Attendant Ana, Principia
Enjoyably dreamy romantic indie pop from Paris, this is the group’s third record of Stereolab worship. I am also reminded of the best parts of early Rilo Kiley; vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and principal songwriter Margaux Bouchaudon sings in English and her voice sits squarely between or within Lætitia Sadier and Jenny Lewis. The guitars have a bit of the Feelies going on. And there’s horns here too, and they’re used really well! It’s all really very good! “Same Old Story” is my favorite track.
Phew, Our Likeness
Big fan of underground cult icon Phew over here; I wrote about her briefly in a previous edition. Here we have a new reissue of an album of hers from 1992 and it features Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit, among others. I could be wrong about this, but Phew does not get compared to Scott Walker enough. I easily put her in the same class of dark romantic art genius. The title track is excellent, weirdly hypnotic avant-pop and the album as a whole is weird as hell, kinda nuts, and completely enthralling.
Thomas Almqvist, The Journey (1980)
I heard tell of this dude, a Swedish composer and multi-instrumentalist, from my friends at Aquarium Drunkard, unsurprisingly. They highlighted his album Nyanser, but I fell for The Journey. First of all, look at that album art: a gorgeous black and white landscape photo, the artist’s name in a simple font, but then the album title in the glorious style of “airbrushed on the side of a van.” Opening track “LA Exit” is admittedly a bit cheesy, with its pixelated crime jazz synths and saxophones, but that’s part of the pleasure of this album. Then you get the cinema of “Mountains of Mexico” and “Nocturnal Visions” and you know this is something more interesting. The album shifts between these two modes (kinda cheesy and totally cinematic) in a way that seems just right for 1980.
Currently Reading: The Years by Annie Ernaux; Other Worlds: Peasants, Pilgrims, Spirits, Saints by Teffi; How to Be a Revolutionary by C.A. Davids; The Two Towers by Tolkien
If you need ~even more~ Necks in your life, here's a whole passel of live tapes (not my uploads, just came across this link at some point): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TiHLGct6XB1OfavCyAD33nBqWgM46XagONTK8OSCQTM/edit#gid=0