015: Mostly jazz but also dark folk, deep sea synth, and an apocalyptic film.
Music new and old, incl. a thread of your Ryuichi Sakamoto faves. An underrated thriller from the last decade. A podcast episode from now in which yours truly speaks about a novel she loves.
Someday I will send out newsletters with more frequency, but today is not that day. The year's most intriguing new releases have really been piling up and at this point, five of them are out in the world! Here are those albums, plus a couple more that are due to come out very soon and another one that came out in February. This list is in chronological order. Keep reading to the very end for a film I recommend.
BREAKING NEWS: I spoke with the lovely, brilliant folks of Unburied Books (a podcast reading its way through the NYRB Classics) about a lovely, brilliant book (Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban) and the episode just so happened to drop as I was prepping this newsletter. Among other things, we discussed coincidence, middle age, loneliness, romance, Godlessness, and how to not mind being alive. Do check it out if you’re so inclined!
Bailey Miller, love is a dying (Whited Sepulchre Records)
Experimental ambient folk for fans of Chelsea Wolfe and early Angel Olsen. This album is a quiet, moody listen. Midwest multi-instrumentalist Miller’s voice is a grounding presence, a clean line cut into her spare music. “goldfinch” is a particularly lovely song on which she loops a recording of frog sounds behind her vocals to great meditative effect.
Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily, Love in Exile (Verve)
Two loves in a row – I *am* a romantic at heart! But a dark one, because these loves are dying and in exile. Anyway, this album is excellent. Arooj Aftab’s impeccably gorgeous vocals sung in Urdu are transportive, Vijay Iyer’s piano is scintillating, and Shahzad Ismaily’s Moog synth is otherworldly. The bass quietly thumps, both grounding and otherworldly, a quiet contradiction that works well in this romantic, ethereal space. Album opener “To Remain/To Return” is my favorite song, I think. It’s captivating!
Scree, Jasmine on a Night in July (Ruination Record Co.)
This one landed in the flowered desert landscape of my heart’s imagination and I fell for it, head over heels. I reviewed it for Uncut so I’ll borrow my own description that this music travels a singularly heady path among jazz, post-rock, and lounge. A poetic pulse is at work here, and not just because the music draws on the work of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. It’s the sense of cosmic longing or connection, both or either, that bottomless well of emotion which a good poet can sum up in a few words. This album feels like that to me!
Rob Mazurek & Exploding Star Orchestra, Lightning Dreamers (International Anthem)
I’ve heard a million good things about Rob Mazurek but hadn’t quite dived into his work until I got the chance to review his new one for Uncut. It’s fantastic and as I have mentioned elsewhere, the pleasantly creepy “Dream Sleeper” is a necessary addition to the canon of Lynchian Trumpet Music.
Wadada Leo Smith & Orange Wave Electric, Fire Illuminations (Kabell Records)
More people should be talking about this album! Trumpeter-composer Wadada Leo Smith is a living legend (his 1978 ECM album Divine Love is especially spectacular), this band includes Nels Cline and Bill Laswell and Melvin Gibbs (among others), and one of their songs is called “Tony Williams”! Their music sounds like slowed down Last Exit meets funky, zonked out Crazy Horse with a spectral trumpet.
Steve Gunn & David Moore, Let the Moon Be a Planet (RVNG Intl)
Most of the albums I’ve already mentioned were released at the very end of March, as was this one. I was naturally drawn to its title and then very pleased with the music, gentle and tranquil instrumentals that make for a lovely morning soundtrack on one of those “it’s early spring and just starting to warm up but we’re not out of the woods yet” days.
Daniel Rotem, Wave Nature (Colorfield Records)
This one is not out yet, but it comes out very soon! This is my ideal mix of jazz and electronic music, experimental and creative. I love the way Rotem incorporates synths into this album’s jazz stylings. Best appreciated by folks who dig Suzanne Ciani and Coltrane, or Wayne Shorter and Moroder. A deeply satisfying listen from start to end, highlights for me include the Plantasia-esque “Alien Love Song” and the recursive beauty of “A Universe Lost in a Universe.” An early contender for one of my favorite jazz albums of the year!
Issei Herr, Distant Intervals (NNA Tapes)
This one is also not out yet but will be soon! Issei Herr is a cellist and composer who recorded this album entirely in her bedroom closet, layering overdubbed cello improvisations and processed samples to produce music that is shockingly lush. The unfiltered thought I had upon my first listen: “Oh my god this is so fucking beautiful.” It feels like it could be the score to an avant-garde ballet. A doomy element surfaces at times, reminding me of the band OM and why I used to think of their music as “special doom.”
Dominique Guiot, L'Univers De La Mer (1978)
It wouldn’t be another issue of Sick Sad Motherslug without one weird album from decades ago and this time that album is perhaps best-suited for fans of the Fantastic Planet soundtrack, Oksana Linde’s Aquatic and Other Worlds, and pixelated video game music. I’ll keep it simple and pull from the album description: “Written, composed and played by Dominique Guiot with his Mellotron, Minimoog, clavinet, organ, and guitar, L'Univers de la Mer draws its inspiration from deep sea exploration, oceanic creatures, and underwater kingdoms.”
Rest in peace, Ryuichi Sakamoto.
To celebrate his legacy, I put the call out on Twitter to share your favorites among his incredible, diverse body of work. As usual, y’all delivered remarkably and the resulting thread is the ideal mix of his most well-known and well-regarded work and deeper cuts. Enjoy, especially if you’re new to the magical genius of his music. You might also check out the 2017 documentary Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, streaming now on MUBI.
Take Shelter (2011)
While looking for another ‘90s film with the themes and tones of Todd Haynes’ all-timer Safe, I swerved out of the decade and into the subject matter with this psychological thriller that I was convinced was a deliberate early-to-mid 2000s period piece until spotting a 2010 calendar on the wall and realizing that the setting is just the time the movie was filmed. Anyway, it stars Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain and they’re both great in their roles as husband and wife of a Midwest Christian family who genuinely love each other but are plagued with the material effects of the husband’s terrible dreams and visions. I’m a big fan of Shannon’s paranoid intensity and it comes naturally to the forefront of this not-quite-disaster film. The title doesn’t need to be interpreted literally, but in this case there’s an actual storm shelter that figures into the climactic action in a 21st-century-folk horror kinda way. I liked it a lot!
Currently Reading: The Years by Annie Ernaux; DFW’s essay about the film Lost Highway; Oscar Wars by Michael Schulman; Cathedral by Raymond Carver; How to Be a Revolutionary by C.A. Davids; The Two Towers by Tolkien
Enjoyed your Unburied Books episode. Definitely going to pick up Turtle Diary now.
Every email results in hours of deep listening afterward. Thank you.