Image borrowed from JSTOR Daily
May 30, 2024
I usually do a big year-end round-up of my favorite recordings, but it seems more manageable to do it on a quarterly basis. This is music I like enough that I hope to listen to it more than once, so it’s here as a reference and reminder to me as much as anyone else. As always, names of artists who live or have lived in the Pacific Northwest are in bold.
Alphawhore - My Vegan Cabal
I have no idea to what extent this music might be (loosely) worked out vs. improvised, or how much of it was created via tricky editing and mixing after the fact vs. played live. Whatever the process, they have masterfully created a marvelous cacophony full of jagged edges and disquieting interludes. Good song titles, too.
Danny Clay - No More Darkness, No More Night
He had me at "pedal steel guitar and string quartet" and the Hank Williams quote in the title. Beautiful, as is his other work, which is all new to me.
Claire Dickson - The Beholder
“Dickson walks the listener through a series of ambient dreamscapes using a collection of samples, found sounds, synths, layered vocals, and sparse percussion to create songs that are constantly evolving. The songs are mostly through-composed, the form is continuously pushing forward, turning a new page; they explore the contrast and coexistence of high drama, drops, big sounds, lush textures, with delicate, close, subtle, sensorial sounds.”
Kaley Lane Eaton - Lookout
More songs about building and trees by this Seattle singer-composer who deserves to be known way beyond the region. A wonderful melding of folk, classical, and jazz elements, fleshed out by a crew of our best local musicians. The blurb mentions Joni, Björk, Kate Bush, Laurie Anderson, and Joana Newsome as references. I'd say Laura Nyro, Robin Holcomb, Veda Hille, and Judee Sill, but that's just me.
ganavya - like the sky I've been too quiet
Recommended if you enjoy singers like Sheila Chandra and Arooj Aftab, who expand on South Asian vocal traditions. "Ganavya’s warm, ornate Tamil vocals are set to bubbling modular synths and breathy woodwind flutes, producing a mix of spiritual jazz and ambient experimentalism."
Jeff Greinke - Oceanic
Excellent new work from this Seattle ambient pioneer (now in Tuscon). "...undulating ambient minimalism floating upon dreamy and somewhat hazy eddies in a slow-moving stream of wonder... The timbres are distinct, formed with subtle detail, capturing the ebb and flow of emotional whirlpools surging like briny ocean turbulence within one’s heart."
Giuseppi Ielasi - unfamiliar music vol. 1 (guitar duets) (Italy)
One of the least guitar-like albums of guitar music I've ever heard. In case it's not obvious, that's a compliment. Very subtle and resolutely low-fi, as if Steve Roden had made an album using a broken toy guitar, a looper, and a crappy cassette recorder. Admittedly an acquired taste, but somehow it works for me.
Nathalie Joachim - Ki moun ou ye
“Brooklyn born Haitian-American flutist, composer, and vocalist known for creating “a unique blend of classical music, hip-hop, electronic programming and soulful vocals...” That mix is quite lovely, though to me the hip-hop aspect seems pretty muted here. Really interesting, though.
MINING - Chimet (UK)
I generally find sound works based on sonification of scientific data to be unsatisfying. This one (based on extreme weather data) succeeds, largely because "after several iterations, improvised instrumental performances were added on piano, cello and synthesiser." The data-derived sounds aren't presented as the primary material, but as background beds for the human element.
Romance - Endless Love (UK)
“I’m still romantic about how music is always happening in the air even when we don’t hear it, how maybe it’s a gradual corralling of everything instead of a spontaneous composing of something that attunes us... Romance says Endless Love is an “epic slow-mo power ballad” which I think is so romantic. Because “epic” goes all the way back to Aristotle and contrasts with “tragic.” (Frank Falisi, Tone Glow 149)
Joana Sá - A Body as Listening (Portugal)
(Not to be confused with sound artist Joana de Sá.) "She has the chops of a classical pianist and the energy of a rocker... She employs electronics and manipulated fragments of recordings as extended techniques themselves, opening up the functions of the piano - is it still a piano at all? - way beyond what is commonly heard... That is, this is not merely a case of (subtly prepared) piano plus electronics, etc., but of a single, sui generis instrument, which allows for either extreme delicacy and sparseness or massive - at times even threatening - waves of sound."
Iu Takahashi - Sense / Margin (Japan)
"…a sound artist and composer living in Yokohama. She produces her works using her own voice and field recordings." Nothing about that blurb leads me to expect anything remarkable here. And yet, this is rather exquisite. It may seem like it would be very easy to make music this spare. I assure you, it is not.
Tirez Tirez - Etudes
This album was a favorite of mine in 1981 and I’ve never stopped liking it. Released on a tiny British label, it was hard to find in the US and quickly fell into obscurity and was never reissued on CD, so I’m happy to have it available in digital form. Led by Mikel Rouse (who later became more of a “composer”), it’s tuneful art-school rock in the vein of early Talking Heads, but has its own special something going on. Still sounds great to me, nostalgia be damned.
Mark Trecka - The Bloom of Performance (France)
Fans of David Sylvian or Scott Walker, listen up. "Trecka’s voice is dynamic on these recordings... Myriad strange but beautiful experiments color this dreamy and infectious record: cut-up tape of Trecka’s croon and wail interwoven throughout are startlingly buoyant, dancing with careening drum machine rhythms."
Nate Wooley - Moths
Mostly known as an improvising trumpeter, Wooley here sits out and dons his composer hat, letting the very capable trio of Laura Cocks (flute), Madison Greenstone (clarinet), and Eric Wubbels (piano, autoharp, and voice) play this beautifully spacious, long chamber piece.