July 1, 2024
A round-up of my favorite recordings released in April through June of this year. As always, names of artists who live or have lived in the Pacific Northwest appear in bold.
Holland Andrews - Answers
A wonderful artist who moved from Portland to Brooklyn a few years ago. "Andrews’ music evades easy categorization, evoking strands of contemporary classical, ambient, electronic, and experimental music... Andrews has found a home at the nexus point of diverging sounds."
Mélodie Blaison - Avant la Rivage (France)
"At the heart of Blaison's music, the shore is not seen as an elementary boundary between water and land. Rather, it is a crossroads of prolific inter-relations, a breeding ground for heterogeneous temporalities that invite disembodied contemplation... Her work is characterised by a long-term practice of breathing through the use of flutes. At once misty curtains and traces of imaginary worlds in the making, Blaison's flute lines give her music a spectral body."
Olivia Block - The Mountains Pass
"Block has developed an extensive body of work grounded in…the musique concrète tradition, while also encompassing improvisation, orchestral pieces, sound installations, and a sustained engagement with the piano. [Here], Block pushes into new terrain, introducing her singing voice and drums played by Jon Mueller into flowing assemblages that move seamlessly from ruminative organ tones and fragmented piano airs to explosions of sizzling synths and thundering percussion."
Celer - Gems II (USA/Japan)
Ambient with just the right balance of stasis and motion. ”Feeling the night wind start blowing in from the mountains to the west, their caps dipped in snow, and their bodies glowing in blue, there was only a sound brimming up. Climbing up, and stopping near the edge, we listen.”
Christopher Cerrone - Beaufort Scales
“Dramatic and alluring music for women’s voices and electronics, performed by the acclaimed Lorelei Ensemble and the composer. Its title and primary text come from a 19th-century measure of wind speeds."
Layale Chaker & Sarafand - Radio Afloat (France/Lebanaon/US)
"The vision of a radio lost at sea evokes a reflection on the intertwined destinies of people and the natural world, which manifest even louder in times of collective pain; a commentary on the ebb and flow of politics of power, conflict and dominance that exacerbate the vulnerability of the land and those who tend to it. As ideologies clash and agendas unfold, the fragility of our ecosystems and the livelihoods they support hangs in the balance."
Richard Chartier - On Leaving
"For over a quarter of a century, sound artist and composer Richard Chartier has interrogated an ever deepening thread of minimalist sound that meshes questions of stasis, pulse and timbre. The results of this work is some of the most quietly intense compositions of this century. His is a music of subtle variation, unwavering concentration, and also patience. This five part work created between 2020 and 2022 is dedicated to his friend and fellow sound artist Steve Roden."
James Falzone, Lisa Cay Miller, Bonnie Whiting - Six Artifacts
"Documents [an improvisational] meeting of pianist Lisa Cay Miller, percussionist Bonnie Whiting, and clarinetist James Falzone. All tracks were recorded live by Steve Peters at the beautiful Chapel space in Seattle, with no edits and minimal mixing."
Luc Ferrari - Complete Works 04 (France)
Four versions of his very important field recording work, Presque Rien (Almost Nothing). "The most faithful and realistic reminiscence possible of a fishing village at dawn... I wound up in 1967 in a Dalmatian village, with microphone and recording device as always. From our room we could see the little fishing port nestled between the hills, which gave it an extraordinary acoustic quality. A little before dawn the silence began to be broken up by the habitual noises of daily life: the same fisherman, the same bicycle, the same donkey… So I left the microphone on the windowsill and, every night from 4 am to 6 am, I recorded. Afterwards in my studio I composed by means of the most undetectable interventions possible."
Jeremy Gignoux - Odd Stillness (Canada)
"A few winters ago I injured a nerve which impaired the use of my left hand for a few months. Unable to play violin and deprived of my principal means of artistic expression, I was forced to stop everything and look at different ways of making music. I invited some of my favourite local musicians to take on the challenge of improvising within strict bounds, using only one note at a time, blindly overdubbing several times before uncovering the final result."
Doug Haire - Too Far West
"A soundscape for an atomic aftermath in the desert followed by a heavy weather clash with stagecoach robbers. Finally, a Michael Heizer earthwork from 1969 as heard from above in the afterlight."
Robin Holcomb - One Way or Another, Vol. 2
One of my favorite local songwriters revisits her back catalog, along with some newer songs and covers, in a stripped-down format of just piano and voice. Volume 1 is also highly recommended.
José James - 1978
"...combining James’ deep love of jazz and hip-hop with songwriting and production nods to R&B heroes Quincy Jones, Michael Jackson and Leon Ware, “1978” pulsates with the socially conscious feel-good vibes of Marvin Gaye, Prince and Stevie Wonder. James also skillfully explores the boundaries of Black music, featuring Brazilian rising star and recent Latin Grammy nominee Xênia França as well as Congolese-Belgian rapper/filmmaker Baloji."
Loma - How Will I Live WIthout a Body? (US/UK)
“A gorgeous, unique, and oddly comforting album about partnership, loss, regeneration, and fighting the feeling that we're all in this alone… Though the record nods to the trio’s separate lives — a German percussion ensemble, a pair of Texan owls, and the surf at Chesil Beach make guest appearances — the core of Loma's sound remains intact: earthy, organic and deeply human, anchored by Cross's cool, clear voice.
Weston Olencki - Pearls Ground Down to Powder
This ain't yer grampa's banjo. "The instrument presents alternately as a percussive drum-with-strings or as a highly dimensional harmonic resonator, blowing out these disparate trajectories into two longform pieces."
Tara Jane O'Neil - The Cool Cloud of Okayness
Great to have TJO back. "A house burns down and is rebuilt again, persons become spirit, known worlds break apart and fall together again. The Cool Cloud of Okayness was written amidst the skirmishes and shuffle of the seven years since her self-titled album. Recorded at her home studio in Ojai, California, a studio built on the ashes of the home lost to the Thomas Fire. "
Pinkcourtesyphone - Arise in Sinking Feelings
"PCP's gently cinematic ambient soundscapes have the rare quality of being complete and mysterious worlds. There is beauty and danger, drama and mesmerism. All wrapped up in the peculiar feeling you're journeying into a domestic fugue, made vast by the sound of distant vacuum cleaners."
Wadada Leo Smith & Amina Claudine Myers - Central Park's Mosaic of Reservoir, Lake, Paths and Gardens
"Seven moving and contemplative tracks inspired by New York’s Central Park and the world’s urgent need for peace and justice. It marks the first collaboration of these two musicians since their early days in the AACM... Smith (trumpet) and Myers (piano/organ) convey a sense of longing with sheer emotion and profound depth..."
somesurprises - Perseids
"Anyone who’s ever tuned in and dropped out to Spacemen 3, spent a long afternoon with Yo La Tengo, or had a good cry to Grouper would do well to check out somesurprises. Natasha El-Sergany’s voice is spectral in tone but crystal clear over a dense network of layered guitars that stick loosely to a set groove but seem to be in the process of a cosmically slow unraveling."
Tilt - something we once knew
"...vocalist Isabel Crespo Pardo, vocalist/bassist Carmen Quill, and trombonist/vocalist Kalia Vandever...write intricate, viscerally affecting art-pop compositions that blend carefully interwoven motifs with improvisation. Their melodies are chiseled at extremes, vacillating between the angular and the achingly lyrical."
Zosha Warpeha - silver dawn
"An ethereal collection of improvised vignettes performed on solo Hardanger d’amore, a sympathetic-stringed relative of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. Resonant strings and wordless vocals are gently guided by the cyclical momentum of dance and the instrument’s lingering overtones, magnifying moments of transience in suspensions of time."
Adam Wiltzie - Eleven Fugues for Sodium Pentathol
"The latest suite by the Stars Of The Lid co-founder...uniquely evokes and evades the allure of oblivion, keening between beauty and ruin, forever unresolved – smeared epiphanies of uncertain memory and spatial dislocation, coaxed from the unconscious and set aloft. "
Patricia Wolf - The Secret Lives of Birds
"Patricia dives deep into her personal library of field recordings and birding experiences... Using electronics and field recordings, Wolf celebrates the avian world with sentimental and melodic musings on their behaviour, beauty, and the challenges that they face in the Anthropocene."