The last week before the holidays, and we are down to a trickle as far as new arrivals. This will be the last New This Week roundup of 2011. Where does the time go? Not into some kind of bottle, I can tell you that much. And now, one last run through the stacks before we reconvene in 2012.
Common, The Dreamer, The Believer: The first track on this record features Maya Angelou. The second features Nas. Honestly, I feel like that says it all when it comes to Common: despite what Bill O’Reilly may say, he’s one of hip-hop’s most progressive figures, as much a poet as a rapper, more interested in storytelling than battle rapping. This one finds him returning to the kind of dusty, old-soul beats that characterized his earliest outings. Which is just fine by me.
Radiohead, “The Daily Mail”/”Staircase”: Studio versions of two songs left off the last Radiohead record. Suspecting you’ve heard these already.
Young Jeezy, TM:103 Hustlerz Ambition: JEEZY. I loved the first Young Jeezy record, was a little cool on the second, skipped the third, but am ready to get back on board if Jeezy is ready to have me. What I love about Jeezy’s delivery is the sense of menace in his voice — the way it scrapes across the ice-cold synths is the stuff of horror movies. LET’S GET IT.
The Internet, Purple Naked Ladies: Chillwavey project from Odd Future’s Syd the Kid. Some chintzy synths, soulful vocals and guest appearances from some of the Odd Future crew. Remember Cody ChestnuTT? If he made a chillwave record, this is what I think it would sound like. Also, chillwave.
The Lost Sounds, Lost Sounds: Synthpunk outing from the late Jay Reatard, with Alicja Trout. One of Jay’s earliest releases. Scuzzy and nasty with buckets of shitty-sounding synths.
Tegan and Sara, The Con: Demos: Truth in advertising! Demo versions of the songs from the last Tegan & Sara record. The songs sound great in this more minimal, stripped-back format, highlighting the Quinn sisters’ trembling voices. RECOMMENDED
Meg & Dia, Be Careful, I Love You, Stay in Touch: EP of sweet, plaintive songs consisting mostly of rolling piano and reaching, emotive vocals.
–> Jazz Picks
By Dave Sumner
For the quantity of releases as sparse at they were these last seven days, looking over my list, I’m pretty happy with what was offered in terms of quality. As always, some conventional music, some odd music, and some stuff in between.
Miguel Zenon, Alma Adentro: The Puerto Rican Songbook: Turning classic Puerto Rican songs into jazz compositions, apparently, wasn’t enough of a challenge for alto-saxophonist Miguel Zenon, so he adds a ten-piece wind ensemble to the mix. The result is a richly textured series of tunes with a modern approach but steeping in the nostalgic songbooks of Long Ago. Sharp searching sax lines interspersed with lush ballads endow this album with a storybook feel. By the way, the wind ensemble is conducted by the excellent pianist-composer Guillermo Klein. If you’re not familiar with his discography, then get started right here, with Filtros, arguably 2008’s album of the year. Highly recommended.
Miguel Zenon, Awake: Altoist Zenon, known predominately for delving into Puerto Rican songbooks and compositions resulting in some very exciting recordings, threatens to record a straight-ahead affair with Awake. I said “threatens”. Adding Fender Rhodes and a string ensemble to album tunes keeps things euphorically different, and his playing on alto sax is just phenomenal. A virtuoso display of his lyricism without it coming off as forced. Pushy lead instruments just grate on my nerves; it’s so unnecessary to force an instrument to do the work that it’s absolutely capable of doing on its own. On Awake, Zenon lets his sax sing. Highly recommended.
Branford Marsalis, Eternal: A Marsalis brothers album that I keep coming back to. Eternal is a laid-back quartet date, featuring Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, and “Tain” Watts on drums. Marsalis really just lets his sax sing and features it through the beautiful sound rather than through a fussy display of technique. Watts’ drum work on this album is outstanding, and Marsalis’s sax wails over the top evoke a sense of the spiritual. Recommended.
Roberto Negro Trio, Downtown Sorry:
Interesting piano trio album. Negro gives the impression on the first track that it’ll be a standard piano-bass-drums recording with some pretty flourishes and a little bit of nuanced melancholia thrown in for good measure. But then his piano runs begin to scatter, the bass and drums follow at a discrete distance, and sax and electronics reveal their face at surprising moments. Each subsequent tune gets a little more interesting than its predecessor. Pretty neat, and Recommended.
Olivier Mugot, Distance(s): French guitarist Olivier Mugot has put himself together a nifty avant-garde world jazz album. With herky-jerky compositions played out on guitar, bandoneon, harmonica, percussion, bass, Distance(s) is faintly reminiscent of old-school ECM without sacrificing any of the album’s sense of Now. Plenty of cerebral moments to keep the listener engaged. Pretty cool.
Oh Yeah Orchestra, Freedom of Movement: Comprised of ten of the top jazzers on the Swedish scene, it’s a nice mix of orchestral and avant-garde jazz. Odd dissonance woven into luxurious threads of large ensemble orchestration results in an enchanting set of tunes. I love it when experimentalism is applied to an album, and yet the overall result is an exhilaratingly pure jazz recording. Soprano & tenor sax, trumpet, trombone, tuba, cello, bass, Berimbau, percussion, hang & sizzleboard drums, and some vocal accompaniment are the ingredients to this excellent album. Highly recommended.
Mike Lorenz, Of the Woods: I often like to refer to Brian Blade’s epic Season of Changes as the vanguard example of what nu-jazz has come to be… non-repetitive melodies more akin to storytelling than formulaic poetry and indie rock conventions in a modern jazz framework. But there are others that have adopted that sound, many to impressive effect. Enter guitarist Mike Lorenz’s Of the Woods, a nice series of tunes with understated tension built over machine gun rhythms. A quintet of guitar, sax, piano, bass, and drums, it’s a solid effort that’s quite an enjoyable listen. Definitely worth a look into if you’re into Brian Blade’s thing.
Dino Saluzzi, Navidad De Los Andes: Another ECM dropped today, this one matching up the trio of composer and bandoneon musician Dino Saluzzi, with cellist Anja Lechner, and saxophonist Felix Saluzzi. Not jazz, per se, more world-classical… I guess… or something like that. Cripes, ECM just has its own sound when it comes to these things; they might as well be their own genre at this point. Some people go crazy for this stuff, some not so much. If you like sorrowful harmonization amongst a trio of concerto instruments, then just hit the download button and don’t look back.
Alfredo Naranjo, Mexico Music Fest: Vibraphonist, composer, and arranger Alfredo Naranjo brings together a quartet that includes guitar, bass, and percussion for a nice live set recorded live in April 2011. With Naranjo’s vibes out front, it’s a warm display of technique and voice, with Juan Angel Esquivel’s guitar the perfect accompaniment. I’m very much of the opinion that vibes and guitar should always be at the hip on a jazz album; something so complementary in the instrument’s respective sounds that it’s a lonelier affair when one is excluded from the other. Thankfully, on this fine live performance, we get to hear them in action together.
Angelo Valori & the M. Edit Ensemble, Il Caffe Dalle Americhe: An intoxicating album of jazz fused with Mediterranean folk music. Piano, strings, vocals, saxophones, guitars, and an accordion that sounds like a string section when it sticks to the background. Plenty of serene moments fluttering over rustic compositions. It gets a bit light & fusion-y at times, but that’s part of its charm. I almost passed this album over, but something about it kept me coming back. Now I’m getting hooked. My patience was rewarded, maybe yours, too. Highly recommended.
Okay, this last one, I’m not sure what to make of it and everything I find on the internet about it is in French and no convenient translation page to help me out, but this is just too cool not to mention…
Jazz Combo Box, Scratcho’Band: A mix of hot jazz, hip hop, and a little bit of 70s soul. As far as I can tell, this outfit got together a jazz outfit, including tuba and either and maybe a banjo, scratch records along with it and sample others. There are a lot of failed hip hop jazz fusion attempts out there… a lot. I find most of them unlistenable. This album, though, it’s so damn infectious, leaves me smiling with each track. I’d hate to find out that they’re actually doing their thing over old vinyl jazz records, but really, what little I could find and translate, I think these guys are doing their own thing. So fun.
And real quickly, I think it’s been awhile since 1201 Music dropped an album from the Black Lion Vault series, but there’s a nice Charles Tolliver (Paper Man) which dropped, and an even better Human Arts Ensemble (Under the Sun).
See you next year.
hope you all have a healthy, happy holiday season.
and i hope you hit the ground running next year with the same flurry of activity on the blog that began 2011. see you in the new year.