CLASSICAL
Joseph Boulogne Chevalier de St.-George
Uncovered Vol. 4 (digital only)
Catalyst Quartet
Azica
ACD-71394
This is the fourth and final installment in the Azica label’s essential Uncovered series, which aims to bring to light music by under-recognized black composers. Previous volumes featured works by Saumel Coleridge-Taylor, Florence Price, William Grant Still, and George Walker; on this album they turn to the music of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a French classical-era composer and violinist of African descent. The son of a white plantation owner and his enslaved mistress, Saint-Georges was integrated into elite French society at a young age and gained a reputation as both a swordsman and a musician; he would eventually publish 18 string quartets, more than a dozen violin concertos, and several operas, among other works. This generous collection offers all 18 of his compositions for string quartet, which show him to be both a master of the French style and gifted at the production of what seems like effortlessly charming melody. The Catalyst Quartet’s playing is notable for its exceptional clarity of tone and tightness of intonation — rhythmically, they sound like four instruments played by one person. Highly recommended to all libraries.
Anonymous
San Francesco: Giullare di Dio
Capella de Ministrers / Carles Magraner
Self-released
CDM 2661
Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order of Catholic friars, has the unusual distinction among Christian saints of being not only well known, but to varying degrees venerated across Christian denominations and even among nonbelievers, many of whom admire his reputation as an advocate for animals and the environment (the religiously orthodox tend to focus more on his legendary devotion to the principles of poverty, chastity, and obedience, not to mention his reported status as a stigmatic). The Franciscans produced quite a few writings on music in the Church, and exerted a significant influence on the development of vernacular religious songs as well; this program by the outstanding early-music ensemble Capella de Ministrers is a collection of medieval songs that range in style and texture from plainchant to simple polyphony to almost raucous group sing-alongs, sometimes performed a cappella and sometimes with the accompaniment of harp, viol, percussion, and other period-appropriate instruments. The music is by turns inspiring and energizing, and any library with a collecting interest in early music will want to snap this one up.
Carl Maria von Weber
Der Freischütz arrangirt [sic] in Harmoniemusik
Wolf / Jean-Philippe Poncin
Ricercar (dist. Naxos)
RIC 489
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Harmoniemusik — music written for a medium-sized chamber ensemble of wind instruments — was all the rage. Purpose-written divertimentos and serenades for this instrumentation were popular, but so were Harmoniemusik arrangements of popular opera scores. The Berlin-based musician Karl Flachs created such an arrangement of music from Weber’s highly successful opera Der Freischütz, written for a standard classical wind octet with the addition of a flute and reconstructed and edited for this recording by the outstanding period-instrument wind ensemble Wolf. This would seem, therefore, to be a world-premiere recording of this full and corrected version of the Flachs transcription, and it is an utter delight. Not only is the playing of absolutely top quality (even the natural horns sound rich and assertive), but the music itself is an example of the best opera writing of the period. In this, the bicentennial of Weber’s death, this recording is particularly welcome.
Terry Riley
The Holy Liftoff
Claire Chase; JACK Quartet; Samuel Clay Birmaher
Sono Luminus (dist. Naxos)
DSL-92290
Among the first-generation minimalists, composer Terry Riley has always distinguished himself both for his mystical orientation and his puckish humor. The Holy Liftoff, a multi-part work for eight (indeterminate) instruments commissioned by flutist Claire Chase as part of her ongoing Density project, evinces both of those strains — even as it finds the composer and his collaborative partners in the ensemble looking back to midcentury avant-gardism. The opening title track features multitracked flute in close, almost hymnic harmony; on the other hand, “Horizon Streakers Rag” and “All Arise” are both astringently post-tonal. (“The Realm of the Silver Balloons,” annoyingly, features almost two minutes of near-silence, which will lead the unwary listener to believe the album has ended.) Parts of the score were illustrated with cartoon figures and only sketchy musical notation, while others were carefully composed, making this work very much a collaborative one with the musicians. The music is fascinating and fun, and beautifully performed.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Cello Suites (2 discs)
René Schiffer
Avié (dist. Naxos)
2CD AV2704
Various Composers
Pièces en solitude
Caroline Nicolas
Avié
AV2861
In a marketplace already glutted with performances, interpretations, and rearrangements of Bach’s iconic suites for cello, one might reasonably ask why we need yet another one. But René Schiffer offers a compelling answer in the case of this recording: to showcase the different sounds and timbres that can be created when playing these works on very different instruments and in different tunings. For four of the suites he uses a 1768 cello by Benoît Fleury and for two an 18th-century violoncello piccolo with an added string, and he changes tunings regularly, creating different cross-string and registral effects. This should be considered an essential purchase for any library supporting a strings pedagogy. On the same label, viola da gamba player Caroline Nicolas has teamed up with lutenist Kevin Payne to offer a recital of tunes that are by turns sprightly and regretful — both modes very popular during the gamba’s heyday in the late Renaissance and early baroque periods. Works by familiar names like Marin Marais, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe (Marais’ teacher), and Antoine Forqueray rub shoulders with a more obscure piece by Le Sieur de Machy. Nicolas plays impeccably in the French style, her lightness of touch consistently idiomatic and her intonation (never a given with this notoriously difficult instrument) admirably reliable. Highly recommended to all early-music collections.
JAZZ
Alister Spence
Always Ever
Self-released
ASM018
I’ll admit that I approached this one with trepidation: solo piano albums don’t usually interest me that much, and fully improvised ones generally interest me even less. But when I saw that Always Ever featured pieces for prepared piano and percussion along with conventional piano, I decided to give it a shot — I have a longstanding fascination with prepared piano. And while I found the album musically uneven, I’m definitely glad I gave it a chance and I can confidently recommend it. If the chaotic anti-music of “Afternoon at Rancom Street” leaves you cold, consider the carefully crafted “Rain Phase,” which sounds like something Fred Frith might have produced during a more contemplative guitars-on-the-table moment, before it segues into Philip Glass-esque arpeggiation. Consider also the impressively contrapuntal “Semi-formal Garden” and “Talking Slowly with Lorikeets” and the charmingly whimsical “Tonal Dance.” One of Spence’s subtle but important strategies is to prepare only some of the piano strings, allowing him to move back and forth between altered sounds and conventional ones within a particular piece — very effective. For all adventurous jazz and contemporary classical collections.
Frank London; Loisaida Fife & Drum Corps
Tousle Your Kurchy
Adhyâropa
ÂR00194
I guarantee that this will be one of the oddest albums you hear all year — but having grown up playing fife and drum music in Massachusetts (holla, Menotomy Fifes and Drums), I knew I was going to have to give it a listen. And what a hoot it is. Opening with arrangements of two staples of the fife-and-drum repertoire (“Village Quickstep” and “Empty Pockets”), Frank London and his collaborators proceed to create a program of ancient tunes recombined, deconstructed, and reinterpreted in ways both puckish and intense. “In a way, we’re performing military music with an anti-military aesthetic,” London has observed, and he’s absolutely right: there’s a borderline chaotic messiness to some of these performances, but also a real sense of joy and enthusiasm. The arrangements combine fifes, drums, horns, fiddle, and percussion, and blend composition with improvisation in truly unique ways. Imagine a collaborative project between John Philip Sousa, John Ciaglia, Branford Marsalis, and Frank Zappa, and you’ll have a sense of the vibe. Amazing.
Randy Ingram
Sound Within: A Celebration of Bill Evans
Chill Tone
CT0008CD
A musician putting together a tribute album has to perform a delicate dance: for the music to serve its function as a tribute, it needs to refer back recognizably to the person to whom tribute is being paid; on the other hand, you don’t want the playing to sound like mere imitation or, worse, parody. Pianist Randy Ingram maintains that balance beautifully on this very winning album, on which he and his trio (which includes the all-star rhythm section of bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Joe LaBarbera, both alumni of Evans combos) play a set of tunes either written by or associated with the legendary Bill Evans, as well as three Ingram originals written in Evans’ honor. Ingram’s playing here is certainly influenced by Evans, though his approach is less impressionistically symphonic than Evans’ tended to be; Reid takes an approach similarly informed by the famously free playing of Scott LaFaro (and, later, Eddie Gomez), while LaBarbera’s drums tend towards the skitteringly gentle even as he carries the full responsibility of maintaining swing. This is a truly lovely and heartfelt album that stands up nicely to repeated listenings.
Julian Lage
Scenes from Above
Blue Note
7893200
Joe Lovano
Paramount Quartet
ECM
2855
On his latest album, rising jazz guitar superstar Julian Lage shows off his stylistic range right out of the gate: Scenes from Above opens with “Opal,” a gentle and bucolic tune that could have been written by Bill Frisell in full pastoral mode. Then it transitions to the sprightly post-bop of “Red Elm” before turning to soulful organ-trio funk with “Talking Drum.” This raises the question: is there anything Lage can’t do? So far the answer seems to be no. And no matter what he does, his gentle good humor shines through — another parallel with Frisell. Lage also appears on the new album from saxophone colossus Joe Lovano, which also features Asante Santi Debriano on bass and Will Calhoun (yes, that Will Calhoun) on drums. This one opens in a sweetly quiet and contemplative mode: “First Song” (a lovely Charlie Haden composition) unfolds slowly, with a lyrical head and chord changes that nod to gospel and pop; the interplay between Lovano and Lage is particularly noteworthy on this track. Elsewhere, “Amsterdam” is built on slippery counterpoint between soprano sax and guitar and then starts to get a bit “outside,” as the jazz cats say; “Fanfare for Unity” has a knotty, off-kilter head that could have been written by Thelonious Monk. Both of these are brilliant albums that showcase some of the many facets of Lane’s brilliance as a guitarist.
Scott Hamilton
In the Still of the Night
GLM Music (dist. MVD)
EC628-2
A new album by legendary swing saxophonist Scott Hamilton is always cause for celebration, and his latest is no exception to that rule. On this all-standards program he leads a top-notch quintet of German musicians, which (interestingly) features both vibraphone and piano; the selections include such familiar fare as “Django,” “Soul Eyes,” and “Angel Face,” as well as the lovely Sonny Rollins composition “Why Don’t I” and a light-footed rendition of Cole Porter’s “In the Still of the Night.” Tempos generally range from slow to mid-, but at every speed Hamilton and his crew swing mightily. In terms of ensemble style, whenever a combo features multiple chord instruments I always pay attention to how they interact with each other — do they maneuver their shared harmonic space with sensitivity to each other but without undue tentativeness? In this regard, vibraphonist Titian Jost and pianist Bernhard Pichl are exemplary, but the whole quintet plays together magnificently. Recommended to all jazz collections.
FOLK/COUNTRY
Kelley Breiding
Nightingale
Music Maker (dist. MVD)
MMCD233
Kelley Breiding has been a prolific artist across multiple roots/folk/country styles, from her role leading a rockabilly band to participating in a folk trio and an old-time string band. But on her debut album as a solo artist, she really digs into hardcore honky-tonk. Even here, though, she’s bringing a unique perspective to the tradition: while the album-opening “Party Hat” is straight-up old-school country, the title track is more complicated: those chord changes are unusual and deeply evocative, and the reverb-drenched production is as much Angelo Badalamenti as Billy Sherrill. Her singing style brings to mind a somewhat lighter Patsy Cline, especially when she rears back and lets loose. Song title of the year: “Quit Calling My Husband.” Recommended to all country and pop collections.
Jess Williamson
A Mile South of Heaven
New West (dist. Redeye)
NW6624
There’s a lot of wide-open space in the sound on singer-songwriter Jess Williamson’s new album. You can hear her Texas upbringing here, but also her experiences as an adopted Los Angelena (and the album’s overall sound is conspicuously shaped by having been recorded at the legendary Sunset Sounds studio). For example, “Country Mile” is drenched in 1970s atmosphere but steeped in 1950s vibes, while generous lashings of pedal steel on the title track bring to mind 1960s country-rock by the likes of the Flying Burrito Brothers. The through line is Williamson’s voice, which strikes a delicate and perfect balance between decorous prettiness and straightforward declamation — she’s been compared simultaneously to Lucinda Williams and Emmylou Harris, which won’t make much sense to you until you hear her sing. This is apparently her sixth album, and I’m a little embarrassed at having come to this party so late.
The Family
Delusions of Grandeur (vinyl only)
Big Black Cow
BBCR-001
Speaking of the 1970s, and speaking of legendary studios, consider this new album from the aptly named band The Family, a quartet consisting of a father/son and a mother/son dyad. (The father and the mother are married to each other, but each of the sons is from a different previous marriage.) All of them are experienced professional musicians, but this is their first album together, and it channels the sound of 1970s folk pop — even though it was recorded at Muscle Shoals, the Holy Land of Memphis soul. The press materials specifically cite Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours as a touch point, and the comparison is apt (though I hear the Eagles at least as strongly as Fleetwood Mac here): there’s similar warm lushness to the production and a similar overarching blend of melodic hooks and regret. Highlight tracks include the slightly bitter “Wicked Kind” and the swooningly pretty “I’ll Take It,” but the whole album is great.
ROCK/POP
Tom-Tom Club
Let There Be Love (box set; 6 discs)
Rhino
R2 728928
45 years(!) after its original release, it’s easy to forget how effortlessly perfect Tom Tom Club’s selt-titled debut album was. From the hit single “Genius of Love” (with its now-ubiquitous earworm synth-and-guitar hook and the deathless couplet “Whatcha gonna do when you get outta jail?/I’m gonna have some fun”) to the weird and slightly eerie “L’Élephant,” Tom Tom Club heralded the arrival of a band that had already figured out how to balance pure pop enjoyment with slightly off-kilter experimentalism. (The fact that its three core members were also 3/4 of Talking Heads contributed to that preparation, of course.) But what’s even more astonishing is how consistent the band’s output was over the course of the four albums and one EP that followed. This six-disc box set brings together all of those releases, each in a sleeve that replicates the original vinyl packaging. One wishes that there were a booklet with some historical notes (and, heck, maybe some bonus tracks and remixes), but this box is still an absolute delight and it offers libraries a convenient and cost-efficient document of one of the most significant dance-pop bands of the 1980s. I recommend listening to all six releases straight through, and marveling at how compellingly they hold your attention.
Scritti Politti
Cupid & Psyche ’85 (expanded reissue)
Rough Trade (dist. Redeye)
RT-0595-CD
When Garth Greenside formed the band Scritti Politti in 1976, it was a punk group that drew on the writings of Marxist political theorist Antonio Gramsci for inspiration. Within a few years, though, Scritti had turned into something even more subversive: a band that sounded like pure 1980s electro-pop but snuck philosophical, religious, and political concepts into their love songs like fishhooks in a hamburger. Greenside has observed (ironically, I hope) that the “absolute” of the song by that name is “Kantian, of course,” while the concept of “the word” pops up repeatedly, in both its relationship to the flesh and its function as a signifier. Then there’s this couplet: “I’m tellin’ you baby ‘cos baby who cares/There’s gonna be a day when the rich get theirs.” That pretty much sums up the dialectic at work here. Sonically, though, this is straight-up 1980s dance pop: candy-coated Stratocasters and Fred Maher’s funky drumming are everywhere, and oh, the hooks — you won’t be able to resist singing along. This new reissue adds a bunch more remixes and extended versions than were included on the original CD version.
Various Artists
The Bristol & Bath Blitz Club Meets Art School Sound: 80s Explosion
Bristol Archive
ARC417CD
Various Artists
The Bristol Meets Africa Sound (vinyl & digital only)
Bristol Archive
ARC415V
I’ve been keeping an eye on the Bristol Archive label for years now. My interest was initially piqued by their series of reissues and compilations documenting the incredibly fertile 1980s reggae scene in that city — but as these two recent releases demonstrate, there was much more than reggae happening there during that decade. The Bristol & Bath Blitz Club Meets Art School Sound compiles work by bands that I can promise you’ve never heard of — Wadi Vision, Creature Beat, Great Naked, etc. — as well as some you just might have (Glaxo Babies, maybe?). Their sounds are quite disparate, though the shimmering guitars and early digital synths bring a certain unity of tone; the quality of songs is uneven, as one might expect, but the whole program is highly valuable as a historical artifact and quite fun to listen to. Even more fun is The Bristol Meets the Africa Sound, which documents a project led by Ekome Dance Company director Barry Anderson, which brought musicians from various African countries to come and collaborate with artists from the Bristol area. As documented on this wonderful collection, these collaborations resulted in music that blended elements of highlife, soukous, township jive, and other pan-African pop styles with 1980s dance funk and (mostly) slick production, to mesmerizing effect. Both collections should be seriously considered by any library supporting research in pop and world music.
Xmal Deutschland
Peel Sessions
4AD
0865CD
Sounding a bit like a cross between the Cocteau Twins and Crass, Xmal Deutschland burst onto the postpunk scene at the turn of the 1980s with a formula that combined room-filling atmospherics with abrasive guitars and mostly tuneless vocals. Maybe you read that description and think “Eh, doesn’t sound like my cup of tea,” and fair enough — but at least check out “Incubus Succubus,” the lead track on this collection of four years’ worth of bespoke studio recordings the group made for England’s famous deejay and impresario John Peel. Notice the complex interplay of the massed guitars and the subtle (okay, very subtle) melodicism of the nearly shouted vocals tucked back in the mix; notice also how the subsequent program proceeds from Killing Joke-style wall of sound (“Geheimnis”) to genuinely introspective atmospherics (“Autumn”). And note that they sing almost entirely in German, for which they should be praised. Recommended to all adventurous pop/rock collections.
Descendents
All (reissue)
Org Music
ORGM-2333
Descendents
Liveage! (reissue)
Org Music
ORGM-2335
In a musical genre defined in part by its predilection for brief, hard-hitting songs, Descendents won the championship in 1987 with the title track of their fourth album: “All” consists entirely of one word, one chord, one drum hit, occupying about one second of time. (It’s a great gimmick, though the third track, “No, All!” does wear the concept out.) The rest of the album is exactly what you’d expect: sharp and snotty punk songs that are more carefully crafted than they want you to think and that nicely balance all-out energy with both melody and the occasional irruption of weirdness: “Impressions” and “Schizophrenia” approach prog in their episodic structure and textural adventurousness, while the knotty time-signature changes of “Iceman” would have made the Minutemen proud. (The constant fart jokes, maybe a bit less so.) Liveage! is what it sounds like — a live album — and it came hot on the heels of All: the latter was recorded in January 1987 and the live album was made in July of that year. If anything, Liveage! is better: the recorded sound is almost as good, and the playing is incredibly tight, the energy unflagging, and it offers a nice overview of their work up to that point. If my collection could have just one Descendents album, this one would probably be it.
WORLD/ETHNIC
Firas Zreik
Tarabesque
Maqām
MR3
There are some instruments that seem to be almost universal — every culture around the world has them in one form or another. Drums are one obvious example; bagpipes are another. And another is the psaltery or hammered dulcimer or, as it’s known in the Middle East, kanun or qanun. This is an instrument with many strings, strung in courses of two or three, which stretch across a large sounding board with an individual bridge for each course; the strings are tuned to a scale and played with lightweight wooden hammers held in both hands, yielding a highly distinctive sound. For his latest album, Palestinian kanun player Firas Zreik has gathered musicians to form a jazz quartet, a traditional Arab takht ensemble, and a fusion group, each of which approaches Zreik’s maqām-based compositions from a different angle, to often thrilling effect. His ability in particular to create a compelling blend of modern jazz and maqām is really impressive, and I was especially taken by the almost koto-like sounds he creates on “Fields of Figs.”
Charles Lloyd
Sangam & Friends
Blue Note
5763566
Speaking of Asian-jazz fusion, saxophonist Charles Lloyd takes a very different approach to a similar concept on his new album, Sangam. Consisting of recordings originally made in 2009 with his friend the legendary tabla player Zakir Hussain, along with some other archival tracks, Sangam is intended as a tribute to and celebration of his friendship with Hussain, who died in 2024. Fans of John McLaughlin’s group Shakti (of which Hussain was a longtime member) will thrill to tracks like “Jai Ganga” and “Sam on the Ganges,” which blend Indian pitch sets and rhythmic patterns with jazz instrumentation as well as instruments like the bansuri and sitar. Lloyd does a good job of adapting his jazz inflections to the structures of Indian music, while the Indian and Pakistani musicians are equally good at meeting him halfway. I found “The Blessing” a bit overlong and flabby, but overall the album is a thrill to listen to — and a welcome opportunity to hear some more of Hussain’s utterly brilliant playing.
Nèg’ Marrons
Nèg’ Marrons
Evidence Music
No cat. no.
A self-titled album is usually a debut affair, presented as an introduction to the band in question. The latest release from Nèg’Marrons is anything but: this duo has been around for 30 years, its membership shifting slightly over time around the core duo of Jacky and Ben-J. Their last full-length release was ten years ago, and on Nèg’ Marrons you can hear both their old-school heritage and the influence of musical changes that have taken place over the course of their career. “Tupac Shakur” draws on electro R&B (complete with some robotic Autotone effects), while “Ma Liberté” is bustling roots reggae built on a gentle steppers beat and replete with subtle dubwise touches. Many have attempted fusions of hip hop and roots reggae, but few have achieved one as pleasingly seamless as what Nèg’ Marrons have come up with. All songs are in French; all the grooves are essential. Highly recommended to all collections.
Pitch Black
Ape to Angel (expanded reissue; 2 discs)
Dubmission (dist. MVD)
CDDUBM171
CHANT Artist Collective
Relics of Tree Worship (in Dub)
Balance Recordings (dist. MVD/Cadiz)
CADIZCD293
Dub — the prototypical art of the remix — has its roots in early-1970s reggae. But over the course of 50 years its influence has spread throughout popular music, with “dub” mixes showing up on albums and singles by electropop, punk, bossa nova, and metal artists, among others. And, inevitably, dub has emerged as a musical genre all its own, often in reggae-adjacent contexts but by no means always. New Zealand’s Pitch Black deals in a unique brand of dub that spans dance-music genres and is as likely to draw on house and breakbeat elements as reggae, everything drenched in echo and expanding into infinite space. Ape to Angel was originally released in 2004, but now returns to market with an additional disc of remixes by the likes of Bluetech, International Observer, and Peak:Shift. CHANT Artist Collective is something quite different: organized and led by bassist/producer Youth (Killing Joke, Brilliant) and environmental activist Dan Morell, this group is as much about saving the planet as it is about creating bone-shaking dub grooves — though it does the latter exceptionally well. All of the tracks on this album are named in honor of particular trees, and they feature a variety of singers, rappers, and instrumentalists. Highlights include the particularly beautiful “Sequestral Dreams” (with vocals by Abby Adams) and the appropriately heavyweight “I Love YEW.” Both of these releases are excellent, each in its own way, and each demonstrates a different way in which dub has become a musical style all it own.
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