CLASSICAL
Various Composers
Earthly Solace: Eton Choirbook Reconstructions
Selene Consort / Daniel Gilchrist
CRD
CRD3569
Various Composers
Choral Contemplations
Phoenix Consort / Adam Whitmore
Convivium (dist. Naxos)
CR130
The titles of these two collections both lead the listener to expect quiet and soothing music — and both deliver on that promise, though each in a very different way. The Selene Consort album is the second in an ongoing series of recordings dedicated to bringing lost music from the Eton Choirbook back into circulation. Compiled in the early 16th century, much of this collection was lost during the chaos of the Reformation; the works presented here were reconstructed based on partially extant originals by musicologist Russell Blacker, and include never-before-recorded pieces by the likes of William Brygeman, John Sygar, and Walter Lambe. The singing is austerely gorgeous. Choral Contemplations, on the other hand, presents contemporary sacred works by nine living composers, most still living. The program consists of 19 brief works, many written to Biblical texts but others drawing on devotional poems and traditional prayers — and one a musical setting for a 1914 poem of tribute to fallen soldiers in the first World War. All are tonal and consonant, and the overall mood varies from solemnity to quiet rejoicing. The Phoenix Consort (singing a cappella) is absolutely luminous in its tone and sweetly creamy in its blend. Both albums are highly recommended to all libraries.
Fanny & Felix Mendelssohn; Juri Seo
Nui: Sister in Korean
Esmé Quartet
Alpha (dist. Naxos)
1271
Perhaps the most famous sister-brother dyad in music history is that of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, who both grew up in a Berlin household that nurtured their prodigious musical talents. Fanny’s E-flat major string quartet is the opening piece on this program; written shortly before her untimely and sudden death, it has a restrained but searching quality that suddenly blossoms into joyful exuberance in the final allegro movement. Felix’s sixth string quartet was written shortly after Fanny’s death and conveys clearly and affectingly his grief — the fast movement that opens the piece feels almost panicked. Between these two works is a commissioned work by the Korean-American composer named Juri Seo. Titled river at the end of the mind, this eight-minute, single-movement composition is inspired by a Korean folk song that celebrates filial relationships; it’s both harmonically complex and sweetly lyrical. The Esmé Quartet plays with conviction and admirable sensitivity throughout; this is both a virtuosic and a deeply moving album.
Hildegard von Bingen
Divan-e Shohud: The Book of Visions
Illuminas Tenebras / Tristan Driessens
Ramée (dist. Naxos)
RAM2411
By juxtaposing selections from Hildegard von Bingen’s Symphonia harmoniae caelestium revelationum with improvisations on early Middle Eastern makam melodies, the early-music ensemble Illuminas Tenebras (“illuminating the darkness”) is not making a historical argument — in other words, not arguing that there was some kind of musical communication or exchange between the late-medieval visionary abbess and the Sufi mystics of the Arab world. Instead, they’re making a musical argument: that the “monophony in the songs of Hildegard von Bingen bears a striking resemblance to the modal foundations of Eastern music.” Musicologists may debate the nature and degree of those commonalities, but one thing is certain: in the hands of this ensemble, the makam-based improvisations and the soaring, ecstatic songs of Hildegard combine to create a compelling and uplifting musical program. Any library with a collecting interest in early Western or Islamic devotional music should jump to acquire this remarkable disc.
František Xaver Pokorný
Clarinet Concertos and Chamber Music with Clarinet
Luigi Magistrelli; Italian Classical Consort
Da Vinci Classics (dist. MVD)
C01019
František Xaver Pokorný was born in 1729 in Czechoslovakia, and what we know about him today is largely thanks to a dissertation written by a doctoral student in 2014. He was apparently quite a prolific composer (though some of the works currently attributed to him are disputed, as his name was removed from more than fifty musical publications after his death). He has not been forgotten by scholars and historians, but his music fell out of the repertoire long ago; most of the pieces on this disc are presented here in world-premiere recordings. Clarinetist Luigi Magistrelli and the Italian Classical Consort present these concertos and chamber works with admirable energy but not with perfect intonation; there are moments when notes are just enough out of tune to ruin the pleasure of these very fine compositions. I’m recommending this recording here anyway because it may be valuable to libraries supporting research into the music of classical Bohemia and the history of clarinet music in particular.
Various Composers
Fiddlers Three: Music from Charles II’s “Private Musick”
Musical & Amicable Society / Martin Perkins
Barn Cottage
BCR030
King Charles II apparently really hated viols and wind instruments, and really loved the violin. One of his violin-centric court ensembles was called the Private Musick, and in the mid-17th century it was led by Thomas Baltzar, a transplanted German violinist who was also a gifted composer. A pavan by Baltzar is featured here alongside works by Davis Mell (another member of the Private Musick) and other pieces by composers of the period whose music would likely have been played in Charles II’s court: names both familiar (John Jenkins, Henry Purcell) and obscure (Christopher Preston, Bartholomew Isaack, Lambert Pietkin). The program includes suites and fantasias and grounds in settings for a variety of instruments that includes harp, bass viol, and others, but generally with the violin at the center. The Musical & Amicable Society play with both vim and precision, and are beautifully recorded.
JAZZ
Rahsaan Barber
Eternal
Jazz Music City
No cat. no.
There’s a tragic backstory to this gorgeous album: shortly before recording began, saxophonist/composer Rahsaan Barber and his wife learned that the baby they were expecting was not viable. The intended title for the album had been Awaiting Zora, but that had to change; the new title chosen was Eternal. The music had already been written, of course, and it would be interesting to know what the performances would have sounded like under different circumstances. As it is, Barber’s playing is both joyful (listen to the glorious “The Skipper”) and also clearly informed by both grief and faith (note, for example, the gently funky but contemplative “Cabbage” and his searing solo on the title track). Barber’s quartet includes guitarist Ted Ludwig, whose playing is in many ways both a foil and a complement to Barber’s; the whole ensemble plays together brilliantly. Strongly recommended to all jazz collections.
Darryl Jenifer
The Weather Channel
Org Music
2347
This one came as a bit of a shock. I’ve been a fan of the iconic hardcore punk band Bad Brains since my teens, and Bad Brains bassist Darryl Jenifer put out a wild and eclectic solo album (In Search of Black Judas) 16 years back, which I also loved. So I was excited to see the announcement of a new Jenifer release — but this is something completely different. It’s jazz-rock fusion that at times is very difficult to distinguish from what used to be called “easy listening.” To add to the confusion, some of the tracks on this album are actually new versions of old Bad Brains songs: “Re-Ignition II,” for example, alternately quotes from the original song (complete with soft but distorted guitar) with long, jazzy excursions on the original chord changes; “Sacred Love II” takes the sung melody of the original and spins out new elaborations over a faintly Latin rhythmic base. This album is definitely a bit baffling, but it’s ultimately quite enjoyable on its own terms, and should be of interest to libraries collecting in both jazz and pop music.
Sarah Wilson
Incandescence
Brass Tonic
btr 003
Cue up the first track of trumpeter/composer Sarah Wilson’s new album, and what will strike you immediately is how gracefully and whimsically her band can straddle the line between looseness and tighness. Some of this comes from the strong New Orleans influence that runs through her music — you’ll hear it particularly on the aptly titled “Jubilant,” with its slippery second-line drum part and funky guitar. Interestingly, “Music Appears to Stand Still” is based on a reggae-derived groove (and features a notably bluesy guitar solo). But mostly it’s her unusual approach to composition: whereas most jazz writers create a tune and chord progression that everyone plays together and on which they then play solos, Wison’s heads tend to be long and complex and very carefully orchestrated. There’s definitely a pervasive playfulness here — the fifth track, smack in the middle of the program, is titled “Epilogue,” for example — but listen closely and you’ll also hear a quiet but fierce defiance. This is one of those albums that reveals more and more complexity the more you listen to it. Highly recommended to all libraries.
Yosef Gutman; Yonathan Avishai
Perfect Traveler
Soul Song
CAT020
Bassist and composer Yosef Gutman continues to produce a steady stream of utterly unique jazz and jazz-adjacent music — his style and approach sound like no one else’s, and yet he is never merely indulging his own personal uniqueness for its own sake. His music is always immediately accessible, even as it treads rarely explored territory. Often he draws on traditional Jewish melodies and themes, and there’s definitely some of that here on his latest album: a setting of the 17th-century liturgical poem “Hareshut,” a delightfully Latin-tinged arrangement of a melody associated with “Hodu,” the text of Psalm 136, etc. But there are also spoken-word elements this time, and much of the program has its roots in patterns and improvisations that were developed by Gutmann and pianist Yonathan Avishai during preparations for the album. Other musicians include woodwinds player Gilad Ronen and drummer Daniel Dor. I’ve never heard a Yosef Gutman album that didn’t leave me eager to recommend it; here’s yet another.
Rob Dehlinger and His Alpha Rhythm Kings
Party Time
Self-released
ARK-003
Traditional or “hot” jazz seems to be having a moment — I’ve been receiving a steady stream of releases in this genre over the past year, and that’s wonderful; every generation seems to rediscover the jazz of the early 20th century, and every time it happens, we’re treated to a new batch of hard-swinging fun. And with that, let me introduce Rob Dehlinger and his Alpha Rhythm Kings, who have been purveying Cab Calloway/Louis Prima-style jump blues and early big-band swing for about a decade now. The aptly titled Party Time offers a mix of standards (“All the Cats Join In,” “La Vie en rose”) and originals, as well as one genuine surprise: a radical reconstruction of Prince’s “Party Man.” One of the most fun and impressive moments comes with “Scatterbrain,” a jump blues tune that consists of four uninterrupted minutes of scat-singing by Dehlinger.
FOLK/COUNTRY
Allison Graves
I Still Look for the Mountains
Important
IMPREC537
Bow and Arrow
Bow and Arrow (vinyl & digital only)
NNA Tapes (dist. Redeye)
LP-NNA-158
Both of these albums, though quite different from each other, fit within the broad genre designation of “dream folk.” Allison Graves’ I Still Look for the Mountains makes one think of what Cocteau Twins might have sounded like if Elisabeth Fraser were American rather than Scottish, and if the group had been more rooted in acoustic music than proto-shoegaze wall-of-gauze electric guitar. Graves’ voice is gentle but firm, as are her melodies, which wander but never aimlessly. The accompanying guitar is often unadorned but sometimes swathed in electronic effects. All of it is very beautiful. Bow and Arrow, on the other hand, are just downright weird — and I mean that in the best possible way. This duo’s music is characterized in the press materials as “somewhere between medieval plainchant, electroacoustic improvisation, and spectral folk song.” What you’ll hear are acoustic guitar, flutes, bells, bottom-heavy digital percussion, and heavily processed voices, sometimes delivering folk-adjacent melodies and, in one notable case, a variation on actual Gregorian chant. This music is much eerier and stranger than Graves’, but equally beautiful in its own way.
Shovel Dance Collective
Everything in Readiness
Glitterbeat (dist. Forced Exposure)
GB 190CD
Here’s some more weird folk music — but again, exhibiting a very different kind of weirdness. The third album by Shovel Dance Collective finds the UK-based nonet continuing to explore new and sometimes frankly crazy ways of presenting traditional tunes. Their rendition of “The Foxhunter’s Reel” is pretty straightforward: multiple fiddles converging and diverging around the very familiar tune. But jump forward in the program to “Jowl, Jowl and Listen Lads” and you get something very different: stomping drums, distorted electric guitars, what sounds like an amplified hurdy-gurdy, and a vocal style that makes me think of some of the heavy-metal-inspired neopagan Nordic folk revivalism that has been coming out in recent years. “Tally Ho! Hark Away” is even harsher — Britfolk as imagined by Glenn Branca, or maybe Killing Joke. Buckle in and brace yourself — it’s worth it.
Jake Blount & Friends
Single-footing Horse (digital only)
Self-released
No cat. no.
Let’s close out this month’s Folk/Country section with something a bit more straightforward: what is reported to be the final stringband album that will be made by celebrated banjoist/fiddler Jake Blount. Teaming up with old friends including Jeff Claus and Judy Hyman (of the Horseflies) and a brilliant — and previously unrecorded — banjo player named Cap Cooke, Blount sticks to the fiddle on this lovely collection of traditional tunes. As is Blount’s wont, he’s both bringing a fresh take to familiar old-time fare (“Shady Grove,” “Garfield’s Blackberry Blossom,” the gospel tune “Working on a Building”) and bringing more obscure tunes to light. “Black Tar on a Stick” and “Pork Fat Makes My Chicken Tan” have been recorded before, but my guess is you’re not likely to hear them called at your typical session. As always, Blount plays with both energy and grace, and the whole ensemble sounds fantastic on this album.
ROCK/POP
Talking Heads
Fear of Music (super deluxe edition; 3 CDs & 1 DVD)
Sire/Rhino
R2728702
This deluxe reissue series just keeps yielding treasures. I’ve already urged libraries to buy the similarly configured releases of Talking Heads 77 and More Songs about Buildings and Food, which came out in 2024 and 2025 respectively. Like the previous releases, this expanded reissue of Fear of Music comes as four discs packaged in a lovely hardbound book filled with photos and photos of ephemera from the period. A newly mastered version of the original album is on the first disc, along with alternate versions and an outtake from the sessions. The second and third discs are live recordings from Boston and New Jersey, made in 1979 while the band was touring this album; the fourth disc is a hybrid audio/video DVD containing multiple high-resolution mixes of the album along with concert footage from the Heads’ appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test. As for the music itself: this is when Talking Heads starting really expanding their sound, experimenting with Afrobeat and funk. Their sonic palette is growing too, with contributions from guitarist Robert Fripp and, er… conga player Gene Wilder? You’ll also hear Byrne getting noticeably more idiosyncratic in his vocal delivery. It’s one of my favorite Talking Heads albums (second only to Remain in Light, which I expect will be getting this same reissue treatment next year), and it may be yours too.
Anna Z
Komiverse
Monkeytown
MTR142
I’ve always found it interesting that dance music lends itself so well, as a general framework, to avant-garde experimentation. Maybe it’s because regular and/or funky rhythms create a firm structure to which the ear can appeal as it deals with otherwise radical weirdness; maybe it’s just that dance beats are made more interesting by weirdness and/or that dance-friendly contexts are naturally more open to weirdness. I don’t know. What I do know is that Berlin producer Anna K’s first album for Modeselektor’s Monkeytown imprint is a delight for both the brain and the hips. “Nightcycle” sometimes harks back to the ambient and ambient-adjacent work of 1980s Bill Nelson, whereas “Baskerhound” hints at early industrial. “Aembr” takes a thumping house beat and makes it interesting with odd ball resonances and effects; “Subset” does the same thing, except without any beat at all. Call it braindance, call it avant-club music, call it whatever — it’s a great mix of the booty-shaking and the intellectual.
Portion Control
1983-86: Hit the Pulse to Purge (compilation; 4 discs)
Artoffact (dist. MVD)
AOF490CD
The early days of industrial music were an interesting time. Bands like Throbbing Gristle and Clock DVA had created a rough framework of machine sounds and stripped-down, aggressive beats; Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb brought a tighter concept and more aggro vocals to the mix. But in retrospect, one thing that’s interesting is how restrained much of this music sounded compared to what would come out under the “industrial” moniker during the 1990s. During this early period, the London-based Portion Control made music that often sounded both more organic and more aggro than what was typical: the jackboot rhythms are a bit less relentless, but the vocals are more snarly and less pseudo-Teutonic. Drawing on the band’s early albums, singles, compilation tracks, demos, outtakes, and live recordings, these four generously packed discs include material that sometimes sounds less industrial than postpunk (“Danger Zone,” “Screen of Death”) and sometimes takes hardcore industrial tropes off into unexpected directions (“Trashville Baby”). As with any industrial band, Portion Control is a bit hard to listen to for four discs straight — but taken in controlled portions, this is fun and interesting stuff, and as a historical document this set is invaluable.
Cujo (Amon Tobin)
Paranova (vinyl & digital only)
Nomark
NO 17
Before he established himself as a giant of electronic music under his own name, Amon Tobin released a debut album under the pseudonym Cujo. Adventures in Foam garnered somewhat ambivalent critical notice, but everyone recognized the talent, and Tobin quickly signed to Ninja Tune and was on his way. Paranova is the long-awaited follow-up to that debut, and unsurprisingly, it finds Tobin bringing decades of experience to bear on the jazz-inflected instrumental trip-hop conception of the original. This one is a masterclass in forward-thinking breakbeat funk, with lots of nods to the past (that synthesized string bass part on “Nine Bars Back,” those slightly queasy keyboards on “Hide Your Ghosts”) scattered among the more up-to-the-minute vibes on tracks like “Seraphine” and the dark but loving tribute “The Loneliest Monk.” Tobin’s many fans have been waiting a long time for this release.
Lamasz
Fioritures (cassette & digital only)
Dronarivm/Le Mont Analogue
LMA-10
Snufmumriko
Talisman (cassette & digital only)
Dronarivm/Le Mont Analogue
LMA-09
Over the past few years, Dronarivm has become my single favorite label for ambient music. Unlike others that tend either towards abrasive drones or pseudo-mystical New Age twaddle, Dronarivm brings together a widely diverse set of artists all of whom are adept at blending quietude with complexity and balancing stasis with movement. These two recent cassette/digital releases are presented a bit confusingly: Le Mont Analogue is an imprint of Dronarivm, but the cassettes are printed with a Fonodroom logo and have what appear to be Fonodroom catalog numbers printed on them; press materials, however, indicate the LMA catalog numbers indicated above. The annoyance this will create for library catalogers, however, is offset by the pleasure the music will hold for listeners. Lamasz’s Fioritures is ambient music of the floating, cloudlike variety; chords emerge from silence and billow briefly before being gently blown over the horizon. Talisman, by Snufmumriko, is busier, darker, and more emotionally complex. It’s built on field recordings and analog synthesizers, and blends subtly dubwise echoes and gritty glitches with gentle chords and a spacious sound field. Both albums are fine examples of the best in contemporary ambient music.
Tungu & Henry Kaiser
The Unexplained
Klanggalerie (dist. MVD)
gg557
Those who have been following the career of avant-garde guitarist Henry Kaiser for a long time will remember his landmark collaboration with Korean kayagum player Sang Won Park and percussionist Charles K. Noyes, and may find themselves thinking of that album as they listen to this duo session with synthesist Tungu (né Sergiy Senchuk). On this release, Kaiser’s guitar is generally unrecognizable; the sounds he makes are integrated seamlessly with the heavily processed samples and field recordings being played back and manipulated by Tungu. The resulting music is often unsettling: “Shadows That Slowly Catch Up” is the perfect title for an eerie nine-minute track that incorporates what sound like slowed-down air-raid sirens, cello (courtesy of Hui-Chun Lin), static, and effects-heavy guitar. “Glass Room,” on the other hand, is a more gentle piece that opens with distorted guitar before easing into a long contemplation built around submarine pings and spacious echoes. All of it is quite wonderful.
WORLD/ETHNIC
Ziggy Marley
Brightside
Tuff Gong Worldwide
TGW082
Bob Marley had lots of kids with many different women, and quite a few of his children (Damian, Stephen, Ky-Mani, Julian, and others) have gone on to music careers of their own. But the most accomplished and successful of them is Ziggy, eldest son of Bob and his wife Rita; both on his own and as leader of the sibling band the Melody Makers, he has made his mark internationally by both deepening and expanding the roots reggae tradition laid down by his father. (He’s also notable for having a voice that strikingly resembles Bob’s.) On his latest solo album, he digs deep into reggae tradition while also bringing other musical elements subtly into the mix — note, for example, the soulful vibe that enriches the reggae beat on “Hey People Now” (which features a great cameo by Nikka Costa), and the firm, rockish backbeat on “Sweet Divine” — not to mention his ukelele-driven collaboration with Jake Shimabukuro. Ziggy has been doing this for over 40 years now, and he continues moving from strength to strength.
Amrita
Amrita (digital only)
Self-released
AMR001
Of all the unlikely instrumental duos in the world, I think I would have to say that tabla and soprano saxophone is the last configuration I would have expected to encounter. One reason it works so well on this album by tabla player Anita Katakkar and saxophonist Kayla Milmine is that the tabla has such a wide range of possible pitches — it’s able not only to provide rhythmic structure and communication with the saxophone, but also a certain amount of melodic content. You can hear this most clearly when the saxophone is doing less and the tabla doing more, as is the case during several long passages of “Clinton Street 7,” but there is also some interesting near-counterpoint between the instruments on “English Breakfast.” Interestingly, the overall vibe here is not particularly South Asian — Milmine’s playing doesn’t draw overtly on raga-based melodic patterns or typical Hindustani modes of elaboration, which means that this project sounds more like East meeting West on an equal footing than many other such projects do. It’s both fascinating and fun.
Tui Hirv & Páll Ragnar Pálsson
Layers
Sono Luminus (dist. Naxos)
SLE-70051
Singer Tui Hirv and guitarist/composer Páll Ragnar Pálsson met during their graduate studies at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. Since then she has mostly sung in choirs while he has had a career as a classical composer, but they have found time to make several albums together as a duo. This one finds them focusing on Estonian folk hymns, with notable digressions into other traditions: a Norwegian folk lullaby, Holst’s famous setting of “In the Bleak Midwinter,” an 11th-century Icelandic hymn, etc. The settings are mostly very spare, mainly voice and guitar, but occasionally electronic keyboards and treatments enter the scene as well. Hirv’s voice is dark and lovely, and Pálsson’s arrangements are elegant and more complex than they seem at first listen.
Kitka
Kolo
Diaphonica
DPCD2026
There’s something particularly thrilling about the sound of Balkan singing — the massed women’s voices, the open-throated vocal style, the tight but astringent harmonies, the often-knotty rhythms. The Bay Area-based Kitka ensemble is an American group that has traveled the world not only singing, but also teaching and organizing multimedia events. Their latest album is a collection of songs from all over Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia, Latvia, Bulgaria, and (interestingly) Corsica. Many of the songs have a basis in seasonal and pagan ritual; there are also love songs, wedding songs, and lullabies — one track is a 13th-century liturgical chant. As always, Kitka’s tone is ravishing and their blend and intonation are admirably precise; their ability to change keys multiples times within the course of a single a cappella song is particularly impressive. Recommended to all libraries.
Jin Hi Kim
The Jin Hi Kim Collection (compilation; 9 discs)
Neuma
236
This amazing set of nine CDs documents more than 30 years of work by the Korean composer and komungo player Jin Hi Kim. The komungo is related to the Japanese koto and the Chinese guqin — all are zithers designed to sit flat on a table; they have multiple strings, each with its own bridge, and each string is plucked on one side of the bridge and then manipulated on the other side as it sounds. Jin Hi Kim received a rigorous training in Korean traditional music before moving to the US and studying contemporary composition in California. Since then she has collaborated with the likes of the Kronos Quartet, Oliver Lake, Henry Kaiser, Elliott Sharp, and many others, working in both carefully scored conventional composition and free improvisation. The variety of sounds and approaches featured on this collection of recordings is astounding, from pieces deeply rooted in Korean tradition to highly challenging noise — all presented in formats that range from solo komungo to small ensembles and full orchestras. This set should find a welcome home in any library with a collecting interest in either Asian or contemporary classical music.
