TRACKS AND NOTES
Kelly Moran | Song: “Autowave” | Album: ‘Ultraviolet’ (Warp Records, 2018) … Kelly Moran is based in Brooklyn and, walking in the footsteps of John Cage, she’s made the prepared piano — objects are places on the strings, or between the strings, or the strings are tuned in different ways — into her own vessel, a vehicle for exploration. Vinyl is available at her Bandcamp page (link to it from her name).
Arve Henriksen, Nils Okland, Svante Henryson, Gjermund Larsen, Mats Ellertsen, and Audun Kleive | Song: “Short Stop Skjak” | Album: ‘Composograph’ (Arve Music, 2018) … Henriksen is a trumpet player, primarily, and his recorded work stretches back to the 1990s. This album was released as a digital-only recording, but has since been issued on vinyl — just 100 copies — by Rune Grammofon, and, if there are still any left, you can also find copies of that run for sale at Amazon.
GusGus | Song: “No Manual” | Album: ‘Lies Are More Flexible’ (Oroom, 2018) … Nine albums into their 20-plus year career, GusGus, from Iceland, have been layering beats and textures into genre-twisting electronic tracks since the mid 1990s, when they started as a film/music collective. From their time on 4AD to this self-released album, the new work is still the founding members, Biggi Veira and Daníel Ágúst.
Peabody & Sherman | Song: “And That is Why” | Album: ‘James Baldwin EP 2’ (Sound Control, 2018) … Part two of a ridiculously strong pair of extended plays, this one arrives, sadly, upon the death of one half the collaboration. To make these records, Phillip C Hertz and Curtis Ruptash — the drummer and the bass player on this track — fused archival recordings of Baldwin, the author, with their own studio work from circa 2011. In November 2018, Hertz died; he was a well known record distributor in Chicago. The Baldwin recordings come from a discussion featuring Baldwin and Dick Gregory at the West Indian Student Centre, in London, in 1968. Here’s a link to that film in full, which came out in 1969, titled ‘Baldwin’s Nigger’.
Jungle | Song: “Happy Man” | Album: ‘For Ever’ (XL Recordings, 2018) … This track is from what is only the second full-length album by Jungle, a collective hailing from the UK. Their first record came out back in 2014. They made the new material while splitting studio time between London and Los Angeles (vinyl and limited edition vinyl at the XL Recordings site). A note on the sample, part of a speech given by Malcolm X (page 16357) that addresses justifications for demonstration, it is interesting to me to bring this voice into the same mix that features James Baldwin. Here’s a link to audio of Baldwin and Malcolm debating the issues surrounding the fight for civil rights — the how of it, the how much of it, etc. — circa 1963.
The Skull Eclipses (Botany & Lushlife, featuring Tendai “Baba” Maraire and Felicia Douglass) : Song: “Pillars” | Album: ‘The Skull Eclipses’ (Western Vinyl, 2018) … The Skull Eclipses is a collaboration between producer Spencer Stephenson (aka Botany), based in Austin, and Raj Haldar, also known as Lushlife, who is the rapper from Philly (and Bengali) in the project. Additional artists on this one: Felicia Douglass sings in Brooklyn’s Ava Luna, and Tendai Maraire, of the Seattle-based Shabazz Palaces, contributes fierce percussion and an even fiercer verse. You can grab a vinyl copy of ‘The Skull Eclipses’ at their label’s online store.
Peabody & Sherman | Song: “Where Were You Born Before That?” | Album: ‘James Baldwin EP 2’ (Sound Control, 2018) … My consciousness of James Baldwin began in the early 1990s when I studied Baldwin in Catherine McLaughlin’s senior seminar at Framingham State University. She’d been his assistant and friend the last ten years of his life and, in her course — entirely focused on his writings — something about the man’s energy and his unfathomable wisdom came through. His voice has been with me ever since; I go back to his writings often. Here’s a link to the first volume of Peabody & Sherman’s work with those words, for more of it. In this case, more is more.
Khruangbin : Song: “Maria Tambien” | Album: ‘Con Todo El Mundo’ (Night Time Stories Ltd / Dead Oceans, 2018) … The Houston trio’s second album looks to the music of the Middle East and Spain. “Maria Tambien” was the album’s lead single and it came with a video that pointed to the struggle of women in post-revolutionary Iran. Also, just listen to that “Apache” breakbeat … crisp!
De-Phazz : Song: “May” | Album: ‘Black White Mono’ (Phazz-a-delic, 2018) … German producer Pit Baumgartner’s project leaves few Latin, soul, or trip-hop stones unturned and, at the 20-year mark, this one slips the bound of the lounge roots and reputation for which the group has been known. Grab a vinyl copy of the album at the De-Phazz website store.
Daniel Erdmann, Christophe Marguet, Claude Tchamitichian, and Henri Texier : Song: “A N’importe Quel Prix” | Album: ‘Three Roads Home’ (Das Kapital Records, 2018) … It’s Erdmann on saxophone and Marguet on drums, plus Tchamitichian and Texier on contrabass. New jazz from Europe. Erdmann worked for a long time in Berlin and now lives in France, where this collaboration with Marguet has taken root. The distribution of this recording has been a little bit on the elemental side, so best to start with Amazon.
Mastered by: Matt Girard, Revolution Sound Studio, 2019