Granules - Unfolding

Artwork by Sepehr Nabi

Hey there readers/world - I hope you didn't think this blog was necessarily dead forever! With great pleasure I'd like to unveil a new album that has been in the works since late 2009. Granules is my open-ended music project with Sepehr Nabi and Niv Bavarsky. Sepehr lives in Oslo, Norway, and Niv and I are based in California (though Niv was attending MICA in Baltimore when his parts for this album were recorded), so this music was all made from material sent back-and-forth over the Internet.

Granules is an experimental workshop - Sepehr, Niv and I have unique musical backgrounds, artistic interests and tastes, and we never once sat down to discuss specifically what our "sound" or aesthetic should be like, though we did discuss tracks in the works. The music developed naturally out of the constraints of our recording capabilities and what we were interested in playing and hearing. Many influences have made deep impressions on all three of us in different ways, including experimental electronic music, jazz, 20th century composition, ambient music, and even hip-hop. We want to abandon genre idioms and explore new expressions through experiments in texture, color and form. We also want to evoke unusual images. Unfolding began as somewhat of a jumble of ideas, but as we worked together for over a year, scrapping and revising tracks, a sense of movement and unification started to come together. I don't want to make any comment as to the emotional qualities of the music, save for that I've honestly never heard anything quite like it.

We present Unfolding on Bandcamp for download in most any file format, free of charge. Note that the album was designed as a continuous musical trip, and several of the track transitions are seamless, so make sure to hear it on a gapless playback device!

Stream and download Unfolding at:
http://granules.bandcamp.com

2010 - Fifty Great Releases, 5 - 1

5. Teebs - Ardour

Teebs' debut LP for Brainfeeder was one of my most anticipated releases of 2010, and it delivered on my every expectation and hope, and then some. Around the fall of 2009 I heard about Teebs from Nosaj Thing's excellent mix of music for the XLR8R Podcast series. Apparently Teebs got into making music when he sustained an injury from skateboarding and found a lot of time on his hands; somehow, he connected to Flying Lotus and became his roommate in LA. Teebs handed out a CD-R compilation in 2009 which completely sold me the first time I heard it. My readers probably know about me that I put a high priority on beauty, and Teebs makes futuristic instrumental hip hop that possesses utopian levels of beauty.

Ardour takes the best handful of tracks from the Teebs '09 compilation and distributes them among more than a dozen newer tracks to form a very tightly focused album. All but one of the tracks (the dreamy "Long Distance" featuring Gaby Hernandez on vocals) are instrumental, and many of them use a similar combination of chimes, bells, sparkling clean electric guitars, bass, Rhodes, ambient synth patches and traditional hip hop percussion. Lush and warm nearly to the point of humidity, the album effortlessly breezes by with some of the most consistently excellent production, melodic hooks and rhythmic flair around. Not a single track is weak, and a handful of them are as good as anything out there. Why, then, did the album end up at my #5 spot when I initially thought it was Top 3 material?

For being so consistent in instrumentation and so constantly gorgeous, combined with the length, Ardour ends up suffering a little bit from samey-ness and Ear Candy Syndrome. Basically we get a little too much of a really good thing. If the album were shorter or changed up its mood a little more, I would probably call it perfect. It works well as a musical trip to paradise, but I'd like to hear Teebs explore some colors other than glowing pastels. One darker track, and a standout on the album, "Why Like This", suggests he could very well work more with grittier sounds if he wanted.

Despite this selfish criticism I still think Teebs is making some of the most interesting new music, truly evolving beyond hip hop to probe sci-fi realms nobody else is exploring. His live sets go full-on psychedelic at times, and anybody in the vicinity of Eagle Rock should check out the new monthly live event "Futura" at the Center for the Arts, curated by Teebs and Asura. I should also mention that Teebs is a talented visual artist and the painter of his own album cover. With a craft as tight as anybody's in the game, Teebs could become the new most exciting beat pioneer by taking his sound just a little bit deeper.

4. Charles Lloyd Quartet - Mirror

No saxophonist I can think of has released more high quality albums throughout the 2000s than Charles Lloyd. His latest for ECM, Mirror, is not just the best jazz album of 2010 but one of the finest albums Charles Lloyd has ever recorded in his 45+ years as a respected improviser, interpreter and composer. His current band, with Jason Moran on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Eric Harland on drums, is one of the strongest active jazz quartets. Their last album was the 2008 live concert recording Rabo de Nube, highlighting their passionately energetic interplay and daring solos. Things are relatively more toned down and introspective on Mirror, which features the group at their most sensitive and elegant.

The track selection includes several Charles Lloyd originals including the beaming, lovely "Desolation Sound", asymmetrical "Mirror" and exotic "Being and Becoming", as well as fresh interpretations of standards and spirituals like "I Fall in Love Too Easily", "Go Down, Moses", and "The Water is Wide". The band plays two Thelonious Monk tunes, "Monk's Mood" and "Ruby, My Dear", giving both of them an indescribably pretty, closer to celestial treatment; at one point of Jason Moran's supremely lyrical solo on "Ruby, My Dear" he lands on a note in the upper register and repeats it over and over while echoing it an octave below - this is one of the most heart-stoppingly-lovely brief moments in music recorded in 2010. "Lift Every Voice and Sing" has its anthemic melody stretched and contracted over rapidly skittering drums in more or less controlled free-time, and after a rollicking, Jaki Byard-esque solo from Moran, Lloyd releases uninhibited streams of melody worthy of John Coltrane.

The meditative, spiritual and deeply inspired mood throughout the album is encapsulated in the final track, "Tagi", which features Charles Lloyd reciting verse from the Bhagavad Gita before launching into joyous sax improvisation. "Become angry, you confuse your mind. Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience. Forget experience, you lose discrimination. Lose discrimination, you miss life's only purpose." This is contemporary jazz as moving and essential as anything recorded in its golden era.

3. Celer - Dwell in Possibility / Dying Star / Honey Moon

Dwell in Possibility

Dying Star

Honey Moon

Three of Celer's many 2010 releases impressed me so much on the first listen, and continued to deepen with further listens, that I couldn't pick just one to make my Top 3. All three are of quite different breeds, and all are top tier entries to the Celer catalog and good starting points for new listeners to the group.

Dwell in Possibility was the very first full-length Celer album to be released on vinyl alone. Its name is loosely suggestive of its content - a large number of musical possibilities contrasting in timbre, texture, color and mood rapidly float by like a sequence of (day)dreams. The instrumentation includes processed voice, cello, violin, piano, ocarina, field recordings, rocks, whistles, a toy organ, and cassette tapes; none of these are clearly recognizable for what they are, though their diversity comes through in the subtle movement from one combination of timbres to the next. Side 1 is titled

"I've Thought Only of Empty Shadows / Embark, Hollow Heart /
Adhered Irreverence / Empty Streets of Accurate Reasons /
The Street Rain & Pain of the City Rests Under My Toenails /
One Long Blast / Fine-Tuned Treetop / Functioning Voluptuary"

revealing that its 18-minute form is subdivided into 8 distinct movements. Though there are no gaps between movements and the dividing points are pretty fuzzy, the changes are much easier to perceive than on other of their albums that follow a similar plan, e.g. Poulaine in 13 Parts and Fountain Glider in 22 Parts. Nevertheless, the structure takes many close listens to carve out. From a spooky beginning comprised of muffled and detuned strings, Side 1 meanders amorphously until more sustained drones emerge, first in the high and then low registers, the feel becoming increasingly uneasy. Tension mounts as a filter passes over the thick stream of drones, only letting through a few in the middle register, becoming more concentrated and anxious. The filter breaks and a huge and ominously resonant tone cluster bursts onto the sound stage, only to gently subside into a lacuna long enough to reset the listener's bearings until another monumental mass of pulsing bass tones comes rolling along. This dark wave leaves a limpid field of bright drones in its wake, washing away the earlier atmosphere of dread and warmly closing Side 1 with the solace of fragile, shifting beauty.

Side 2, only slightly shorter than Side 1 and divided into seven parts, is titled

"A Mislaying of the Out-and-Out / Trespassing In Love's Furrows /
Umbrella Terms Protecting Puddles / Bony Hands and Hips Drawn /
The Satisfied Disorder / Say A Prayer For Me Tonight / The Veins of My Days".

The first portion of this side is distinctly sadder in tone than anything on Side 1, making its transition to the blissfully enchanting middle section all the more sublime. The record then enters a region more stable, focused, reserved and pure than any heard leading up to it, ultimately closing on a note of melancholy. 'Deep' hardly begins to describe it all; be sure to try spinning it at 30 RPM to go even deeper.

Dying Star is a very different affair. The instrumentation on this 50 minute album reads "Analog Synthesizer, Mixing Board". That's it. The entire album was free-improvised in one shot on a keyboard, without post-processing applied, which gives us a unique document of Will & Danielle Long working purely on instinct, in the moment. The control, restraint and taste they maintain in this most demanding of formats is downright incredible; this dying star is not a violent supernova, but a white dwarf billions of years old, finally puffing away its last layers. Activity is kept at a relatively low level for the most part, and the album is mixed very quietly; amping up the volume isn't encouraged, as this music was meant to capture a sense of seclusion. Despite how low-key and relatively static the tracks are, close attentive listening is greatly rewarded every time a subtle shift or accentuation occurs. In particular, there's a magical moment that another reviewer described right on the money:

"Yet despite the seeming placidity of the Dying Star's trajectory, the album's most poignant moment comes at the beginning of the final track. Flickers (Goodnight) is the only track that doesn't begin in silence, but instead is crossfaded directly from its predecessor. Even more significant, its continuing drone is overlaid with the only two even mildly percussive events, aptly characterized by the flickers in the track title, coming at the very beginning of the track and echoed about forty seconds in. These two events, so quiet as to be barely suggested, and appearing only after forty minutes of quiet undulating drones, are Dying Star's hidden treasure. Is it the dying star finally imploding, creating a brief flash all too easily overlooked? Has the listener drifted into an oblivious somnolence and heard it only in his or her dreams? Celer makes a call to the listener's attention and imagination and thereby elevates this release to one of their best." - Classical Drone

Well said, Caleb Deupree.

Neither as reserved & ascetic as Dying Star nor as diverse & kaleidoscopic as Dwell in Possibility, the cassette release Honey Moon occupies a somewhat more standard place in the Celer discography. The album was recorded "at home on the Autumnal Equinox, 2008" and is nocturnal through and through. Each side of the cassette has three tracks separated by silence, adding up to nearly an hour of Celer's trademark hypnotic immersion. Though the title suggests brightness and the joy of new matrimony, the work is eerily moody, balancing the murky feelings of the night with the ethereal glow of the moon.

Celer continue to stun with their ever-growing pool of releases. Thankfully, the rate of new material coming out seems to have curbed a bit, giving us some time to digest all that they've given us so far. I'm nowhere near exhausting all the beautiful and subtle details on the three albums in this review, let alone the dozens of other of their albums available. 2010 removed all doubt that Celer have the most impressive discography of any ambient group.

2. AFTA-1 - F O R M

I think I will take the lazy way out with this one and link to my past review of the album. Nothing has changed with respect to how strongly I feel about this jewel of instrumental hip hop. This is one of not too many albums I'm happy calling "perfect". How AFTA-1 remains an under-the-radar, unsigned artist, I have no idea. Easily one of the most talented and individual voices working in this new wave of beat based music.

1. Flying Lotus - Comosgramma

Cosmogramma is not a perfect album. It's not the best thing I've ever heard or even necessarily the most moving thing I heard in 2010. That said, I can't deny that it's the most unprecedented, important, on-another-level album released last year, promising more great and exciting things to come in bigger ways than any other 2010 release.

My quibbles with Flying Lotus' masterpiece are few in number and nitpicky. First, I think he could have and should have employed his cousin Ravi Coltrane to more substantial ends. The two tracks Ravi is afforded, "Arkestry" and "German Haircut", both sound like amorphous interludes - frankly, filler - compared to the rest of the album. For how indebted to jazz Cosmogramma is, I wish it had taken what was a ripe opportunity to include some actual trailblazing future-jazz with these tracks. Second, the album's structural arc is very hard to get a grip on, and I'm still not totally sold on it, particularly with how it opens, immediately throwing the listener into a fray of hectic confusion before shifting gears; you know something funny is going on when the fourth track is titled "Intro". I've heard the argument that Cosmogramma is divided roughly into three sections which represent the old Flying Lotus style (loop-heavy electronic arcade Los Angeles era), the new style (more organic and jazz influenced), and the transition between the two. Fair enough, but that kind of meta-ness distracts me a little bit, and overall I wish I simply got the new Flying Lotus. "Intro" would have made a really sweet first track.

Okay, this hasn't been the most glowing review so far for what I'm calling the album of the year. The truth is, what I perceive as flaws are the result of an excess of brilliance, not a lack of it. On the positive tip, there are about fourteen or so tracks here that are some of the most mind blowing things you can hear right at the moment. Many, many words have already been written about how great this stuff is, and in the interest of finally being done with this Fifty Great Releases list, I won't add too many more. Flying Lotus is a genius and charging the way to a future of sound I can't really imagine. His influence on other musicians is profound, and with his Brainfeeder label promoting artists like piano prodigy Austin Peralta, he may just be able to make jazz cool again with the young kids. Conclusion: if you live under a rock and haven't heard Cosmogramma yet, I wholeheartedly recommend you get on that ASAP.



Wow! It feels good to finally have this project behind me. I think 2010 was one of the most amazing years for music in recent memory, and so far 2011 has been delivering equally amazing goods. At this point I'm going to take a little break from reviewing to focus on composing and recording some new music. I hope you enjoyed my (way past its due-date) Top 50!

2010 - Fifty Great Releases, 10 - 6

10. Keith Jarrett & Charlie Haden - Jasmine

A quick glance at this deceptively simple album cover may lead many to see nothing more than a couple intersecting plane figures. Look a little longer however and you notice that the design is more naturally interpreted as the result of one continuous line motion - it actually cannot be broken down into two complete, overlapping rectangles. I smell an analogy. The music on this album, too, is deceptively simple. Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden play so straight-ahead throughout Jasmine that it could have been recorded in the early '60s (except that a few of their song choices hadn't been written yet). However, there is a depth of communication and sensitivity of musicianship present that is rarely heard in jazz of any period, except from total masters of the art. This music cannot be effectively broken down into two complete, overlapping piano and bass parts.

Eschewing all pyrotechnics and showboating, Jarrett and Haden offer a revitalization of one of my favorite jazz formats: the stripped-down deep ballad. It had been three decades since the two played music together before Jasmine, but each is such a consummate musician individually, and each is so concerned with subtlety and refinement in particular, that their long time apart did nothing to affect their compatibility. They sound like old friends playing from the heart. If Jarrett takes somewhat more time in a leading position throughout, Haden makes the deliberateness of his understatement clear in his solos, which never once call special attention to technique or speed. All the delicacy is called for, as Jarrett explicitly writes that this is nighttime music for lovers - but it's also anytime music for the self-reflective. Anybody who appreciates the 1960s recordings of Bill Evans (Portrait in Jazz, Waltz for Debby, Moon Beams, Undercurrent and a lot more) should make it a priority to hear Jasmine, especially Jarrett & Haden's contrapuntal cover of Evan's jaunty and cool "No Moon At All". Without any uninspired moments, this is the most intimate and straightforwardly beautiful recording Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden have released in a long time, together or apart.

9. Kayo Dot - Coyote

It's becoming increasingly hard to describe what kind of music Kayo Dot make. From the metal roots of their progenitors maudlin of the Well, through four LP releases and several changes in personnel, the band has evolved past the point of genre classification. I like the non-descriptive umbrella "new chamber music" for their third album Blue Lambency Downward and their latest, Coyote. The instrumentation includes bass, drums, vocals, violin, trumpet, saxophones, and synths - and almost no guitar, a significant choice for a group that's been moving further away from their aforementioned metal roots.

What unites all of their albums is the presence of (melo)drama: concept-driven narrative arcs, references to the occult, dark and often dissonant instrumentation, and an air of total seriousness. Actually, moments of Blue Lambency Downward reveal the band's unique sense of humor, but there's nothing funny about Coyote, except maybe its name. The story behind the album was developed by Yuko Sueta, artist and close personal friend of group-mastermind Toby Driver, during the last stage of her life; sadly, she lost a battle with breast cancer. Musically it's the band's most unrelentingly heavy and pitch-black album to date, heavily influenced by '80s goth rock bands like Bauhaus and Faith and the Muse. Driver also acknowledged another interesting influence on the album, Herbie Hancock's Sextant. At no point would I really call Coyote "jazzy" but there are definitely places where the trumpet and sax arrangements recall Eddie Henderson's colorful solos, and this is also the most rhythmically charged, at times almost groovy Kayo Dot album.

Coyote is the band's shortest LP at a little under 40 minutes, and given its intensity and complexity that's not a bad thing. "Calonyction Girl" opens very strongly with menacing gestures from the violin, bass and drums; rarely have I heard bass harmonics sound so sinister. Driver quickly brings his voice to the forefront with pained, elongated phrases in fluid rhythm. After three minutes the song picks up momentum and becomes more rhythmically defined, ultimately building to a crushing odd-meter vamp that could be Kayo Dot's spin on "Hidden Shadows" (Herbie Hancock, Sextant). The song also features one of the band's most surprising and lovely moments as it deceptively closes on a totally unexpected note of joy, with an extended major chord.

Continuing with a song-by-song analysis would result in an overly long review (not to mention spoil all the album's nice surprises), so suffice to say that the rest of the material maintains the standard of excellence set by "Calonyction Girl", though there are no further respites to happiness. The brilliant compositional arrangements throughout deliver fear, anger, sadness, beauty and wonder with an intensity few bands can match, and really, no other bands I know of are even trying to meld popular heavy music with 20th century avant-garde techniques in a remotely similar way. Kayo Dot are certainly a one of a kind group and they keep churning out masterpieces without repeating themselves.

8. Supersilent - 10
Supersilent's tenth album marks a very different direction for Deathprod, Arve Henriksen and Stale Storlokken. Lacking a drummer, the band has turned to increased harmonic sophistication and textural diversity to hold the listener's attention as they explore the infinite possibilities of free improvisation. The brief 10.1 begins with a piercing sustained trumpet note from Henriksen, over which Storlokken scatters some clear high piano notes. Storlokken harnesses chromaticism beautifully without giving a sense of total atonality, and the stark opener gives the impression of a dirge or elegy as Henriksen's tone takes on greater inflections of pain. Quite suddenly this melodic start completely gives way to texture, as the creeping fog of 10.2 fades in and Deathprod weaves a noxious mist with his one of a kind "Audiovirus", an amalgamation of signal processors. No band communication is apparent on this track, but it is effective ambient music. 10.3 and 10.4 return to the instrumentation of the opener plus electronics, with Storlokken on piano playing his most harmonically daring material to date. Apparently he was influenced by the compositions of Gyorgy Ligeti for these sessions, and one can definitely hear the impact of the 20th century avant-garde in general on his playing. Whereas previous Supersilent albums tended to be on the harmonically static side, generating interest mainly through dynamic variation, 10 features frequent distant modulations, chromaticism, artificial scales, and overall a much more impressionistic and unpredictable sound. When Storlokken untimidly lands on a surprising chord, the other players react and adjust immediately so nothing sounds like a mistake.

On 10.5 Supersilent work with bowel-rumblingly heavy drones and harsh noises reminiscent of their earlier material from 1-3, evoking the slow plod of some kind of megalithic golem bent on breaking stuff. It's an unexpected turn on this album, but a welcome switch to a sound many have come to expect from the band: thick, with a directly gutsy and aggressive attitude. This doesn't develop for long though, as 10.6 bends back in the opposite direction to textural sparsity and lovely diatonic melodies from the trumpet and a Brian Eno-esque wobbly keyboard sound. Beautiful melodic phrasing continues with the next two tracks; 10.7 is a dreamlike interlude for piano and trumpet with crystalline, pointillistic piano lines that are chromatic yet strangely consonant, and 10.8 - the longest track and functional centerpiece of the album - is arguably the most earnest and lovely piece the band has ever recorded, like a hymn on the sadness of existence, with Henriksen displaying the heights of his lyricism.

Things take another sharp turn with 10.9, another standout track and a return to Deathprod's thick ambient textures, this time more in the hazy extraterrestrial vein previously explored on 6 (probably Supersilent's most consistent, best album, and for me one of the absolute greatest records of the 2000s). Geologic bass tones mix with subtly shifting drone pads and bleeping alien signal transmissions to give a sonic picture of lonely beings marooned on an uncharted planet. Contrasting greatly with this is 10.10, the humble jewel of the album, less than 90 seconds of exquisite guitar, trumpet and piano interplay around a major triad. Yet another curve ball is tossed at the listener with 10.11, the fifth track on 10 under two minutes long. Here (and only here) percussion and repetition are the dominant elements, with a glitchy percussive sound repeating at unsteady intervals against computerized blips. Machine-like in timbre yet organic in development, the zen-like track reminds me of some of the more abstract material on the classic ambient glitch album Frame by Shuttle358.

10.12 closes the album on a foreboding note. Again Storlokken's piano playing displays sophisticated harmonic awareness, with dark polytonalities echoing Ligeti and Bartok. He mainly stays in the low registers of the piano, building tension while Deathprod and Henriksen provide additional dark colors. In the final quarter of the piece the trademark Supersilent UFO synth sound enters in the upper register, offering a climactic melody supported by the trumpet. Finally out of the dissonance the piano reveals a tonic note, and the piece ends with a firmly resolved cadence.

Supersilent have evolved in range with each release, but 10 displays them in a particularly sharp period of stylistic transition. Never before have their improvisations sounded so deliberate and planned out, almost mistakable for fully composed contemporary chamber music. Losing their drummer forced them to either quit or else drastically change their language and scope, and happily in choosing the latter they've recorded one of their most fascinating and moving albums.

7. Madlib - Medicine Shows

Medicine Show #4: 420 Chalice All Stars

Medicine Show #5: The History of the Loop Digga

Medicine Show #7: High Jazz

Medicine Show #8: Advanced Jazz

The award for hardest working and most diverse producer in the game today goes to Madlib. At the beginning of 2010 it was announced that Stones Throw would be releasing a new Madlib full-length every month through the whole year, alternatively in the form of albums and mixtapes. Dubbed the Medicine Show series, ten of the twelve releases have seen the light of day; numbers 9 and 12 remain mysteriously unavailable. As it stands the collection is as follows:

#1: Before the Verdict
#2: Flight to Brazil*
#3: Beat Konducta in Africa
#4: 420 Chalice All Stars*
#5: History of the Loop Digga
#6: The Brain Wreck Show*
#7: High Jazz
#8: Advanced Jazz*
#10: Black Soul*
#11: Low Budget High Fi Music

*mixtape

All of the installments I've heard range from very good to outstanding, and there are several I'd like to draw particular attention to. I've been hoping for a new Quasimoto album for a long time - The Unseen (2000) is one of my favorite hip hop albums ever, and The Further Adventures of Lord Quas (2005) is a great companion to it, if not a classic in itself. Episode five of the Medicine Show isn't a new Lord Quas album, but it's about as good instrumentally as The Unseen, and resides in a similar realm as that masterpiece. All of the material on the archival History of the Loop Digga was created prior to 2000, and it almost comes across like a collection of mostly-instrumental B-sides to The Unseen, making it a jazzy-hip-hop treasure trove. Alongside Beat Konducta Vol. 5-6 (Madlib's tribute to J Dilla) and the aforementioned Quasimoto albums, Medicine Show #5 has joined the ranks of my absolute favorite Madlib releases. The last five tracks feature Madlib freestyling with his Oxnard crew, and a number of Lord Quas motifs appear, like the sample "Warning...the Surgeon General...has determined...that the sounds you are about to hear...could be devastating...to your ears..."

Medicine Show #8: Advanced Jazz is a mixtape of trail-blazing jazz artists with some vocal skits interspersed throughout (it wouldn't be a Madlib release without some kind of vocal element). Happily, the skits don't detract from the great jazz selections at all, as they're either hilarious or interesting throwbacks to 60's and 70's culture. The tracks are named after jazz masters, like "Miles", "Ornette", "Pharoah", etc. I don't recognize any but one of the selections, namely Grant Green's terrific solo on "Back From The Gig" from Horace Parlan's album Happy Frame of Mind, which I reviewed a while back. This appears at the start of track 2, "Ornette", and none of the other various selections on this track sound like Ornette Coleman to my ears; there seems to be no connection between the titles and the artists present on each track. The material stays on the uptempo, fiery and exploratory side, and overall the mixtape gives the listener the impression of listening to one of the coolest jazz radio programs ever, without any DJ commentary but featuring a wide range of engaging supportive vocal performances. It sure would be nice if a full track list surfaced.

Other great entries in the series include: #6: The Brain Wreck Show, a collection of psychedelic 70s Kraut rock - turns out Madlib is a fan of Brainticket; #4: 420 Chalice All Stars, a crucial compilation of classic dub and roots reggae; #3: Beat Konducta in Africa, yet another deep, ambitious and banging entry in the Beat Konducta series; and #7: High Jazz, which features Madlib playing different live instruments under many aliases like Yesterday's New Quintet, the Jahari Massamba Unit and others, showing Madlib to be not just one of the greatest beat composers but also an adept and sensitive live player. I can't wait to find out what the last remaining album and mixtape will be like. Maybe, just maybe, the long awaited third Quasimoto LP is close at hand. Until the day that certain-to-be-crazy album emerges, though, I'm more than satisfied with the torrent of releases Madlib has been churning out; not all of them are top tier relative to his entire discography, but all of them are top tier relative to new music in general.

6. Gonjasufi - A Sufi and A Killer

One of the most diverse, unique and memorable albums of 2010, A Sufi and A Killer was released to just about unanimous acclaim, and I won't be going against the grain. Gonjasufi came on my radar via his contribution to Flying Lotus' Los Angeles in the form of those hauntingly cracked vocals on "Testament". Shortly before the release of Gonjasufi's debut LP, the single "Ancestors" made waves on the Internet; produced by Flying Lotus, the brilliant track combines ocean-deep bass lines, harmonium drones and introspective sitar melodies with Gonjasufi's anguished vocals on the brink of breaking. This track had me looking forward to an album midway between Los Angeles and India, but A Sufi and A Killer is much more multidimensional than that. Most of the production is handled by The Gaslamp Killer, well known for his encyclopedic knowledge of obscure world psychedelia, and Gonjasufi's debut LP has not just Indian flavors but Turkish, Middle Eastern, blues, rock, soul, folk, funk, hip-hop and even doo-wop. All of these influences are filtered through a lens of decay and grime - as Flying Lotus put it, "timeless, incredible filth" - resulting in a one-of-a-kind sound that's simultaneously ancient and futuristic. The opening prelude "(Bharatanatyam)" with a steady pounding drum and tribal vocal chant sets the scene with what sounds like centuries' worth of sonic distortion and patina.

Standouts are many on this almost hour-long album. Preceding "Ancestors" (the only Flying Lotus-produced track on the album, and one of the best cuts) is the excellent "Kobwebz", soaked in reverbed, overdriven guitars and vocals, spacey synth swoops and Turkish scales. Later there's the golden shimmering 70's psych of "Stardustin'", immediately followed by "Kowboyz and Indians", the most swagged out Bollywood-ish track I've heard. Several gems are contributed by producer Mainframe, including "Candylane" with its fatally-funky bassline, and the retro-electronic, almost Radiohead-esque "Holidays". On "Ageing", produced by The Gaslamp Killer, Gonjasufi imitates the wispy, frail vocals of a wizened old man, over a twisted Delta blues. Throughout the album Gonjasufi demonstrates amazing vocal range, and the producers treat his timbre in a variety of effective ways, usually towards the end of making it sound dirtier.

A Sufi and A Killer is an ambitious and somewhat sprawling album that requires multiple listens to really unlock, but it should be clear from the first that it's like nothing else out there. Gonjasufi came on the scene a fully matured artist with a compelling vision, and I eagerly await his next release.

2010 - Fifty Great Releases, 40 - 31

40. Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz

This album put Sufjan Stevens firmly back on my radar. I had kind of lost interest by the time Illinoise had been out for a year, and it seemed like his material after that was rapidly declining in substance. An album of lesser Illinoise outtakes; a Christmas collection. Then eventually came The Age of Adz, which totally defied my expectations and found Stevens exploring a much more electronic sound, full of urgency, anxiety and doom. Melodramatic this is, to the extreme, and the closing track exceeds 25 minutes and finds Sufjan busting out the vocoder, a regrettable last-minute miscalculation in my opinion. The best moments of the album though are mind blowing arrangements on the level of Tyondai Braxton's crazed Central Market.

39. Brian Eno - Small Craft on a Milk Sea
A slightly uneven bag, but the better tracks are the best Eno has released in decades, equal to his classic recordings. I think Eno should leave the beat-driven techno-esque tracks to younger souls and play to his strengths, namely creating mesmeric soundscapes tinted with direct melodies. Fortunately, the majority of the tracks on this album are of the latter type, and they are exquisite.

38. 1000names - Illuminated Man

1000names are a Bulgarian duo who sound a little too close to pre-Cosmogramma Flying Lotus for comfort. That said, this album is undeniably jammin', without one wasted track. Their craft is superbly polished, with all the tricky syncopations and lush textures that define this genre. Unfortunately it sounds a little too much like a product of its times to get higher on my list. Still, if you're a fan of this type of music, you won't regret having this one in your collection.

37. Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me

First let me admit I haven't listened to this one enough times. It's a tough pill to swallow, even though individually just about each song is quite strong. Three disks is a lot of music to push on anybody, even if it's really nice music. I just can't muster the endurance to figure out the plan of this album, its structural arch. But when I pick a song at random, I'm reminded of all the reasons I love Joanna Newsom, and plus, her voice has gotten better than ever. I think this could click for me in a big way yet, but for now Ys remains her masterpiece.

36. Asura - Asura
Here is another album with some slight potential to be confused for early Flying Lotus, but fortunately Asura mostly works in a pallet that is distinctly softer and cooler than Mr. Ellison's, resulting in an album that is more laid-back and impressionistic than any by FlyLo. It's gotten to the point that a lot of people are producing impressive sounding beats, so this is no longer enough to declare a musician as artistically relevant. Good thing Asura can go beyond that and make a tightly-focused album with a sense of movement from start to finish, always accessible and groovin' but with an introspective edge. This impressive debut clearly has a honed statement behind it (though I won't attempt to translate it into words), and it promises great work in the future.

35. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal

I had the great pleasure of seeing Oneohtrix Point Never rearrange gray matter at the Low End Theory, a most unlikely venue for his music. There are no beats here whatsoever, and he didn't drop a single one that night, either. I heard one guy shout "Play some real music!"; he clearly didn't appreciate or understand the trip OPN was taking the rest of the club on. To my great amusement, one couple standing right up by the stage was making out for almost his whole set. This is visual music that will show you worlds you didn't know you could dream about. The opening track is a burst of ultra-intense noise in dozens of colors (brace yourself!), and from there things settle down into much more dreamlike territory for the rest of the ride. The sound of an astronaut with dementia dreaming of an artificial intelligence disintegrating into an accretion disk of blue-hot plasma - that is something not too far from OPN's sound.

34. Shigeto - Full Circle

Another instrumental hip-hop album, and there are more to come. This stuff has just been exploding the last couple of years. Once again, a lot of the tropes you find here were essentially pioneered by Flying Lotus, but it's important to consider that nowadays the beat situation is like what happened with jazz and its great innovators - a figure like Bill Evans comes along, and suddenly everybody is playing stacked fourth voicings. Now, people still make effective use of those voicings today, and it isn't really fair to say they're ripping off Bill Evans, just like it would be unfair to call this album a ripoff of Flying Lotus. Shigeto is blazing his own intriguing trails, prioritizing lyrical melodies and nonstandard instrumentation (I hear some traditional Asian sounding instruments, hearkening to Shigeto's ancestry). Importantly, this album easily elevates itself above being a "collection of beats" and sounds like an artistic statement.

33. Gang Gang Dance - Kamakura

Only 15 minutes long, the single track on Gang Gang Dance's Kamakura EP covers more interesting territory than your typical band has recorded in their whole career. The first 10 minutes are a whirlwind ride through various mutations of funky breaks, fragmented hip hop, grime, dub, and general psychedelia. Things then wind down to an elegantly lyrical and melancholy finish, as Lizzi Bougatsos provides her singular vocals for the first time on the recording. People accustomed to her frenetic whoops and tribal babble won't find any of that here, only beautiful restraint. GGD have been on a serious roll with God's Money, Saint Dymphna, and now this. I regard them as the finest band of the weirdo-indie Brooklyn scene; they're certainly the hardest to pigeonhole.

32. Jason Moran - Ten

This album sees Jason Moran pulling out a lot more stops and displaying more baffling inventiveness than Lost In A Dream, album #47 on my list. This kind of jazz isn't to everybody's taste, because they do a lot of crazy things with time signatures and tempo changes and unusual scales, that might be regarded as being mostly for fellow musicians to appreciate. As I hear what they do, it always serves a greater purpose, not to show off chops. "Gangsterism Over 10 Years" is bliss in groove form - I don't hear too much jazz that makes me go "this just rocks so hard". Backed by a high-caliber and very dynamic band, Jason Moran displays his full potential on this thrilling record. Jazz is so far from dead!

31. Guilty Simpson - OJ Simpson

Another Madlib invasion, this is one of the least conventional rap albums of the year. It's bloated at 24 tracks, and only about half of those have rapping. The rest aren't disposable skits, however, but a collection of great Madlib beats with thought provoking spoken word samples that tell a story. This makes OJ Simpson an unabashed "concept album", and a somewhat challenging listen - Guilty's rap tracks are so good, one almost wishes it was a more straightforward collaboration. But with Madlib on deck nothing is ever straightforward, and repeated listens reveal this to be a deep, robust and nuanced journey, even if it seems unfocused at first.

To be continued!

2010 - Fifty Great Releases, 50 - 41

It's that time of the year and best-of lists are cropping up all over the web. I think a lot of people out there agree that 2010 has been a spectacular year for a lot of varieties of music. To my ears, hip-hop has been particularly strong, and I can't wait to see how it continues to develop in the new year. As I want to mention quite a few albums, I won't be able to say more than a few words about each one. The order I list these albums in should really be taken with a grain of salt - I'm only going to mention things that made a solid positive impression on me, and in many cases albums will be so close in quality that I'm just going to have to make an arbitrary decision in ranking them. Also, my current stylistic predilections are obviously going to bias this list in favor of hip-hop, jazz, and ambient music. Without further ado...

50. Kanye West - My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy

I'm basically getting this one out of the way as soon as possible. I do indeed think it's good enough to warrant a mention, and leagues above Kanye's last effort 808s & Heartbreak, but there has been a lot more exciting music this year. As usual, Kanye's beats are on point, his lyrics by and large unmemorable. That some people regard this as the essential album of the year is beyond me. It's possible I'm being unnecessarily harsh here - this album is well worth a listen, but I feel the need to counteract the hype slightly if at all possible.

49. Hidden Orchestra - Night Walks

A relatively recent discovery for me, and one I plan to revisit many more times. Darkly orchestrated noir beats that remind me a bit of the Scandinavian neckbreakers Xploding Plastix. Groovy, jazzy, and easy to enjoy.

48. Caribou - Swim

I want to love this album, as it's by a beatmaker with a penchant for psychedelics who also happens to hold a PhD in mathematics. Despite these qualities in its favor, this hasn't yet transcended beyond just solid dance music for me. I can definitely see it growing on me, though - its lush arrangements and catchy melodies are admirable.

47. Paul Motian - Lost In A Dream
This is one of three albums on my list featuring pianist Jason Moran, who I believe to be one of the most significant young players on the scene today. Moran has a lot of styles under his belt, being a student of the peerless virtuoso chameleon Jaki Byard, and like his teacher he switches between them with arresting grace. Compared to his album as a leader Ten and his work with Charles Lloyd Mirror, however, this album suffers a little bit from "typical ECM syndrome" - the tunes mostly plod along, exploring dark modalities and using a lot of open space. Part of this is on account of Paul Motian leading; for decades now the drummer has been developing an unorthodox approach that provides pure color but little in the way of regular or driving rhythms. Still, this is really beautiful work.

46. Black Milk - Album of the Year

Album of the Year isn't the album of the year. But it is a vital example of contemporary hip-hop true to the roots of the genre while exploring fresh territory. Black Milk raps and makes his own beats, and is better at both activities than most musicians who do only one or the other. Funky fresh.

45. Sun Kil Moon - Admiral Fell Promises

Here's one of several albums on my list I could easily be underrating simply because I haven't been so into this type of music in the past year. If melancholy acoustic folk is up your alley, consider this one of the best releases of the year. All of Sun Kil Moon's albums are great and this is no exception.

44. Baths - Cerulean

This is the first and so far only release on Anticon that has really caught and held my interest. That's because it doesn't sound like an Anticon record at all. Baths is a frustratingly young (as in I'm jealous) beatmaker who actually went to my high school in the San Fernando Valley and is now more than holding his own in LA's Low End Theory scene. Unlike most future-beat crafters, Baths makes his own (processed) vocals a major part of his sound, which is bright, childlike and pastoral while also distinctly weird. The vocals are odd, but this is ultimately too tight and catchy to resist.

43. Extra Life - Made Flesh

This is one of those albums I've listened to a couple times and decided I love, yet rarely find myself wanting to put on. Most of that has to do with that avant-Medieval-metal hasn't been my cup of tea this year, but this is still amazing, forward-looking music that sounds like no other band I'm aware of. Charlie Looker works in a style that has the potential to be utterly cheesy, but executes it with total sophistication. There are more than a few "holy crap"-inducing flourishes on this remarkable album.

42. Vijay Iyer - Solo
Like with Caribou, I have automatic admiration for Vijay Iyer for his holding a PhD in math. Then there's the fact that he's an excellent improviser on the piano. On this album, his first playing by himself, he opens with a beautiful, shimmering cover of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature". Like, how much cooler could this guy be? That said, the album isn't higher on my list because even I with my love of formalized and mathematical music can understand the criticism against Vijay Iyer that his playing is at times a little too rigid and structured, a little bit lacking in sensitive dynamics. The album also feels a little more like a collection of different songs than a unified statement. Regardless, there's a lot of fascinating and moving content here.

41. Dimlite - Prismic Tops

One of the most tricky to unlock mostly-instrumental hip hop albums on my list. There's plenty here that's immediately accessible, but beat-alchemist Dimlite layers in so many unexpected left turns and proggy conceits that I still don't have a clear understanding of how the album unfolds, after several listens. This is a compliment; few beat-based albums are slow to reveal their secrets and able improve with time. Richly complex yet always able to make your head nod.

To be continued!

Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza - Azioni

I've had Giraffe Kingdom on an unofficial, temporary hiatus for a few months now to pursue some other projects - namely, finishing my last quarter at college and recording an ambient album. I should graduate within the first week of June (yay), and the album is so far sounding nicer than I imagined it would, though it still needs a lot of work. Needless to say I am beyond excited to eventually unleash it here.

That said, I've been sad to let GK languish (again), and it's about time I post something fresh and exciting. To that end, here are two disk's worth of some of the most far out music I've ever come across, that of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. This was a group of free improvisers formed in the mid 1960s, which was unique in that every player was an accomplished composer as well as performer. The band, founded by Franco Evangelisti, had an "open" lineup and went through several mutations. Before a concert, the current members would meet daily to practice and define the scope of their musical language; on stage, the only rules were to listen to each other intently.

All of the members of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione were high art composers, and their music can be heard partly as reactionary against two of the dominant schools of élite music in their time - 12-tone/serial compositions following Schoenberg, Berg, & Webern, and aleatoric (chance based) works following John Cage. Arguably, their music is nothing other than aleatoric music with no plan whatsoever, but this extremely crude description does nothing to give readers any understanding of how the band actually sounded. Unfortunately, no words that come to my mind can really do that. Shocking? Provocative? Alien? Primitive? Futurist? Timeless? Ugly? Beautiful? One thing's for sure: it ain't jazz.

This is absolutely essential listening for any fan of the notion of free improvisation, from lovers of Keith Jarrett's Koln Concert to Anthony Braxton's For Alto to Supersilent, 1 through 9.

Did I mention that Ennio Morricone was the group's trumpet player? That's right, the composer of some of the most memorable film music ever scored (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) found time on the side to play in one of the most radical, fringe, niche bands that ever existed. And he was amazing in that context, too - another reflection of his genius.

Happily, the DVD that comes with this box set, featuring precious footage of the Gruppo in its prime, has found its way to YouTube. Find yourself an absolutely free hour, strive to forget all conceptions you hold about sound and music, and watch these. You won't be quite the same after.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3IuNV3dCWY
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=P1S6WsvfI6w&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=QRuY0Q7KVzc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=aF8hqcLUf2Y&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=wCFyyGeCCRo&feature=related

Track info:

Disk 1 personnel for all tracks:
Mario Bertoncini
Walter Branchi
Franco Evangelisti
John Heineman
Egisto Macchi
Ennio Morricone

1. "Kate" (7:09)
2. "Es War Einmal" (25:49)
3. Untitled (18:23)

Disk 2

1. "Fili" (14:02)
w/ Branchi, Bertoncini, Evangelisti, Heineman
2. "Concreto" (13:29)
w/ Branchi, Bertoncini, Evangelisti, Heineman
3. "A5-3" (8:01)
w/ Bertoncini, Evangelisti, Kayn, Heineman, Morricone, Vandor
4. "Trix 3" (prove concerto '67) (4:37)
w/ Heineman, Morricone, Vandor
5. "Fili 2" (prove concerto '67) (11:11)
w/ Branchi, Bertoncini, Evangelisti, Kayn
6. "A7" (7:04)
w/ Branchi, Bertoncini, Evangelisti, Heineman, Kayne, Morricone, Vandor
7. "A5-4" (prove concerto '67) (4:28)
w/ Bertoncini, Evangelisti, Heineman, Kayn, Morricone, Vandor
8. "A7-2" (prove concerto '67) (8:01)
w/ Branchi, Bertoncini, Evangelisti, Heineman, Kayn, Morricone, Vandor
9. "Trio" (10:44)
w/ Branchi, Heineman, Vandor

Download Disk 1
Download Disk 2
Purchase the 2 CD + DVD box set Azioni from die Schachtel and you'll also get a fascinating booklet containing interviews with Gruppo members, and a poster.

Can't thank Dory enough for this thrilling music.

Sam Rivers - Inspiration

Here's another challenging yet accessible modern jazz album I've been enjoying lately. Sam Rivers recorded this album with his avant garde big band, the Rivbea Orchestra, in 1999. At the time, Rivers was pushing 80 (he's now 86 and still going strong!), but the music he scored for this album, and his solos throughout it, are as adventurous and energetic as those of any young vanguard on the scene today. This shouldn't really come as a surprise, since Sam Rivers is one of the most experienced players alive, having recorded numerous free jazz masterpieces since the mid 1960s with high profile artists like Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, Anthony Braxton, and etc.

Inspiration features daunting big band arrangements that alternate between extremely carefully written phrases and far-out improvised solos. Often the band really swings, but in a sort of bizarre disjointed way; I'm reminded of the experimental big band works of Mingus from albums like The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady and Let My Children Hear Music, but the playing on Inspiration is typically a lot less tuneful, and much more abstract, than those. Actually, the album is often quite tuneful and even downright beautiful (hear "Beatrice" and "Solace"), but it speaks a particular jazz dialect that's a little strange to the ears at first. The forms of the pieces elude my comprehension even after multiple listens; new ways of hearing the parts fit together continue to reveal themselves, and the range of expression achieved through the variation of band textures is amazing. Some of the tracks are very dissonant and fierce, which is to be expected given Rivers' discography full of pretty out there records, but the music on Inspiration is generally as accessible as, say, Contours (Blue Note 1965), a classic free jazz staple.

Besides Sam Rivers I'm not familiar with any of the players on this album, but they're all more than up to par to work with the master. There are too many cool trombone, trumpet and sax solos to count, and the rhythm section (consisting only of drums and bass) stays deep in the pocket from start to finish. There are also appearances from a flute (played by Rivers) and an electric guitar. Very exciting, expressive, cerebral, vigorous music. Residents of Orlando, FL are fortunate to have regular opportunities to see modern jazz's most accomplished octogenarian perform with this group and others.

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Vijay Iyer Trio - Historicity

This is the first album I've heard by the amazing piano improviser Vijay Iyer (b. 1971), and also his most recently released. There seems to be a global, cross-genre trend going on with musicians fervently blazing trails toward the future of music, pushing genres further and further, exploring new territory - and this new release certainly displays this action in jazz. Somewhat interesting, then, that it's called Historicity -

"Historicity in philosophy is the underlying concept of history, or the intersection of teleology (the concept and study of progress and purpose) temporality (the concept of time) and historiography (semiotics and history of history). Varying conceptualizations of historicity emphasize linear progress or the repetition or modulation of past events." (Wikipedia)

Now, I'm not sure what all of that means, or exactly what Iyer is trying to say titling his album that, but I'm guessing it has something to do with the grand and vast tradition of jazz innovators before him, and the synthesis of their influences on his own playing, and how he has became a part of that tradition by cooking up something truly new in the process...or....

Okay, enough philosophical rambling. Here we have an album of three startlingly virtuosic and intelligent improvisers going crazy. The first album that springs to mind to compare this to is Gently Disturbed by the Avishai Cohen Trio, but their similarities are on the superficial side. Both feature piano trios in which all three players take on an equally important and expressive role. Both feature insane technicality, especially with rhythm, and both display near-constant improvisational genius and sensitive group interplay. But Gently Disturbed has Israeli melodies at its core, so the songs tend to have an epic and emotionally moving (sometimes sentimental) feel, and a deep sense of tradition. (By the way, Gently Disturbed is one of my very favorite albums on this blog).

Historicity as I hear it is all about modernity, intellectual muscle and sheer surprise. Vijay Iyer brings to mind acknowledged master improvisers like Keith Jarrett, Anthony Braxton and Cecil Taylor, but somehow manages to sound like none of them. He is some sort of relentless idea-machine; passage by passage his lines are constantly sliding into new contours and rhythmic patterns, expanding and contracting time, exploring every inch of the space conjured by the given piece. If heard totally on its own, I'm not sure all the piano music on Historicity could make sense, but Stephan Crump (bass) and Marcus Gilmore (drums) are the sort of players with that seemingly telepathic gift, who can not only keep up with Iyer, but reveal his abstract stream's unmistakable structure and form.

There are four Iyer originals here, and a number of intriguing covers, including Andrew Hill's "Smoke Stack" (check out Hill's great Blue Note album of the same name), Bernstein's "Somewhere" from West Side Story, Stevie Wonder's "Big Brother", and an awesome, hard rollicking rendition of "Galang" by M.I.A. (say what?? - yes!). All the covers are executed with total originality and wit, and some of them are very funky.

From what I've read, Iyer's previous albums have been fusions of jazz and world music. I'm interested to hear him in that context, but he sounds beyond amazing in this one, and I hope he continues to explore this kind of edgy, super creative modern jazz on future releases.

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Esa-Pekka Salonen - Helix, Piano Concerto, & Dichotomie

"I think of myself basically as a composer," Esa-Pekka Salonen has often been heard to say, "with a little conducting on the side to help pay the bills." Despite the charming modesty of these words, the more remarkable fact is the actual phenomenon of Salonen today - not merely another of those composers who can manage a little conducting if called upon, not merely a conductor with a couple of symphonies in a secret portfolio, but a master at the top of both professions. Here, on this disc, is further proof. (Alan Rich)

Taken from the liner notes to the album, this excerpt nicely summarizes the man who has been the most important champion for new music in Los Angeles for the last 25 years. Under his lead the L.A. Phil has performed world premieres of works by Arvo Pärt, John Adams, John Corigliano, and many others, as well as important pieces by Ligeti, Stravinsky, Bartok, and scores of other adventurous composers. As of the time of writing, Salonen is on hiatus from conducting to spend more time composing, a move that, despite his great talent for conducting, shouldn't make anybody unhappy, because his music is terrific.

This album has recordings of three recent works, Helix (2005) for orchestra, a three-movement piano concerto (2007), and Dichotomie (2000) for solo piano. The recording of the piano concerto, with pianist Yefim Bronfman, is of the piece's world premier performance. The first two pieces are both extremely lively and full of color, utilizing every resource of the orchestra to consistently creative and emotive results. Helix follows a predetermined and mathematically informed structure, that of a spiral wrapping around a cone. The piece, working in a mood reminiscent of certain bits from Stravinsky's La Sacre du Printemps, steadily builds in tempo and dynamics for nine minutes until it reaches its climactic breaking point - the tip of the cone. Salonen's first piano concerto, on the other hand, has a much more organic (and hence difficult to describe) form. As the liner notes put it,

"The music gathers strength as piano and orchestra engage in a variation of the opening slow music. Low woodwinds carry on in an interlude, 'the elegance of very large animals' (Salonen). The variety of orchestral events is breathtaking; a duet for piano and viola, a fast orchestra answer to that duet, a grand romantic sweep accompanied by arpeggios in the strings. Then comes a new sound: a solo saxophone in a haunting, slow melody, a reminder that one of Salonen's great early works was a concerto for that instrument. It is joined now by the piano and by the strange, otherworldly whistle of three piccolos. The first movement ends."

The second two movements, equally epic and adventurous, bring the concerto to a hefty 33 minutes in length. This is one to sit down and listen to when you know you have the time to appreciate it.

The final piece on the album is Dichotomie for solo piano, a piece with a somewhat minimalist/austere character but packing a lot of ferocity. Divided into two sections, Mecanisme and Organisme, the work is almost 20 minutes of constantly streaming notes whose intensity rises and falls in slow waves, demanding amazing virtuosity from Yefim Bronfman.

In 2009 Salonen completed a violin concerto, and he plans to soon return to conduct the L.A. Philharmonic during part of its 2010-11 season.* Very good news for lovers of contemporary concert music in L.A.

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*http://www.laphil.com/press/press-release/index.cfm?id=2390

Oorutaichi - Drifting My Folklore

Here's an album I've been meaning to blog about for some time, Oorutaichi's Drifting My Folklore from 2007. I don't know much about Oorutaichi, other than that he's a Japanese solo artist/DJ who cooks up some seriously zany acid cartoon music. If you thought that was Cornelius's shtick, prepare to experience new levels of zany acidity - Drifting My Folklore comes bursting at the seams with mutated disco, freak funk, twisted pop hooks, synths and turntables galore, hypnotic grooves, and utterly bizarre vocal melodies that shouldn't work but somehow do. Rarely are albums simultaneously as strange and catchy as this one. Given the overwhelming number of different musical ideas that transpire throughout it, one must really admire Oorutaichi's flawless sense of craft in arranging so many instruments and studio effects into something cohesive, without a moment sounding out of place. (Then again, what could sound out of place on an album like this?) The studio tricks in particular are frequently mindbending and worthy of Nobukazu Takemura at his best. In the end there's probably no describing this album, so let's just say I can comfortably imagine alien robots doing their morning workout routine to it, and leave it at that.

Aside, Oorutaichi contributed one of the best tracks on Shugo Tokumaru's 2009 release Rum Hee, a remix of Shugo's song of the same name.

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Toru Takemitsu - Complete Takemitsu Edition 2: Instrumental and Choral Works (11 Disks)

I just found out that 5 days ago was the late Toru Takemitsu's 79th birthday, so here's a belated dedication and celebration post. I bring you quite a large collection of instrumental and choral works by the visionary man Wikipedia documents as Japan's first international composer:

In the late 1950s chance brought Takemitsu international attention: his Requiem for string orchestra (1957 listen (help·info)) was heard by Igor Stravinsky in 1958 during his visit to Japan. (The NHK had organised opportunities for Stravinsky to listen to some of the latest Japanese music; when Takemitsu's work was put on by mistake, Stravinsky insisted on hearing it to the end.) At a press conference later, Stravinsky expressed his admiration for the work, praising its "sincerity" and "passionate" writing.^[14] Stravinsky subsequently invited Takemitsu to lunch; and for Takemitsu this was an "unforgettable" experience.^[15] After Stravinsky returned to the U.S., Takemitsu soon received a commission for a new work from the Koussevitsky Foundation which, he assumed, had come as a suggestion from Stravinsky to Aaron Copland.^[15] For this he composed Dorian Horizon, (1966), which was premièred by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Copland.

Takemitsu later became a close personal friend of John Cage, who encouraged him to embrace his nation's musical traditions for the first time, leading to a new stylistic period combining ancient Japanese and Western avant garde ideas. At the same time, Toru was also highly conscious of Western popular music, as evidenced by his many guitar transcriptions of Beatles and jazz songs.

This collection is actually the second installment of an even larger group of recordings of Takemitsu's music, called the Complete Takemitsu Edition. From what I can tell, Edition 1 consists of his orchestral works, Editions 3 and 4 cover his film works, and Edition 5 is made up of popular songs, tape, and theatre works. Supposedly the entire collection goes for around an absurd $1,000. Here's what we have on Edition 2, the instrumental and choral works:

Disk 1
1.Romance
2-3. Lento in Due Movimenti
4. Distance de Fee
5-7. Pause Ininterrompue
8-10. Le Son Calligraphie I, II, III
11. Masque
12. Landscape
13. Piano Distance
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Disk 2
1. Ring for flute, terz guitar and lute
2. Corona for one or more pianists
3. Sacrifice for alto flute, lute and vibraphone with antique cymbals
4. Sonant for 2 flutes, violin, violoncello, guitar and 2 bandoneons
5. Hika for violin and piano
6. Eclipse for biwa and shakuhachi
7. Cross Talk for 2 bandoneons and tape music
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Disk 3
1. Stanza I
2. Valeria
3. Seasons
4. Munari by Munari
5. Voice
6. Eucalypts II
7. Stanza II
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Disk 4
1. Distance for oboe with or without sho
2. For Away for piano
3. Voyage for biwa
4. Garden Rain for brass ensemble
5-7. Folios for guitar
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Disk 5
1. Bryce
2. Waves
3. Quatrain 2
4. Waterways
5. Les yeux clos
6. Les yeux clos II
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Disk 6
1. A Way a Lone for string quartet
2-4. Toward the Sea for alto flute and guitar
5. Rain Tree for 3 percussion players
6. Rain Spell for flute, clarinet, harp, piano and vibraphone
7. Rain Tree Sketch I for piano
8. Rain Tree Sketch II, In Memoriam Olivier Messiaen for piano
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Disk 7
1. Cross Hatch for marimba and vibraphone
2. Rocking Mirror Daybreak I, Autumn for violin duo
3. Rocking Mirror Daybreak II, Passing Bird for violin duo
4. Rocking Mirror Daybreak III, In The Shadows for violin duo
5. Rocking Mirror Daybreak IV, Rocking Mirror for violin duo
6. From far beyond the Chrysanthemums and November Fog for violin and piano
7. Orion for violoncello and piano
8. Entre-temps for oboe and string quartet
9. Rain Dreaming for cembalo
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Disk 8
1. Signals from Heaven I, Day Signal
2. Signals from Heaven II, Night Signal
3. All in Twilight I for guitar
4. All in Twilight II for guitar
5. All in Twilight III for guitar
6. All in Twilight IV for guitar
7. Toward the Sea III Part I for alto flute and harp
8. Toward the Sea III Part II for alto flute and harp
9. Toward the Sea III Part III for alto flute and harp
10 Itinerant, In Memory Of Isamu Nogutchi for flute
11. Litany I, In Memory Of Michael Vyner for piano
12. Litany II, In Memory Of Michael Vyner for piano
13. A piece for guitar For The 60th Birthday of Sylvano Bussotti
14. And then I knew 'twas the Wind for flute, viola and harp
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Disk 9
1. Equinox
2. Between Tides
3. Paths
4. A Bird came down the Walk
5. In the Woods I
6. In the Woods II
7. In the Woods III
8. Air
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Disk 10
1. Bad Boy for 2 or 3 guitars
2-3. Piano Pieces for Children
4. A Boy Name Hiroshima for 2 guitars
5. Le Fils des Etoiles for flute and harp
6-17. 12 songs for guitar
18. The Last Waltz for guitar
19. Golden Slumbers for piano
20. Herbstlied for clarinet and string quartet
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Disk 11
1. Wind Horse I
2. Wind Horse II
3. Wind Horse III
4. Wind Horse IV
5. Wind Horse V
6. Grass
7. Handmade Proverbs I
8. Handmade Proverbs II
9. Handmade Proverbs III
10. Handmade Proverbs IV
11-22. Songs for mixed chorus
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There are too many excellent pieces here to really name highlights, but I'm particularly fond of the Piano Pieces for Children, Toward the Sea for alto flute and harp, the guitar songs, and the astoundingly gorgeous songs for mixed chorus, which to me almost sound like otherworldly slave spirituals.

Complete Takemitsu Edition website (Japanese)