My 40 favorite albums of 2019—part 3
20. Art Ensemble of Chicago, We are on the Edge: a 50th Anniversary Celebration (Pi)
My review in the Quietus:
It’s easy to forget that before the Art Ensemble of Chicago there was the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble, the group that changed its appellation and became one of the most paradigm-shifting forces in music history. With most of the members of the old iteration of his group dead, a few eyebrows were raised when the composer and improviser revived the band with only percussionist Don Moye connecting the group to its past. With We Are On The Edge the multi-instrumentalist delivers a statement, if a little overstuffed, on many levels: the primacy of his vision (from ancient to the future); his unceasing commitment to exploration and growth; an embrace of a younger generation of musical seekers. Mitchell’s music sprawls from heavily notated contemporary music, wide-open improvisation, old AEC classics, and an embrace to new iterations of the avant-garde, whether through the charged oratory of Moor Mother or by bringing in leading lights of a much younger generation, including cellist Tomeka Reid, bassist Junius Paul, and violinist Jean Cook.
19. Benedicte Maurseth, Benedicte Maurseth (Heilo)
I’ve long been a softie when it comes to Norway’s Hardanger fiddle tradition—I hear the stuff and I’m pulled in, melting into a puddle due to its atmospheric richness and lyric beauty, or electrified by its biting resonance and sublime grain. But I’ve heard lots of the stuff, and for something to pull me back for repeated listening it takes something original, much like the work Nils Økland has been doing for years in solo practice or with projects like 1982 or Lumen Drones, which dropped an excellent new record in 2019 called Umbra (Hubro). I’ve enjoyed the work of Benedicte Maurseth for years now, but this new eponymous recording is something else, a mix or traditional themes and a couple of originals in which the fiddler judiciously and thoughtfully expands the material (a tendency she adapted from her mentor, the great Knut Hamre), often according to versions seared upon her memory by older Hardanger masters, in ways that have transported me—there’s few things that can match the experience of getting lost in the sounds, with those sympathetic strings under the violin’s bridge filling up the room with some ghostly, ineffable presence.
18. Dustin Laurenzi, Snaketime: the Music of Moondog (Astral Spirits/Feeding Tube)
From my review in the Quietus:
There’s much more to Chicago jazz than what you hear on International Anthem these days. Saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi sometimes tours with Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver and makes up one-third of the nimble Twin Talk, but he’s probably a name you’ve never heard. He formed Snaketime to interpret the music of Moondog—a fairly common occurrence of late—but his deft arrangements leech out Louis Hardin Jr.’s naiveté in favor of his melodic generosity, especially in the pieces that are canons. Laurenzi is the featured soloist here, playing buoyant yet probing lines mixing lilt and soulfulness, but the high-quality band brings the leader’s ideas to pungent, springy life—as drummers Ryan Packard and Quin Kirchner apply an infectious polyrhythmic push, bassist Matt Ulery and guitarist Dave Miller map out lovely harmonies and three additional horn players (reedists Nick Mazzarella and Jason Stein and trumpeter Chad McCullough) articulate the catchy melodies in geometric splendor. The music doesn’t try to mimic Moondog’s records—instead it zeros in on what made his pieces so indelible.
17. Fredrik Ljungkvist Trio, Atlantis (Moserobie)
Excerpted from a Nowhere Street post.
Fredrik Ljungvkist is a masterful reedist, but his curiosity has generally led him away from straight-ahead contexts, which makes the appearance of Atlantis so welcome. It’s not as if he’s suddenly lost his edge or explorative drive, but I’ve been thrilled to sit through a full album where displays his talents on tunes that keep it relatively simple and swing. The title track is hardly simple—its corkscrewing melody reminds me of Jimmy Giuffre’s iconic early 60s trio with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow in its tight-knit cohesion and peripatetic episodes—but with drummer Jon Fält and bassist Mattias Welin deftly sculpting the grooves, keeping their accompaniment sleek and unobtrusive, we can really bask in the way the leader constructs one of his magnificent solos. He kneads each motif, reshaping melodic variations, and exploits his full tonal palette, whether guttural snorts to altissimo sallies, in a wide-ranging, fluid improvisation unencumbered by other players or elaborate arrangements. It’s also great to hear him tackle a tune like “Monk’s Dream”—with the trio expanded by the presence of the young pianist Max Agnas—where he toggles between lithe, airy phrases and bluesy, earthy ones, moving between them without a hiccup and embarks on a thrilling, unexpected double-time sprint. On his “Rue Oberkampf,” with a melody partially cribbed from “Cherokee,” the saxophonist luxuriates in his rich, full-bodied tone—blowing over the rhythm section’s delicious, halting mid-tempo figures with a massive sound that gathers steam and detail only to descend from the crescendo with exquisite grace.
16. Bill Orcutt, Odds Against Tomorrow (Pallalia)
On one hand the latest from Bill Orcutt could feel like the latest step in a dazzling evolution where his trademark phrasing—jagged, lacerating, acidic—has been softened in favor of a lyric fluidity while his overall exploratory ethos has remained steadfast, as he tears into crystalline thematic material with the same glee, intensity, and openness. But Orcutt doesn’t travel in a straight line, thankfully. Odds Against Tomorrow is certainly his most accessible, beautiful work, but I don’t think that’s the most interesting or trenchant assessment of his creative arc—he’s simply grown as a musician, with a broader palette of techniques and a heightened ability to rapidly translate ideas that seem to explode into his head directly to his fingers. His tone is sublime—some unholy marriage of Loren MazzaCane Connors, Bill Frisell, Jimi Hendrix, Les Paul, and, I dunno, early Tom Verlaine. Orcutt is pushing forward in multiple directions at once—somehow connected, but also independent of one another, and while this is probably the record I’ve listened to more than any of his albums, it ultimately feels like one vibrant tile in an ongoing mosaic. As much as I love this one, I’m more excited for the full picture that will hopefully take years to complete.
15. JD Allen, Barracoon (Savant)
Sometimes it’s hard to witness the dissolution of a great band, and tenor saxophonist JD Allen’s long-running trio with bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston was one of the best of the previous decade--a combo which only gained heft and depth when it was joined by guitarist Liberty Ellman on its last two records—including last year’s classic ballad collection Love Stone. I’ll admit I had some trepidation about his new trio with a rhythm section I knew nothing about, but it didn’t take long for drummer Nic Cacioppo and bassist Ian Kenselaar to win me over. They provide Allen with a tougher, more driving and angular foundation without hampering his innate sense of swing and deep blues feeling. Allen remains my favorite inside-out cat, a musician seriously rooted in tradition while constantly pushing against its strictures, exploring the contours of change-based tunes with endless invention, authority, and verve. Few working musicians can make me appreciate Ornette Coleman—Allen’s sighs on “The Immortal (H. Lacks)” are instantly recognizable, but not to easy to produce in such meaningful, gut-punch fashion--and Sonny Rollins more than this guy, who’s distilled their essences into a granite-hard concentrate that perpetually reminds me of why I love jazz in the first place.
14. Nathalie Joachim w/ Spektral Quartet, Fanm d’Ayiti (New Amsterdam)
My review from Bandcamp Daily
Haitian-American vocalist, flutist, and composer Nathalie Joachim—a member of the flute duo Flutronix and the popular Chicago chamber ensemble eighth blackbird—delivers a highly personal lyrical work with this set of pieces gathered from the traditional music of her ancestral homeland, Haiti. She launched the project not long after the passing of her maternal grandmother in 2015—a powerful link for her to the music and culture of that island, through the stories and songs shared in the rural farming village of Dantan. Joachim conducted research, recording interviews with storied vocalists Emerante de Pradines and Carole Demesmin, as well as Milena Sandler, daughter of the great Toto Bissainthe, about Haitian musical tradition and feminist freedom in Haiti. Their words are spread throughout the album. She wrote new arrangements for most of the traditional songs, while she composed new music for “Suite pou Dantan,” using the original lyrics of older songs and hymns. She’s empathically supported by the lustrous strings of Spektral Quartet—sometimes solemn, sometimes playful—and several pieces meticulously deploy electronic beats and her own serene flute lines. For “Suite pou Dantan” she built the pieces around a children’s church choir she recorded in Dantan, underlining how Haitians adapted Catholic liturgy to tribal religious beliefs from West Africa. Her singing has a measured, crystalline soulfulness to it, and throughout this spectacular record she effortlessly blends the past and present, tradition and the contemporary.
13. 75 Dollar Bill, I Was Real (Thin Wrist)
Excerpted from a Nowhere Street post
I Was Real finds a number of guests joining guitarist Che Chen and percussionist Rick Brown, who continues to produce mind-bending depth from the punk rock plywood cajon-like box that doubles as his drum stool, and a series of homemade mallets. The duo’s machinations obviously throb at the heart of all the music here, but the shifting arrangements throughout the album add new colors and timbres, expanding the pair’s sonic blueprint in all kinds of ways. The epic title track, for example, seems to roll into eternity, patiently pulsing with a tangy striated drone (somewhere between Tony Conrad and a tamboura) played by guest electric violist Karen Waltuch complementing the twill of thumping low-end tones laid down by Andrew Lafkas (double bass) and Sue Garner (electric bass); Chen calmly embroiders a spare riff, plucking out endless little variations that stab and seethe before retracting into meditative cool. On “WZN#3 (Verso)” is a cool act of subtraction, as most of the recorded tracks were later stripped away. Chen puts his guitar down altogether, opting for amplified violin and filling one channel, with the returning Waltuch taking the other, creating a three-way dialogue of slashing lines, drones, and skree with baritone saxophonist Cheryl Kingan—somehow hybridizing Celtic fiddle music and Tuareg jams.
12. Philip Thomas, Morton Feldman Piano (Another Timbre)
My review from Bandcamp Daily:
This monumental endeavor by British pianist Philip Thomas (well known as a member of the contemporary ensemble Apartment House) summarizes his decades of direct engagement and study with the music of Morton Feldman. In 1999, pianist John Tilbury released a masterful 4-CD collection of the composer’s piano music, which has led some to wonder why Thomas would feel the need to chime in, but such thinking is silly. The subtlety and openness of Feldman’s work certainly allows for every performer to leave his or her mark, and Thomas also adds more, rarely heard, material to the mix—including a previously unpublished minute-long gem from 1942 and a couple of others from 1954. Aside from the sublime, meticulous performances themselves, the pianist’s elaborate liner notes provide fascinating insights into his own approach. Thomas places a unique emphasis on experiencing sounds from the performer’s onstage perspective, noting that audiences often miss some of the nuances in Feldman’s generally quiet music by dint of physical distance. He also waxes eloquently on the importance of touch in Feldman’s music, a quality elusive in the actual scores. Iconic works like “Triadic Memories” and “For Bunita Marcus” are the headliners of this box set, but a lesser-celebrated work like 1977’s “Piano” proves equally revealing. Essential stuff.
11. Cassandra Miller, Songs About Singing (All That Dust)
With each new release we get a better picture of the crackling imagination and deep musicality of London-based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller, and this stunning collection of four vocal pieces only adds to the gravity and pleasure of her work. Miller often mines the past for warped inspiration, homing in on unexpected qualities or elements to create something startlingly fresh, and that’s precisely what happens on the 2010 piece Bel Canto, in which soprano Juliet Fraser masterfully articulates the heavy vibrato of opera star Maria Callas as part of a trippy abstraction, amid an array of wobbly, destabilizing strings meticulously played by Plus-Minus Ensemble. For the first 14 minutes of the work everything sounds pleasingly underwater, while on the last three the players all seem to break the surface, with a piercing violin figure played by the great Aisha Orazbayeva. For me that piece alone is worth the price of admission, but the more recent pieces are no less astonishing—Traveller Song features the composer’s own intimately vulnerable voice singing along wordlessly to Sicilian folk songs that she’s listening to on headphones, accompanied by lovely, fleeting lines somewhere between chamber music and folk by a few members of Plus-Minus, as they all coalesce in the final moments. There are two iterations of her “Tracery” series, a project with Fraser in which the singer performs a body scan meditation while listening to different pieces of music on headphones—one featuring a pair of Hardanger fiddle tunes and another with a movement of Ben Johnson’s eighth string quartet--which she responds to with “automatic singing,” further manipulated by the composer in shifting, canon-like layers. Each listen has given up more secrets.
Today’s playlist:
Kassin, Relax (Luaka Bop)
Mountain Men, Magic Ship (Nonesuch)
Low, Double Negative (Sub Pop)
Jonathan Finlayson, 3 Times Round (Pi)
The Necks, Body (Northern Spy)
