v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

The Coming Regime

From Robert Kagan in this weekends Washington Post:

Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence. The fact that many Americans might prefer other candidates, much ballyhooed by such political sages as Karl Rove, will soon become irrelevant when millions of Republican voters turn out to choose the person whom no one allegedly wants.

For many months now, we have been living in a world of self-delusion, rich with imagined possibilities. Maybe it will be Ron DeSantis, or maybe Nikki Haley. Maybe the myriad indictments of Trump will doom him with Republican suburbanites. Such hopeful speculation has allowed us to drift along passively, conducting business as usual, taking no dramatic action to change course, in the hope and expectation that something will happen. Like people on a riverboat, we have long known there is a waterfall ahead but assume we will somehow find our way to shore before we go over the edge. But now the actions required to get us to shore are looking harder and harder, if not downright impossible.

The magical-thinking phase is ending. Barring some miracle, Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor. Until now, Republicans and conservatives have enjoyed relative freedom to express anti-Trump sentiments, to speak openly and positively about alternative candidates, to vent criticisms of Trump’s behavior past and present. Donors who find Trump distasteful have been free to spread their money around to help his competitors. Establishment Republicans have made no secret of their hope that Trump will be convicted and thus removed from the equation without their having to take a stand against him.

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Best Music of 2023- Phi-Psonics

Pensive and brooding with a touch of Tyner on a Fender Rhodes this music is something to wake up to, or perhaps while one reads their favorite novel during a mid-morning interlude. A welcome addition to the tranquil, yet turbulent music of your soul.

From UK Vibe:

It was the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who first coined the phrase “music is the food of the soul”. And listening to this latest release from the LA-based jazz quartet Phi-Psonics, rarely has that phrase been so appropriate. Led by bassist Seth Ford-Young and featuring Sylvain Carton on woodwinds, Mitchell Yoshida on electric piano, and Josh Collazo on drums, their beautiful music draws on jazz and classical influences together with Ford-Young’s own musical experiences, relationships, and his introduction to spirituality, yoga and philosophy at a young age. Their unique brand of fully immersive, meditative jazz can’t help but soothe the soul and lift the spirits.

Originally from the Washington DC area, Ford-Young moved to California in the early 90s and fell in love with the sounds of the upright bass and the music of Charles Mingus, John and Alice Coltrane, and Duke Ellington along with Bach, Chopin, Pärt, and Satie. These influences can clearly be heard throughout “Octava”, with the group’s combined expression soaring in a quietly contemplative way. Their music glides effortlessly like a beautiful bird spreading its wings and catching the sunlight as it drifts from one gentle slipstream to another.

“Octava” is the group’s second album and like their debut “The Cradle” and its somewhat introspective approach to meditative jazz offers a welcoming space for uplifting contemplation. The warm melodies and thoughtful musical exploration take the listener on a lovely journey, one which offers a deep reward. Ford-Young shares a few thoughts on the recording: “This album is about change and evolution to a higher version of ourselves. Understanding this journey through the idea of ascending a musical scale and arriving at a new, higher octave is natural, especially for a musician. We move, struggle, and work through the various steps or tones and arrive at the octave a new version of ourselves, still the same person, but vibrating at a higher frequency.”

From Marlbank:

Cast your minds back to 2022 and in the same Pharoanic slipstream The Cradle that maxed out on the sheer feeling of space engendered on 'First Step' pivoting between the bass playing of Seth Ford-Young of US West Coast outfit Phi-Psonics to the floaty flute-playing of Sylvain Carton who also plays tenor saxophone on the album.

On the upcoming Octava clearly the balladic 'Green Dreams' dedicated to Ford-Young's wife is the best track with the slow tick of drummer Josh Collazo a human metronome that has somehow ceased being an inanimate object to deftly choreograph the dance that develops. But most tracks work in terms of a long play listen. Carton is all over the record and the tasteful Wurly playing is the work of Mitchell Yoshida.

Even more relevant since the passing of Pharoah Sanders last September. And even long before. Again the sax titan was at the heart of the awakening. What goes around coming around all the years on since his classic Karma all the way up to his last great statement, the incredible Promises. It is a circle that remains unbroken and the solar ripples span ever outerwards.

Maybe it says in its best expression a poetic commentary on the malaise of Western society more than any news cycle can even make a motion towards. Manchester label Gondwana is the original spiritual jazz label for the 21st century in the UK and while others may dabble at the style and frequently do, there is always a deep sense of exploration with the Halsalls & Mackness heads at the label even when they change tack.

From Goldmine Mag:

In modern days and times, when it comes to the pure and unadulterated genre of Jazz music, although it doesn't seem so, there are a plethora of recording artist's and musical ensembles who exemplify the pure and genetic coding of the roots of the genre of Jazz (in all of its classic sub-genres).  Whether it be Bebop, Hard Bop, Post Bop, Soul Jazz, Modal, Vocal Jazz, Jazz Funk, and even up to the mid-'70s incarnation of Jazz Fusion, respectable homages to those varied styles of classic traditional jazz music are alive and very present, today.  Phi-Psonics, having recently entered this realm with their debut album The Cradle (2020)—which we hope to review in the near future—have resurfaced in 2023 with their sophomore album, Octava, given to us via the very notable and respectable avant-garde and eclectic UK record label, Gondwana Records.  Aside from the Phi-Psonics, Gondwana's artist roster includes other phenomenal and note-worthy acts such as Chip Wickham, Allysha Joy, and Caoilfhionn Rose, to name a few; and the Phi-Psonics are right at home, fitting right in the musical mentality of the record label. Headed by the incredible writer, composer, producer and bassist, Seth Ford-Young, and completed with his line up of exceptional musicians: Sylvain Carton (saxophones and flutes), Mitchell Yoshida (Wurlitzer and electric piano), and Josh Collazo (drums), Phi-Psonics are a quartet of modern ethereal post bop and modal jazz, that has no choice but to garner respect from even the most discerning of Jazz music aficionados.  And all of this, out of Los Angeles, the 'music capital of the world', where Rock, HipHop, Pop, Soul/R&B, Punk, and even Smooth Jazz reign supreme ... come Phi-Psonics.

Octava is a brilliant sophomore effort if there ever was one.  And although I do not own their debut release, I have sampled it online, and I will say that, even as incredibly impressive as their breakthrough album The Cradle is, their sophomore release stands out even if just a hair more, than their debut does.  Boy, does the opening track,  "Invocation," immediately stir up mid-'60s post bop offerings from some of my most notable favorites.  It immediately threw me back to some of my favorite Eric Dolphy, Ron Carter, Charles Mingus and John Coltrane recordings.  Moving through the track-listing to "We Walk in the Gardens of Our Ancestors," I came to a place of the meditative Jazz ethers, where the minimalistic infusion of brilliant musicianship and composition met the sonic fingerprint of psychedelia, which was lead specifically by flute and Rhodes piano, and carried me through a pure Jazz dream state, reminiscent of circa ealy-'70s CTI label Hubert Laws.  "Green Dreams," is yet another 'beyond reality' work of art that invokes feelings of supernatural peace and subconscious self-reflection, yet in the midst of contemplation, all in a slightly more than five minute composition, which ends much to soon.  

Photo: Bobby Gordon

Denis' The Bastards

 

Review of Claire Denis' Bastards-a worthwhile film from this always surprising director:

Like the shadows blocking out key areas of the frame in a Val Lewton film, or the requisite locked attic door in a haunted-house story, the narrative ellipses that open Claire Denis’s murky, rain-soaked, profoundly upsetting film noir could be concealing anything—but it’s hard to imagine they’re hiding anything you’d want to see for yourself. Bastards is Denis’s tightest narrative in decades, but that’s not immediately apparent from the film’s opening series of shard-like vignettes: a well-dressed man straightens his tie in a dark, deserted office; a woman is led slowly away from a crime scene; a teenage girl stumbles home through the lamp-lit streets of Paris wearing only a pair of five-inch heels.

As the film continues, little details, shreds of context, facts, clues, and connections start to accumulate at painfully spaced-out intervals. The story, when it eventually emerges, concerns ship’s captain Marco (Vincent Lindon), who goes AWOL and rushes home following his brother-in-law’s suicide and the hospitalization of his young niece Justine (Lola Créton, she of the high heels), only to get caught up in the machinations of a depraved, sunken-eyed financier (Michel Subor). It’s not totally obvious what makes Denis’s trail of bread crumbs so thrilling to follow. Certainly there’s an element of morbid curiosity, but there’s also the urge not to leave any shadows unexplored or any doors unopened.

More to the point: is there, as a handful of critics have suggested, something questionable about Denis’s choice to make a film about victimhood that refrains from exploring the psychology of the victims? For all Créton’s natural, almond-eyed soulfulness, Justine remains an opaque enigma, while Chiara Mastroianni, playing Subor’s mistress, radiates loneliness and desperation but rarely seems to have a will of her own (that is, until she finally lashes out in a last-ditch act). Marco is our entry point into their sufferings, and he’s as much an outsider as we are: a passive, world-weary onlooker who’d rather be floating out at sea; the quintessential noir protagonist in over his own head. But all this, I think, serves to justify the supposed lack of empathy in Bastards. It suggests the extent to which the film’s shadowy corporate Paris is of a piece with Chinatown’s rotten-to-the-core Los Angeles, or the Chicago that told Tony Camonte in Scarface that the world was his: within a thoroughly amoral universe in which women are bought and bartered by men of absolute power, victimhood consists precisely in being commodified, flattened out, reduced to a cipher.

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Photos from This Past Weekend in Pennsylvania

Vallejo Nocturno 2023 -Philadelphia