What is almost self-evident now is that our government is becoming more corrupt now, and at a dangerously accelerating rate. (Although in many other ways life is getting better, as Steven Pinker recently noted.) In response we must resist becoming like the those of whom Yeats said: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” So I state unequivocally that I agree with the vast majority of scholars and thinkers—recent trends reveal that the USA is becoming more authoritarian, totalitarian, and fascist.
Of course I could be mistaken. I am not a scholar of Italian history, totalitarianism, or the mob psychology that enables fascist movements. But I do know that all human beings have a human genome, making them much more alike than different. Humans are capable of racism, sexism, xenophobia, cruelty, violence, religious fanaticism and more. We are a nasty species; we are modified monkeys. As Mark Twain said: “Such is the human race … Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.”
Thus I resist the idea that fascism can happen in Germany, Italy or Russia, but not in the United States. It can happen here, and all signs point in an ominous direction. Moreover, the United States was never a model of liberty or justice. The country was built on slave labor and genocide at home and violent imperialism abroad. It is a first world outlier in terms of incarceration rates and gun violence; it is the only developed country in the world without national health and child care; it has outrageous levels of income inequality with few opportunities for individuals to climb the socio-economic ladder; and it is consistently ranked by people around the world as the greatest threat to world peace and the world’s most hated country.
Furthermore, signs of its dysfunction continue to grow. If authoritarian political forces don’t get their way, they shut down the government, threaten to default on the nation’s debt, fail to fill judicial vacancies, deny people health-care and family planning options, conduct congressional show trials, suppress voting, gerrymander congressional districts, support racism, xenophobia and sexism, and spread lies and propaganda. These aren’t signs of a stable society. As the late Princeton political theorist Sheldon Wolin put it:
The elements are in place [for a quasi-fascist takeover]: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers. That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents.
Now with power in the hands of an odd mix of plutocrats, corporatists, theocrats, racists, sexists, egoists, psychopaths, sycophants, anti-modernists, and the scientifically illiterate, there is no reason to think that they will surrender their power without a fight. You might think that if income inequality grows, individual liberties are further constricted, or millions of people are killed at home or abroad, that people will reject those in power when conditions worsened. But this assumes we are a democracy. A compliant and misinformed public can’t think, act or vote intelligently. If you control your citizens with sophisticated propaganda and mindless entertainment, you can persuade them to support anything. With better methods of controlling and distorting information will come more control over the population and, as long the powerful believe they benefit from an increasingly totalitarian state, they will try to maintain it. Most people like to control others; they like to win.
Wow, what an album! Precise musical ruminations in a cool and thoughtful setting but with determination and drive that manages to encompass both past and future. This surprisingly excellent album by Niescier and Weber explores many sentiments in a cohesive and collaborative way with their North American partners on ambitious compositions that provide a fertile platform for the hard work to come. Great quintet play. Not sure why so many critics missed this one.
Looking to re-create the excitement of New York City’s vibrancy in music, the group consisting of Angelika Niescier on saxophone, Ralph Alessi on trumpet, Florian Weber on piano, Christopher Tordini on bass and Tyshawn Sorey on drums, create colorful and spirited music on this album. “The Barn Thing” opens the album with choppy horns and spirited rhythm accompaniment. The full band interplay is fast and intricate with heavy drops of piano and rapid drumming. The leader’s saxophone comes into the frame, soloing and keeping the fast pace going. There is an excellent quartet section with everyone just playing lights out, made even more intense by the entry of Alessi’s trumpet. The music is relentless and very exciting and the group runs full tilt to the finish line. Swirling saxophone and trumpet keep the music moving briskly forward on “And Over” and the group brings music forward in waves, before it crests and Weber’s piano takes over, casting the music in a more delicate and thoughtful manner. Light and nimble saxophone is added, and the trumpet joins in adding lyrical qualities to the proceedings. The music drops dynamically to spare piano and cymbals before coalescing at the end. “Invaded” slows things down a little bit with a open ballad type feel. There is gentle and light toned saxophone over spare piano, bass and brushes. They develop a melancholy air to the music, which changes markedly on “The Liquid Stone” where the leader’s strutting saxophone is framed by trumpet and cymbals and cultivates music that is characterized by nervousness and unease. There is a spacious interlude for the rhythm section that gradually gathers steam aided by smears and sparks of brass that enter the stream of the music. The strong drumming and piercing trumpet are very impressive, and Niescier engages with her fellow musicians setting up a powerful collective group improvisation. “Parsifal” brings the intensity back down to a simmer, with light trumpet and spacious rhythm accompaniment. Saxophone and trumpet gently probe the music while delicate brushes and bass provide a subtle backdrop. The swirling brushes plus the thick and ever present bass provide a quiet focus for this track. The concluding selection “Für Krefeld” sees the band opening together nicely with the saxophone building over piano, bass and drums with trumpet riding shotgun. The horns push the tempo over taut rhythm of strong piano and drums and stoic bass. The piano and drums are very strong and exciting, making for a complicated and interesting rhythmic foundation allowing the horns to blast back in and enjoy the fun. This leads to an exciting saxophone and drums based conversation, before Alessi takes the baton and drives home a very powerful statement of his own.
I've been a fan of Cologne-based Polish saxophonist Angelika Niescier for quite a few years, and my admiration was cemented when she played at the Chicago Cultural Center as part of European Jazz Meets Chicago in 2012. At Moers she was partnered with bassist Yasser Morejon Pino and drummer Ruy Adrian López-Nussa, who also serve as the deft rhythm section for explosive Cuban pianist Harold López-Nussa. That pianist is a fiery performer, and together their playing bursts with high-energy pyrotechnics. With Niescier they were cooler, trusting in their rapport and focusing on a subtler but no less rewarding approach. Niescier evoked the disparate sounds of two alto greats—the bright melodies of Ornette Coleman and the airy bounce and rhythmic grace of Lee Konitz—and the trio's entirely improvised performance traversed lots of peaks and valleys, fueled by deep, organic grooves.
Earlier this year Niescier released a fantastic album with German pianist Florian Weber called NYC Five (Intakt), titled thusly because it was made in New York with drummer Tyshawn Sorey, trumpeter Ralph Alessi, and bassist Chris Tordini. Both of the Germans have worked in New York often, and the saxophonist's previous studio album, 2011's Quite Simply (Enja), was made with Sorey and bassist Tomas Morgan—as a result, this doesn't feel like a pickup session, where visiting musicians hire a top-flight band to burnish their own reputations but end up generating few creative sparks. Each of the leaders wrote half of the six tunes, and Niescier brings an aggressive, driving vibe, while Weber generally opts for a more contemplative feel. Below you can hear the album's opening cut, Niescier's "The Barn Thing," a tightly coiled burner that constantly seems on the verge of exploding but instead stays reined in throughout its series of concise solos stoked by Sorey and Tordini.
NYC Five is a beautifully constructed album of songs by one of the most extroverted saxophonists in Europe. Angelika Niescier might not be a name many are familiar with but the Cologne-based alto saxophonist inhabits many worlds seemingly at once. The music that is improvised is strikingly majestic and the written work – especially the ballad, Invaded – is likely to tear your heart out for its deep emotion and exquisite showers of notes by the pianist Florian Weber. The ubiquitous American drummer Tyshawn Sorey makes an electrifying appearance wherever he goes and this record is no exception. Watch out for the lightness and bounce of Ralph Alessi’s trumpet – the other American of repute on the album.
This well crafted and delicious set of electronic dance music by two of the genre's more ambitious explorers has been criticized by some for being to predictable-but I find it reassuring that these artists continue to make deeply felt music that works on my ears and feet. Incredibly its not on any of the year end lists that I've seen. Well worth the listen.
When Juan Atkins and Moritz von Oswald collaborated on the first Borderland release in 2013, some corners of the internet decried it as unambitious, claiming that its producers had failed to step out of their comfort zones. In their purported attack on the ethos of our endemic chase for the perennially new, Atkins' and von Oswald's 'uniform' sequencing and thematic constancy were singled out as the prime suspects. The same criticism could, in theory, be applied to Transport – released to mark the 25th anniversary of Berlin's Tresor club – however, this would be to fundamentally misinterpret the album's seeming simplicity. Transport does not represent a paradigm shift nor an experimental frenzy, but what it does offer is a studied and disarmingly beautiful crystallisation of more than two decades of techno, produced by two people who have been at its cutting edge since the very beginning.
If their first record had made it as far as the 'Mars Garden', then Transport, with its more pervasive cosmic imagery, spreads the net even wider, creating a thoroughly modern prototype for the music of the spheres. An impeccable sense of proportion dominates throughout, and this is where Atkins' and von Oswald's years of experience in some of the world's best clubs pays off. They are fully aware of the fact that time moves in a particular, omnidirectional way on the dance floor, and they give every element the time and space it needs to register on the listener's pre-consciousness. The drum patterning is equally flawless, and adds to the album's curious type of chemically-induced clarity, which is thrown into sharper relief by the disorienting but unmistakably benign synth smears which appear, in varying guises of aqua, in all seven tracks.
Transport follows a quasi-narrative structure, with the somewhat foreboding title track serving as a kind of launch pad for the album's subsequent travels. The prognosis becomes sunnier from the second track onwards, culminating in 'Riod' – an exquisite piece of music, fully deserving of its separate release as an EP, whose melodic riff sounds so organic, so right, that it seems as though it has always been there, reverberating in a quiet harmony with our entire being. Dance music yields many blissful moments, yet few are as powerful as the realisation that a soundtrack totally independent from the music you have been listening to in the club is being performed in your head concurrently. This "other", unwritten music, is what Transport seems to have finally given form to, and this feat alone should qualify its status as a great album.
The influence of jazz and dub is synonymous with Atkins' and von Oswald's output, and is present throughout the album, but here it is brought within orbit by taut, wandering basslines and brilliantly defined drums. If the first Borderland release, with its sinister harmonic expeditions, represented the sublime, perpetually teetering on the edge of the unknowable, then Transport, in its glowing wholeness, is the epitome of the beautiful. The fifth track, 'Merkur', also deserves special mention. In an album governed by subtlety, its swung bass and the rests, which are so loaded with anticipation, provide a critical moment for the direct outpouring of energy and joy. All in all, Transport embodies a seasoned classicism, with all the connotations of timelessness that that entails, and thus, to the ears of your humble narrator, presents itself as a resounding success.
What can you say that hasn’t been said about these two men before? It’s been 20 years since these two greats came together to work on something and with Borderland, we really do have something special.
Usually, when I listen to something, I find myself going back to a particular track over and over but for Transport, I found myself going back and listening to the whole thing over and over. The whole thing. For me, that speaks volumes in terms of how well this has been put together. The 7 tracks sound wonderfully warm throughout and almost organic at times too. So many elements that come into play on this; there are the obvious echoes of Detroit from Juan, the unmistakeable dub techno influence with Moritz, and there is something else. Something that I can’t put my finger on.
This something that has totally drawn me in on Transport. This something is most definitely tied into its near perfect listenability but that is also where I am lost. Lost in a perfect way though. Maybe because there is so much going on but nothing that overpowers anything else at the same time. Something that is subtle yet it’s right there but out on the edge too. It’s a tricky one to describe if I’m honest and I think that is where this has power to draw you in.
I’m very sure you are going to hear tracks from this left, right, and centre. Tracks from Transport are going to appear all sorts of sets, in all sorts of clubs, and played by all sorts of DJs. You’ll also hear it at my house an awful lot too. Fantastic stuff and I hope to hear a lot more from Borderland.
In Germany, Moritz von Oswald's Basic Channel production team was as important to the identity of Berlin techno as Juan Atkins' Belleville Three was to the development of techno in Detroit. As both scenes healthily fed off of each other throughout the '90s, the genre of minimal techno was born, influencing a slew of artists from Aphex Twin to Richie Hawtin.
With the release of Transport, the two pioneers have reunited (they previously worked together on 1992's 3MB project) to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of German electronic label Tresor. That may be why Atkins and von Oswald seem rather content in revelling in the past, as much of the material on this seven-track LP comes off like archetypal instrumental techno. That's not a bad thing: on tracks like the cascading "Transport," pulsating "Lightyears" and breezy "Riod," the duo are still able to connect with the listener sonically, allowing durable rhythms, muffled beats and alien sounds to tightly coalesce and freely scatter, even though Atkins and von Oswald seem to be working off of the same structural blueprint for much of the album's 52-minute runtime.
Transport may be overly concerned with looking to the past, but honestly, you won't find two better-equipped historians than Atkins and von Oswald.
A delightful concoction of sounds that lead you back to a time when you were learning to listen.Familiar but strange causes that uncanny feeling and there is that plus more in this superb album of things past but still here. The inventiveness of this collection proves that a good understanding of sounds and context make music what it is. A must for those who are interested in how sound works.
For decades the music made by Woo drifted maddeningly just out of reach. Since the 1970s, British brothers Mark and Clive Ives would hole up in a small terraced house in South London and make hours of peculiar home recordings, but the music never traveled far. Of its own era, it most resembled the Penguin Café Orchestra. Brian Eno's E.G. label would have been a perfect fit for Woo, too, but they wound up self-releasing their music instead. They've since hovered outside of time, not easy to track or pin down.
Only in 2012 did Woo's discography begin to be properly reissued and re-evaluated, first by indie label Drag City and then by Britain's dance floor curio specialists Emotional Rescue. Now comes the fifth release of Woo's music in the past four years, this time from the same label that brought us Mariah's similarly unclassifiable album, Utakata No Hibi. According to the liner notes, Awaawaa dates back to the band's earliest recordings, from the mid-'70s until the early '80s.
Woo's woozy sound world is hard to categorize. It's ambient and electronic, though the instruments that most often rise to the fore are strummed guitars and woodwinds, phase-shifted on a track like "Green Blob" until it's hard to discern where their timbres begin and end. Woo bear similarities to the gentler side of kosmische (think Cluster's Sowiesoso, early Faust and Can's "Ethnological Forgery Series"), and their lyrical guitar lines bring to mind the likes of Durutti Column. New age fans will delight in the relaxed feel that permeates Awaawaa; a five-minute track like "The Goodies" is both easy to get lost in and easy to hum.
"Tick Tock," "Fun, The Final Frontier" and the title track sound like a jazz trio, if heard from deep down a storm drain. Which might raise the question of how an album like this could appeal to electronic music fans. The Ives brothers' warped sonic strategies bring to mind Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project, which often ran recordings of classical piano and brass bands through a number of effects until they became a luminous haze. Had Voigt been taken with sunny afternoons rather than forests at midnight, Gas might've sounded like Awaawaa. In that manner, Woo could be seen as the estranged uncles of the Pop Ambient form, imagining a beatless, beatific future.
Renewed interest in the buried catalogue of British brothers, Mark and Clive Ives – recording under the name Woo, has seen a dig through the archives as well as the reissuing of the albums. Following on from the wonderful When The Past Arrives – a collection that’s still on fairly high rotation at mine, comes this, another set of previously unreleased gems. Taken from the duo’s golden period (1975-82) some of these pieces feel like they were created in the 40s, 50s or 60s and were miles ahead of their time, others still sound ahead of their time now…
There are little moments of Krautrock-derived bursts, the fuzzy-logic guitar scattershots and spatial awareness of Mike Oldfield, the knickknack rhythms and mercurial melodies of Penguin Café Orchestra, it’s all here – once again. This set of Woo moments, as with When The Past Arrives, feels all at once like a strange new (previously swamped) world of murky musical memories recreated anew and then so much like so many different things at the same time as to feel like nothing you’ve ever quite heard before.
Opener Odd Spiral feels like a soundtrack inspired by one of Len Lye’s kinetic sculptures, it could damn near be a recording of one, it is in fact its own aural sculpture as much as a clearly defined ‘piece’ of music. It wobbles and shines as an odd spiral might.
Then it’s to Green Blob where Durutti Column and Faust feel like the aspirants floating around this sound if not the direct influences/influencers.
Some of these pieces are merely tantalising teasers, the spacey jazz-shuffle of Mobile Phone lasts just one minute and feels exactly like something you might create on an app now, while waiting for the bus. All the more intriguing to think of it as being cooked up in a bedsit music-lab on organic instruments 35-40 years before music was truly everywhere.
January saw the release of the latest record from Mark and Clive Ives, two brothers from South London who have been making music since 1972. Together, the pair make up a duo called Woo and have bent the definition of the term 'genre' producing woozy ambient to indie rock, experimental jazz and beyond. Here is their guide to the latest release.
The basic tracks where recorded between 1975-1982 in Wimbledon in South London. Because of the way most of the tracks were recorded, and their short duration, we decided to merge the tracks so the end result is a continuous flow. We then did overdubs at some of the transition points to enhance the continuity.
This was one of our very early recordings, around 1976. We lived in South London and were in our early 20’s, and very influenced by all the incredible four piece bands that followed in the Beatles enormous footsteps. In our own way we worked on the four piece format of bass, drums, guitar and keyboard.
The initial track was Mark’s guitar put through a sequencer, (Korg System 100). This created the rhythm and the chords, with me synthesising and phrasing his notes with my keyboard. There was a wonderful spontaneity to it because the two of us played it as a single take. It was followed by one overdub recording of percussion and a guitar.
A truly moving and soulful elaboration of the life you live while you ponder today's realities. Slinky and languid. My type of reality as I assume today's responsibilities. Understated but so true. Like all of our lives .....
You could choose any number of songs from this languid, twinkly debut album to sum up King, an emerging LA soul trio. But it’s simplest to turn straight to The Greatest. From its antique computer game sonics, to its retro-futurist vibe, The Greatest sounds like very little of the genre out there today, unless we’re counting Daft Punk as a soul band. King’s three-way vocals are silken; their harmonies glisten. Moreover, The Greatest is a song in which three African American women – two sisters and a friend – declare their own awesomeness with casual grace.
Granted, the video borrows retro arcade-game graphics that reference boxing and, almost certainly, a previous incumbent of their title, but King’s words exude serene composure, not threat. “Who wants a run with the No 1?” they sing. If any sync agents are reading, The Greatest needs to soundtrack every televised sporting victory, ever, from now on.
Why are they called King? Because they rule. King write and produce their own music, on their own label. Paris Strother is the linchpin, writing, recording and arranging on a series of analogue keyboards; she went to Berklee College of Music and was mentored by Patrice “Forget Me Nots” Rushen. Strother’s twin sister Amber and friend Anita Bias complete the trio with their influences, rhythmic nous and dulcet tones.
King’s own victory run is a quiet, internet-age fairytale. In 2011 they put some songs up on Soundcloud. Before too long, their squelchy, idiosyncratic, time-capsule sound had gone, if not viral, then straight to all the right ears thanks to Twitter. Questlove, Erykah Badu and Prince declared themselves fans after King’s EP, The Story, came out. Stevie Wonder looms large in King’s sound, but a dreamlike, utopian ambience and psychedelic nuances – “We’re gonna keep on riding till we reach the mothership,” they crooned on The Story – complete the picture of a band out of time.
How many groups arrive fully-formed, with a sound that belongs entirely to them and nobody else? It’s a rare thing. And that’s what made KING, the Los Angeles R&B trio, so special when they self-released The Story, their three-song debut EP, in 2011. There was certainly something retro about the EP; it drew from the languid, blissful soul music of the ’70s and ’80s. But KING also brought a digital haze with them. Like the chillwave that was sweeping through indie rock at the time, they used technology to unmoor themselves from any sense of physical reality. The Story got endorsements from neo-soul veterans like Erykah Badu and ?uestove, who must’ve seen them as fellow travelers, and Prince invited them to open up an LA show for them. After that, they recorded the odd collaboration here and there, and they toured. Mostly, though, they disappeared. They went five years with only three songs to their name. And that whole time, as we can hear now, they were working.
As fully-formed as that EP might’ve been, We Are KING, the trio’s full-length debut, takes its ideas and pushes them even further. KING were glorious anomalies when they first showed up, and they now seem completely lost in time and space. Their music hits like a drug, with melting harmonies and digital basslines and vaporous smears of melody coming at you from all angles. Listening to them is like being smothered by a silk pillow with a luxuriously high thread count. Their music is thick and full and luscious. There’s no empty space anywhere in it, which means it’s different enough from most contemporary R&B that it might as well come from a completely different planet. This is music about love and languor and contentment, and it’s hard to imagine a better soundtrack for spending a sunny afternoon rolling around on a sunny living-room floor with someone you adore.
We Are KING includes extended, extra-zoned-out versions of the three songs from that first EP. When they show up, if you’ve spent enough time with that EP, they sound like old friends. But We Are KING isn’t an album of songs. Instead, it’s an extended-vibe sort of thing. The songs don’t seem to have concrete beginnings and endings. Instead, everything melts into everything else. This is a version of R&B that comes from jazz, rather than pop or gospel. The voices sing euphoric riffs and lose themselves intertwining in one another, and euphoric bursts of saxophone or keyboard will bubble up out of nowhere. Someone who knows more about soul music than me could tell you more about its influences, but I hear Minnie Riperton in full ecstatic-sprawl mode, as well as Prince at his squelchiest. But it also functions as a sort of ambient music, a cloud of sound that can make any room that much more pleasant. It’s a rare thing: An album that never makes any sort of immediate pop concessions but still sounds perfectly welcoming. You can hear their smiles when they’re singing. When was the last time you heard that on any album, in any genre?
And if the music feels aqueous and formless, that’s clearly the intent. Paris Strother, the group’s producer, played just about every instrument on We Are KING. Anita Bias, who handles the vocals alongside Paris’ twin sister Amber, studied at Berklee College Of Music. These women clearly know what they’re doing. They spent years working on this album carefully, whittling away at it until it had exactly the sound they wanted. And that was time well-spent. Nobody else sounds like this.
This accurately self-termed electro-soul trio debuted in 2011 with an EP that resembled reinterpretations of imaginary recordings made by Wonderlove, Stevie Wonder's background vocalists, circa Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants. All three songs, measured and spirit-lifting in nature, radiated warmth through rich harmonies and crafty programming. Supported by the likes of Erykah Badu and Questlove, King's impact was instant. Within a year, they elevated cuts by the Foreign Exchange and Robert Glasper Experiment. Additional singles trickled out slowly, surely. The trio likewise didn't spread itself thin when it came to further collaborations, highlighted by "Right at the Core," Paris' smoldering duet with Bilal. Almost five years after their first step, the Strothers and Bias released their slow-cooked We Are King. For those who have been aware since the beginning, the album might seem anticlimactic. Only seven of the 12 inclusions are completely fresh. The 2011-2014 output, however, is cleverly dispersed throughout the sequence, with all of the EP cuts appearing as extended versions that enhance flow. Most of the new tracks are up to the high bar they set for themselves. Three of better ones -- two floating love songs leaving it all behind and a proud, percolating tribute to Muhammad Ali -- are emphasized with front-loading. King don't take a caravan across the Sudan, but "Red Eye," in which they "fly through the Nigerian night sky," makes a clear connection with the Jones Girls of "Nights Over Egypt," and continues their recurring spiritual and/or romantic journeys theme. They even present the album's finale, "Native Land," as a cunning sequel to "The Story," and land at home. The flashiest they get is with a monologue, some horns, and a guitar solo, all of which appear on the hot-pursuit ballad "Oh, Please!" Otherwise, We Are King is all about plush, impeccable grooves and spine-tingling harmonies. It's without fault.
Sinuous but determined like a labyrinth with a purpose Halvorson's compositions and her compatriots collaborative improvisations work in thoughtful and philosophical ways. The pleasure in this and previous albums by this guitar/composer wizard is how they expand and contract to the situation at hand. Here we have beautiful baroque solos around a precise tapestry of orchestration. The welcome addition of Susan Alcorn's pedal steel guitar is the missing piece. Halvorson's octet has garnered the well deserved praise from all corners so this obvious selection should be no surprise.
Continuing her streak of outstanding releases, guitarist extraordinaire Mary Halvorson once again shows her determination to build upon her unique style as a composer and bandleader. She's taken her septet from 2013's superb Illusionary Sea and added an eighth member, pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn, and the resulting music is typical Halvorson: harmonically complex, emotionally compelling, and full of interesting moments worth savoring.
The first thing one notices about Alcorn's presence is the sense of atmosphere she provides. On the third track, "The Absolute Almost," she offers spare, crystalline notes that gradually emerge and then drift away, providing a somber opening to the cut. Then Halvorson herself joins in, with carefully placed notes that emerge in a pensive dialogue with Alcorn to continue the subdued conversation, before a break in which the rest of the band jumps in to take the piece in a dramatically different direction, full of bounce and rhythmic drive. (It's little surprises like these that always make listening to a Halvorson record such an adventure.) Alcorn's role seems to liberate Halvorson's playing, freeing up subtle opportunities for her to contribute to the group as an equal rather than as a dominant voice.
It's also immediately evident how well this group works together as a unit. Drummer Ches Smith and bassist John Hébert have worked as Halvorson's partners for several recordings, to the point that they are an intuitive element of the rhythmic fluidity that is one of her trademarks. Even during the record's more raucous moments, there's never a sense that they're in danger of losing control of the pulse. And the horns are as fabulous as you would expect: with Jonathan Finlayson, Jon Irabagon, Ingrid Laubrock and Jacob Garchik in the lineup, Halvorson has a superlative brass section for her rich compositions, each member equally adept as a soloist or as an ensemble contributor.
Perhaps the most engaging aspect of the recording is its strong emotional core. Listening to the opening of the record, "Spirit Splitter," and the jubilant horn interplay that propels the track, it is clear that this is music to be enjoyed, not simply admired or respected. Whether we are taken down a path of exultant cacophony or melancholy musings, with Halvorson as our guide it is sure to involve her irresistible melodic sensibility. I'm sure Halvorson's next installment in her impressive catalog will continue to surprise and astonish, but in the meantime she's given us another exceptional record to celebrate.
From New York Times:
Ms. Halvorson has released six albums on the independent label Firehouse 12, starting in 2008 with “Dragon’s Head,” which introduced her trio and, in practical terms, signaled her arrival. The trio, with John Hébert on bass and Ches Smith on drums, has been the core of her band as it grew in increments — first to a quintet, and then a septet.
“Away With You,” out this week, expands to eight pieces, with the galvanizing addition of Susan Alcorn on pedal steel guitar. It’s the most accomplished statement Ms. Halvorson has made as a composer, her strongest turn as bandleader and a standout jazz release of the year.
“It does feel like a culmination,” she said of the album after her bagatelles marathon shift, in an interview at Rough Trade NYC. “I have no plans to make it a larger band.” She caught herself: “Actually, I said that the last time, too, when it was a septet, but then I met Susan. I love what she does so much, and I really heard that voice mixed in.”
Ms. Halvorson has an agreeable, unassuming demeanor in conversation; she can come across like a humanities professor. But there’s no doubting her intensity of purpose, or the deep measure of her confidence.
She grew up in Brookline, Mass., beginning her musical training on violin. The guitar became an obsession in seventh grade after she discovered Jimi Hendrix. Her first guitar teacher was Issi Rozen, a jazz musician who shaped her early understanding of the music. She later found two mentors as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, where she had intended to study biology.
One of those was another guitar player, Joe Morris, a staunch experimentalist with whom she took private lessons. The other was Anthony Braxton, a composer, multireedist and all-around genius who was a distinguished member of Wesleyan’s music faculty at the time.
Mr. Braxton gave Ms. Halvorson some of her earliest exposure on record, and she remains a regular collaborator: She’s featured on one of his newest releases, a three-CD boxed set titled “3 Compositions (EEMHM) 2011.” Beyond that, he was a formative influence as a musical thinker.
“He would always say that musicians were either stylists or restructuralists,” Ms. Halvorson said. “So you can master a style, or you can take aspects of that style and do something different.”
Around the time that she was forming her identity, the emblematic postbop guitarist was someone like Kurt Rosenwinkel, whose playing skews luminous, ethereal and hyperfluent. (This is essentially still the gold standard.) Ms. Halvorson admires that school of jazz guitar but has never tried to emulate it, partly because it’s already so widely emulated.
She plays a vintage Guild Artist Award archtop hollow body, with a percussive picking style. As for effects, she uses standard equipment: a volume pedal, an expression pedal, a Line 6 delay modeler. “For me, the basis is always going to be a clean tone, with an acoustic sound coming through as much as possible,” she said. “It’s not something I’ve ever thought about changing.”
Whether her instrumentation or expands and contracts, the reach of Mary Halvorson’s artistic flair keeps widening with each release. After dropping a brilliant solo guitar record onto the jazz world in 2015 (Meltframe), Halvorson returns to her ever-enlarging ensemble, which was once formed by her, Ches Smith on drums and John Hébert on bass. Over time, she augmented the trio with a quartet of horn players (Jon Irabagon, alto sax; Ingrid Laubrock, tenor sax; Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet; Jacob Garchik, trombone). That was the septet that convened for Halvorson’s last band record, Illusionary Sea (2016).
So in keeping with the pattern of expansion, Halvorson unveils an octet for Away With You (now out from Firehouse 12 Records), but also in keeping with her audacious unpredictability, that eighth seat is occupied by a pedal steel player. Susan Alcorn started out in country-western pedal steel but eventually developed her own technique informed by free jazz, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, and various folk music from around the world. It’s not hard to imagine the potential that Halvorson saw after seeing Alcorn perform live on multiple occasions.
The eight new compositions on Away With You were written by her with Alcorn in mind, but smartly integrates Alcorn as part of a group that includes all those horns and another chordal instrument, not as some curiosity to the jazz world. Conversely, Alcorn’s pedal steel is implemented in ways that are foreign to accustomed way such an instrument is played but makes sense within the context of Halvorson’s world.
For example, “Fog Bank (no. 56)” presents the lonely, strangely dissonant sound of Alcorn’s pedal steel guitar, played in a way rarely heard but fits the ghostly somber sentiment of this song. Alcorn’s slow procession of notes spelling out the main harmonic thread of “Inky Ribbons (no. 53)” is in essence assuming Halvorson’s usual role. Halvorson essentially engages in a duet with Alcorn for the first half “The Absolute Almost (no. 52),” the bending notes of the pedal steel a perfect companion to the signature bending note style of Halvorson. The heralding horns brings the rest of the band in, and what follows is a carnival ride through advanced harmonics.
The leader has hardly forgotten about the rest of the band, though, and she knows just how to deploy each piece individually and together in service of her songs, demonstrated so well on “Away With You (No. 55).” The punchy horn lines and whistle-able melody deceives you into thinking it’s some lost 70s television theme song at first as the climbing and falling sequence of note forms the foundation for a tune that these horns dance around. Increasingly, it becomes avant-garde that rocks (complete with faint echoes of the Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear The Reaper”). When Halvorson takes a solo, Hébert and Smith syncopate like they are inside her head. When Finlayson takes over, the rhythms section gets shifty, competing with the trumpeter for attention an example of Halvorson’s sophisticated and imaginative arrangements.
True roots music and especially appreciated by those who ran with Sun Ra and Art Ensemble of Chicago and drank at their river. Always in the tradition but ahead of their times. Perhaps that is why they sometime refer to these great musicians as practitioners of spiritual jazz, a term that may miss their essence. Its's heartening to see music like this made in this day and age. Highly recommended.
Unlike many modern recording studios, Max Weissenfeldt’s Philophon studio is a fully analogue setup. There were neither DAWs nor soft synths in Max Weissenfeldt’s Philophon studio. This old school setup was a reminder of the studios where The Pyramids had recorded their trilogy of seventies albums. For The Pyramids, Max Weissenfeldt’s Philophon studio was the perfect place to record We Be All Africans.
Having recorded the seven songs that became We Be All Africans, The Pyramids decided to release a single later in 2015. By then, The Pyramids were billed as Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids. The song chosen for their new forty-five was Rhapsody In Berlin. It gave Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids’ fans a tantalising taste of We Be All Africans. With their fans licking their lips at an album of Afro- jazz-funk, Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids began the search for a record company to release their fifth album.
Eventually, Strut Records agreed to release We Be All Africans. The release date was scheduled for 27th May 2016, when Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids’ first album in five years hits the shops. We Be All Africans is a welcome return to form from a band that was founded in 1972.
Opening We Be All Africans, is the title track. An urgently plucked bass joins drums and a myriad of exotic, bustling, chiming, ringing percussion, in driving the arrangement along. They create an irresistibly catchy arrangement that stays true to The Pyramids’ original sound. Partly, that is the decision to using analogue equipment; and partly the type of instruments deployed. Soon, though, a chant of: “We Be All Africans” enters. Before long, female vocalists deliver the lead vocal, and harmonies respond to their call. By then, the percussion is panned hard left, while the vocal dominated the rest of the arrangement. That’s until the vocals drop out, and a bass ushers in braying, scorching horns are added. Just as one thinks the track can’t get any better, it does. In full, flight Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids unleash a glorious mixture of percussion, horns and rhythm section. The vocals add the finishing touch to what’s akin to a truly irresistible call to dance.
There’s a thoughtful, mesmeric sound to Epiphany, as the arrangement gradually unfolds, and meanders along. A melancholy, jazz-tinged horn plays, sounding as if it belongs in a late night jazz club in Dakar, Brazzaville or Kinshasa. That’s until the tempo rises, and the sultry sound becomes celebratory. Percussion and the rhythm section combine, as the track takes on a much more contemporary Nu-Jazz sound. Sometimes, the arrangement almost explodes, and dances along before briefly teasing the listener into thinking that a journey into jazz is about to ensue. That doesn’t happen. However, there’s an almost downtempo influences to this genre-melting track that veers between celebratory, smooth, sultry, ruminative and mellow. In doing so, it proves that Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids are still relevant.
Bursts of horn punctuate the arrangement to Silent Days, before an array of percussive delights unite with Bajka’s vocal. It’s rueful, and tinged with sadness and regret. Just below her vocal, the backing vocals sit. They augment her reflective vocal, while drums crash and clamber across the arrangement. Meanwhile, the subtle, sultry sound of the alto saxophone briefly replaces the vocal, and takes centre-stage. This happens several times, before the horns enjoy their moment in the sun. They bobs and weaves across the arrangement, adding to the wistful, heart wrenching sound of what’s a beautiful track.
Over the last four decades, Idris Ackamoor & the Pyramids have gained worldwide renown for their vibrant, cosmic blend of jazz, funk and world elements, three highly collectible private-press 1970s albums, a breathtaking live show culminating with a reunion album (2012's Otherworldly) and a lifetime achievement award for Ackamoor from Gilles Peterson.
Recorded in Berlin at Max Weissenfeldt's Philophon studios, We Be All Africans sustains the collective's jubilant vibe with a euphonious message of universal brotherhood and harmony. The title track fuses the interstellar excursions of Sun Ra and the joyous insurgency of Fela Kuti into a contagious dance-floor filler that doesn't let up for more than six minutes. The groove gets even hotter with the polyrhythmic Afro-funk of "Rhapsody in Berlin."
More cerebral is the appropriately titled "Epiphany," a futuristic excursion with transcendent saxophone from Ackamoor and ethereal synthesizer lines swathed over serpentine percussion, and "Clarion Call," a hymnal in which the band explore interstellar space that would make Coltrane proud. With the exception of the slight percussion workout "Traponga," We Be All Africans is another exceptional sonic adventure in Idris Ackamoor's growing legacy. (Strut)
It’s strange that Ackamoor's name is largely unfamiliar in Western jazz – he studied under the famous jazz pianist Cecil Taylor – though he left America to play across Africa, inspired by Ghana and Ghanian music: Fully respected and admired in Tamale, he played with the Tamalian king's own musicians. In America though, his name would not be as familiar as Taylor's or other musicians who played in bigger jazz bands where a reputation could more easily emerge as a result.
We Be All Africans is an interesting and loaded title. Like Sun Ra, Ackamoor buoys a serious message atop his playful melodies: Humanity originated in Africa, and so Ackamoor believes that this shared heritage unifies humanity; he thinks that divisions between race would be detrimental to the survival of humanity as a whole. His music then may be presented, in an ideal world, as something that can be respectfully appreciated by all. That is, as a joyous, cultural boundary crossing flip-side to racial aggressions and violence.
This album does not dully encapsulate what is familiar to previous jazz and Afropop records and instead is modern in the sense that it looks to more recent music and instrumentation for points of reference. 'Epiphany' unfolds with a slow, creeping electric bass and cool synthesiser phasing, counterbalanced with sharp horn stabs and clattering drum fills before returning back to the gentle introductory sway. Synthesiser might have been found on Herbie Hancock records or Sun Ra, but the phaser sound used here sounds more modern, despite having been recorded in Max Weissenfeldt's analogue studio in Berlin.
If you’re looking for explicit Sun Ra references, you'll find them on 'Silent Days'. This third track features cosmic imagery familiar to the self-proclaimed solar explorer's own records. Even the chanting has the same relaxed lull that Sun Ra's Arkestra sometimes break into on his tracks. But 'Silent Days' is a gentle homage, and doesn't serve to copy for copying’s own sake. And jazz has had a solid history of paying reference to previous musicians, usually mimicking their hooks or motifs: The comical, breathy yelps on 'Rhapsody In Berlin' are like those on Herbie Hancock's 'Watermelon Man', but this helps to accent and maintain the pulse of a track euphoric on the surface, but not without chaos or aggression. It should be aimless sounding, but the cacophony works because of the way in which it is subtly built up: A violin makes a brief solo appearance, jazzy in the sense that the playing is very experimental in terms of timbre. The bow judders and screeches across the strings as if to damage them. When it gets to the stage where 'Rhapsody In Berlin' sounds overly busy, the band quietens somewhat – the trick to creating balance.
A powerful singer with a great guitar band from Mauritania has put out one of the most surprising albums of the year-Arbina. This electronic desert music hits the spot and sounds a hell of a more authentic than the majority of releases out in 2016. Take my word this release works: Noura Mint Seymali has a captivating style and voice that transcends this superlative release.
I shouldn't be personally offended that many don't know about or consider Noura Mint Seymali the best singer in the world and her band the best band in the world. But I am. Grievously so. It's a slight I feel in my bones that causes me to slander all other bands, no matter how worthy. Noura Mint Seymali's new album, Arbina, is one of the best albums of the year. Not one of the best "world music" albums, whatever that means, but one the best albums. Full stop. Period. I want to list every album it's far better than, in detail, starting with Radiohead's A Moon Shaped Pool, but I don't imagine Noura Mint Seymali would appreciate that.
Noura Mint Seymali's music touches on folk, psych, funk, and rock, but fits neatly nowhere. She's in a genre, "Azaewan," that, referring to Moorish pop from Mauritania, pretty much just consists of her, her husband, and the rest of her band, and that's it. I met her and her band once, to interview them all for Noisey for their previous excellent album, Tzenni, and they all seemed extremely nice. But, really, I want to impress upon you this this album is very good. Well, I'm excited about it.
Arbina is a name for god and the whole album, produced by drummer Mathew Tinari with engineering by Pere Ubu/Brooklyn legend Tony Maimone, is heavy and soaring in the contradictory manner worship can both encompass and absolve. Much has already been written about the influence of both Hendrix and Mark Knopfler on the guitar technique of many West African players (basically, in the 80s, cheap Dire Straits and Jimi tapes spread through the region, influencing pop and desert blues alike) but on Arbina, Seymali's husband, Jeiche Ould Chighaly, and his modified for Moorish scales guitar takes his influences, both contemporary and griot, further afield than ever before. Imagine all the solos from Marquee Moon played in succession and as dance music. The rhythm section of drummer Tinari and bassist Ousmane Touré also take the steady grounding funk of Tzenni and upend it into a roiling and unexpected back and forth, sometimes dub, sometimes straight up prog. And, as always, the center piece is Noura Mint Seymali herself, one of the most singular voices out there, singing songs ranging from the necessity of woman's healthcare to odes to the band's native Mauritania to the transcendent nature of music to, of course, the grace only available through the higher universal powers. It's heady stuff and if you don't speak Arabic, that's OK, you can't understand the words in Deafheaven songs either.
Compared with its neighbours Mali and Senegal, Mauritania has enjoyed little international recognition for its music, but Noura Mint Seymali intends to put that right. A griot (oral poet) from a celebrated musical family, she started out working with her stepmother, the great singer Dimi Mint Abba, and now plays desert rock in a four-piece band dominated by the amplified “modified Moorish guitar” of her husband Jeiche Ould Chighaly. Her powerful voice sounded a little relentless on her first, much-praised international release, Tzenni, but this a more varied affair in which exuberant, full-tilt songs are matched against the lighter, traditional Suedi Koum, or the melodic Richa, written by her father and now dressed up with powerful guitar work. Elsewhere, there are echoes of desert blues and reggae, and some intriguing lyrics. The rousing title track is both a religious praise song and advice to women about cancer screening.
In traditional Mauritanian music men play a banjo-like lute - the tidinit - and women play the harp-like ardine, similar to the kora played in Mali. The music played by Seymali and her group follows a tradition of folk music that dates back hundreds of years, but it has never sounded quite like this molten form of sunbaked Saharan psychedelia. Their modern take on griot music is made with the classic rock band set up of guitar, bass and drums, with Seymali on ardine and vocals, which they describe as playing the music of the "Azawan” – the music of the desert.
On Arbina – the group’s second album following 2014’s Tzenni - Seymali’s husband Jeiche Ould Chigaly has replaced the tidinit in favour of electric guitar, modified to replicate Moorish scales by adding additional frets on the neck, adding to the mystique of his playing, which twists and turns reaching dizzying heights throughout, fingers dancing in a whirlwhind of inspired axe-wielding wizardry.
Opener ‘Arbina’ is doused in Chigaly’s warped licks, with Seymali repeating the title – a name for God – as she calls on women to make the most of available health care, following the death of her mother to breast cancer: “The sickness is preventable, if you get an analysis early you will be okay and without regret.” Seymali’s vocals can transform any line into a spellbinding command as she holds notes seemingly endlessly – a skill apparently developed as a young girl by pushing her voice to breaking point and, in doing so, opening up new musical chambers deep within from where to draw additional vocal power.
‘Mohammedoun’ follows with Ousmane Touré’s deceptively subtle bass throbs forming fluid foundations in a maze of complex musical patterns with drummer Matthew Tinari over underlying dub-like siren frequencies. The intensity is taken higher again on ‘Na Sane’, as Seymali lyrics address the group’s alchemy, “The music of the band, the Azawan, is blending well with my song, Protect us from bad enegry, Help us preserve the vibe”. The reflective ‘Suedi Koum’ brings Seymali’s ardine forward in the mix, as she sings: “We appreciate the music you’ve played, And that you have sung this song right now, You have left nobody untouched, You have blown all of our minds!”
Seymali and Chighaly have been playing music together for more than 18 years and their musical lineage goes back much further, both coming from griot families. In Noura’s case some 10 previous generations have been griots. Their musical relationship mirrors that of her father, the tidinit player Seymali Ould Ahmed Vall who performed with Seymali’s stepmother, one of Mauritania’s most loved pop stars Dimi Mint Abba, known as the “Diva of the Desert” – who Seymali also toured with as a backing singer when she was a teenager. Before joining the group Touré also played music with Seymali’s father, while Senegal-based Tinari, who also produced the album, has been working with the group since they met at a music festival in Dakar in 2009.