File Under?

Jack Rose
Luck in the Valley
Thrill Jockey

One of the great losses of 2009 was guitarist Jack Rose, who passed away in December. Thrill Jockey Records has released his final album, Luck in the Valley, posthumously.

Rose’s early career is most often associated with his work in the experimental folk/drone outfit Pelt. His solo albums came later, and evinced a wider array of influences, keeping his interest in drone in the mix, but adding ragtime, raga, and blues styles as well.

Luck in the Valley is a fitting, if premature, valedictory statement, encompassing Rose’s wide-ranging interests and featuring some truly beautiful performances. It includes lustrous dronescapes such as the title composition, a raga-inflected “Blues for Percy Danforth,” and a more authentically bluesy sounding rendition of W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.”

Fans of Robbie Basho, John Fahey, and Stephen Basho-Junghans will recognize a kindred spirit in Rose, and regret that he will not be around longer to truly inherit the alt-folk acoustic guitar crown.

Jack Rose (photo: A. Evans)

MP3: Woodpiles

A bit of vintage synth hijinks this AM. Javelin’s new single Oh! Centra is out, pairing 80s arcade video game sounds with helium-buoyed vocals.

He’s performed with Darker my Love, the Fall, and is a member of the Strange Boys; but Tim Presley is currently recording his debut album under the moniker White Fence. The self-titled recording is slated for release on Woodsist on April 26, 2010. In the meantime, Presley’s released a teaser MP3, “The Love Between,” for your listening enjoyment. It’s a smoky slice of promising post-psych pop (Say that three times fast!).

MP3: The Love Between

White Fence

Olney Clark

“Orchestral pop” duo Olney Clark write moody, witty, and, yes, gracefully orchestrated pop songs. Their debut self-titled LP is slated for release in April 13, 2010.

The band is sharing a teaser track, “Josefin the Writer,” available below.

MP3: Josefin the Writer

Serial...chance ... trumpet concerto?

John Cage: Sixteen Dances

Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Gil Rose, conductor

BMOP Sound 1012

Sixteen Dances comes at a transitional time in Cage’s career. Completed in the beginning of 1951, it intimates the importance of chance in his works from then onwards, but still retains a fascination for serial procedures and precompositional planning: a remnant of his 1940s studies of Webern. The overall plan of the piece involves a constantly morphing 8×8 array, albeit one which Cage deployed freely and in a wide variety of permutations.

At nearly an hour in duration and for large forces, it’s also a departure in terms of his music to accompany dance. Indeed, it’s Cage’s first evening length piece for the Cunningham company. To add still another layer, the movements are subtitled as progressions through the emotional states of classical Indian aesthetics. However, the composer’s reaction to these various emotions is anything but conventional. One can hear a particularly idiosyncratic response – to “The Heroic” in an audio excerpt below (courtesy of BMOP).

In a new recording by the estimable Boston Modern Orchestra Project, one also detects another strand of influence: there’s a lot that’s jazzy about the score. Indeed, in places it seems like a post-swing trumpet concerto colliding with avant-garde percussion. One of the numbers, No. 10 (Interlude), was even conceived of as an (unorthodox) blues. While one often associates Cage with rhythmic variety and even a seemingly unfettered flow of events, here is the place where the composer most thoroughly incorporated early bop’s own experimentations with pulse, swing, and the freedom that would lie beyond.

After Sixteen Dances, Cage immersed himself in the I Ching. It might be fanciful, but at least to my ear, during his work on Sixteen Dances, he was immersed in the music of Dizzy Gillespie.

MP3; No.7 [TheHeroic]

Can’t find Cage at your local record seller? Get the BMOP disc via their website.

Univers Zero

Clivages

Cuneiform CD Rune 295

35 years into their tenure, Belgian chamber rock outfit Univers Zero has just released a new LP, Clivages. Chamber rock? Well, calling the band “chamber rock” or even “instrumental prog” is reasonably descriptive; but its kind of like calling Wilco “roots-inflected indie rock:” it gets you in the vicinity of their oeuvre,  but it doesn’t get close to the guts of what the band’s really about. Univers Zero is one of the few outfits who entirely convince me that classical instruments can be successfully incorporated in a rock context without robbing the music of any power.

Indeed, how many other prog bands feature bassoon solos alongside skronking bass clarinet, as UZ does on the extended cut”"Warrior”? There’s more than a taste of the Stravinsky Octet in the elegant frequent metric shifts of “Vacillements” and “Soubresauts.” Meanwhile, “Earth Scream” moves us closer to the world of ambiance, sampling, and free improv.

Courtesy of the label’s site, we have an audio stream of “Les Kobolds,” a cut that combines both their neoclassical and rocking modes of music-making.

Chicago indie folk singer-songwriter Judson Claiborne releases his sophomore recording, Time and Temperature, via on April 6, 2010. In advance, he’s sharing “Song for Dreaming,” a moody, nocturnal ballad, as a teaser track (MP3 download below).

MP3: Song for Dreaming

Zach Tillman makes compelling alt-folk under the moniker Pearly Gate Music. He  has a new session up on one of our favorite websites: Daytrotter. He’s also sharing a new song off of a tour EP.

MP3: I Was a River (live)

Pearly Gate Music’s self-titled debut LP will be released on May 18 by Barsuk.

Swedish indie pop outfit Radio Dept. has a new LP “Clinging to a Scheme” coming out April 21, 2010 on Labrador Records.

But they’re sharing a teaser track, “Heaven’s on Fire,” available for download below.

MP3 (via SendSpace): Heaven’s on Fire

Many Sequenza 21 readers will know Carlton Wilkinson best for his blog The And of One and for his work as a composer and presenter of contemporary concert music; but the man wears many hats. He’s also a college instructor (currently on the faculty at TCNJ) and a music critic for the Asbury Park Press.

Wilkinson recently shared another facet of his work: Three Rooms, a self-released album of avant pop songs. It’s currently for sale at CD Baby and iTunes. The recording primarily consists of spare piano-vocal tracks; but also includes percussion, guitars, and judicious, employment of synthesizers.

One can certainly hear influences of Carlton’s experimental compositions in the arranging touches such as flurries of noise and percussive adornments. But there’s a fair bit of prog sensibility here as well, no doubt abetted by Wilkinson’s singing voice bearing more than a  passing resemblance to Adrian Belew.

Wilkinson has graciously shared an MP3 with us for previewing. Please don’t re-host and, if you like it, support grassroots music-making and buy the recording!

MP3: Trigger