Catherine Lamb’s studies with James Tenney at Cal Arts, as well as substantial research of figures such as Erv Wilson, have led her to crafting compositions with subtle tuning systems based on just intonation. On a double-CD from Kairos, JACK Quartet performs an early piece, Two Blooms (2009), and a recent, gargantuan opus, divisio spiralis (2019). Where extended just-intonation composer Ben Johnston created quartets like his Fourth, based on “Amazing Grace,” where the focus is melodic cells, Lamb is interested in the confluence of different intervals, creating beats from difference and combination tones and reveling in the interplay of harmonics.
JACK plays the subtle shifts of intonation with gorgeous specificity, savoring each dyad or vertical construct as a sound image in itself, yet providing a flowing legato that connects the various strands. Their renditions take time, the phrases breathing within a subtle, mainly soft, dynamic spectrum. In this one hears Lamb’s predilections for allowing difference tones to be articulated without the high amplitude of pieces by LaMonte Young and Phil Niblock. The overtones nearly take the role of extra voices in the texture, shimmering and poignant. Two Blooms focuses on the development of the entire compass, not stinting intervals in the tenor and bass registers. It ends with an open fifth that is perfectly tuned, abundantly spacious.
Her most recent quartet, divisio spiralis, is an epic journey of thirteen movements. It too focuses on the entire compass, but the main sections often deal with piquant dissonances in the upper register, where major and minor seconds deliver achingly biting beats. As the piece progresses, wider intervals, particularly open fifths and octaves, provide a context of progression to the formerly aloft altissimo duos. Seconds become sevenths, affording a triadic component to the work’s conclusion. Despite the epic proportions of divisio spiralis, listeners will be rewarded with further details in subsequent listenings. Highly recommended.
Mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and collaborative pianist Kirill Kuzmin supply an entry in the “pandemic recording” subgenre, how do I find you?, named after the title piece by Caroline Shaw. Cooke performs a great deal of contemporary repertoire, creating roles in operas and premiering art songs by composers including William Bolcom, Nico Muhly (Marnie at the English National Opera), and Joby Talbot. Apart from a selection by Muhly, all of the songs on the release are with new collaborators, composers in the under-fifty age bracket. Written in 2020, the songs are inspired by topics from that fraught year of pestilence, protests, and political rancor.
The first two songs on the album, Shaw’s and Kamala Sankaram’s, are particularly well written and moving. Here, as elsewhere, Cooke sings with great beauty, deploying a richly hued voice with impressive diction and expressivity. Shaw focuses on the ability of natural beauty to provide succor, those distanced walks so many treasured as a respite from lockdown. Sandaram’s “Listen” is a moving and harmonically rich musical tribute to George Floyd, with an eloquent poem written by Mark Campbell, one that could be classical music’s equivalent of “Strange Fruit.” Elsewhere, Missy Mazzoli’s “Self-Portrait with Disheveled Hair,” with words by opera librettist Royce Vavrek, is an aria in its own right, inspired by Rembrandt’s painting and bifurcated into a soaring recitative and post-minimal main section. One could easily imagine her writing a role for Cooke; has Mazzoli’s Met debut been cast yet?
Nico Muhly knows Cooke’s voice well, and deploys it in the touching and delicate “Intimate Things.” Hilary Purrington counts on Cooke’s legato control and brings a mix of added note chords and chiming interjections to “That Night’s” fetching accompaniment, creating a piece that resembles a musical theater scene, albeit with no belting required. Gabriel Kahane writes both music and lyrics for “The Hazelnut Tree,” a touching song about fear of global warming and the gloom of the daily news being soothed by a beautiful scene in the backyard. Timo Andres provides some of the highest notes on the recording for Cooke to sing to a jaunty accompaniment. Her control and Kuzmin’s incisive playing are both impressive.
“After the Fires,” referencing the California wildfires, by Lembit Beecher, uses expressive vocal devices, such as melisma, to create a keening and harrowing ode to senseless destruction. The plight of immigrant detainees is encountered in Huang Ruo’s “The Work of Angels,” a setting of a 1978 poem about the imprisonment of Chinese emigres under the 1882 Exclusion Act. At nearly eight minutes, it is a powerful depiction of squalid conditions and suicide, decrying past and present US immigration policies.
Andrew Marshall acknowledges the challenges of remote learning with a charming cabaret song, “(A Bad Case of) Kids.” Rene Orth’s “Dear Colleagues” also affords Cooke the opportunity to tear into an angst-filled scene. Chris Cerrone’s “Everything will Be Okay” is an understated setting depicting anxiety, in this case lost then found cash in a hotel.
It is hard to know how long audiences will want to hear pandemic year music. Perhaps, rather sooner than one expects, it will become something left behind, as are (in some cases regrettably) many of the pieces dedicated to 9/11. Cooke and Kuzmin are to be commended for presenting every song in a strong performance with equally fervent commitment, creating a musical time capsule that is an evocative summary of the challenges facing many during painful pandemic days. If there is an album depicting 2020 to which I wish to return, this is it.
“Glitter and Gleam,”the leadoff single for Robbie Lee and Lea Bertucci’s collaboration Wind Bells Falls immediately brings you into the altered domain of their engaging approach to sound art. An essay for warped celeste, it provides a sense of musique concrète while also exploring a playful sensibility. Bell-like timbres ricochet throughout the soundfield, supplying exactly what the title suggests.
Throughout the nine pieces on the recording, the duo deploys winds, keyboards, and tape machines. Their specialties include using acoustic instruments in unconventional ways and distressing tape to make it sound synthetic. “Image Mirror” features wild flute overdubs, once again kaleidoscopically transformed. They sound like the wailing riff from an Arkestra member’s free jazz solo chasing itself around the room.
It is striking how willing the artists are to restrict their palette to a limited and distinctive set of sounds for each track. On “Bags, Boxes, and Bubbles,” chiming chords are set against glissandos in a reiterative dialogue. Via an excellent segue, this morphs into duets of slides and trills on “Division Music.”
The duo stretch out on “Azimuth,” retaining small collections of sounds for discrete sections but gradually morphing between them through a process of addition and subtraction of new timbres and motifs. Baying shards gradually build into a registrally delineated rhythmic canon, a venerable composition device redeployed in this experimental context. The album closes with a delicate miniature, “Somebody Dream,” in which chimes and delicate cooing afford a lullaby sendoff to this unusual and diverting recording.
Ethan Iverson, piano; Larry Grenadier, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums
Blue Note
Pianist Ethan Iverson received an excellent birthday present today: the release of Every Note is True, his debut recording on Blue Note Records. Since departing the Bad Plus, Iverson has worked on a number of projects as a composer, taught at New England Conservatory, written insightful criticism and pedagogical articles on his blog Do the Mathand for other publications, and collaborated with musicians such as saxophonist Mark Turner, drummer Bill Hart, and trumpeter Tom Harrell. Followers of these activities will note that the pianist’s encyclopedic explication of the jazz tradition in his writings has mirrored trends in his recent playing.
Iverson, ever unpredictable, takes a different approach on Every Note is True. Apart from a single tune, “Blue,” by drummer Jack DeJohnette, all of the compositions on the recording are originals by Iverson. Many resume a connection to the rock-inflected jazz he made earlier in his career. Not one to attempt to remake the past, Iverson has selected collaborators who are two of the best known players in jazz, DeJohnette and bassist Larry Grenadier. The absence of covers – a Bad Plus staple – and presence of fulsome swing from his current collaborators allows Iverson the opportunity to blend multiple approaches into a compelling amalgam distinct from his previous work.
A couple of imaginary theme songs populate the recording. “She Won’t Forget Me” is likened by Iverson to a rom-com theme, although I have never heard a rom-com theme with as zesty a solo. The album itself starts with a quirky vocal number, “The More it Changes,” a commercial sounding song featuring overdubs of a number of Iverson’s friends, Sarah Deming (who wrote the lyrics), Alex Ross, and Mark Padmore among them, who sang their parts remotely. Brief enough to leave a listener just enough time to scramble to their playlist and settle back in their seat, it is followed by the avowedly not soundtrack-related “The Eternal Verities,” a sequential tune with a little chromatic twist as it turns around. Grenadier’s playing embellishes the changes and adds countermelodies that interlock well with the spacious solo that Iverson provides. A coda brings the progression to a sideways yet satisfying conclusion.
“For Ellen Raskin” is dedicated to one of Iverson’s favorite children’s authors. It is a gentle jazz waltz with bluesy inflections and deft use of hemiola – moving from 3/4 to 6/8 – to give a little Brahmsian nod to the proceedings. “Had I but Known” is an uptempo tune with sequences of dissonant intervals and polychords in the bridge that allow for a suave extrapolation of Fats Waller’s language and voicings. Particularly persuasive is “Had I but Known,” which is through-composed rather than primarily improvised. It combines a balladic cast with tart melodic punctuations and Ivesian verticals.
Iverson admired DeJohnette’s “Blue” when he heard it on John Abercrombie’s 1978 ECM recording Gateway 2. With powerful fills from the drummer, Iverson’s interpretation revels in the tune’s unadorned triads, particularly the one at the close that receives an expansive arpeggiation. Whereas jazz chords usually contain more than just the triad, with 6th, 7ths, 9ths and more added to harmonies, using a bare triad in the right context buoys the connection that Iverson is making throughout Every Note is True between commercial pop, rock, and jazz.
“Merely Improbable” presents a more traditional structure, providing a chance for Iverson and company to play rhythm changes, variants on the chord structure of Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” that populate countless standards. As with the other compositions here, at three and a half minutes the run-time is relatively lean; I would have been happy to hear the trio stretch it out. “Praise Will Travel” is an ebullient piece performed with a tight groove offsetting florid soloing. Titled after an Agatha Christie story, the album closer “At the Bells and Motley” is a jaunty blues that demonstrates the trio’s simpatico interaction. Here we get the longed-for jam, with nine minutes of subtle shifts of emphasis and piano solos that build from restraint to sly quotation to gestures writ large and back again. Excellent solos from Grenadier and DeJohnette as well.
Every Note is True is an auspicious label debut that demonstrates the imagination, breadth, and wit of Iverson’s playing while maintaining a spirit of enthusiastic collaboration. Highly recommended.
On Wednesday, February 9th, Herb Deutsch turned ninety years old. Deutsch has been an icon of sound synthesis both as a composer and hardware designer. One of the inventors of the first Moog synthesizers, he designed the keyboard interface that served as the basis for countless synths that followed. Moog Music is using this auspicious occasion to kick off GIANTS, a series of films about synth pioneers. In the video below, Deutsch describes his life, musical inspirations, and the early days of creating versatile hardware to perform and record electronic sound.
After the film about Deutsch, you will soon be able to view a number of films that celebrate pivotal figures in electronic music on Moog’s YouTube channel. Future episodes will feature Suzanne Ciani, Bernie Krause, and Daniel Miller. Alongside the recent Sisters with Transistorsdocumentary, the documentation of electronic music’s early luminaries is a welcome opportunity to reassess its legacy.
On a personal note, as a fellow Long Islander, Deutsch’s long tenure at Hofstra University and co-founding of the Long Island Composer Alliance helped to provide many events that opened my ears to the possibilities of sound, and for that I remain ever grateful.
We are saddened to learn of the loss of George Crumb, who passed away on February 6, 2022 at the age of 92. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the composer was one of the most important musical figures of his generation, both as a creator and, for many years, as a professor at University of Pennsylvania. Considered by his students to be a supportive and gifted teacher, he mentored a number of composers who went on to major careers.
Crumb composed a large catalog of works, and many of them have become touchstones of the contemporary repertoire. The bracing amplified string quartet Black Angels (1970) decried the atrocities of the Vietnam War; from that same year, the poignant and colorful Ancient Voices of Children is a standout among a host of eloquent settings of Federico Garcia Lorca’s poetry. He often wrote series of pieces; Madrigals from the 1960s for soprano and mixed ensemble, Makrokosmos from the 1970s for amplified piano, and American Songbooks from the 2000s for male and female voices and mixed ensemble are among them. Occasional pieces, including a few depicting his beloved mischievous dogs and a gloss on Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight,” were witty and equally memorable.
Photo: Rob Starobin
From the outset of his career, Crumb referenced a different set of influences than many of his relative peers, with Bartôk, Debussy, Cowell, Cage, and the burgeoning movement of postmodern Europeans informing him as he struck out on his own path. Crumb was a tremendously imaginative orchestrator, in particular expanding the role and number of percussion instruments in chamber music. The look of his scores, which were frequently graphic in design, was also distinctive. Crumb’s music provided chamber groups, especially new music ensembles, with repertoire that stretched them technically and encouraged them to listen carefully to find the character and balance of the distinctive sound combinations he supplied. His work gave generations of other emerging composers permission to use an expansive set of resources and think outside the box.
In 2021, a recent piano cycle (2015-2020) in two books, Metamorphoses, in which each piece evoked a work of visual art from a disparate collection of painters, was released on CD by Bridge Records as the twentieth volume of their George Crumb Edition. The composer was involved in the recordings, active until near the end of his extraordinary life.
Celebrating Mendelssohn’s Birthday with Piano Recordings
February 3rd is Felix Mendelssohn’s birthday. To celebrate, here are two reviews of recent recordings of piano music by the composer.
Felix Mendelssohn
Complete Music for Solo Piano, Vol. 6
Hyperion CD
Howard Shelley
Pianist Howard Shelley has been making his way through the compendious catalog of Felix Mendelssohn. The latest entry in his complete set, Volume Six, contains several well-known favorites as well as gems without opus numbers. If one has the impression of Mendelssohn as a neo-Mozartean composer of grace without the oomph of a creator like Schumann from the Romantic generation, the powerful Reiterlied presents a different side of the composer, as does his Sonata in B-flat Major, which should be programmed far more than it currently is. The Fugue in E minor reminds one of Mendelssohn’s affinity and advocacy for Bach’s music. Shelley makes the case for versatility in Mendelssohn but retains the quintessentially burnished and characterful nature of his “Songs Without Words” in recordings of two of the books of this collection. A lovingly crafted addition to what is becoming a benchmark complete works edition.
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
Complete Music for Piano Solo
Hänssler Classic 12 CD boxed set
Ana-Marija Markovina
Ana-Marija Markovina has released her Mendelssohn cycle all at once in a well-appointed 12 CD boxed set. Where Shelley brings out the luminous qualities of the piano works, Markovina is a classicist, creating interpretations that are lucidly detailed. I am particularly fond of Markovina’s playing in the sonatas and fugues, where she reveals the architecture of these pieces with abundant clarity.
The pieces without opus number, including fragments and juvenalia, are spread throughout the collection rather than put in an appendix. At first, this may seem surprising, however it is an excellent way to measure Mendelssohn’s prodigious development. The composition teacher in me immediately thought of using the fragments and short pieces with students, asking them for Mendelssohnian completions as assignments; they are ideal models. It is wonderful that both pianists have taken on this project, as there is ample room for their distinctive approaches.
Michael Gielen Edition Volume 10: Music After 1945
SWR Sinfonieorchester, Michael Gielen conductor
SWR 6xCD boxed set
The tenth and final boxed set in SWR’s Michael Gielen Edition spotlights his considerable contributions to post-1945 concert music. Seven hours of live recordings of music by European avant-garde figures Pierre Boulez, Luigi Nono, György Ligeti, György Kurtág, Jorge E. López, Maurizio Kagel, and Bernd Alois Zimmerman and Americans Morton Feldman, John Cage, and George Crumb. Gielen’s own compositions are featured as well. Gielen (1927-2019) may not have been prolific, but proves to be a fine composer, one whose works should be considered for programming more regularly. Vier Gedichte von Stefan George (2010) (“Four Poems of Stefan George”) finds the SWR Vokalensemble joining a chamber segment of the SWR Sinfonieorchester in a performance that displays the virtuosity of both groups to excellent advantage. Pflicht und Neigung (1988) (“Duty and Inclination”) is imaginatively scored for a sinfonietta sans strings, with muscular percussion writing, crystalline wind chords, and eruptive brass lines.
As the previous nine boxed sets of the Gielen Edition attest, he was a conductor who excelled in many different eras and styles of music-making. Still, Gielen’s championing of contemporary music is legendary, as are some of the performances included here. Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Requiem für einen junge Dichter (1969)(“Requiem for a Young Poet”) has a particularly dark history that lends to the already harrowing nature of the work. Both the narrator, a pivotal performer in the piece, and Zimmermann himself committed suicide shortly after the Requiem’s premiere by SWR and Gielen. It has been widely debunked that Mozart was “writing his own Requiem,” but can one say that of Zimmermann’s riveting piece? Gielen reportedly wasn’t so sure. Ligeti’s Requiem (1965) is another selection that is a standout, with radiant singing of its tight clusters and affecting emotive delivery. Instead of the dizzying polyglot assemblage of myriad texts in the decidedly secular and even nihilistic Zimmermann piece, Ligeti uses portions of the Catholic Requiem liturgy as part of his postmodern setting. George Crumb’s Star Child (1977) is another textual amalgam, with references to Gnostic concepts of Advent and Apocalypse. As so frequently in Crumb’s work, his attention to declamation is only matched by imaginative and exquisitely detailed scoring.
Having recently finished Nono’s collected writings, it was particularly wonderful to hear these fine recordings of his music. In the book, Nono mentions working out complex canons with Bruno Maderna as a focal point of his training, which he deploys here in Variazioni canoniche. His signature orchestral work, No hay caminos hay que caminar (1987) (“Walker, there is no path yet you must Walk”), and A Carlo Scarpa (1984), dedicated to the famous twentieth century architect, also represent Gielen’s staunch support of and insights into Nono’s work.
Kurtág’s Stele (1994) is the piece that elevated his compositional career, and it remains one of his most durable works; SWR provides a rendition that could be the benchmark for a long time to come. Ein Brief (1986) (“A Letter”) by Mauricio Kagel is a piece for mezzo-soprano and orchestra that features angular vocalise and Schoenbergian harmony; it reads like an enigmatic sequel to Erwartung.
The artistic breadth and consistently superior musicality of this set are extraordinary. Given their archival nature, listeners may be surprised at the fidelity of the recordings. Details are clear, and dynamic range is tremendous; the disc containing the pieces by Lopez even includes a warning to be careful of the dynamic extremes of the piece when choosing a volume level. The selections by this composer are all premiere recordings. Born in Cuba and an emigree to the United States, Lopez has for some years been a citizen of Austria, flying under the radar of much of the American musical establishment. His formidable scoring and the aforementioned extremes navigated by his music may also play a role. These prove to be right in Gielen and SWR’s wheelhouse; they make a case for Dome Peak (1993) and Breath-Hammer-Lightning (1991) as compelling works that deal with a gargantuan spatial aesthetic.
Two of Pierre Boulez’s most important orchestra pieces are included here, Rituel in Memoriam Bruno Maderna (1975) and movements from the seemingly ever enlarging Notations (recorded in 1990, with an additional portion added in 2003). Rituel incorporates expressive gestures and formal bearing; it was truly a turning point piece for Boulez. Notations was a touchstone work emblematic of the composer’s willingness to build up and revise fragments of material throughout his lifetime. It is masterfully scored and tailor made for a detail-oriented Gielen. Once again, SWR displays extraordinary fluency in densely complex music.
The late Feldman piece Coptic Light (1985)clocks in at nearly a half hour, which is short by the composer’s standards. It is still one of his most impressive essays, requiring 106 musicians to create a kaleidoscope of colors, staggered entrances, and off-kilter near repetitions. The Gielen set closes with another New York School piece, the totemic Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1958), an audacious open form piece in which the conductor is literally a time-keeper, using his hands to indicate positions on the clock to move through the piece’s sections. The soloist’s part, written on single sheets, can be assembled in any order. Despite all of the chance procedures at work here, the SWR and Gielen understand the performance practice surrounding Cage’s output well, making clear that they are as equally at home in American experimental music as they are the European avant-garde. Highly recommended.
The masterful bassist William Parker turns seventy today. Tonight (January 10th) through the 17th, Arts for Art, the foundation with which Parker is associated, is making available a livestream of Parker playing his hour long solo composition “Black Reflection and Meditation.” (Tickets here: Donation of at least $5 requested).
The number of labels and recordings on which Parker has appeared is formidable, but AUM Fidelity has been a mainstay in his career for some time (they are co-organizers of the online salon). Any deep dive into the bassist’s recorded output should include AUM CDs. One might start with some of his large ensemble works with Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra or opt for The Peach Orchard with the 1990s quartet In Order to Survive, which included pianist Cooper-Moore, saxophonist Rob Brown, and percussionist Susie Ibarra.
Parker has had a long musical relationship with pianist Matthew Shipp. A recent outing that displays their extraordinary interplay with the drummer Whit Dickey is 2021’s Village Mothership, released on the recent AUM offshoot Tao Forms. Parker has also recorded for 577 Records. Last September saw the release of Music Frees Our Souls, Vol. 1, on which Parker and Shipp joined drummer Francisco Mela for another rousing trio set. Comparing the two CDs, it is noteworthy how much a different drummer inspires Parker and Shipp to take a fresh approach to linear dialogue, harmonic choices, and use of space.
2021 also saw the release of the 10-CD boxed set (of all new music) Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World. The set is a truly rewarding deep dive into Parker’s work. Another immersive experience is Universal Tonality (Duke University Press, 2021), the first full length book devoted to Parker’s life and music, written by the critic and historian Cisco Bradley.
So many ways to celebrate. Happy Birthday William Parker!
As with their previous album Luciferan Towers, a published manifesto accompanied the release of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s seventh LP, G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!. While further left than Bernie Sanders, some of the planks of Godspeed’s platform – defunding the police, taxing the wealthy, prison reform, climate change mitigation – seem newly relevant in light of the (first?) two pandemic years and their concomitant political and social awakening. Rather than curse the darkness, this time out the band makes music that is defiant, indefatigable, and even exuberant in demeanor. Long and short form pieces, with post-rock’s customary accumulating arrangements tweaked to break the formula in significant places, reveal some of GSY!BE’s most compelling work to date. Best song title of the year goes to their “First of the Last Glaciers.”
Hey What
Low
Sub Pop
Following the progression further out that began with 2018’s Double Negative, Low has released Hey What, their most experimental album yet. Those who are surprised may only be familiar with their more mainstream mid period music. Look back to the band’s earliest recordings and a clear connection to their slowcore beginnings can be seen in the recent turn to sonic adventure. This is not to suggest that the songs on Hey What have been divested of melody or memorability. Quite the contrary, “All Night,” “Days Like These,” and the rousing two minutes of “More” contain some of Low’s finest hooks. That the sound environment surrounding them is distressed and distorted proves no hindrance. In this case, a thirteenth album is a lucky break – with tradition.
IT’S NOT THEM. IT COULDN’T BE THEM. IT IS THEM.
Guided by Voices
GBV Inc.
True, IT’S NOT THEM. IT COULDN’T BE THEM. IT IS THEM., Guided by Voices thirty-fourth – yes, that’s right, thirty-fourth – album has some audacious arrangement choices. This is especially true of the first track, “Spanish Coin,” which begins with acoustic guitar playing harmonics and strings – yes, that’s right, strings on a GbV album – playing a slow introduction before the song kicks in with an Iberian progression. It soars chromatically upward partway through before being supplanted by an honest to goodness mariachi trumpet solo.
Fans of GbV’s nineties lo-fi work may scoff, but they don’t make the rules: Robert Pollard is still in the captain’s chair. Besides, there are plenty of trademark Pollard songs, aphoristic yet blooming with melodic interest and harmonic twists and turns; for example, the rollicking “Dance of Gurus” and “I Share a Rhythm,” atmospheric multi-part “Maintenance Man of the Haunted House,” and impish, syncopated “I Wanna Monkey.” Guitarists Bobby Bare, Jr. and Doug Gillard, bassist Mark Shue, and drummer Kevin March may not be the classic lineup, but all have been working with Pollard for years and they prove, as always, to be a tight unit that can get rough around the edges as warranted. One assumes album number thirty-five is likely in train, but in the meantime Pollard and company have supplied us with songs to savor.
Acoustic and Ambient Spheres, Vol. 2
Popul Vuh
BMG 4xCD/4XLP
A treasure trove for prog and film music enthusiasts alike, Acoustic and Ambient Spheres, Vol. 2 on BMGcontains four albums from the seventies and eighties by Popul Vuh: Seligpreisung, Agape-Agape, Coeur de Verre, and Cobra Verde. The latter two are evocative soundtracks for films by Werner Hertzog. The first band to use a Moog synthesizer, Popul Vug also incorporated acoustic instruments, Non-Western source material, drone, chanting, and incipient elements of ambient; all alongside the kitbag of Krautrock. So many styles and artists have propogated from their work.
Seligpreisung’s lead off track, “Selig sind die, die da hungern,” demonstrates several of the afore-mentioned elements of their sound, but also that Popul Vuh could rock out with the best of them in 1973. A decade later, Agape-Agape evinces spiritual questing and a penchant for post-minimalism. One wishes that a few more recent film composers would give a listen to Cobra Verde and arrange accordingly; “Der Tod Das Cobra Verde” is a track that begins with unforgettable deep-throated chanting and moves into a hybridization that is part Koyaanisqatsi, part Can, and quintessentially Popul Vuh.
Live in Brighton 1975
Live in Stuttgart 1975
Can
Mute Records, two 2xCD sets
Can eschewed live albums, and it is a pity. One can imagine collectors of Krautrock and jam bands alike thrilling to their improvisatory escapades onstage. Two surprisingly good-sounding bootlegs have surfaced, both from the band’s heyday in 1975. Of the two, Live in Brighton 1975 is a bit more rangy, with a few miscues along the way, but eventually it coalesces into some extraordinary playing that incorporates thematic material from the band’s then recent recordings alongside a great deal of improvisation. Live in Stuttgart 1975 is tighter in terms of ensemble, yet still features imaginative extended suites. Song titles don’t appear: the music is too dense with cross-references and fresh material that disappeared into the ether, never to be worked out in the studio. One is grateful that this pair of buried treasures have come to light.
Strange Fortune
Powers/Rolin Duo
Astral Editions
Gerycz/Powers/Rolin
Lamplighter
American Dreams
Ohio based musicians dulcimer/autoharp player Jen Powers, guitarist Matthew Rolin, and percussionist Jason Gerycz don’t talk a lot before they play, maybe thirty seconds to a minute, according to Powers. On the American Dreams album Lamplighter, the pieces the trio crafts are mostly improvised, and their collective work coheres into imaginative designs that incorporate folk music, drone, and urgent post-rock. The dulcimer isn’t often associated with rocking out, but Jen Powers makes it seem like the instrument was made for it. One of the tracks I have played the most this year is “Rotations,” which is bold, richly textured, and propelled by Gerycz’s energetic drumming. Though the trio likes to hang, they also create a concise rambler, “June,” that resembles song structure more than a long form jam.
Powers and Rolin perform as a duo on the Astral Editions recording Strange Fortune. Here Rolin plays twelve-string, and the blend that Powers and he achieve creates a beguiling atmosphere on “Birdhouse” and “Tea Lights.” The twenty-minute long “Amaranth” is a sonic waterfall of ambient psychedelia.
I Don’t Live Here Anymore
The War on Drugs
Atlantic Records
If you view the Tiny Desk video below, you get a sense of the newly elaborate arrangements that War on Drugs are employing. It is impressive, given how many tracks are layered in each song, the high percentage of the record that they are able to replicate live. Frontman Adam Granduciel continues to reference totemic figures: Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Mark Knopfler, Bob Dylan, et cetera. But more than ever the songs transcend these influences to put eighties pop through a decidedly 21st century lens. Singles like the title track and “Change” are stretched out to the five and six minute mark with multiple solo breaks, reminding us that rock can take its time instead of bowing to an arbitrary framework.
Uncommon Weather
The Reds, Pinks, and Purples
Slumberland
In 2021, how do you financially survive in San Francisco as a creative artist? Are ‘scenes’ left after tech money and gentrification move in? Should single people give up on finding love in year two of distancing due to the pandemic? Glenn Donaldson deals with heavy subjects on Uncommon Weather, his third album as The Reds, Pinks, and Purples (in less than three years, no less). Despite this, his lyric sensibility and sure songcraft save us from bathos. Long a lo-fi musician, Donaldson records most of this himself, with a bit of help from guitarist Thomas Rubinstein and bassist Charlie Ertola. Reverberant echo and drum machines remind one of a host of influences, with Television Personalities frequently mentioned as a touchstone. Uncommon Weather wears these influences lightly, and supplies the listener with memorable songs that channel our frustration with current crises, both collective and personal.
Mogwai
As the Love Continues
Rock Action/Temporary Residence Ltd.
On February 26th, twenty-five years into their recording career, Mogwai hit #1 on the UK charts. The band’s two previous full length releases were in the Top 10 in the UK, but the success of As the Love Continues, their tenth album, is remarkable.
Known for a live act that is one of the loudest in history, Mogwai retains a musicality that often hews close to the shaping of post-rock, with varied textures supplied both by synthesizers and electric guitars replete with pedals. The looping melody of “Dry Fantasy” evinces minimalist sympathies, as does “Here We, Here We, Here We Go Forever,” the latter combining a looping chordal ostinato with drums providing one of the more danceable grooves in the band’s catalog.
Vocals treated with vocoder appear on a couple tracks, and the album opens with a spoken word excerpt – Benjamin John Power (Blanck Mass) apparently speaking in his sleep – that also serves as the song’s curious title, “To the Bin My Friend, Tonight We Vacate Earth.” What follows seems to emanate from a dreamstate, with heartbeat drums and haloing of harmonics giving way to overlapping melodies for synth-piano and guitar that provide a slow burn prior to one of the band’s patented anthemic choruses. Mogwai often gives their music enigmatic titles. The track “Ritchie Sacramento” was inspired by a record store clerk’s mishearing of Ryuichi Sakamoto. However, the piece, the only one with non-modified vocals, is more somber than this pun would suggest, referencing grief, not just for the COVID year, but for departed musician friends, among them David Berman.
Some emphases have changed, and As the Love Continues shows the band relishing a temperament for exploration. Mogwai still makes thunderous rock. “Ceiling Granny” is inspired by a scene from TheExorcist, and the terror that Braithwaite experienced upon viewing it is translated into roaring guitars and triple forte drumming.
Listen to an interview with Stuart Braithwaite and some live performances below.
