Dream Position Supermassive (Bandcamp)
YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds (Bandcamp)
Editrix The Big E (Joyful Noise)
Siavish Amini Caligo (Room 40)
Sipanngkah Langkata Suruike (Chinabot)
Reid Willis Reliquary (Mesh)
Sandbox Percussion play Christopher Cerrone : Don't Look Down (Pentatone)
Koenji Hyakkei Live at Club Goodman (Skin Graft)
Hyper Gal After Image (Skin Graft)
Lost Crowns The Heart Is In The Body (Lost Crowns)
Wippy Bonstack Tactile Demons (Mogul Intermissions)
Ital Tek TimeProof (Planet Mu)
Hannah Kendall Shouting Forever Into The Receiver (NMC Recordings)
Brama Brama (Airfono)
Zeynep Toraman A Lifetime of Annotations (Sawyer Editions)
John T.Gast Excerpts (Planet Mu)
u-ZIQ Bilious Paths (Planet Mu)
Fink Beauty In Your Wake (Republic Of Music)
Kursa Warfare (Kursa)
Ensemble et al The Slow Reveal (Ensemble et al)
Various Artists Women’s Sacred Chants (MANA)
I’m shuffling my deck and revealing the top 10 cards to all; one by one.
10♥️: Slift: “The Real Unseen”
9♦️: Maxband: “Exhaling”
10♦️: Boy Harsher: “Run”
K♣️: Iodi: “Sonrie”
7♦️: BadBadNotGood f. Charlotte Wilson: “In Your Eyes”
K♥️: Self Defense Family: “Jesus Of Nazareth”
6♥️: Editrix: “She Wants to Go And Party”
4♦️: Tracks: “Bottleneck”
10♣️: Kontravoid: “So It Seems” (ver. 2)
5♠️: Zonal f. Moor Mother: “System Error"
B/W🃏: Thanks For Coming: "Five And A Half Feet Under"
@iamdangerace tagged me to hit ‘shuffle’ and list the next ten songs that come up. To make it simpler, all tracks posted here are ones I found in the Springtime within the last five years.
Unlike everyone, I use iTunes and not Spotify. iTunes always gives me freedom to import and find anything I want without limitations like Spotify. And, Spotify is a cheap deadbeat uncle who keeps taking from his poorer friends and never gives anything back.
I invite @charliemonroe, @sludgexslut, @sibelin, @lysistra and @kimkimberhelen to play.
Draw 10 (Summer).
I’m shuffling my deck and revealing the top 10 cards to all; one by one.
10♥️: Slift: “The Real Unseen”
9♦️: Maxband: “Exhaling”
10♦️: Boy Harsher: “Run”
K♣️: Iodi: “Sonrie”
7♦️: BadBadNotGood f. Charlotte Wilson: “In Your Eyes”
K♥️: Self Defense Family: “Jesus Of Nazareth”
6♥️: Editrix: “She Wants to Go And Party”
4♦️: Tracks: “Bottleneck”
10♣️: Kontravoid: “So It Seems” (ver. 2)
5♠️: Zonal f. Moor Mother: “System Error"
B/W🃏: Thanks For Coming: “Five And A Half Feet Under”
I was asked by @ iamdangerace to hit ‘shuffle’ and list the next ten songs that came up.
Unlike everyone, I use iTunes and not Spotify. iTunes always gives me freedom to import and find anything I want without limitations like Spotify. And, Spotify is a cheap deadbeat uncle who keeps taking from his poorer friends and never gives anything back.
Feel free to play this game yourself and reblog your results!
Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, and Lizzo all released acclaimed albums in 2022. But you don’t come to this Very Small Blog to hear about that ! I posted 44 Album of the Week reviews this year (which includes 3 albums from last year and 1 reissue from 1966). Here are 10 of my favorites I’ve culled from the list.
Check out my lists of favorite albums from 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020…
Child's Pose: "Eyes To The Right"
Fitness: "Telephone"
Freaking: "5 Star"
Laundromat: "Bug-Eyed" (***NEW)
Conditioner Disco Group: "No Concepts"
Gustaf: "Mine"
Editrix: "Torture"
Spiritual Mafia: "Smiles"
Splitting Image: "Mirror Lives" + “Unwilling Participant”
Dee-Parts: "Repair" + “Picture”
Unschooling: "Boo Boo Dragon"
Lie': "Bugs"
Hideous Sun Demon: "Distractions"
Maxband: "Rural North"
Joy: "Idols Of Perversity"
FACS: "General Public"
Nightshift: "Make Kin"
Tough Age: "My Life's A Joke And I'm Throwing It Away"
Clock Of Time: "Swallow The Feed"
Black Midi: "Of Schlagenheim"
All Hits: "Easy Killer"
Special Interest: "Nerve"
Squid: "2010"
Spread Joy: "Semantic"
Global Charming: "Celebration"
BB & The Blips: "Corrections"
Smarts: "Individuality"
Parquet Courts: "Berlin Got Blurry"
Fake Fruit: "Lying Legal Horror Lawyers"
Scrap Brain: "Limbs In The Night"
Viagra Boys: "Secret Canine Agent"
Vintage Crop: "Just My Luck"
Moontype: "Stuck On You"
April 25, 2022 (midnight New York City): bonus Omega
Omega Radio is happy to present to its listening audience its deluxe Spring post-punk, d.i.y., and city sounds during some great cool April weather. Tonight, it’s two hours of Omega’s usual favorites plus new discoveries and artists making their first appearance on our show.
Still plenty of more Springtime Omega to come. We’ll be back in 24 hours for our quarterly bonus golden-era broadcast. We hope you’ll join us.
A little bit of optimism is creeping into the air as Dusted writers start to get their shots. We’re all starting to think about live music, maybe outside, maybe this summer. But as the spate of freak snow storms demonstrates, summer’s not here yet, and in the meantime, piles of records and gigs of MP3s beckon. This early spring version of Dust covers the map, literally, with artists representing Pakistan, Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, and stylistically with jazz, rock, punk, rap, improv and many other genres in play. Contributors include Jennifer Kelly, Justin Cober-Lake, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Patrick Masterson, Tim Clarke and Bryon Hayes.
Arooj Aftab — Vulture Prince (New Amsterdam)
Vulture Prince by Arooj Aftab
Arooj Aftab is a classical composer originally from Pakistan but now living in Brooklyn. Vulture Prince, her third full-length album, blends the bright clarity of new age music with the fluid, non-Western vocal tones of her Central Asian roots. “Last Night,” from an old Rumi poem but sung mostly in English, lilts in dub-scented syncopation, the thump and pop of stand-up bass underlining its bittersweet melody. An interlude in some other language shifts the song entirely, pitting vintage reggae reverberation against an exotic melisma. “Mohabbat” (which is apparently Urdu for sex) soothes in the pristine instrumentals, lucid guitars, a horn, scattered drumbeats, but smolders and beckons in the vocals. None of these tracks feel wholly traditional or wholly Western and modern day, but sit somewhere in a well-lit, idealized space. Timeless and placeless, Vulture Prince is nonetheless very beautiful.
Jennifer Kelly
Assertion — Intermission (Spartan)
Intermission comes from an alternate timeline. Founding drummer William Goldsmith started his musical career in Sunny Day Real Estate and had a notable stint with Foo Fighters. To cut the biography short, Goldsmith took a decade off from the music industry. He's returned now with Assertion, joined by guitarist/vocalist Justin Tamminga and bassist Bryan Gorder (both of Blind Guides, among other acts). This band picks up in the late 1990s, imagining a new path for post-hardcore/post-grunge music. The trio's name suits, as the songs' energy and the lyrical assertiveness develops the intensity of the release. The group works carefully with dynamics, neither parroting the loud-quiet tradition nor simply pushing their emo leanings toward 11.
“The Lamb to the Slaughter Pulls a Knife” epitomizes the album. The track sounds like Foo Fighters decided to get dirtier rather than more arena-friendly, while the lyrics mix violence with emotional persistence. First single “Supervised Suffering” finds triumph in endurance, turning the aggressive chorus into something of a victory. “Set Fire” closes the album with something more delicate, but it's just the gauze over a seething anger. Goldsmith's time off seems to have served him well, as does collaborating with some new partners. Assertion makes its case clearly and effectively, and if the intermission's over for Goldsmith, the second half sounds promising.
Justin Cober-Lake
Michael Beach — Dream Violence (Goner/Poison City)
Dream Violence by Michael Beach
“De Facto Blues,” from Michael Beach’s fourth solo album, is a barn-burner of a song, rough and messy and passionate, the kind of song that makes you want to take a stand on something, who cares what as long as it matters to you. It snarls like Radio Birdman, slashes like the Wipers and follows its muse through chaos to righteousness like an off-cut from Crazy Horse, just back from rockin’ the free world. It’s got Matt Ford and Inez Tulloch from Thigh Master on guitar and bass, respectively, Utrillo Kushner from Colossal Yes (and Comets on Fire) on drums, and Kelley Stoltz at the boards, and it’s a killer. The rest of the album is varied and, honestly, not uniformly astounding, but there’s a nice Summer of Love-style psych dream in “Metaphysical Dice,” a slow-burning post-rocker in the title track and a driving, pounding punk anthem in the opener “Irregardless.” Beach has been splitting his time between San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia, and lately settled on Melbourne, where he will fit like a native into their thriving punk-garage scene.
Jennifer Kelly
Bloop — Proof (Lumo)
Proof by BLOOP (Lina Allemano / Mike Smith)
The trumpet is already a catalog of sound effects waiting to happen, and Lina Allemano knows the table of contents by heart. So, to shake things up, she has paired up with electronic musician Mike Smith, who contributes live processing and effects to Allemano’s improvisations. A blind listen to Proof might leave you with the impression that you’re hearing a horn player jamming with some outer space cats, and we’re not talking about hip, lingo-slinging jazz dudes. In fact, everything on these eight tracks happened in real time. Smith’s a strategic intervener, aware that too much sauce can spoil the stew, so he mixes up precise layering and pitch-shifting with more disorienting transformations. It’s hard to say how much Allemano responds to the simulacra that surround her brass voice, but there’s no denying the persuasiveness of her melodic and timbral ideas.
Bris left some music behind when he died in 2020, but it took almost a year to shape these recordings into a proper CD. The label CEO Mac J (a fine artist himself) could easily capitalize on his friend’s death, stacking Tricky Dance Moves with features from the artists Bris never would have worked with. Yet the album was prepared with the utmost care, not giving an ugly Frankenstein monster feel. Bris’s references to his possible early death are scattered throughout the whole tape: “Heard they wanna pop Bris cause they mad I’m poppin.” Almost every song could be easily turned into a prophetic tale (a cheap move one wants to avoid at all costs). Nonetheless, something is missing here. Or maybe it is just an image of death that disturbs the whole picture, making us realize that this is the last we’d hear from Bris.
Ray Garraty
Dreamwell — Modern Grotesque (self-released)
Modern Grotesque by Dreamwell
I recently read an interview with Providence’s Dreamwell breaking down in almost excruciating detail the influences that led to the quintet’s sophomore full-length Modern Grotesque. I kept scrolling past Daughters and Deftones and Deafheaven and increasingly disconnected influences like The Mountain Goats and Nina Simone. I went back to the top and looked again. I typed Ctrl+F and put in “Thursday.” Nothing. This is preposterous. I may not be in the post-hardcore trenches the way I once was, but even I’d know a good Full Collapse homage if it swung a mic right into my face the way this one did; hell, just listen to “The Lost Ballad of Dominic Anneghi” and tell me singer Keziah Staska doesn’t know every single word of “Paris in Flames.” That may not look like flattery on a first read, but too often, bands striding the emo/pop divide have chased the latter into sub-Taking Back Sunday oblivion; what Thursday did was much harder, and Dreamwell has ably taken up the torch here. That they did it unintentionally is a curious, bewildering footnote.
Patrick Masterson
Paul Dunmall / Matthew Shipp / Joe Morris / Gerald Cleaver — The Bright Awakening (Rogue Art)
It’s a bit perplexing that reeds player Paul Dunmall hasn’t spent more time playing with American musicians. He’s firmly situated within the English improvisation community, where he’s perhaps best known for his longer tenure with the quartet Mujician, and his ability to double on bagpipes has allowed him to establish links between improvised and folk music. But
his jazz-rooted approach makes him a natural to work in settings such as this one. When Dunmall toted his tenor to the Vision Festival in 2012 (even then, it could be costly to lug multiple horns on a plane), he found three sympatico partners in Fest regulars pianist Matthew Shipp, double bassist Joe Morris and drummer Gerald Cleaver. They all hit the ground running, generating a barrage of pulsing, roiling sound for over 20 minutes before the piano and drums peel off, leaving Morris to sustain momentum alone. Dunmall’s gruff, spiraling lines find common cause with each of his fellows, and the gradual addition and subtraction of players from that point makes it easier to hear the exchange of ideas, which often seem to take place between dyads operating within the larger flow.
Bill Meyer
Editrix — Tell Me I’m Bad (Exploding in Sound)
Tell Me I'm Bad by Editrix
Wendy Eisenberg’s rock band is like her solo output in that it snarls delicate, self-aware, mini-short stories in complex tangles of guitar, hemming in high, sing-song-y verses with riffs and licks of daunting difficulty. The main differences are speed, volume and aggression (i.e. it rocks.) and a certain communal energy. That’s down to two collaborators who can more than keep up, Josh Daniel on surging, rattling, break-it-all-down percussion and Steve Cameron, equally anarchic and fast on bass. The title track is an all-out rager, thrusting jagged arena riffs of guitar and bass forward, then clearing space for off-kilter verses and time-shifting, irregular instrumental interplay. “Chelsea” follows a similar chaotic pattern, setting up a teeth-shaking cadence of rock instruments, with Eisenberg keening over the top of it. “I know, perfectly well, that we’re not safe, safe from the men in power,” she croons, engaged in the knotting difficulties of the world as we know it, but winning.
Jennifer Kelly
Elephant Micah — Vague Tidings (Western Vinyl)
Vague Tidings by Elephant Micah
The new Elephant Micah album, the follow-up to 2018’s excellent Genericana, has an apposite title. Vague Tidings conveys an atmosphere of feeling conscious of something carried on the wind, a story passed on that may have shifted through various iterations, leaving only a sense of its original meaning. All that can be sure is that this is sad, sober music, unafraid to brace against the chill of mortality and speak of all that is felt. The instruments — guitar, piano, percussion, violin and woodwinds — move around Joseph O’Connell’s voice in stiff yet graceful arcs, distanced by an unspoken etiquette. Repetitive melodic figures, stark yet steady, gradually accumulate weight as they roll along like tumbleweeds. It’s a crisp, forlorn country-blues, in no hurry to get nowhere, carrying ancient wisdom that seems to acknowledge the empty resonance of its own import.
Tim Clarke
Fraufraulein — Solum (Notice Recordings)
Fraufraulein’s music is immersive. Anne Guthrie and Billy Gomberg beam themselves, and us along with them, Quantum Leap-style directly into multiple environments in medias res. Through the clever employment of field recordings, they transport us to a hurricane-addled beach, performing a voice/piano duet as driftwood missiles careen through the air. In another “episode,” the manipulation of small objects conjures up the intimacy of a water garden filled with windchimes. Partners in both life and art, Guthrie and Gomberg are also consummate solo artists. He is a master of spike-textured drones, while she explores the intimate properties of physical entities. Like a child tends to resemble one parent while borrowing subtle traits from the other, Solum identifies more with Guthrie’s electroacoustic tendencies than it does with Gomberg’s electronics. This is in stark contrast to 2015’s Extinguishment, which felt a little more balanced between those two modes. Both approaches work, yet Solum feels more meticulously crafted and nuanced. Careful listening unveils multiple subtle tones and textures, and each piece is an adventure for the ears.
Bryon Hayes
Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi — Triplet Fawns (Kettle Hole)
Triplet Fawns by Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi
The album’s title implies a crew you wouldn’t want on your yard; while those adolescent ungulate appetites do a number on your bushes, the hooves are hacking up your grass. But if they knocked on your door, saxophone cases in their respective hands, you could do worse than invite them around the back for some blowing. Hatcher, Magill and Shiroishi present with sufficient lung power to be heard fine without the reflective assistance of walls, even when they aren’t making like Sonore (that was Gustafsson, Vandermark, and Brötzmann, about a dozen years back). This album, which was released in a micro-edition of 100 CD-Rs on Hatcher’s Kettle Hole imprint, builds gradually from restrained melancholy to pointillistic jousting to a climactic blow-out, and the assured development of each piece suggests that each player was listening not only to what each of the others was doing, but where the music was headed.
Bill Meyer
A.Karperyd — GND (Novoton)
GND by A.Karperyd
On his second solo release, GND, Swedish artist Andreas Karperyd broodingly ruminates on snatches of musical ideas that have been percolating in his consciousness over extended periods. Anyone familiar with his 2015 debut, Woodwork, will find these 55 minutes similarly immersive, as Karperyd manipulates live instruments such as piano and strings into shimmering, alien tapestries. Opener “The Well-Defined Rules of Certainty” appears to take Fennesz’s Venice as its blueprint, issuing forth cascading, percolating tones that tickle the ears. “The Desire to Invoke Balance with Our Eyes Closed” and “Failures and Small Observations” have a Satie-esque elegance to their piano lines, albeit refracted via a hall of mirrors. The 12-minute “Reminiscence of Tar” sounds like a slow-motion pan across the hulking mass of a shadowy space station. And closing track “Mummification of an Empire” slowly fries its piano in static, then unfurls wistful melodica and throbbing synth across the wreckage.
Tim Clarke
Kiwi Jr. — Cooler Returns (Subpop)
Cooler Returns by Kiwi jr
Kiwi Jr.’s brash, brainy indie pop punk vibrates with nervy energy, like the first Feelies album or Violent Femmes’ 1983 debut or that one great S-T from the Soft Pack. Those are all opening salvos for their respective bands, but this one is a second outing, suffering not a bit from sophomore slackening. Instead, Cooler Returns tightens up everything that was already stinging on the Toronto band’s debut and adds a giddy careening glee. An oddball thread of Robin Hood-ness runs through the disc, with Sherwood forest getting a nod in the title track and “Maid Marian’s Toast” tipping the love interest, but these songs are anything but archaic. “Undecided Voters,” the single jangles harder than anything I’ve heard since Woolen Men, slyly upending creative pretensions in a verse that goes: “You take a photo of the CN tower/you take another of the Honest Ed sign/Well, I take photos of your photos/and they really move people.” Has it been done before? Maybe. Does it move us. Yes indeed.
Jennifer Kelly
Kool John — Get Rich, Die $moppin ($moplife Entertainment)
A year ago, Kool John was shot six times. Yet you wouldn’t know about it from the general mood of Get Rich, Die $moppin, his first tape since then. He does name one song “6 Shots” and explicitly mentions the shooting accident a few times on other songs, but his bouncy music says he wasn’t hurt bad after all. The beats perfectly match the rhymes, playfully ignorant and ignorantly playful. Kool John still doesn’t mix with broke people, doesn’t return calls if it’s not about money and “doesn’t get stressed out.” Instead, he gets high. His new tape is nothing groundbreaking, even though he’s pretending that is: “If I had no legs I’d still be outstanding.”
Ray Garraty
Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner — See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Out Of Your Head)
See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival by Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this recording is that the titular festival happened at all. While most festivals either canceled or went on line, Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival dealt with COVID by spreading out. Instead of big stages and indoor shows, last September it staged little pop-up events on sidewalks and in parks. So, if the sound of See or Seem feels a bit diffuse, it’s because it was recorded with a device propped in front of two guys playing on a grassy median. There are moments when the buzz of bugs rises up for a second behind Nick Mazzarella’s darting alto sax and Quin Kirchner’s brisk, mercurial beats. But the thrill of actually playing in front of some people (or actually being surrounded by them; when there’s no stage and social distancing is in effect, it makes sense to walk slow circles around the performers) infuses this music, extracting an extra ounce of joyousness from Mazzarella’s free, boppish lines, and adding a restlessness charge to the drumming, as though Kirchner really wanted to squeeze as much music as possible into this 31-minute set. This release is part of Out Of Your Head Records’ Untamed series of download-only albums recorded under less than pristine conditions. A portion of each title’s income is directed to a charity of the artists’ choice; the duo selected St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
Bill Meyer
Dean McPhee — Witch’s Ladder (Hood Faire)
Witch's Ladder by Dean McPhee
Finger-picked melodies cut through haunted landscapes of echo and hum on this fourth LP from the British guitarist Dean McPhee. Track titles like “The Alchemist” and “Witch’s Ladder” evoke the supernatural, as does the spectral ambient tone, reminiscent of Chuck Johnson’s recent Cinder Grove or Mark Nelson’s last Pan•American album. Yet while an e-bow traces ghostly chills through “The Alder Tree,” there’s also a grounding in lovely, well-rooted folk forms; it’s like seeing a familiar landscape in moonlight, well-known landmarks suddenly turned unearthly and strange. The long closing title track has an introspective air. Pensive, jazz-infused runs flower into bright bursts of notes, not quite blues, not quite folk, not quite jazz, not quite anything but gorgeous.
Jennifer Kelly
Moontype — Bodies of Water (Born Yesterday)
Bodies of Water by Moontype
Margaret McCarthy’s voice swims across your headphones like being on an innertube drifting languidly downstream. Typically, saying someone’s vocals are like water indicates a degree of timidity or laziness, obscured in reverb or simply buried by the mix, but on Moontype’s debut LP, it’s a compliment: McCarthy floats across the different styles of music she makes with guitarist Ben Cruz and drummer Emerson Hunton. You notice it not just because she often sings of water or because it’s right there in the title, but also because the Chicago trio hasn’t settled on any particular style yet — just listen to the three-song stretch at the heart of the record where achingly beautiful alt-country ballad “3 Weeks” leads into “When You Say Yes,” a sub-three-minute power-pop number Weezer ought to be jealous of, followed immediately by crunching alt-rock swoon and first single “Ferry.” All the while, McCarthy lets her melodies drift to the will of the songs. I’m reminded of recent efforts from Great Grandpa, Squirrel Flower and Lucy Dacus, but the brief, jazzy curveball of “Alpha” is a peek into whole other possibilities. Bodies of Water is a fine record, but perhaps its most exciting aspect is how much ground you can see Moontype has already conquered. One can’t help but wonder what sonic worlds awash in water await.
Patrick Masterson
Rob Noyes / Joseph Allred — Avoidance Language (Feeding Tube)
Avoidance Language by Rob Noyes and Joseph Allred
The 12-string guitar can emit such a prodigious amount of sound, and there are two of them on Avoidance Language. If Joseph Allred and Rob Noyes had planned things out in order to avoid canceling each other out, they might never have picked their instruments up, so they just started playing and listening. The result is not so much a summing of two broad spectrums of sound, but an instinctual blending of similar textures that ends up sounding significantly different from what either musician does on their own. Even when Allred switches to harmonium or banjo, as he does on the album’s two shorter tracks, the music rushes in torrential fashion. Their collaboration is so compatible that it often seems more like a recital for one big stringed thing played by one four-handed musician than a doubled instrumental duet.
Bill Meyer
NRCSSSST — S-T (Slimstyle)
NRCSSST by NRCSSST
There’s no “I” in NRCSSSST but there’s plenty of swagger. The Atlanta-based synth pop band, formed around Coathangers drummer and singer Stephanie Luke and Dropsonic’s Dan Dixon, taunts and teases in its opening salvo “All I Ever Wanted.” Luke rasps appealingly atop Spoon-style piano banging, and big shout along choruses erupt from sudden flares of synths. It’s all hedonism, but done with conviction. You haven’t heard a big rock song kick up this much fun in ages. “Love Suicide” bangs just as hard, its bass line muttering like a crazy person, unstable and ready to explode (and yet it doesn’t, it maintains its restraint even when the rest of the cut goes deliriously off the rails). Dixon can really sing, too, holding the long vibrating notes that lift these prickly jams into anthemry. It’s been a while since a band reminded me of INXS and U2 without sucking, but here we are. Sometimes guilty pleasures are just pleasures.
Glass Triangle by Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, Ryan Sawyer
Harpist Zeena Parkins and Ryan Sawyer have a long-standing partnership in the trio substitutes Moss Garden, a chamber improv ensemble with pianist Ryan Ross. But swapping in Danish alto saxophonist Mette Rasmussen brings about a change, not just in instrumentation, but attitude. She plays free jazz like a punk, impatient and aggressive, and Parkins and Sawyer are up for the challenge. This music often plays out like a battle between two titans, one blowing and the other pummeling, while Parkins seeks to liquify the ground upon which they stand. She sticks exclusively to an electric harp whose effects-laden tone is disorientingly alien, blinking beacon-like one moment, low as a backhoe engage in earth removal the next. The combination of new and old relationships promotes a combination of instability and trust that yields splendid results.
Bill Meyer
claire rousay — A Softer Focus (American Dreams)
a softer focus by claire rousay
In film, soft focus is a technique of contrast reduction that lends a scene a dreamlike quality. With A Softer Focus, claire rousay imbues her already intimate compositions with a noctilucent aura. She has created a dreamworld with sound. One glimpse at the glowing flowers that grace the cover art created by visual artist Dani Toral, with whom rousay closely collaborated on this release, and the illusory nature of the record is revealed. The reds, oranges, blues and purples of deep twilight are reflected in both the textures rousay weaves into her soundscapes and the visual themes that Toral conjures. Violin, cello, piano and synth are the musical origins of this warmth, which rousay wraps around environments crafted from the sounds of everyday life. She recorded herself moving about her apartment, visiting a farmer’s market, observing kids playing and just existing. These field recordings of the mundane, when coupled with the radiance of the musical elements, are magical. Snatches of conversation become incantations; auto-tuned vocals are the whisperings of spirits; fireworks explode into brilliant shards of crystal. With A Softer Focus, rousay takes a glimpse into the beauty of the everyday, showing us just how precious our most humdrum moments can be.
Bryon Hayes
Axel Rulay x Verbo Flow — Si Es Trucho Es Trucho / Axel Rulay (La Granja)
Axel Rulay must be kicking himself right now. With more than three million plays on the original version and more than five million on the remix that adds verses from Farruko and El Alfa into the fray, the Dominican is cruising into our second pandemic summer with an unbeatable poolside anthem — and to think, after years of clawing his way up through the industry dregs, working to get his name out there, all he had to do was make himself the chorus over Venezuelan producer Manybeat’s 2019 tropical house trip “El Tiempo.” Presto: Massive visibility in the Spanish-speaking world and a song that ought to transcend any linguistic barriers unlocked even if the best I can manage is a title that translates as “If It’s Trout It’s Trout.” Expect that long-desired Daddy Yankee collabo to follow any day now.
Patrick Masterson
Rx Nephew — Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me (NewBreedTrapper)
Rochester rapper Rx Nephew trailed brother-turned-archrival-turned-back Rx Papi’s coming out party 100 Miles and Walk’in by just a few weeks with the 53-minute all-in proposition Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me. Unlike Papi’s Max B-ish smoothness, Nephew is all rough n’ tumble through these 17 tracks, provocative pump action with narrative bursts of violence and street hustling delivered with a verve most akin to DaBaby or, in some of his more elastic enunciations, peak Ludacris. A recent Creative Hustle interview provides some insight: The first time he went into the booth, “I didn’t write anything. I just started talking about selling crack and robbing people.” The stories haven’t stopped since. If he can keep putting out music as engaging as Listen Here…, Rx Nephew is destined for more than just the margins; until then, we have one of the year’s densest rap records to hold the line.
Patrick Masterson
Nick Schofield — Glass Gallery (Backward Music)
Glass Gallery by Nick Schofield
Nick Schoefield, out of Montreal, composed these 13 tracks entirely on a vintage Prophet 600, the first synthesizer to designed to employ the then-new MIDI standard established by the instrument’s inventor Dave Smith and Roland’s Ikutaru Kakahashi. The instrument has a lovely, crystalline quality, floating effortless arpeggios through vaulting sonic spaces. Though clearly synthesized, these pieces of music resonate in serene and peaceful ways, evoking light, water, air and contemplation with a simplicity that evokes Japan. “Water Court” drips notes of startling purity into deep pools of tone-washed whoosh and hum. “Snow Blue Square” flutters an oboe-like melody over eddying gusts of keyboard motifs. The pieces fit together with calm precision, leading from one beautiful space to the next like a stroll through a museum.
Jennifer Kelly
Archie Shepp — Blasé And Yasmina Revisited (Ezz-thetics)
The Ezz-thetics campaign to keep the best of mid-20th century free jazz on CD shelves (yes, CD, not streaming or LP) breaches the walls of the BYG catalog with a disc that issues one and a half albums from Archie Shepp’s busy week in August 1969. Blasé is a stand-out for the participation of singer Jeanne Lee, whose indomitable and flexible delivery as equal to the demands of material that’s be turns pungently earthy and steeped in antiquity. But the rest of the band, which includes Philly Joe Jones, Dave Burrell, some harmonica players, and a couple members of the Art Ensemble, is also more than equal to the task of filtering the blues and Ellingtonia through the gestures of the then-contemporary avant-garde. “Yasmina,” which originally occupied one side of another LP, makes sense here as an extension of the raw, rippling “Touareg,” the last tune on Blasé, into exultantly African territory.
Bill Meyer
Juanita Stein — Snapshot (Handwritten)
Juanita Stein was the cool, serene, Mazzy Star-evoking vocal presence in the Aussie dream-gaze outfit Howling Bells, and she plays more or less the same role on her third solo album. Yet she is also the source of mayhem here, kicking up an angst of guitar-freaked turmoil on “1,2,3,4,5,6” then soothing it away with singing, hanging long threads of feedback from the thump-thump-thumping blues-rock architecture of “L.O.T.F.” and crooning dulcetly, but with a little yip, in the trance-y title track. This latter cut reflects on the death of her father, a kindred soul who wrote a couple of Howling Bells songs for her and passed away recently. It distills a palpable ache into pure, distanced poetry, finding a cool, dispassionate way to consider the mysteries of human loss.
Jennifer Kelly
The Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums — Wabi Sabi (Sowiesound)
Wabi Sabi by Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums
Over its 30 years together, the Tiptons Sax Quartet has done less to hone its sound and more to figure out how many styles to embrace. The group (typically a soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone sax joined by percussion and even including some vocals) can dig into trad jazz but sounds more at home in exploration, adapting world music or other traditional American styles. The title of their latest album, Wabi Sabi refers to the Japanese concept of finding beauty in and accepting imperfection. The Tiptons, despite that sentiment, don't approach their play with a sloppy sound; in fact, they're as tight as ever. The understanding of impermanence and imperfection does help contextualize their risk-taking. When they turn to odd yodeling on “Moadl Joadl,” they find joy in an odd vocal moment that highlights expression and discovery over formal rigor. When they tap in New Orleans energy for “Jouissance,” we can connect the dots between parades and funerals, celebrating all the while. The whole album serves as a tour of styles and moods, always with an energetic potency. If it's more of the same from the Tiptons, that just means continuance of difference.
Halfsour: “Milk Bath”
Floatie: “Catch A Good Worm” (***NEW)
Buffet Lunch: “Pebbledash” (***NEW)
Unschooling: “Social Chameleon” (***NEW)
Hooveriii: “Cindy” (***NEW)
Moontype: “About You” (***NEW)
Fake Fruit: “Milkman” + “Old Skin” (***NEW)
Mamalarky: “Drug Store Model”
Spread Joy: “St. Tropez” + “Unoriginal” (***NEW)
All Hits: “Kickback”
Celestial Shore: “Slime”
Smirk: “S. Construction” + “N.W.O.” (***NEW)
Sarcasm: “Caught Hand, Gazing Hand” (***NEW)
Conditioner Disco Group: “Fashion Void (fast)” + “City 2″
Ohmme: “3 2 4 3″
Peeling: “Dread”
Laundromat: “Nein” + “Flat Planet” (***NEW)
Global Charming: “If It Is” + “Curveball”
Italia 90: “Borderline” (***NEW)
Squid: “City 3″ + “Padding” (***NEW)
Editrix: “Instant” (***NEW)
Freaking: “I’m Not Opposed To Sand” (***NEW)
Lewsburg: ”From Never To Once”
Shopping: “No Apologies”
Deeper: “Pink Showers” + “Trust”
TV Priest: “Press Gang” (***NEW)
EIEIEIO: “Jerkface” (***NEW)
Stiff Richards: “Fill In The Blanks”
Shame: “6/1″ (***NEW)
Want more post-punk, d.y.i., and city sounds? No problem. Omega Radio has enough to go around for its own second deluxe spring broadcast. Like last spring, here’s a double delight of some of our favorite discoveries in the d.i.y. / Bandcamp world.
We’re preparing our biggest and best summer broadcasting season so far. Please join us as we’ll showcase our most diverse selection of sounds. Until then...
May 19, 2021 (10PM New York City): next bonus Omega.
May 22, 2021 (10PM New York City): final deluxe Omega (Spring ‘21).
