2023 was pretty much an awful year for our world —climate disaster moves ever more quickly, violence abounds and US politics are a disaster. I would not write a thank you card to the universe for many of my own experiences during the year either. However, I am grateful for the extraordinary music I participated in, heard and wrote about: it was a great solace. A few highlights are below:
I composed three new pieces: Solemn Tollings, for microtonal trumpet and trombone, Just Like You for singing violist, and Cracking Linear Elamite for solo guitar. The latter premiered in December at Loft 393 in Tribeca, played by Dan Lippel.
In addition to editing Sequenza 21 and contributing to Dusted, I authored several reviews and a research article for the British journal Tempo. The article was on my research in narratology as a feature of Elliott Carter’s music, which I have been exploring and publishing on since writing my Ph.D. dissertation. It was great for this particular research, of character-types and interactions in the Fifth String Quartet, to finally see the light of day.
After a half-century of banged up and often unreliable used pianos, my wife Kay got me a new Baldwin grand piano for my 50th birthday. Since it has arrived, I have practically lived in it.
Post-pandemic and post-cancer, I began to dip my toe into attending live events. I went to the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, which was a mixed bag. As compensation, the Boston Symphony performances that weekend were excellent. I attended a great concert at the New York Philharmonic in November and another in December. For many years, Kay and I have made a holiday tradition of seeing the Tallis Scholars at St. Mary the Virgin Church in midtown. It was wonderful to return there. The Tallis Scholars’ performance was splendid, featuring a mass by Clemens non Papa.
After the Tallis concert, Kay was in Nashville, where her parents live, for two weeks, spending time with her brother Tom and sister-in-law Aymara, who were visiting from Qatar (Tom teaches at the Carnegie Mellon University campus there and Aymara is a yoga instructor), and celebrating Christmas with her parents. Here in New Jersey, it was just me and the felines, who were (mostly) well-behaved. To keep the holiday blues at bay, I went all out, decorating a natural tree and the house. I played every carol in the hymnal, and enjoyed old holiday standbys: Oscar Peterson, Dave Brubeck, and Mel Torme’s Christmas albums.
There was much excellent recorded music released this year, and I will not attempt to document it all. Here are twelve records, in no particular order, that I expect will stay with me and be played often in coming years.
2023 Favorite Recordings
Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World (Matador)
Hilary Hahn — Eugène Ysaÿe’s Six Sonatas for Violin Solo, op. 27 (DG)
Morton Feldman — Violin and String Quartet (Another Timbre)
Natural Information Society — Since Time is Gravity (Eremite)
Leah Bertucci — Of Shadow and Substance (Self— released)
Juliet Fraser — What of Words and What of Song (Neos)
Laura Strickling and Daniel Schlosberg — 40@40 (Bright Shiny Things)
Our August collection of short reviews contains more big names than usual with singles from Big Thief and Dry Cleaning, a digital compilation from Thou, live music from Obits and a side project from members of the Bats and the Clean. Never fear, there are obscurities as well, including an improv guitar player even Bill Meyer had hardly heard of, a Norwegian emo artist in love with Texas and a death metal outfit verging into psychedelia. Our writers, this time including Tim Clarke, Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Chris Liberato and Jonathan Shaw, like what they like, big or small, hyped or unknown. We hope you’ll like some of it, too.
Marc Barreca — The Sleeper Awakes (Scissor Tail)
The Sleeper Wakes by Marc Barreca
Odd connections abound here. One might not expect the usually acoustic-oriented Scissor Tail Recordings to make a vinyl reissue of an electronic ambient music cassette from 1986, any more than one would expect its maker to currently earn his crust as a bankruptcy judge. So, let’s just shed those expectations and get to listening. Unlike so many lower profile electronic recordings from the 1980s, which seemed targeted for a space next to the cash register of a new age bookstore, this album offers a profusion of mysteries that compound the closer you listen to them. It’s not at all obvious what sounds Barreca fed into his Akai sampler. Japanese folk music? Church chimes? A log drum jam? Tugboat engines? One hears hints of such sounds, but they’ve been warped and dredged in a thin coat of murk, so that the predominant experience is one of feeling like you’re dreaming, even if your eyes are wide open.
Bill Meyer
Big Thief — “Little Things” / “Sparrow” (4AD)
Little Things/Sparrow by Big Thief
Who knows how much more music Big Thief might have released in the last 18 months if the pandemic hadn’t tripped them up? Given the creative momentum generated by 2019’s UFOF and Two Hands, it’s fair to assume the band have plenty of music waiting in the wings. “Little Things” and “Sparrow” arrive with no sign of a new album on the horizon, so are probably being released to promote Big Thief’s upcoming US and European tour. Both songs clock in at around five minutes and handle musical repetition in different satisfying ways. Reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everything,” but hyped up on caffeine, “Little Things” feels like an exciting new direction for the band. It cycles through its whirlpooling, modulated acoustic guitar over and over, the frantic little sequence of chords never changing; the interest comes from the ways in which the rest of the instruments bob and weave in the ever-shifting, psychedelic mix. “Sparrow” is a more traditional Big Thief song, sparse and sad. Its melancholic sway is enlivened by some beautiful wavering vocal harmonies as Adrianne Lenker paints a picture of a Garden of Eden populated by sparrows, owls and eagles, culminating in Adam blaming Eve for humankind’s fall from grace.
Tim Clarke
Simão Costa — Beat Without Byte: (Un)Learning Machine (Cipsela)
Beat With Out Byte by Simão Costa
Piano preparation often makes use of modest resources — bolts and combs, strings or maybe just a raincoat tossed into the instrument’s innards. By contrast, Simão Costa’s set-up looks like took all of the entries in a robotics assembly competition and set them to work agitating a snarl of cables that met the pirated telecommunication requirements for an especially crowded favela. But whether it’s twitching motors or Costa’s own hands doing the work, the sounds that come out of his sound remarkably rich and cohesive. He stirs drifting hums, metallic sonorities, and stomping rhythms into a bracingly immediate sonic onslaught.
Bill Meyer
Cots — Disturbing Body (Boiled)
Disturbing Body by Cots
Disturbing Body is the low-key debut album by Montreal-based musician Steph Yates, who enlisted Sandro Perri to produce. Where the songs are pared back to mostly just vocals and peppy major-seventh chords on nylon-string guitar — such as “Bitter Part of the Fruit” and “Midnight at the Station” — comparisons with bossa-nova classics such as “The Girl From Ipanema” inevitably arise. Where the tempo is slower, the chord voicings are less sun-dappled, and Perri’s arrangements call upon a wider palette of instrumental colors, the songs venture into more interesting terrain, calling to mind a less haunted Broadcast. There’s an eerie sway to the opening title track, backed by rich piano chords and clattering cymbal textures. Fender Rhodes and the light clack of a rhythm track give “Inertia of a Dream” an uneasy momentum. And forlorn trumpet, percussion and piano situate “Last Sip” at closing time in a forgotten jazz club. There’s something evasive yet subtly intoxicating at work here, the album’s ten songs breezing past in half an hour, leaving plenty of unanswered questions in their wake.
Tim Clarke
Dry Cleaning — “Bug Eggs” / “Tony Speaks!” (4AD)
Bug Eggs/Tony Speaks! by Dry Cleaning
A few months on from the release of their excellent debut album, New Long Leg, Dry Cleaning have put out two more songs from the same sessions, which are featured as bonus tracks on the Japanese edition. For a band whose unique appeal is mostly attributed to Florence Shaw’s surreal lyrics and deadpan delivery, it’s heartening to hear further evidence that it’s the complete cocktail of musical ingredients — Shaw plus Tom Dowse’s inventive guitar, Lewis Maynard’s satisfyingly thick bass, and Nick Buxton’s driving drums — that alchemizes into their winning sound. The verse guitar chords of “Bug Eggs” are naggingly similar to New Long Leg’s “More Big Birds,” while the instrumental chorus has a yearning feel akin to album highlight “Her Hippo.” Maynard’s bass tone on “Tony Speaks!” is absolutely filthy, swallowing up most of the mix until Dowse’s guitar bares its teeth in a swarm of squalling wah-wah, while Shaw’s lyrics muse upon the decline of heavy industry, the environment, and crisps.
Tim Clarke
Flight Mode — TX, ’98 (Sound As Language)
TX, '98 by Flight Mode
In 1998, well before he started Little Hands of Asphalt, Sjur Lyseid spent a year in Texas at the height of the emo wave, skateboarding and going to house shows and listening to the Get Up Kids. TX, ’98 is the Norwegian’s tribute to that coming of age experience, the giddy euphorias of mid-teenage freedom filtered through bittersweet subsequent experience. “Sixteen” is the banger, all crunchy, twitchy exhilarating guitars and vulnerable pop tunefulness, its clangor breaking for wistful reminiscence, but “Fossil Fuel” waxes lyrical, its guitar riffs splintering into radiant shards, its lyrics capturing those youthful years when anything seems possible and also, somehow, the later recognition that perhaps it isn’t. It’s an interesting tension between the now-is-everything hedonism of adolescence and the rueful remembering of adulthood, encapsulate in a chorus that goes, “Well wait and see if there’s no more history/and just defend the present tense.”
Jennifer Kelly
Drew Gardner— S-T (Eiderdown Records)
S/T by Drew Gardner
Drew Gardner has been popping up all over lately, on Elkhorn’s snowed in acoustic jam Storm Sessions and the electrified follow-up Sun Cycle and as one of Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders. Here, it’s just him and his guitar plus a like-minded rhythm section (that’s Ryan Jewell on drums and Garcia Peoples’ Andy Cush on bass), spinning off dreamy, folk-into-interstellar-journeys like “Calyx” and “Kelp Highway.” Gardner puts some muscle into some of his grooves, running close to Chris Forsyth’s wide-angle electric boogie in “Bird Food.” “The Road to Eastern Garden,” though, is pure limpid transcendence, Buddhist monastery bells jangling as Gardner’s warm, inquiring melodic line intersects with rubbery bends on bass. Give this one a little time to sit, but don’t miss it.
Jennifer Kelly
Hearth — Melt (Clean Feed)
Melt by Hearth
This pan-European quartet’s name suggests domesticity, but the fact that none of its members lives in the country of their birth probably says more about the breadth of their music. The closest geographic point of reference for the sounds that pianist Kaja Draksler, trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, and saxophonists Ada Rave and Mette Rasmussen’s make together would be Chicago’s south side. Their dynamic blend of angular structures, extended instrumental techniques, and obscurely theatrical enactments brings to mind the Art Ensemble of Chicago, even though the sounds on this concert-length recording rarely echo the AEC’s. But it is similarly charged with mystery and collective identity.
Bill Meyer
Klaus Lang / Konus Quartett — Drei Allmenden (Cubus)
Drei Allmenden (translation: Three Commons) treats the act of commission as an opportunity to create common cause. For composer and keyboardist Klaus Lang, this is a chance to push back against a long trend of separation and stratification, with musicians bound to realize the composer’s whim, no matter the cost. Invoking works from the 16th century, he penned something simple, flexible and open to embellishment. Then he pitched in with Konus Quartett, a Swiss saxophone ensemble, to get the job done. The three-part piece, which lasts 43 sublime minutes, amply rewards the submersion of ego. Lang’s slowly morphing harmonium drones and Konus’ long reed tones sound like one instrument, enriched by tendrils of sound that rise up and then sink back into the music’s body.
Bill Meyer
Lynch, Moore, Riley — Secant / Tangent (dx/dy)
Secant | Tangent by Sue Lynch, N.O. Moore, Crystabel Riley
Electric guitarist N.O. Moore is barely known in these parts. I’ve only heard him on one album with Eddie Prévost a couple years back, and the other two musicians, not at all. But on the strength of this robust performance, which was recorded at London’s Icklectick venue, it would be a loss to keep it that way. They combine acoustic sounds with electronics, courtesy of guitar effects and amplification, in an exceedingly natural fashion. Each musician also gets into the other’s business in ways that correspond to the one spicy suggestion made by one cook that elevates another’s dish to the next level. Susan Lynch’s clarinet and flute compliment Moore’s radiophonic/feedback sounds like two flashes of lightning illuminating the same dark cloud, and her vigorously pecking saxophone attack mixes with Crystabel’s cascading beats like idiosyncratically tuned drums. This is one of the first albums to be released on Moore’s dx/dy label; keep your eye out for more.
OURANIA by Mako Sica / Hamid Drake featuring Tatsu Aoki & Thymme Jones
Ourania is named for the muse associated with astronomy in Greek mythology, and the album has an aim for the stars quality. In 2020, Chicago’s Mako Sica lost not only the chance to play concerts, but one third of its number. Core members Brent Fuscaldo (electric bass, voice, harmonica, percussion) and Przemyslaw Krys Drazek (electric trumpet, electric guitar, mandolin) could have just hunkered down with their respective TV sets. Instead, they booked themselves three other musicians who make rising above circumstances a core practice. The duo convened at Electrical Audio with Hamid Drake (drums, percussion, Tatsu Aoki (upright bass, shamisen), and Thymme Jones (piano, organ, balloon, trumpet, voice, recorder, percussion), rolled tape for a couple hours, and walked out with this album. The 85 minute-long recording (edited to about half that length on vinyl, but the LP comes with a download card) exudes a vibe of calm, even beatitude, with twin trumpets and Fuscaldo’s echo-laden, nearly word-free vocals weaving though a sequence of patient grooves like migrational birds on the glide.
Bill Meyer
Mar Caribe — Hymn of the Mar Caribe (Mar Caribe)
Hymn of the Mar Caribe b/w Rondo for Unemployment by mar caribe
Some musicians burn to make something new; others generate attention-getting sounds designed to maximize the potential of their other earning activities; and others, well, they just want you to sway along with their version of the good sounds. Mar Caribe falls into that last category. This Chicago-based instrumental ensemble has spent most of the last decade maintaining a robust performance schedule, and it would seem that recording is pretty much an afterthought; a photo of the test pressing for this 7” was posted in May 2019, but the release show didn’t happen until August 2021. Sure, COVID can be blamed for part of the delay, but one suspects that mostly, these guys just want to play, and they didn’t bother to stuff the singles in the sleeves until they knew when they’d next be leaning over a merch table. The titular suspends anthemic brass and pedal steel over a swinging double bass cadence, and if there was a moment during the night when the band invited the audience to pledge allegiance to their favorite drink, this is what they’d be playing while they asked. Guitars lead on the flip side, whose busy twists and turns belie the implied laziness of the title, “Rondo For Unemployment.”
Bill Meyer
Mint Julep — In a Deep and Dreamless Sleep (Western Vinyl)
In A Deep And Dreamless Sleep by Mint Julep
These songs traverse a hazy, dreamlike space, diffusing dance beats, dream-y vocals and synth pulses into inchoate sensation that nonetheless retains enough rhythmic propulsion to keep your heart rate up. “A Rising Sun” filters jangly guitar and bass through a sizzle of static, letting tambourine thump gently somewhere off camera, as voices soothe and reassure. “Mirage” pounds a four-on-the-floor, but quietly, angelically, like a disco visited through astral projection or maybe a really rave-y iteration of heaven. There’s an ominous undercurrent to “Longshore Drift,” in its growly, sub-bass-y hum, but glittering bits of synth sprinkle over like fairy dust. This is indefinitely gorgeous stuff, ethereal but surprisingly energizing. Dance or drift, take your pick.
Jennifer Kelly
Monocot — Directions We Know (Feeding Tube)
Direction We Know by Monocot
Directions We Know is an LP of free-form freak-outs generated by an instrumental duo that includes one musician who you might expect to perpetuate such a ruckus, and one that you might not. The more likely character is drummer Jayson Gerycz, who may be known for keeping time with the Cloud Nothings, but has shown a willingness to wax colorizing in the company of Anthony Pasquarosa, Jen Powers and Matthew Rolin. The happy surprise is Rosali Middleman, whose singer-songwriter efforts have kept her guitar playing firmly in service of her songs. She doesn’t exactly abandon lyricism in Monocot, but the tunes serve as launching ramps for exuberant lunges into the realm of voltage-saturated sound. On “Ruby Throated,” the first of the record’s four extended jams, Middleman lofts rippling peals over a near-boil of drums and churning loops. By the time you get to “Multidimensional Solutions,” the last and longest track, her wah-wah-dipped streams of sound have taken on a blackened quality, as though her overheating tubes have burned every note.
Bill Meyer
Obits — Die at the Zoo (Outer Battery)
Die At The Zoo by Obits
Few aughts rock bands held more promise than Obits. The four-piece headed by Hot Snakes’ Rick Froberg and Edsel’s Sohrab Habibion emerged in 2005 with a stinging, stripped-back, blues-touched sound. Froberg’s feral snarl rode a surfy, twitchy amplified onslaught, that was, by 2012 a finely tuned machine. I caught one of the live shows following Moody, Standard and Poor at small club in Northampton the same year this was recorded (so small that I was sitting on a couch next to Froberg, oblivious, for 20 minutes before the show), and what struck me was how well the band played together. The records sound chaotic, and that was certainly there in performance, but the cuts and stops were perfect, the surfy instrumental breaks (“New August”) absolutely in tune. At the time this set was recorded in the Brisbane punk landmark known as the Zoo, the band was near the peak of its considerable powers—and regrettably near the end of its run. Die at the Zoo is reasonably well recorded, rough enough to capture the band’s raucous energy, skilled enough so you can understand the words and hear all the parts. It hits all the highlights, blistering early cuts like “Widow of My Dreams,” and “Pine On,” the blues cover “Milk Cow Blues,” and later, slightly more melodic ragers like “Everything Looks Better in the Morning” and “You Gotta Lose.” The guitar work is particularly sharp throughout, its straight-on chug breaking into fiery blues licks and surfy whammy explosions. It’s a poignant reminder of a time when American rock bands played ferocious shows halfway across the world (or anywhere) as a matter of course and a fitting eulogy for Obits.
Jennifer Kelly
A Place To Bury Strangers — Hologram (Dedstrange)
Hologram EP by A Place To Bury Strangers
A Place To Bury Strangers returns with a new rhythm section and renewed focus on the elements that made its version of revivalism the loudest if not brashest of the New York aughties. Sarah and John Fedowitz on drums and bass join Oliver Ackerman on the five track EP Hologram which is the most concise and vital APTBS release for a while. For all the criticism of copyism thrown at the band since their early days, APTBS has always been as much about Ackerman’s production skills and feel for texture as musical originality and the songs on Hologram sound fantastic at volume. Beneath the sonic onslaught of fuzz and reverb, not a brick is misplaced in this intricately constructed sonic wall. True “I Might Have” is pure Jesus & Mary Chain and “In My Hive” a Wax Trax take on Spector but Hologram is an endorphin rush of guitar driven noise bound to make one forget the world, if only for a while.
Andrew Forell
Praises — EP4 (Hand Drawn Dracula)
Jesse Crowe’s work as Praises has been ongoing since 2014, but has shifted in tone, instrumentation and emphasis since then. While the first two EPs have more of a full, rock band feel, the third one and 2018’s full-length In This Year: Ten of Swords took things in a more electronic, sometimes industrial direction. It was an even better fit for the rest, probing creativity evident in Praises’ work, and 3/4s of the new EP4 are in a pleasingly similar vein. The echoing, ringing denunciations of “We Let Go” and “A World on Fire” are fine examples of Praises’ existing strengths, but the opening “Apples for My Love” is immediately captivating in a very different way. Gauzy and rapturous, it’s a reverie that keeps the satisfying textural detail of the other songs but turns them to different ends. It’s not something that was missing from Crowe’s work before — again, the other tracks here are also very good — but a reminder that what Praises has shown before is not the extent of what they can do.
Ian Mathers
The Sundae Painters — The First SP Single (Leather Jacket)
“This is a supergroup, is it not?” someone asked the Sundae Painters bassist Paul Kean on social media last year, to which he responded, “Some may choose that title. We prefer superglue.” Kaye Woodward, his wife and longtime bandmate in both The Bats and Minisnap, takes the lead vocal on “Thin Air,” one of the pair of A-sides found on their new band’s debut seven-inch. From the outset, Kean’s unmistakable bass playing and Hamish Kilgour’s (The Clean/Mad Scene) drumming lock into a psychedelic march, with the other instruments weaving like kites above, vying for position on the same breeze. “You fight your way down/You fight your way up/You wait for the dust to settle,” Woodward sings. A few gentle strums cut their way through the parade, and a guitar calls out gull-like from above, before everything trails off as if something potent has just kicked in. On the flip side, “Aversion” has an old friend-like familiarity to it, soundwise (if not lengthwise) sitting somewhere between VU’s “The Gift” and “Sister Ray.” Things begin a little stand-offish, though, like you’ve interrupted a guitar pontificating to a rapt audience — it turns its head to look you over, falling momentarily silent, before picking right back up where it left off. Kilgour’s spoken vocals join the conversation, as the song builds towards a groovy kind of fever pitch. “You look a little stoned,” he says, before responding to his own observation. “Well me I’m a little bit groggy/But it ain’t too foggy/I can see some way of getting out of here.” By this point, both guitars (played by Woodward and Tall Dwarfs’ Alec Bathgate) are full-on screeching and howling, and as the song sputters to a sudden finish, our man’s left waiting for someone to buy him “a ride out the gate.”
Chris Liberato
Thou — Hightower (Self-released)
Hightower by Thou
Hightower is the latest in a string of digital compilations from Thou, most of which collect songs that have been previously released on small-batch splits, 7” records and other hyper-obscure media that briefly circulated through the metal underground. You might be tempted to pronounce that a cynical cash-grab, but Thou has posted Hightower (along with previous compilations, like Algiers, Oakland and Blessings of the Highest Order, a killer collection of Nirvana covers) on their official Bandcamp page as a name-yo’-price download. Thanks, band. Beyond convenience, Hightower has an additional, if a sort of inside-baseball, attraction. The band has re-recorded a few of its older songs with its latest, three-guitar line-up. Longtime listeners will recognize “Smoke Pigs” and “Fucking Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean,” which already sounded terrifyingly massive back in 2008 and 2007, respectively. The expanded instrumentation, new arrangements and better production give the songs even more power and depth, all the way down to the bottom of the effing ocean. Yikes. And there are a few additional touches, like K.C. Stafford’s clean vocals on “Fucking Chained…,” which provide an effective complement to Bryan Funck’s inimitably scabrous howl. Rarely has being pummeled and feeling bummed out been so vivifying.
Jonathan Shaw
Tropical Fuck Storm — Deep States (Joyful Noise)
Deep States by Tropical Fuck Storm
Fueled by exasperation as much as anger, the new album by Melbourne’s Tropical Fuck Storm rounds on the myriad ways in which the world has become a “Bumma Sanger” as leader Gareth Liddiard puts it on the eponymous song about COVID lockdown. A roiling meld of psychedelic garage garnished with elements of hip hop and electronic noise it’s close in method and mood if not sound to another Australian provocateur JG Thirwell whose Foetus project girded maximalist surfaces with rigid discipline. If the Tropical Fuck Storm sought to mirror current conditions, they succeed but lack of clarity in both production and intent makes Deep States a frustrating experience. Backing vocals from Fiona Kitschin (bass), Erica Dunn (keys and guitar) and Lauren Hammel (drums) leaven Liddiard’s blokey pronouncements and there are some good sounds and biting words but the band’s determination to overelaborate and underdevelop musical ideas makes this album seem like a lost opportunity.
Andrew Forell
Marta Warelis / Carlos “Zingaro” / Helena Espvall /Marcelo dos Reis — Turquoise Dream (JACC)
Turquoise Dream by Marta Warelis, Carlos "Zíngaro", Helena Espvall, Marcelo dos Reis
Turquoise Dream documents an example of an encounter that is a mainstay of avant-garde jazz festivals, in which out of towners mix it up locals that they may or may not know. This particular concert, which took place at the Jazz ao Centro Festival in 2019, is one such encounter that deserves to live past the night when it transpired. It featured three stringed instrument players who live in Portugal and a Polish pianist who is based in Holland. But they don’t sound like strangers at all. Violinist Zingaro, cellist Espvall, and guitarist dos Reis blend like flashes of sunlight reflecting off of waves, adding up to a sound that is bright and ever-changing. Warelis, who is equally resourceful with her head under the lid of her piano as she is at the keyboard, adding fleet but substantial responses to her hosts’ quicksilver interactions. The result is music that is resolutely abstract but closely engaged.
Bill Meyer
Wharflurch — Psychedelic Realms ov Hell (Gurgling Gore)
PSYCHEDELIC REALMS OV HELL by Wharflurch
Wharflurch is just plain fun to say — but there are at least two ways in which the name also makes sense for the band that has chosen it: it has a bilious, nauseous quality that matches the vibe of the pustulent death metal you’ll hear on Psychedelic Realms ov Hell; and if you separate the words, you can conjure a sodden, rotten wooden structure, swaying vertiginously over a marshy expanse of water, which is filled with alligators and decaying organic material. Imagine that sway, and that stink, and then imagine yourself collapsing into the viscous fluid, soon to be gator chow. Sounds like Florida, and that’s exactly from whence Wharflurch has emerged. Which also makes sense. Is Wharflurch’s music “psychedelic”? Depends on what you hear in that word. If you want to see hippies dancing ecstatically on a verdant, sun-drenched stretch of Golden Gate Park, then no. But if you have spent any time in the warped, dementedly distorted spaces that psychedelics can open (less happily perhaps, but very powerfully), then yes. Wharflurch likes to accent its meaty riffs and muscular thumps with weird flutters and electronic effects that frequently have a gastric, flatulent quality to them. The saturated and sickly pinks and greens on the album art do a pretty good job of capturing the music’s tones. So do the song titles: “Stoned Ape Apocalypse,” “Bog Body Boletus,” “Phantasmagorical Fumes.” Still game? I’m sorry. But I’ll also be standing right there next to you, on that wobbly, lurching wharf, watching the gators swim near.
Jonathan Shaw
Whisper Room — Lunokhod (Midira Records)
Lunokhod by Whisper Room
That the title of Whisper Room’s fifth album is taken from Soviet lunar rovers makes a certain sense, given how potentially frustrating it might have been for the trio to be working at such a distance. Generally their other records are recorded live, in one room, seeing Aidan Baker (guitar), Jakob Thiesen (drums) and Neil Wiernik (bass) exploring simultaneously, hitting whatever junctions of psychedelic/shoegazing/motorik sound come to them. With Baker in Berlin and travel understandably limiited, this time they recorded their parts separately, layering them together (and bringing in sound designer Scott Deathe to add the kind of pedal processing their sound engineer normally does live). The result certainly sounds as collaborative as ever, seven seamless tracks making up nearly an hour that makes the journey from the friendly, clattering percussion of “Lunokhod01” to the centrifugal ambience of “Lunokhod07” feel perfectly natural. Even though it explores just as much inner and outer space as Whisper Room ever have, there’s something very approachable about Lunokhod that makes it one of their best.
Sometimes a name is also an explanation, and so it is with Continuité Fragilité Résonance. The first word attests to the fact that the piece lasts 51 minutes without a break. The second admits that a listener’s engagement with the music is subject to interruption. The third acknowledges the vertical and spherical aspects of sound since in any moment, the phenomenon you hear might be experienced in ways that have nothing to do with the ongoing march of time, but might drop you into a layered experience or absorb you into an all-encompassing one.
Jürg Frey is part of the Wandelweiser Group, a community of composers and musicians who share a philosophy of taking sound and its counterpart, silence, seriously as essential parts of music and the listening experience. It’s a group of people who seek to understand essences, and then apply that understanding to what they do. If you aren’t aware of that philosophy going into your encounter with this album, don’t worry; the music will teach you what you need to know.
As long as we’re considering associations as engagement-facilitators, it’s worth noting that Continuité Fragilité Résonance was one of three records that Elsewhere released in the same month and which are united by their essential three-ness. While the other two, L’Occhio Del Vedere, by Giovanni Di Domenico, Silvia Tarozzi, and Emmanuel Holterback, and Circles, Reeds, and Memories, by Germaine Sijstermans, Koen Nutters, and Reinier van Houdt, were performed by three musicians each, this album was made by an octet performing another person’s music. But when one notes that the octet is actually composed of two very cohesive entities, the string quartet Quatuor Bozzini and the saxophone quartet Konus Quartett, and that the musicians had contact with Frey during the realization of this piece, its trio aspect takes shape.
Frey’s music is the sort for which the often-abused term, “deceptively simple,” should be reserved. The musicians’ parts, which comprise mostly long tones played at a relaxed pace aren’t that hard. But the mutual attunement necessary to achieve the right balance of sounds requires a cohesion that just can’t happen without investments both in the amount of time to figure out how to play the piece together, and then to sit with it long enough for the players’ collective consciousness to comfortably contain the music’s long form. Nearly a year passed between the first performance of the piece and its recording for this CD, and that time contributed to the integrity of its web of sounds and spaces. It takes a lot of attention and contemplation to get the elements in balance, both moment-to-moment and over the arc of 51 minutes.
A listener should come to this music prepared to have their sense of time gently but effectively disrupted. The titular Fragilité can manifest at any moment, as the listener’s ears grab ahold of a particular texture or quiet gesture and savor it, only to realize that the music has moved on while you have been lingering. So, you listen ahead, or listen more closely, effectively inhabiting varying combinations of past, present and future. Or maybe your experience will be completely different, but that’s a feature, not a bug, with music so matter-of-factly rich in just-rightness. Each sliding screen of string texture, each gleam of sounded brass, each intersection of sounds that merge and sounds that remain distinct, can be absorbed or fallen into depending on where you’re at in your relationship with the music and your own attention span.
