Oren Ambarchi’s Black Truffle label has long been a source for challenging, rewarding music across genres from contemporary composition and free jazz to Thai mouth organ and wah-wah’d out solo bass recordings. Now it is becoming a great resource for Dhrupad music as well. Following up archival recordings of the recently departed Amelia Cuni and rudra veena virtuoso Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar is a revelatory set of lost recordings from the Dagar Brothers, two of the most important figures in establishing the documentation and preservation of this important vocal art form.
Dhrupad is the oldest form of Hindustani classical music, characterized by extensive, drawn-out improvisations. Within this lineage, the Dagar family, which includes the Dagar Brothers, their younger siblings and fellow vocal duo Zahiruddin Dagar and Faiyazuddin Dagar, the aforementioned Z.M. Dagar and his son Bahauddin Dagar, is not just a family, but an institution. Historically, the Dagars were court musicians, and to give a sense of how important the Dagar family is to Dhrupad, there are four styles of court (or darbārī) Dhrupad, and one of them is known simply as the Dāgar vānī. Ustad Nasir Moinuddin (1919-1966) and Ustad Nasir Aminuddin Khan (1923-2000) were born into this lineage at a critical period, coming of age as India broke free from centuries of British colonial rule. British colonialism had upended Indian court music and, starting in the 19th century, Dhrupad had begun to decline in favor of different styles of Hindustani classical music such as Khyal and Thumri. The development of recording technology further displaced the music from its regal context, as the music was now being presented to a much larger audience than the courts would have allowed. Indian classical music was extensively recorded on 78 rpm records from the very beginning, but the limited timeframe that the records allowed made documenting the lengthy Dhrupad music practically impossible. In the aftermath of decolonization, Dhrupad was in danger of disappearing entirely, and it was in this context that the Dagar Brothers took initiative to preserve their family tradition.
Crucial to this mission was the rise of long-playing records in the 1950s and 1960s, which provided much more space for the expansive improvisations of the Dagar Dhrupad. There were also a number of record labels emerging around this time, such as Ocora and Lyrichord, which were dedicated to producing ethnographic recordings without consideration for commercial appeal. In the mid-1960s the Dagar Brothers made the very first Dhrupad record for the EMI-Odeon label, and went on a tour of Europe organized by the eccentric French historian Alain Daniélou. Daniélou recorded the Dagar Brothers in Berlin during this tour, which remained unreleased until now due to the tape abruptly cutting out just before the brothers finished their performance of Raga Jaijavanti. Fifty years later that recording, along with a live recording made in Berlin around the same time, is now being released by Black Truffle.
The Dagar Brothers participated in these recordings with the intention of documenting and preserving a musical tradition in danger of disappearing (and promoting it to a new audience), but this doesn’t make them any less singular as artists. Perhaps the most striking thing about these releases is the intensity of the brothers’ performances, which ought to single handedly dispel any preconceptions of Indian Classical music as new-agey “chill-out” music. On the performance of Rāga Miyān kī Todī from the live recording, that intensity is present from the very beginning and doesn’t let up during the nearly 40 minute run time. The Dagar Brothers sing in beautiful droning overtones, but when the energy hits peak levels their vocal ornamentations sound like deep, commanding shouts, all perfectly on rhythm. The court music context may make one expect otherwise, but this is deeply powerful, trance-inducing music.
In the present day, Dhrupad is often associated with what is now known as drone music. La Monte Young, who is perhaps more associated with drone than any other composer, famously studied under Pandit Pran Nath, as did Terry Riley, and those two composers helped set the stage for future works exploring long tones. But what makes Dhrupad music so important in understanding the “Western” experimental music it paved the way for isn’t just the drone, but the way in which its practitioners showed the endless sonic possibilities of such seemingly “static” music. There are even some moments of vocal overlap between the two brothers that are somewhat reminiscent of the phasing techniques utilized by Phill Niblock. But even beyond its importance to experimental music, these recordings are a testament to the living, breathing power of this ancient vocal art form, and the power of music in moving both the mind and the body. The voice, after all, is the original instrument.
Otomo Yoshihide and Chris Pitsiokos — Uncanny Mirror (Eleatic)
When talking about Otomo Yoshihide, one has to be specific as to whether they’re talking about the rock deconstructionist (as a member of the seminal Japanese avant-rock group Ground Zero), the Onkyo pioneer, the big band leader, or the improviser, amongst many other hats. Over the course of more than 30 years, Yoshihide has occupied a space within the avant-garde that no other musician dwells in. In recent years, however, he has found a more than capable improvising partner in saxophonist Chris Pitsiokos. Pitsiokos has managed to forge new forward-looking directions in spite of the retro-fetishistic tendencies of the free jazz scene, working with luminaries such as Luke Stewart, Wendy Eisenberg and Brandon Seabrook along the way.
Uncanny Mirror, the duo’s second release,features Pitsiokos on saxophone and laptop and Yoshihide on turntables, save for one track where he plays guitar. Yoshihide’s approach to the turntable as a vehicle for improvisation is a story of its own. Turntablists such as Christian Marclay, arguably the forefather of experimental turntable music, often use the instrument as a means of referencing various songs and sounds and taking them out of their original context, sometimes in a humorous manner. Yoshihide’s turntable work on Uncanny Mirror, however, is pure sound. The cracks and skips of the turntable are the instrument. The records used as source material are inscrutable, and knowing what they are seems to be beside the point.
The first track is titled “Original Glitch,” speaking to the fact that Yoshihide has employed technological malfunctions as sound sources long before doing so became an idiom of its own. Yoshihide sounds as though he is shooting sparks and fireworks out of his turntables, and Pitsiokos plays off of the madness. His saxophone style is deep and guttural, but also far more intricate and subtle than the typical Brötzmann worship would allow. Somehow, he sounds as though he is peeling apart his saxophone piece by piece through his playing. This frenetic energy is kept up throughout the duration of the record, pausing only on the sixth track “Lava Flow.” This track is a tense, ominous dirge; Yoshihide’s turntable sounds less like fireworks and more like waves flowing out from the ether, and Pitsiokos substitutes his growl for a slow, but no less aggressive, whining tone. The end result shows that, even after nearly a decade of working together, Yoshihide and Pitsiokos are far from exhausting the possibilities of their improvisational practice.
Australian-born Berlin-based composer Jasmine Guffond has long focused on the sociopolitical elements of sound in her practice. Her previous solo album, 2020’s Microphone Permission, was an enthralling exploration of sound art in the age of mass surveillance, utilizing sonification of Twitter metadata and the city of Melbourne amongst other sources. Her latest record Alien Intelligence utilizes the non-humanistic elements of electroacoustic composition as a point of departure for understanding technological interference in our day-to-day lives.
Alien Intelligence was conceived during Guffond’s 2021 GRM residency and was composed on GRM’s Serge modular synth alongside Max MSP. The intention was for the technology to have as much of an imprint on the music as the composer herself, calling to mind Roland Kayn’s cybernetic approach to computer music. Indeed, experimental music has long called into question the role of the composer themself, going back to John Cage’s indeterminate music. Alien Intelligence, however, exists in the context of AI increasingly seeping its way into every aspect of art, labor and culture. Thus, there’s a palpable tension in Alien Intelligence, existing somewhere between the bliss of letting go of control and the potential for disruption inherent in all technology.
The three tracks on this album each stand as statements of their own. “Serge & Maxine Variation One” is a slow-moving ambient piece reminiscent of Laurie Spiegel’s “Patchwork.” The track is driven by warm layers of synths but maintains a somewhat surreal pitch that gradually builds into a soft alarm by the end. In contrast, “Serge & Maxine Variation Three” is more overtly dark and desolate, with streams of sound flowing over the drones like sirens. The final track, “Serge and Maxine Variation Two” feels like the natural culmination of the album. The first few minutes are a sparse, simple, almost folk-like melody that give way to more layers of warm synths, calling back to the first track. The track is very pretty, but in an open-ended, fittingly “alien” way. It’s the sound of something mysteriously fading into the distance. The music has all the characteristics of an ambient drone album, but the stasis is consistently interrupted by stops and pauses. Where any other musician would focus on the psychoacoustic elements of the drone, Guffond seems to find just as much purpose in these small disruptions. The end result is a haunting, deeply perplexing record that rewards repeated listening.
El Jardín de las Matemáticas — S/T (Penultimate)
El Jardín de las Matemáticas (The Garden of Mathematics) is a first time cross-continental collaboration between four musicians who each occupy different corners of the global experimental music scene. The group comprises of Mark Harwood (head of the tape music label Penultimate Press) from Melbourne, Australia, Pablo Picco (known for his wide-spanning Bardo Todol project) from Salsipuedes, Argentina, and Alvaro Dauger and Tomás Salvatierra from the Chilean free-folk group Glorias Navales. Each artist brings their own perspective to this self-titled record, but there’s clearly a deep musical understanding being shared here. The result is a free-flowing, yet cohesive, statement of folkloric sonic abstraction.
The music reaches even further than the global experimental pedigree of the musicians involved would suggest, and the most immediate influence on this record seems to be the ethnographic recordings proliferated on labels such as Ocora and Lyrichord in the 1960s and 1970s. Though these recordings often captured extensive musical traditions, the unimpeded presentation of the recordings reflected a radical inclination that was in line with contemporaneous innovations in electronic and improvised music. El Jardín de las Matemáticas represents the nexus of ethnomusicology, improvised music, and (perhaps most unique to this record) the DIY tape music that informs much of Harwood’s work on Penultimate.
“Las palabras fueron Sonido / Words were sounds” opens the record with a steady drumbeat rhythm and soaring streams of flutes. The shakers and flutes call to mind traditional trance-inducing ritual music, counterpointed by clattering tape hiss. The record is filled with a dense atmosphere and tension, evoking the feeling of maintaining direct eye contact across a crowded forest. But perhaps the most gripping aspect of the record is how colorful and alive the entire process is. The most impressive track on the record is “El problema de Suslin / Suslin’s Problem,” which includes what sounds like a prepared acoustic guitar and a restless, ominous hum permeating throughout. The tension is augmented by tape recordings playing in reverse, but then about halfway through the acoustic guitar comes to the center, and it’s unabashedly pretty. As murky and mysterious as this record may be, at its core there is a deep sense of joyfulness. John Cage described music as simply an affirmation of life, and El Jardín de las Matemáticas fully realizes this understanding of music in its most elemental sense.
Over the course of a decade and counting, Australian composer James Rushford has built up an impressive discography, one that squares the austere minimalism of early music and impressionism and the infinite complexities of electroacoustic composition and computer music. In doing so, Rushford has carved out a singular place for himself in an era of crescendo-driven ambient music that often feels like an audition for a film scoring gig. His music is lush and delicate, but also strange and mysterious, and always rewards attentive listening. This is music driven not by tension and release but rather by the liminal elements of its composition.
Rushford’s latest album, Turzets, breaks down these compositional elements. The album consists of two pieces, the first of which, “Fallaway Whisk,” takes up almost half of the album. On this piece, Rushford’s Satie-esque piano and synthetic choir vocals are continuously interrupted by fragmented sound poetry and electronics. Rushford’s piano playing is light, almost bordering on pretty, even, but the abstracted vocals and the ominous hum undercutting the whole piece keeps the listener questioning everything. This piece calls to mind some of the solo work of Chris Abrahams from The Necks, but with less propulsion in favor of an eerie stillness.
If “Whisk” represented Rushford operating in his comfort zone, the second piece, “Quire” — a ten-part suite for portative organ, synth and electronics — represents anything but. While one would typically expect organ music to be sparse and introspective, Rushford’s organ playing is tense and immediate, augmented by swirling computer-processed electronics. “Quire VII” even has synth rhythm that wouldn’t be entirely out of place on a Kraftwerk record, and the unwavering repetition of the organ is comparable to Philip Glass. “Quire VIII” is particularly a highlight; the whistles of the organ and the beeping of the electronics are perfectly synchronized, coupled with humming vocals that create an entrancing hypnotic effect. Unfortunately, at 30 seconds the piece is over as soon as it begins.
This speaks to one of the main flaws of “Quire,” which is that the piece is full of ideas, but (uncharacteristically for Rushford) those ideas aren’t always given enough space to breathe. It feels less like a singular piece and more like a series of short experiments, sometimes producing rewarding results, sometimes just coming and going without leaving much of an impression. The piece clashes with “Fallaway Whisk” more than it compliments it, and the album as a whole feels lacking in cohesion, especially compared to previous albums from Rushford such as The Body’s Night. That being said, this is still an intriguing listen, and even in its weaker moments it’s exciting to hear Rushford try new things.
Amirtha Kidambi's Elder Ones — New Monuments (We Jazz)
The great DC artist, audio scholar and activist Thomas Stanley once described Sun Ra’s concept of the Alter Destiny as “a small chunk of language, a key unlocking large powers and capacities that will allow us to realize sustainable futures that are not subordinate to the same imperial regime that fucked up our planet in the first place. History is the plantation, abolitionist Ra reminds us, and it is time to break loose from these chains and leave.” This is a particularly resonant message today, in an era of late capitalism, deteriorating institutions and genocidal warfare. Yet, the inevitable future promised to us by this seemingly unending quagmire presents a sense of stability in its repetition of failures that enables many of its subjects to cling to its promise even as we further careen into the abyss. Amirtha Kidambi is not one of those people, and in the five years since her previous release with her group Elder Ones — a period marked by the pandemic, the George Floyd protests, and a rapidly-encroaching American fascism — her resolve has only been strengthened. Their record New Monuments is a battle cry for building not a better future, but a different future entirely, one free from the ghosts of colonialism and imperialism.
Kidambi has a background in both new music and DIY, and navigating these disparate worlds has informed her unique approach to improvised music. This is on full display on the opening track “Third Space,” on which Kidambi sings with punk-inflected energy while maintaining complete control and authority over her vocals. The track takes its name from influential postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of a liminal space in which, in the context of colonial ambivalence, different cultures interact with each other. The (very) basic gist of this theory is that, in post-colonial society, culture is constantly moving, never one singular thing and never the property of any singular people. In turn, on this track, and the album as a whole, Kidambi defies any essentialized notion of “Indian music” or Indian jazz (which has become yet another needlessly limiting genre term in this “spiritual jazz” era), and not just by invoking Bhabha. From the moment the record kicks off, new agey world music treacle is left behind on another planet entirely.
On this record, Kidambi is backed by a top group of New York improvisers, including Elder Ones mainstay Matt Nelson on soprano saxophone alongside cellist Lester St. Louis, known for his work in the late Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die group, and Jason Nazary, frequent collaborator of Darius Jones and one half of Jaimie Branch’s Anteloper group. Rounding out the quintet is Eva Lawitts, whose propulsive basswork pushes the multi-part compositions on the album forward. On album centerpiece “Farmer’s Day” the band balances a modal, in-the-pocket groove with loose improvisation, with a particularly dazzling solo from Nazary showing off his impressive and dynamic range as a percussionist. After this solo, the song slows to a crawl as Kidambi invokes the now-yearslong protest movement of Indian farmers against a series of bills designed to weaken working farmers and benefit corporations: “We work from cradle to grave / conditioned like a slave.” This is protest music, as clear in its radical intentions as it can be, but the Elder Ones find plenty of room for beauty in struggle. This is especially true on the title track, which has a synth line that, if isolated, would call to mind the devotional music Alice Coltrane recorded in the 80s. Kidambi asks “in the end is history always doomed to repeat?” The answer she arrives at for this unanswerable question is to “build new monuments to new futures,” an affirmation of the Alter Destiny. Though the struggle is neverending, these new futures are still well within our capabilities. All it takes is a level of fearlessness, something Amirtha Kidambi has shown in spades on this record.
Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, has a genuine claim towards being one of the busiest artists working today. Over the past five years she has taken part in more than ten albums, with sounds spanning unpredictable hip-hop experimentation to free jazz odyssies. The Great Bailout represents yet another left turn, taking sonic inspiration from glitch and concrete poetry and working with noise veterans such as C. Spencer Yeh and Aaron Dilloway to put together something truly haunting. On this record, Moor Mother bears witness to centuries of violence, death and horror at the hands of European colonialism and white supremacy. She spits its debris back at the listener and forcing us to contend with our ability to remain nonchalant in its seemingly never-ending cycle.
The first thing heard on this record is not Ayewa, but rather the intonations of Raia Was and Lonnie Holley over the twinkling harp of Mary Lattimore. Was’ fluttering vocals could not contrast more with Holley’s powerful warble, but both convey the dread and weariness that come with continuing to survive in a society that offers nothing but death in return. Three minutes into the track, Ayewa sets the scene for the rest of the record: “Taxpayers of erasure, of relapse, of amnesia, paying the crimes off.” This is perhaps the condition of being an everyday citizen, living in a state that never shook off the ghosts of colonialism, if it ever even tried in the first place. On “ALL THE MONEY,” over an ominous dub-inflected beat, Ayewa lists off British national landmarks and the years they were established, building up to the British Museum, one of the world’s largest resources of stolen cultural landmarks. “They heard about the kingdoms of gold,” Ayewa states. “They heard about the books of mathematics, philosophy and rituals.” The title of the album could be interpreted a number of different ways, but in this context it is clear that Europe stole so much from Africa to bail out its own moral and spiritual failures.
One of the highlights of the album is “LIVERPOOL WINS,” which features Aaron Dilloway contributing a typically clattering, ugly backing track. “Payouts, bailouts, just enough to build the city, a country, an infrastructure, a financial revolution, a stronger christianity, a whiter God, a period of enlightenment,” lists Ayewa. “Who builds death like this?” This question resonates through the entire record. Towards the end of the record “SOUTH SEA,” featuring the contributions of Chicago jazz mainstay Angel Bat Dawid and her vocal group Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty, feels like a requiem for what’s been lost, both material and immaterial, in the fray of colonialism. “How many have to be slaughtered in front of you before you choke on your own tears?” Ayewa asks. “Before your brain convinces you that you are already dead and if you are still breathing, you shouldn’t be?” It’s difficult to listen to these questions without thinking of horrific images from Gaza, Sudan and the Congo, all of which are stark reminders that the same forces that bailed out Europe are continuing to fuck up the world to this day. There isn’t a singular, clear message of hope on The Great Bailout, but in documenting the rage and despair built into life under such a ugly and evil system, Moor Mother has provided something just as valuable — if not more so— in understanding the struggles of the present day.
Portuguese guitarist Rafael Toral once described his music as “post-free jazz electronic music,” and he has spent the past couple decades bringing this concept to life, particularly with his Space Quartet group. In this context, Toral’s latest album Spectral Evolution, released on Jim O’Rourke’s newly-revived Moikai imprint, may be his most fully realized work. Toral’s early albums, such as Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance and Wave Field, are purely ambient, filled with lush textures that unfold continuously without ever interrupting the blissed-out state they induce upon the listener. Spectral Evolution is similarly lush and textural, but also far more unpredictable than those early albums, and branches out into some fascinating directions.
Spectral Evolution sounds like the totality of Toral’s work and influences broken down to a granular level, meticulously crafted into one whole piece. Toral’s influence for this album wasn’t esoteric free jazz, but rather the basics of jazz harmony, specifically in ubiquitous pieces like Gershwin’s “Rhythm changes” and Ellington and Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train.” The very first thing one hears on Spectral Evolution is Toral’s guitar, which calls to mind John McLaughlin on In A Silent Way, punctuated by chirping electronics. The electronics bear an obvious resemblance to birdsong — and that’s not just the album cover talking — but more importantly, they capture the collective nature of improvisation harmony in early jazz music, an impressive feat considering this is the work of one man. Soon the guitar gives way to overwhelming textures, the clearest link here to Toral’s early work. The contrast between the dissonant bleeps and bloops and the textures — hazy and warm but also sweeping and cinematic at the same time — and the way all of these disparate sounds collectively swirl together creates an uncanny feeling. Towards the end of the piece the guitar returns, but in a wah’d out, Eddie Hazel-esque form, something radically different from anything we’ve heard from Toral in the past.
In a recent interview with Tone Glow, Toral compared the album to a garden, stating “I wanted to have the soil, the substrate, as the harmonic ground, and instead of having these plants that were neatly arranged, I’d have a chaotic mess of weeds. So that’s how I had the idea of bringing in these electronic instruments. I thought I could make them sound like they were growing out of the chords.” Toral definitely succeeded in this sense, but much like how weeds also include dandelions, the electronics have their own alien beauty to them. That being said, though the electronics provide a healthy touch of danger, everything in the piece sounds perfectly in place. In that same interview, Toral also said that Spectral Evolution came into being through a lengthy process of tweaking and fine-tuning, and it shows. But the level of attention to detail pays off. It’s difficult to imagine the record being more fully-realized and immersive than it is, and it stands as a towering achievement in Toral’s formidable body of work. The album marks the exciting return of Moikai, and Jim O’Rourke has set the bar high for future releases. But Toral has always been around, constantly changing his sound and progressing as an artist without ever sacrificing the individualism of his approach.
