#mdou moctar

[jt1674]

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[jgthirlwell]

2024 Year In Review

2024 was another intense year. It was the first time in twenty years I wasn’t scoring a show for TV, and I got to concentrate on finishing albums and starting new projects. The year began with the premiere of my chamber symphony for Alterity Chamber Orchestra in Orlando and ended with guest-vocalizing with the Losers Lounge Band on a Bowie classic at Joe's Pub in NYC. I completed new albums for Xordox and Venture Bros, to be released in 2025. I released an Archer Soundtrack album and scored a Harry Smith film for L’Etrange Festival in Paris. Worked with Laura Wolf on a new project and premiered my Ensemble project at the Big Ears Festival in Tennessee. Recorded many overdubs for the next Foetus album, also to be released in 2025. Began a new series of sculptural wall pieces. We lost Phill Niblock in January and Steve Albini in May. We lost my colleague Roli Mosimann in September. I still woke up 5am in a panic on too many occasions. As a cultural omnivore, many sights, sounds and stimuli penetrated me.

Albums that I enjoyed in 2024

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum of the Last Human Being (Pelagic) Present This is not the end (Cuneiform) Tristan Perich/Ensemble 0 Open Symmetry (Erased Tapes) Drew McDowall A Thread Silvered and Trembling (Dais) Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan Your Community Hub (Castles In Space) Extra Life The Sacred Vowel (Bandcamp) Geordie Greep The New Sound (Rough Trade) D-en Haut D-en Haut (Pagan) Aksumi Fleeting Future + Lines (Tonal Union) Louis Cole Nothing (Brainfeeder) Uniform American Standard (Sacred Bones) Zeal and Ardor Greif (Redacted) Shellac To All Trains (Touch and Go) Bangladeafy Vulture (Nefarious Industries) Ekko Astral Pink Balloons (Topshelf Records) Kee Avil Spine (Constellation) Fennesz Mosaic (Touch) Marewren Ukouk Round singing Voices of the Ainu 2012-2024 (Pingipung) Elysian Fields What The Thunder Said (Ojet) Melvins Tarantula Heart (Ipecac) Blood Incantation Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media) Aoife O’Donovan All My Friends (Yep Roc) Anna Thorvaldsdottir Aerial (Sono Luminus) Grace Bergere A Little Blood (Casa Gogol) Bob Vylan Humble As The Sun (Ghost Theatre 2) Andy Akiho Kin (Aki Rhythm) Yannis Kyriakides Hypnokaseta (Unsounds) Big | Brave A Chaos of Flowers (Thrill Jockey) The The Ensoulment (Cinéola / earMUSIC) Beth Gibbons Lives Outgrown (Domino) Beak >>>> / Kosmik Musik (Invada) Sebastian Tropic OST (Ed Banger) Chaser Planned Obsolescence (Decoherence Records) Jesus Lizard Rack (Ipecac) Ex East Islander Norther (Rocket Recordings)

Some books I enjoyed

Yuval Noah Harari Nexus Chris Stein Under A Rock Bill Buford Among The Thugs Patricia Highsmith The Talented Mr Ripley Sy Montgomery Soul Of An Octopus Malcolm Gladwell Revenge Of The Tipping Point

Some films I enjoyed

Furiosa ZEF Story Of Die Antwoord Joker Folie A Deux Kneecap Bad Faith Rebel Ridge Hundreds Of Beavers Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Behavior Teachers Lounge

I saw hundreds of concerts in 2024. Some highlights:

01.24.24 The Chisel at Bowery Ballroom 02.15.24 Jack Quartet play Austin Wulliman at Roulette Intermedium NYC. 03.09.24 Louis Cole / Genevieve Artadi at Brooklyn Steel 03.14.24 Kate NV at the Atrium at Lincoln Center 03.18.24 Sleepytime Gorilla Museum at Elsewhere in Brooklyn 03.23.24 Secret Chiefs 3 at Big Ears Festival 03.23.24 Hatis Noit at St John’s Cathedral in Knoxville TN for the Big Ears Festival 03.24.24 Kenny Wollesen’s Sonic Massage at Knoxville Art Museum for the Big Ears Festival 03.24.24 Elliott Sharp’s Void Patrol (with guests Cyro Batista and Colin Stetson) at Big Ears Festival 03.24.24 Aoife O'Donovan with the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra at the Big Ears Festival 04.01.24 Caleb Landry Jones at The Sultan Room i 04.06.24 Lovely Little Girls at Hart Bar. 04.19.24 Keith Fullerton Whitman performs ‘Playthroughs’ at Ambient Church 04.23.24 Mandy Indiana at Elsewhere in Brooklyn 04.26.24 Knower at the Brooklyn Bowl 05.04.24 Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, directed by Tim Weiss, play Alex Paxton at Long Play Festival 05.04.24 Fuji|||||||||||ta at Long Play Festival 05.05.24 Ligeti Quartet perform Ligeti + Anna Meredith at Long Play Festival 05.17.23 Swans at Music Hall of Williamsburg 05.23.24 The Rolling Stones played at Met Life Stadium in New Jersey. 05.24.24 John Zorn’s ensemble, the New Masada Quartet 06.08.24 Rebekah Heller’s Bassoon Ensemble 06.25.24 Mdou Moctar at Bowery Ballroom NYC 07.12.24 C.Gibbs Review at Barbes 07.23.24 Bangladeafy at The Sultan Room in Brooklyn 08.18.24 Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds at Union Pool 08.23.24 Alarm Will Sound play Marcos Balter’s Code-Switching, 09.30.24 Uniform at Bowery Ballroom 09.04.24 King Dunn aka King Buzzo (Melvins) and Trevor Dunn (Mr Bungle etc) at Music Hall of Williamsburg + White Eagle Hall in Jersey City. 09.13.24 Steven Bernstein and Nels Cline with the Arturo O'Farrill Latin Jazz Orchestra, playing James Bond themes. At Bryant Park in NYC. 09.15.24 PJ Harvey at Terminal 5, NYC 10.11.24 John Zorn’s Cobra in a 40th anniversary performance at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn 10.17.25 The The played at the Beacon Theater 10.22.24 Die Antwoord at Brooklyn Steel, 10.23.24 Boris played at Racket in NYC. 11.01.24 William Basinski for Age Of Reflections 11.04.24 Growing performing for Abasement at Artists Space in Manhattan 11.06.24 Pioneer Works presented a concert of Louis Cole Choral Music. 11.08.24 Lankum at Warsaw in Brooklyn 11.17.24 sunn o))) at Lincoln Center for the Unsound Festival 11.21.24 Extra Life at TV Eye. 11.24.24 Zeal and Ardor at Le Poisson Rouge NYC 11.25.24 Axiom, comprised of Juilliard students and conducted by Jeffrey Milarsky playing Solstice Ritual by Augusta Read Thomas 11.26.24 Blood Incantation at Elsewhere 12.01.24 Pharmakon’s awesomely unhinged performance at Union Pool. 12.11.24 Jesus Lizard played a great set at Brooklyn Steel 12.28.24 Grace Bergere / Jon Spencer / Gogol Bordello Capitol Theater Port Chester

Honorable mention to the multiple concerts I attended at the Abasement series at Artist Space, as well as multiple shows by S.E.M. Ensemble and Wet Ink Ensemble

[pitchburgh]

Interesting article from Paste Magazine today (10/9/2024) exploring which albums have defined the 2020s to date. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about music, but much of this list was surprisingly unfamiliar to me!

How about you?

The 100 Best Albums of the 2020s So Far

Paste Magazine is your source for the best music, movies, TV, comedy, videogames, books, comics, craft beer, politics and more. Discover you

How many artists on Paste Magazine's 100 Best Albums of the 2020s So Far have you heard?

1

2-5

6-10

11-15

16-25

26-35

36-50

51-75

76-99

all 100 (no you haven't lol)

button for people who don't wanna count but DO like feeling included

Voting ended onOct 17, 2024

Bonus points if you mention which listed artist(s) are your favorite in the tags 😎

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

TAKAAT - Tubby's, Kingston, New York, May 8, 2025

What do you get when you take Mdou Moctar out of Mdou Moctar? TAKAAT. The trio of Ahmoudou Madassane, Mikey Coltun and Souleymane Ibrahim has been criss-crossing the globe as the hard-working rhythm section of the Nigerien guitarist for the past several years, electrifying audiences with their intoxicating Tuareg rock. And somehow, TAKAAT is just as electrifying/intoxicating without their fearless leader.

The band's sound is definitely RIYL Mdou Moctar, but it's very cool to hear these three musicians cut loose in an almost punk fashion — their first release from this spring is a total thrill ride. And a recently uploaded Kliked / NYC Taper tape from Tubby's in Kingston is even more wild and free-form, with the songs often stretching way out past the 10-minute mark. Some serious jams that will still leave you wanting more ... and fortunately, there's also a Milwaukee Taper TAKAAT tape, too! Come on, feel the NOISE.

📸: Nelson Antonio Espinal

[foldback]

Mdou Moctar - "Tarhatazed"

Here's something I didn't know I needed in my life until today.

[mudwerks]

(via Amidinin - Takaat)

[raggedclawsscuttling]

Mdou Moctar is such a trip. It's like, here's a poem about the impacts of French colonialism. Here's a blistering guitar solo.

[dustedmagazine]

A good year for music if nothing else: Jennifer Kelly’s 2024 review

Ben Chasny came to VT in 2024, go figure.

Things have been feeling very end of the world for a few years now, and 2024 (especially from November on) only intensified my sense of doom. It’ll get worse, too, in 2025. The vilest, stupidest people on earth are in change, and oh boy, do they have a lot of ideas, all of them bad.

But you lived through last year, too, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get to experience whatever hell 2025 brings. It’s scary shit, but also deeply tedious, so let’s talk about music instead.

Because music came through in a big way this year. There was so much of it, and so much that was great.

Live music, for instance, continued to flourish, even in very small markets like Western Massachusetts and southern Vermont and New Hampshire. Bang, right off the bat, we caught Makaya McCraven in February holding court at Brattleboro’s Vermont Jazz Center. With Junius Paul, Brandee Younger and Marquis Hill, he hit the highlights from 2022’s In these Times, mixing up trad jazz, improvisation and hip hop in an intricate mesh, and it was wonderful.

Makaya McCraven and friends

Now let’s jump ahead to May and the always remarkable Thing in the Spring, where Myriam Gendron (with Jim White and Marisa Anderson), Mark Ribot, Earth and many others visited Keene, NH. Wadada Leo Smith played an astonishing set with Shazad Ismaily…even more astonishing, he had to yell at the crowd for quiet.

I even had the chance to see a couple of bands that rarely play live. In August, my friend Chris Liberato booked the super-ish group Winged Wheel to play at a nondescript bar near Springfield Mass. It was revelatory, worth getting lost trying to find 91 in the middle of the night afterwards.

Winged Wheel

Then in November, right around the time, things started getting dark, I hit the lottery. First Haley Fohr and Bill Nace raised the spirits in Keene, a day later the NYC post-punk legends Love Child with Lupo Citta in Easthampton, and a couple of days after that, Ben Chasney and Tashi Dorji in Brattleboro in front of the towering pipe organ at Epsilon Spires.

Love Child

Tashi Dorji

Recorded music came in an avalanche in 2024, just so many good records, month after month after month. I narrowed my favorites down to a list of 42, harder than you’d think, and there are plenty of discs I enjoyed plenty that didn’t make the cut.

Top Ten

Rosali—Bite Down (Merge) My favorite all year long for Rosali’s lovely voice, the instant classic-ness of the songs and the kicking band in Mowed Sound.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds—Wild God (PIAS) What I’d really like is another Grinderman, but this lush, string-heavy iteration of the Cave art form is very fine in its own way, not least because it leans on the Bad Seeds more heavily than the last couple. Time for joy indeed.

The Cure—Songs for a Lost World (Polydor) It is not easy to crack my top five in November, but Robert Smith did it with the bleak, soul-stirring grandeur of this late-life epic. It doesn’t hurt that he still sounds exactly like he did in my misspent youth.

Oneida—Expensive Air (Joyful Noise) Oneida has been my favorite working band for decades, and this one follows the song-structured Success with more bangers but also more weirdness. Thalia Zedek sings on two tracks with her signature ragged power.

Miriam Gendron—Mayday (Thrill Jockey) These are just surpassingly beautiful songs about love and death, gorgeously played and sung.  Gendron continues to get more comfortable with her art, taking a few more well-worth-it steps from her folk music origins.

PYPY—Sacred Times (Goner) Unhinged post-punk from one of the best in Montreal’s thriving scene. “Lonely Striped Sock” crosses ESG with Delta Five and contains the craziest keyboard lick I’ve heard this year.

MJ Lenderman—Manning Fireworks (ANTI-) One of 2024’s consensus favorites, and for all that, more idiosyncratic and complicated than you’d expect. Genuinely intriguing writing coupled with an incendiary rock roar.

Cassandra Jenkins—My Light My Destroyer (Dead Oceans) A bigger, denser, more accomplished sound for Jenkins than on her magical debut, but no less quirkily intelligent for its beauty.

Mdou Moctar—Funeral for Justice (Matador) Mdou Moctar is maybe the best guitarist in rock music right now, and here’s the kicker, he’s not really in rock music. Searing, wrenching, politically charged Afro-rock from the master.

Another Dancer—I Try to Be Another Dancer (Bruit Direct Disques) This charmingly odd Brussels ensemble skips from detuned Lewsberg-style minimalism to glowing Stereolab raves. Unexpected and intoxicating.

The rest

Winged Wheel—Big Hotel (12XU)

Uranium Club—Infants Under the Bulb (Static Shock)

E—Living Waters (Silver Rocket)

Luppo Citta—S-T (12XU)

Six Organs—Time Is Glass (Drag City)

Des Demonas—Apocalyptic Boom Boom (In the Red)

Guided by Voices—Strut of Kings (GBV Inc.)

Weak Signal—Fine (12XU)

Bonnie “Prince” Billy—Hear the Children/The Evidence (No Quarter)

Yasmin Williams—Acadia (Nonesuch)

Bill Mackay—Locust Land (Drag City)

Hard Quartet—S-T (matador)

The Bug Club—On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System (Sub Pop)

Black Pus—Terrestrial Seethings (Thrill Jockey)

Dummy—Free Energy (Trouble in Mind)

Horse Jumper of Love—Disaster Trick (Run for Cover)

Itasca—Imitation of War (Paradise of Bachelors)

West of Roan—Queen of Eyes (Spinster)

James Elkington & Nathan Salsburg—All Gist (Paradise of Bachelors)

Workers Comp—S-T (Ever/Never)

Jessica Pratt—Here in the Pitch (Mexican Summer)

Aluminum—Fully Beat (felte)

Mary Timony—Untame the Tiger (Merge)

Mount Eerie—Night Palace (P.W. Elverum & Sun)

Penny Arcade—Backwater Collage (Tapete)

Rail Band—S-T (Mississippi)

The Softies—The Bed I Made (Father/Daughter)

Thine Retail Simps—Strike Gold Strike Back Strike Out (Total Punk)

Unknowns—East Coast Low (Drunken Sailor)

Ava Mendoza—Circular Train (Palilia)

Ned Collette—Our Other History (ever/never)

Amelia Courthouse—broken things (Spinster)

The Osees—Sorc 80 (Castle Face)