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dustedmagazine · 3 months

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Slept Ons: 2023

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter

If you write for Dusted, you listen to music all the time and you try, at least within your general area of interest, to stay current with what’s current. Ask any of our significant others, and they’ll say we listen to too much music, to which we inevitably reply “What’s that, this ‘too much’ you speak of?” We listen to music while we’re eating, while we’re working, while we’re exercising, while we’re driving from one place to another, even while we’re brushing our teeth sometimes; though, admittedly, the sound quality is not that great in the bathroom.

Even so, we miss things. Here, in what has become an annual tradition, we revisit some of the albums that slipped away in one fashion or another, the ones that we kept putting off until it was too late, the ones we somehow didn’t catch wind of until well into January, the ones we discovered tardily on other people’s lists and year-end podcasts and radio shows. So here are our late finds, a favorite or two each that we never got the chance to write about. Fortunately, unlike bread and fresh fruit and bunches of cilantro, albums don’t go bad if you let them sit for a while.

Die Enttäuschung und Alexander Von Schlippenbach — Monk’s Casino Live At Au Topsi Pohl (Two Nineteen)

This record wasn’t so much slept on as patiently sleuthed. Die Enttäuschung, the long-running German quartet (their name translates as The Disappointment, an appellation that says more about their sense of humor than the quality of their ever-buoyant reimagining of bebop and early free jazz) started selling it at gigs in the spring of 2023. I bided my time, and when I made it to Berlin last fall, scoring a copy was on my agenda. To this day, the record and the internet are near strangers; while you can buy it from Bandcamp, there’s no download, streaming or videos. So, you’ll have to just take it from me that Die Enttäuschung’s reunion with now-octogenarian pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach will take wrinkles off your brow. The first time that these musicians recorded together as Monk’s Casino, back in 2005, they performed every one of Thelonious Monk’s compositions over three CDs; pith was essential. The repertoire hasn’t changed this time, but the approach is looser. Crammed into the intimate confines of the now-shuttered Au Topsi Pohl just as Omicron started ruining parties, the five musicians goose the tempos, spike the solos with impertinence, and veer around Monk’s sharp angles with a combination of intimate familiarity and belt-busting abandon.

Bill Meyer

Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter — SAVED! (Perpetual Flame Ministries)

Not slept on so much as avoided— and why, at this point I am not entirely sure. When I saw Kristin Hayter perform under her previous Lingua Ignota moniker back in December of 2022, she opened with a set of devotional songs on piano, a variety of metallic objects set and chains draped across the instrument’s interior string works. It was extraordinary, and SAVED! features the same basic set of raw, austere elements: that prepared piano, Hayter’s remarkable voice and the problematics of faith. The avoidance may stem from my own fraught relations to the sort of grim Protestantism Hayter reimagines; I spend some time around fire-and-brimstone Baptism as a child, and it left a mark on me. She wove some of that language and those textures into the excellent Lingua Ignota record Sinner Get Ready, but there they were much more symbolic, and largely couched in specific fundamentalisms (Amish and Mennonite) that distanced them somewhat. The sounds and spiritual gestures on SAVED! are a good deal more familiar to me, and they haunt. Likely the haunting is the point. Certainly “All of My Friends Are Going to Hell” and “I Know His Blood Can Make Me Whole” smolder and then burn with varieties of hellfire I have smelled before. One can also hear those songs more metaphorically, and “I Will Be with You Always” (the best thing on the record) is replete with images and intensities that call to multiple levels of meaning, simultaneously and sublimely. SAVED! is a hard record for me to listen to, and that’s why I have come, somewhat belatedly, to prize it so highly.

Jonathan Shaw

Illusion of Safety — Pastoral (Korm Plastics)

Daniel Burke has been carefully and consistently nurturing his Illusion of Safety project for 40 years, and I’ve been embarrassingly ignorant of the output until now. Burke released multiple audio artifacts in 2023, including a 40th anniversary ten-cassette box set, so choosing a single album to write about for the Slept On column was a daunting undertaking. Pastoral is unique in that it shows off a more delicate and expansive side of the Illusion of Safety oeuvre. It’s also one of the few music-focused objects that the stalwart Korm Plastics label has released in years; the imprint focuses on the written word these days. Sonically, Burke has established a series of vignettes that follow a similar pattern. The music flows from short, sharp attacks into lengthy sustained quietude. Burke unleashes his jarring, frantic salvos both percussively and synthetically, and these brief but unsettling periods morph into slowly churning drone swarms. Given that this is just one example of Burke’s sonic vernacular, I’m excited to hear more. Thankfully, when it comes to Illusion of Safety, I’ve been a veritable Rip Van Winkle.

Bryon Hayes

Malla — Fresko (Solina)

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So slept on was Malla Malmivaara’s second solo album that even the normally reliable Beehype missed it, but even if you did happen to notice its inclusion on my midyear list, overstating how well-crafted and immersive Fresko’s dance-pop tracks are is hard to do. It makes sense given she’s better known for her acting career, but Malla’s been in the Finnish music game for a long time, too — first in the short-lived mid-aughts house trio Elisabeth Underground, then as herself with 2019’s “Sabrina” single (which got a Jori Hulkkonen remix, a guy who once redid M83) that ended up paving the way for her self-titled 2021 debut full-length. Despite using similar synth arpeggios and a healthy dose of vocal reverb as she did on Malla, Fresko is a little bit darker, moodier, more down in it. Lead single “Moi” (“hi” in English) tells the tale, its perfectly crafted video full of young Rolf Ekroth models doing things like looking impossibly cool in ridiculous outfits and having fashion shows with ATVs in snowy back alley Helsinki parking lots are a perfect marriage of audio and video, images and a melody burned in my brain the moment I saw it. It is very much a dance record flush with tech-house tweaks and no grander artistic ambitions, but Malla’s barely crested 40; now that she’s pledged more time to her music career, it’s entirely possible Fresko is but a warmup for something bolder — and even if it’s not, you could do much worse than a third album full of body movers like this. Hi is right.

Patrick Masterson

Kevin Richard Martin – Black (Intercranial)

Ostensibly a eulogy to Amy Winehouse, Kevin Richard Martin’s Black is a deeply humane expression of isolation, loss and grief. Built from the ground up, the bass deep and warm, swathes of glacial arpeggiated synths and beats that hint at the club. Notes echo and ripple away to create silhouettes of solitude, a tangible manifestation of absence. Despite the deep weight of his music, Martin imbues Black with an incredible delicacy. His abstract architecture allows the mind to roam and the listener to connect with emotional truths. It’s the balance Martin finds between the particular and universal that gives Black it’s power. In the strutting bassline of “Camden Crawling” smeared with narco/alcoholic fuzz, the looming threat of “Blake’s Shadow” and the bleary saxophone in “Belgrade Meltdown” there are the faintest echoes of Winehouse’s sound which emerge from the depths of Martin’s echo chambers. A work of terrible sadness, great beauty, empathy and comfort.

Andrew Forell

Derek Monypeny — Cibola (2182 Recording Company)

Cibola eased into the world as 2022 turned into 2023, but it took me nearly a year to get to it. Monypeny is a confirmed westerner, having lived in Arizona, Oregon, and (currently) the California desert, and an awareness of both the wrongfulness and the good fortune of living in that neck of the woods infuses Cibola, which is named for one of the American southwest’s legendary cities of gold (helpful hint; if you ever encounter a conquistador looking for gold, tell them it’s somewhere else). Monypeny alternates between guitar, shahi baaja, and on electric autoharp the LP’s seven tracks, and Kevin Corcoran contributes time-stopping metal percussion to one of them. The music likewise toggles between stark evocations of space and swirling submersions into nether states. In either mode, Monypeny effectively suggests the gorgeous immensity and pitiless history of the land around him.

Bill Meyer

The Sundae Painters — S-T (Flying Nun)

One minute, The Sundae Painters are churning wild screes of noisy guitar, the next they construct airy psychedelic pop songs of a rare unstudied grace. The band is a super group of sorts — Paul Kean and Kaye Woodward of the Bats, Alex Bathgate of the Tall Dwarfs and the late Hamish Kilgour of the Clean — convening in loose-limbed, joyful mayhem in songs that glisten and shimmer and roar. “Hollow Way” roils thick, muddy textures of drone up from the bottom, the slippery bent notes of sitar (that’s Bathgate) and Woodward’s diaphanous vocals floating free of a visceral murk. “Aversion” lets unhinged guitar shards fly over the thump of grounding drums as Kilgour chants inscrutable poetry. The two HAP tracks, I and II, stretch out in locked-in, psychotropic grooves, relentless forward motion somehow dissolving into an endless ecstatic now. This full-length, sadly the only one we’ll ever have from the Sundae Painters now that Kilgour is gone, is as good as anything that its esteemed participants ever did in their more famous bands, and that’s saying a lot.

Jennifer Kelly

U SCO — Catchin’ Heat (Self Released)

Here’s the extent of what I currently know: Someone I have on Facebook posted a link to it as one of his favorite records of the year, and someone I don’t know responded that they bought a copy of the cassette before the first track even finished. U SCO are Jon Scheid (bass), Ryan Miller (guitar), and Phil Cleary (Drums) and they are from and/or based in Portland Oregon. According to Discogs and Bandcamp Catchin’ Heat is the first thing they’ve released since 2016. That’s it! I started listened to this with the same box-checking, due diligence energy I tend to have for the dozen or so records I hear about one way or another after I’ve already done my year-end writing; most of them, every year, I don’t even make it through one play (the fatigue has fully set in by this point in the process). But sure enough before the end of that first track, I knew this was going to have to be the record I slept on. It’s perfectly structured, with extra-long, absolute blowouts beginning and ending the record, the second and second-last tracks being the two shortest and the only moments of relative calm, and the middle two making up a strong core that both brings in some elements not found elsewhere on Catchin’ Heat (the vocals on “trrrem”) and is just the most straightforward version of the absolute burners U SCO can clearly summon up on command (“woe dimension”). As great and arresting as that opening track is, though, the closing “abyssal hymn” might be the real highlight here, bringing in clarinet and saxophone to add a whole new layer of skronk to what they’re cooking. I’ve listened to this record about 10 times in a couple of days, and they deserve to sell out of that run of cassettes.

Ian Mathers

#dusted magazine #yearend 2023 #slept ons #Die Enttäuschung und Alexander Von Schlippenbach #bill meyer #Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter #jonathan shaw #illusion of safety #bryon hayes #malla #patrick masterson #kevin richard martin #andrew forell #derek monypeny #jennifer kelly #the sundae painters #Ian mathers #U SCO

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itanigrande · 1 year

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Último día del año ✨😍 espero se la pasen muy bonito en compañía de sus seres queridos. Mis festejos terminan temprano por lo que probablemente podamos andar en stream dándole la bienvenida al 2023 en mi twitch 😄 así que si no tienen nada que hacer ahí los veo en la noche para pasar el rato. Otra fotito de #UTA Tomada por @mono_photography_mx ✨ #anime #yearend #2023 #utadance #onepiece #cosplay #méxico #japon https://www.instagram.com/p/Cm10mr5LjAB/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#uta #anime #yearend #2023 #utadance #onepiece #cosplay #méxico #japon

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someotherheroes · 1 year

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It has been such a great year over here and we have to thank you our wonderful community for your love, support and enthusiasm.

And to make it to the top 5% of D&D streamers on Twitch in our first full year is actually blowing our minds.

You have all been amazing and we love sharing our stories and silliness with you all. We cannot wait to get into 2023 and start with what comes next but in the mean time….

Happy Holidays to you all! Have an amazing break.

#happyholidays #someotherheroes #dungeonsanddragons #ttrpgs #spaceatthetable #roleplay #storytelling #dice #twitchrecap #dndtwitch #ttrpgtwitch #2022 #2023 #yearend #community #ttrpgrising

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nonfilms · 2 months

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2023 was a remarkable time for cinema, with amazing titles released almost monthly throughout the year. Here are some theatrical and festival favorites that pushed the boundaries of cinema and absoultely inspired, astonished, and impressed us – films that haven’t left our mind since we first viewed them. 1. Hello Dankness (Soda Jerk) 2. Therapy Dogs (Ethan Eng) 3. Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki) 4. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer) 5. Killers of the flower Moon (Martin Scorsese) 6. Anselm (Wim Wenders) 7. Pacifiction (Albert Serra) 8. Open Doom Crescendo (Terry Chiu) 9. Free Time (Ryan Martin Brown) 10. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson) 11. Playland (Georden West) 12. My Animal (Jacqueline Castel) 13. Waiting For the Light to Change (Linh Tran) 14. Cash Cow (Matt Barats) 15. Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos) 16. Walk Up (Hong Sang-soo) 17. Birth/Rebirth (Laura Moss) 18. Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis (Anton Corbijn) 19. Priscilla (Sofia Coppola) 20. Passages (Ira Sachs) 21. Hannah Ha Ha (Joshua Pikovsky & Jordan Tetewsky) 22. The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki) 23. May December (Todd Haynes) 24. Dad & Step-Dad (Tynan DeLong) 25. Mississippi River Styx (Tim Grant & Andy McMillan) 26. Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV (Amanda Kim) 27. How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber) 28. The Horse Tail (Justyna Luczaj) 29. Onlookers (Kimi Takesue) 30. Divinity (Eddie Alcazar) 31. Enys Men (Mark Jenkin) 32. Cette Maison (Miryam Charles) 33. Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli) 34. A Thousand and One (A.V. Rockwell) 35. Sweetheart Deal (Elisa Levine & Gabriel Miller) 36. De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel)

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mazelikedays · 4 months

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2023 Year Ender

Currently Listening to: Ginger Root - Nominated Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates Mood: Waiting listlessly Welcome to the 17th iteration of my Year Ender post. I'll be doing this a bit earlier than usual as I'll be going off to Musandam, Oman tomorrow. As you can see in the pic, I have been trying to go to different places. Anyhow, let’s do the 2023 edition of my year ender report!

1. Thankfully, COVID pretty much became endemic this 2023. Pretty much things have gone back to normal, travel wise. Sadly, inflation happened everywhere. Luckily, my salary also increased this year which was quite nice given the inflation and expenses I had.

2. This year was quite eventful that I was able to secure a state nomination from Canberra, Australia! All the expenses and effort paid off! I was quite surprised though that it was Australia that gave me a chance, since I thought Australia will be harder to get in compared to Canada. While sadly nothing happened with my Canadian application, now I'm waiting for that Australian visa grant. I sure hope I can get it as early as March. I was also quite lucky that I applied as soon as I could, because when July came, it became much, much harder to apply for an Australian PR.

3. Travel wise, I actually became active in camping for the first quarter of the year. I was able to try solo camping in various locations such as Hatta, Jebel Ali Beach, Al Mirfa in Abu Dhabi and Al Qudra with my colleagues in the office. I also travel twice in the Philippines and twice in Singapore. I didn't travel in the latter part of the year due to the summer heat + lethargy. Hopefully I get to travel more starting tomorrow in Oman!

4. TCG wise, the first half of the year was quite good, with our team getting Top 3 not once, but twice! I fortunately had really good teammates, and I was able to play well. I unfortunately had a bad run though on the second part of the year, and my dream of going to worlds didn't happen. Hopefully the next year will be much better, and I'm hoping I'll get more chances of going to worlds.

5. Health wise, I can't say that it was that good. Nothing really serious, but work stress kind of got to me, especially when new members of the Cerave team joined. The system became drastically different from last year, and it became so stressful that I became easily irritated. It even went to a point where I became so stressed I got sick. I wasn't even able to stick to my diet, and was living an unhealthy lifestyle. I do hope I can reset this coming year, I feel finally going to Australia will greatly help as I feel I'm currently in a limbo waiting for my visa grant. 6. Some not so good news regarding my sister. Seems she was involved in some drug issues and she got imprisoned. She got out of jail eventually but now she's currently detained in an immigration facility as of writing. She's still waiting for a verdict, and I'm hoping for a positive outcome. Kinda fearing for her ability to travel due to this though, as kinda worried for my niece and her fiancee as well. Kinda bummed with what my sister did to her life, but it is what it is sadly.

7. Anime, Manga and Pop Culture stuff.

Anime and Manga wise, I had been watching and reading less. It's probably due to the stress I experienced for a good part of the year. I was able to attend some conventions though, like the MEFCC in Abu Dhabi and AFA in Singapore. I also have some show lined up to watch. As for sumo, I'm not able to watch livestreams for the latter part of the year, though I still check upon the results whenever there's a tournament. I was hyped when Hakuoho was competing, and got bummed that he had to pull out for a while due to injury. I sure hope he'll bounce back in the coming year. It's also exciting to see whether the two new Ozeki, especially Kirishima (formerly Kiribayama) will step up to become the new Yokozuna. I'm also happy that the coming year will have Ura going to Sanyaku!

Currently Watching:

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Aria the Origination Planning to Watch: Kubo-San Won't Let Me Be Invisible, Isekai Nonbiri Nouka

Finished This Year:

Engage Kiss, Gundam: Witch From Mercury, Hataraku Maou Sama S3, Danmachi S4 Part 2, Mushoku Tensei S3 Part 1, Tomo-Chan is a Girl, Bofuri S2, Oshi no Ko, Isekai Ojisan, Tonikawa, In/Spectre, Tondemo Sukiru de Isekai Hōrō Meshi, The Dangers in My Heart, Masterful Cat is Depressed, Chainsaw Man, Arifureta S1, Aria the Animation/Natural

Unfinished Anime: Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru?, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Swordsman Village Arc, Rurouni Kenshin Reboot,

Finished OVA/Movies:

Tensura Scarlet Bond, Gundam Hathaway, Jujutsu Kaisen Zero, First Slam Dunk, Suzume, The Boy and the Heron

New Manga Read:

Oshi no Ko, Chainsaw Man

Finished Manga: Ayakashi Triangle, Other Stuff Watched:

Movies: Avatar: Way of the Water, Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Flash

Series: The Mandalorian S2, Ahsoka, Andor, Castlevania Nocturne

New Games Played: Mainly just playing Mahjong Soul, Teamfight Tactics, Weiss Simulator and Pokemon TCG Live. Occasionally playing casual games and Colonist (Catan clone).

8. Fulfilled (or not) Wishes a. Get Healthier - Kinda not, though I'm trying to be mindful. I need to reset this coming year and have less stress. b. Get to emigrate elsewhere - Funny enough, it was Australia that gave me the chance! Hoping to hear soon as early as March. I'm quite anxious to get there that I'm currently in a state of limbo. c. Travel to new places - This year made me do a lot of solo camping. Also was able to set foot in Qatar, albeit as a stopover. I am going to Oman tomorrow though, so that's exciting. And even more exciting if I'm finally able to go to Australia! d. TCG wise -I finally played in a teams format, and did quite well especially in PH. Sadly the worlds invite dream went downhill! Hoping this year I can finally get the worlds invite!

New Wishes: a. Get the Australia Visa Grant - Can't wait for it, hoping for a positive outcome, and soon! b. Improved Health - Hoping to reset this year and be better. c. WS Worlds Invite - Hoping to finally get that Worlds invite, so that I can finally retire in TCGs lol! d. Better situation for my Sis - I hope the issues get settled soon, and in a positive manner. e. Some new goal to look forward to - Because sometimes lately, I feel that nothing happens that much. Let's see what endeavor I can aim for the coming year.

I don’t have much else to wish for, maybe just for good health for me, my family and my friends. Hoping the Musandam trip tomorrow will be awesome, even if it's quite expensive. Anyhow, till next year!

#year ender #2023 #yearend #year end

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esandersonucc · 4 months

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2023: What will Normal Be?

January 2023 started with an eruption in Halema’uma’u Crater at the summit of Kilauea. The new lava continued to raise the crater floor. As it happened, two more eruptions would do the same during 2023, adding bit by bit to the island of Hawai’i. Church of the Holy Cross UCC began the year with a gathered congregation and continued to live stream the service to those, far and near, who needed to…

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#2023 #NewYear #YearEnd

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jobaaj · 4 months

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Investors are hopeful for 2024! Due to increased investor interest in Asian markets, Asian indexes, which have suffered greatly over the past two years, are now breaking their losing run. Positive US economic data and talk of rate cuts have caused the MSCI APAC index to rise 11% over the past two months, encouraging more investment in Asian markets. Consequently, the index is forecasting a 5% increase in 2023!

Furthermore, market anticipation about rate cuts has caused global equities to soar to their best levels in more than a year, while the dollar has fallen relative to the euro and pound. Most Asian indices saw muted trading today while Chinese indices surged almost 1% due to the cessation of China’s crackdown on gaming companies and the PBOC’s announcement of better monetary policies to stimulate consumer prices. At the time of reporting, Nifty 50 was trading at around 21,700, down 0.4%. Follow us at ProCapitas for more financial insights.

#finance #2023 #yearend #markets #financialinsights

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sreepriyamnn · 4 months

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2023- Another year, another chapter ends

Years are floating by, sometimes i wonder where all my months and weeks went by. I hardly look back and see, what changed so much. The only part where my eyes get stuck is the weather that’s changing and prominently showing up as and when I am off to work. The rest seems to have come to a stand still i believe. Not sure, if it’s my problem or that, nothing seems to be speeding away from me.Again…

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#2023 #kaleidoscopeofmythoughts #myquillthrill #opusverus #soulrecitals #sreepriyawrites #yearending

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cletusthurstonbeauregard · 4 months

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#kpop #2023 #yearend wrap up

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dustedmagazine · 4 months

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Music is an Essential Verb: Derek Taylor 2023

Music remains, along with family, friends, and a select few venial vices, my primary daily defense against the mental erosions of spiritual malaise and existential dread. Being a humanist also means being a realist, and little looks to be different on that score in the year ahead as we continue to careen toward a bleak and self-defeating dénouement. The veil of uncertainty around what ultimately feels like inevitability redoubles the need to remain thankful for and supportive of those who devote themselves to art. Summary capsules below describe some of the sounds that kept me going in 2023.

Peter Brötzmann, Wayne Shorter, Kidd Jordan, & Charles Gayle

“The trauma of my generation was what our fathers had done to the rest of the world, and so we said, ‘never again,’ and that was the whole impetus through all my life, and it still is.” ~ Brötzmann (2018)

Musician attrition and demise are dispiriting aspects of every annum, but the departure of four disparate octogenarian reedists exacted an especially steep emotional and cultural toll this year. Shorter and Jordan passed away in March, each of them leaving a rich legacy as indefatigable improviser and altruistic educator that continue influence and inspire. Brötzmann exited in June after the return of a protracted respiratory illness. Few if any can match the magnitude of his mileage and six-decade itinerary as an irrepressible, obstinately adventurous world traveler. Gayle ascended in September, an ardent, uncompromising eremite to the end. All four men left behind discographies and concert/interview footage that will leave the faithful and curious listening and marveling in perpetuity, but their collective absence still aches.

Kirk Knuffke & Joe McPhee Quartet + 1 – Keep the Dream Up (Fundacja Sluchaj)

One of the manifold joys of following the output of Kirk Knuffke is anticipating who he’ll collaborate with next. The cornetist’s ears and imagination are as huge as his heart, a trait he has in common with the equally equanimous Joe McPhee. They’ve known each other for years but Keep the Dream Up is their first released collaboration and it’s an affirming alloy of their complementary creative temperaments. Longtime McPhee comrades Michael Bisio and Jay Rosen complete the quartet with bass clarinetist Christof Knoche comprising the additive on a Brooklyn studio session that captures collective creative lightning in a digital bottle. My album of the year for these reasons and more, although hopefully Joe will bring his brass to a follow-up conclave soon.

Don Byas – Classic Sessions 1944-1946 (Mosaic)

Saxophonist Don Byas recorded prolifically during the 1940s. His porous sound and popular style bridged the schools of swing and bop through prowess and panache aligned with the most esteemed of post-WII tone scientists. That sustained industriousness hasn’t reflected in reliable access to his works, primarily because they’re spread across a plethora of independent labels and competing copyrights. Leave it to Mosaic Records to rectify the longstanding reissue lacuna. This long gestating collection corrals and sequences the bulk of them across ten discs, scrubbing their sound, and adding an expansive cache of rarified verité concert recordings made in a Swedish jazz fan’s residence. Indulging in one’s Byas bias has never been easier or as edifying.

Fred Anderson – The Milwaukee Tapes Vol. 2 (Corbett vs Dempsey)

Patience and long-game aptitude are among music producer/archivist/advocate John Corbett’s virtues. This unexpected, but abundantly welcome sequel to an archival Anderson collection on Corbett’s long defunct Unheard Music Series took 23 years to secure commercial circulation and offers an additional hour-plus from the same gig in improved sound. Fellow AACMers Billy Brimfield and Hamid (nee Hank) Drake join bassist Larry Hayrod in bringing vibrant, detailed life to the Lone Prophet of the Prairie’s (as Anderson was affectionately known) serpentine, cerulean melodies. Corbett’s current label released a plenitude of music in 2023 (see also below) but the uncommon opportunity to hear more Anderson of any vintage makes this release worthy of independent mention.

Jason Adasiewicz

Corbett vs. Dempsey also had a welcome role in Jason Adasiewicz’s return to record with two different projects. On vinyl, Roy’s World documents a 2017 Chicago studio session by the vibraphonist’s quintet originally intended as the soundtrack to a film based on neo-noir novelist Barry Gifford’s short stories. Chicago stalwarts Josh Berman, Joshua Abrams, Hamid Drake, join saxophonist Jonathan Doyle in the ensemble for a program that sounds at once fresh and nostalgic while always vital. On CD, Roscoe’s Village dispenses with band for a solo selective foray through the songbook of Roscoe Mitchell including evocative renderings of “Congliptious” and “A Jackson in Your House” that retain the composer’s essence while striking out in bold new directions.

Natural Information Society

Grounded as it is in core voices of guembri, frame drum and harmonium, codification of Josh Abrams’ NIS as a jazz ensemble immediately feels reductively incomplete. All participating instruments can be active architects in the undulating, melody-laced drones that frequently form the basis of the band’s gradual, granulated improvisations. Performances are more akin to collective expeditions where a galvanizing gestalt effect is afoot; one where earned communal peaks preserve the individual power and agency of the interlocking parts. Since Time is Gravity augments this already catalytic template by incorporating a larger contingent of Chicago colleagues including tenorist Ari Brown to the equation.

Abdul Wadud

A jazz-based improviser on the cello who didn’t double on other stringed instruments, Wadud was also a consummate collaborator and sideman. Magnanimity in lending his substantial talents to the projects of others resulted in a paucity of albums under his own name. By Myself from 1977 on the Bisharra label is a revelatory anomaly on that self-effacing resume. Wadud approaches the instrument as a multifaceted sound factory, plucking, strumming, and bowing, often simultaneously, to create solo tone poems steeped in personal poignancy. Gotta Groove’s vinyl reissue is a beautiful facsimile of the original album object in faithfully reconstructed fidelity.

Marion Brown

Georgia-born altoist Marion Brown had a lengthy, storied career but the body of recorded work that he left behind can present difficulties in terms of ingress to its totality. Scattered across labels, years, and circumstances, much of it is either out of print or commercially unreleased. That collective relative obscurity makes a trio of releases, two on the German Moosicus label, and a third Record Store Day viny reissue of Brown’s 1970 studio duets with Wadada Leo Smith under the shared sobriquet Creative Improvisation Ensemble even more valuable. Of the former two, Mary Ann presents concert material by Brown’s quartet from a 1969 Bremen club gig in soundboard fidelity. Gesprächsfetzen & In Sommerhausen combines two more German concert snapshots, quintet, and sextet, from 1968 & 1969 with Gunter Hampel originally released on the Calig imprint. Steve McCall is a boon on drums in all three contexts.

Art Pepper – Complete Maiden Voyage Recordings (Omnivore)

Art Pepper was an inveterate rake for most of his life, magnifying destructive interpersonal tendencies with drugs and frustratingly frequent acts of self-sabotage. That star-crossed propensity makes the fact that he left so much magnificent music even more miraculous. This lavish box is a fascinating compendium of the constantly competing artistic contradictions at his center, collecting a quartet gig across three nights and seven club sets in Pepper’s native Los Angeles, ten months prior to his premature passing at 56. Over half of the music is previously unreleased and the rhythm section, led by the impeccable and implacable pianistics of George Cables, gives Pepper a cumulative confidence boost that keeps him on the rails. None of it has ever sounded better.

Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra

Los Angeles of the late-1970s was an unforgiving environment for the economic necessities of orchestral jazz. The Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra, under the nominal leadership of pianist/composer/community organizer Horace Tapscott, was a tenaciously subversive force in the face of that ruinous rule. Adopting the Immanuel United Church of Christ as an informal base of operations, the large ensemble resourcefully engaged in an ambitious series of concerts in 1979. The Nimbus label, long a Tapscott exponent and repository, released the first three entries this year in an archival subscription series collecting the voluminous results. Titles are also available individually and present the pivotal band at a performative peak with star soloists Sabir Mateen, Billy Harris, Jesse Sharps, and Robert Miranda shining just as bright as their fearless foreman.

Alan Skidmore – A Supreme Love

Unexpectedly issued on Mark Wastell’s Confront label, an imprint better known for its fealty to free improvisation, this six-disc archival tribute to Alan Skidmore’s 70+ year career in music launches with the saxophonist’s 1961 radio debut and lands some seven-hours later with his intimate 2019 rendering of John Coltrane’s “Psalm.” The aural expanse between is brimming with bright moments and luminary collaborators the likes of which include Tony Oxley, Kenny Wheeler, Wayne Shorter, Dave Holland, Mike Osborne, Elvin Jones, and another dozen name drops from the top tier of improvised music. It’s a wild, illuminating ride and a sterling example of a musical memorial done right.

The Jazz Doctors – Intensive Care/Prescriptions Filled: The Billy Bang Quartet Sessions 1983/1984 (Cadillac)

Billy Bang and Frank Lowe shared a bottomless fraternal bond forged through parallel traumas internalized in Vietnam and expressed by the subsequent embrace of the restorative power of improvised music. The pair of sessions (one reissued, one archival) collected on this disc epitomize their deep attachment arguably as well as any of their other numerous collaborations. Outside the cardinal duo, the Jazz Doctors never really had a stable lineup, but the quartets here embody two of their best. Both programs are loosely adherent to freebop conventions with violin and tenor saxophone combining over contrabass and drums for a potent front line. Bang and Lowe are long gone now, their shared absence making the availability of this music even more precious.

Attila Zoller & Jimmy Raney

Hungarian guitarist Attila Zoller had selective affinity for other artists on the instrument, so much so that his mid-career period is seeded by fateful encounters with plectrist peers. Most prolific among these partnerships was his prudent pairing with Jimmy Raney. A popular proponent of bop-based jazz, Raney was in a similar exploratory headspace when the two joined forces on a trio of recordings for the German L + R label over a seven-year span. Concert dates from Frankfurt (’80) and Berlin (’86) find the duo spooling out lengthy dialogues that dabble in free improvisation while keeping codified melodies within reach. An earlier New York encounter (’79) explores their rapport in a studio. All three reissues on the Japanese Ultra-Vybe imprint are aces.

Steve Swell’s Fire Into Music

Simultaneously emblematic of NYC free jazz in the early aughts and fiercely dedicated to resisting pitfalls of provincialism by touring generously and rigorously, trombonist Steve Swell’s Fire into Music was one of the finest quartets of its kind. Posthumously dedicated to the late altoist Moondoc, this three CD set collects a trio of small venue concerts by the band from gigs in Texas and Ontario. As with the horns, William Parker and Hamid Drake are ideally suited to the extended, expository freebop safaris that formed the ensemble’s flexible repertoire. Swell’s the leader on paper but sagely embraces musical communalism without fail.

Intakt

Running a physical media imprint in the 21st century is an inherently parlous enterprise, but this steadfast Swiss label continues to evidence how it’s done. This year’s standout catalog entries include Andrew Cyrille’s Music Delivery/Percussion, the octogenarian drummer’s third solo album and first in 45-years; bassist Jöelle Leandré’s solo Zurich Concert; pianist Aruán Ortiz’s Serranías Sketchbook for Piano Trio; Beyond Dragons by the trio of saxophonist Angelika Niescier, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer Savannah Harris, and Ohad Talmor’s Back to the Land, a quartet-plus-guests survey that takes its compositional focus an archival workshop date by Ornette Coleman and Lee Konitz.

Ezz-thetics

The appearance of the Swiss Ezz-thetics imprint four years ago raised both eyebrows and ire. Lacking access to master tapes, veteran free jazz and new music producer Werner Uehlinger sourced commercially released editions instead, employing ace audio engineer Peter Pfister succeeded by Michael Brandli to rejuvenate and refurbish the recordings, stateside copyright considerations be damned. Reaction was expeditious and polemical, but proof is in the hearing as most of the label’s dozens of releases sound better than their original incarnations. Catalog highlights this year include another round of Albert Ayler airshots including his pivotal meeting with the Cecil Tayor Trio in 1962 on More Lost Performances, Charles Mingus’ At Antibes 1960, and Ornette Coleman’s At the Golden Circle.

Fresh Sound

Jordi Pujol is akin to Uehlinger in that he refuses to let his vision and ambitions as a producer be abbreviated by external opinion. In Pujol’s case it’s yielded a bountiful inventory of antiquarian titles that rights holders have shown little to zero interest in restoring to begin with. Cases in point for this year include a definitive collection of obscurando saxophonist Boots Mussulli’s works; concert and studio collections by the Count Basie alumni tandem of Al Grey and Billy Mitchell; hens’ teeth rare leader sessions by Arthur Lyman vibraphonist Julius Wechter; and a two-fer of Julliard-trained Ellingtonian Cass Harrison piano trio albums. Exciting guilty pleasures all around.

Playing for the Man at the Door

As complex as he was controversial, Robert “Mack” McCormick deserves consideration in the esteemed company of other maverick cultural archivists like Alan Lomax, George Mitchell, and Harry Smith. With a preservationist purview mostly comprising Texas and bordering states, McCormick spent much of his adult life obsessively documenting and disentangling the cultural capital of the region through recordings, photography, interviews, essays, and research. Smithsonian Folkways became repository for the massive reservoir after his passing and this box is the first in what will hopefully be multiple dispatches from the same. Unreleased field recordings of Mance Lipscomb and Lightnin’ Hopkins represent the big names, but works by the likes of Hop Wilson, Cedell Davis, Robert Shaw, and a handful of others are just as persuasive. Bongo Joe Coleman’s impassioned presidential pitch closing the set will have listeners pining for a time when third party Executive Branch candidacy didn’t seem so fraught.

Joni Mitchell Archives - Vol. 3, The Asylum Years 1972 to 1975

Mitchell’s continuing project corollary to her old friend Neil Young’s analogously exhaustive retrospective enterprise, this third entry in the series finds her 30-something-self further broadening the lens of her art beyond the solo concert music that dominated the first two boxes. There are stirring solitary shows here, too, but it’s the band offerings that prove most revealing, particularly in the company of reedist Tom Scott’s fusion group L.A. Express. James Taylor, Graham Nash, and David Crosby lend contributory hands, and there’s a brief but intriguing collaboration with Young alongside a trove of demos and workshop versions of songs from her first three albums for Asylum.

Martin Davidson

In closing, another memorial. Martin Davidson wasn’t a musician, but European free improvisation as an art and archive would be a fraction of what it is without his copious and enduring work. As steadfast proprietor of the Emanem label he put his resources into musicians whose efforts frequently fell outside the probability of consistent commercial remuneration. Under his aegis, influential improvisers like Steve Lacy, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and Paul Rutherford gained robust catalogs alongside other aspiring artists who never garnered even niche cachet. Davidson was a curmudgeon and an anachronism, trusting his ears implicitly, suffering the indignities of inquiries from strangers seeking audience with the hip hop icon who shared the phonetics of his imprint’s name, and advancing the pleasures of physical media well past their purported expiration date. He was also a talented writer, adding invaluable context to his releases through first-person testimony and critique. Martin will be missed.

And as is tradition in this 20th iteration of this year-end exercise, 25 more titles in stochastic order. Thanks to all for reading, and gratitude to Jennifer Kelly for providing the forum and formatting.

Rodrigo Amado’s The Bridge – Beyond the Margins (Trost)

James Brandon Lewis – For Mahalia with Love (Tao Forms)

Henry Threadgill – The Other One (Pi)

Guillermo Gregorio – Two Trios (ESP)

Rob Brown – Oceanic (RogueArt)

Rich Halley Quintet – Fire Within (Pine Eagle)

Milford Graves w/ Arthur Doyle & Hugh Glover – Children of the Forest (Black Editions)

Mike Osborne – Starting Fires: Live at the 100 Club 1970 (British Progressive Jazz)

Jim Hall – Uniquities Vol 1 + 2 (ArtistShare)

Madhuvanti Pal – The Holy Mother (Sublime Frequencies)

V/A – On the Honky Tonk Highway with Augie Meyers & the Texas Re-Cord Company (Bear Family)

Mal Waldron & Terumasa Hino – Reminiscent Suite (Victor/BBE)

Oum Kalsoum – L’Astre D’Orient 1926-1937 (Fremeaux & Associates)

Sonny Rollins w/ the Heikki Sarmanto Trio – Live at Finlandia Hall Helsinki 1972 (Svart)

V/A – Equatoriana: El Universo Paralelo de Polibio Mayorga (Analog Africa)

Evan Parker – NYC 1978 (Relative Pitch)

V/A – If There’s a Hell Below (Numero Group)

John Coltrane – Evenings at the Village Gate (Impulse)

Derek Bailey & Paul Motian – Duo in Concert (Frozen Reeds)

Peter Brötzmann/Fred Van Hove/Han Bennink/Albert Mangelsdorff – Outspan 1 & 2 (FMP/Cien Fuegos)

Hasaan Ibn Ali – Reaching for the Stars: Trios/Duos/Solos (Omnivore)

Mark Dresser – Tines of Change (Pyroclastic)

Steve Millhouse – The Unwinding (Steeplechase)

Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet – Hear the Light Singing (RogueArt)

V/A – Destination Desert: 33 Oriental Rock & Roll Treasures (Bear Family)

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