Hello and welcome to the very first instalment of MUSIC REGULAR! I figured I’d start things off deluxe and, frankly, a little irregular. The intention of this letter is to bring new sounds to you, the faithful reader, regardless of style, genre, era, scene, etc… and to keep it brief.
This first issue is a year-in-review, looking back at some of the sounds that excited me most from 2020, which means it’s bound by temporality and not-so-brief. BUT, it does offer plenty of threads to keep your ears curious as we plunge headlong into winter. I hope you discover something new to cherish!
Ever encouraging dialogue around music, I would love to hear what you think/hear. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, recommendations, please: I’m all ears.
Finally, if you find something you like and feel financially able, please please please consider purchasing this music through Bandcamp, from a local record store, or from the artist directly!
To listen to an album, click on the cover in the first section and directly on the text in the following sections
Alabaster DePlume - To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol.1
A disarming, outright beautiful collection of calming jazz pieces culled from DePlume’s early, short-run releases. The bones of a few tracks come from experimental sessions the saxophonist did with Cy and Lee, two adults living in a centre for folks with learning disabilities. Melodically, the music borrows from ethio-jazz and a confluence of folk traditions. Entirely resplendent.
Siti Muharram - Siti Of Ungula
Deeply rooted in the taarab tradition, this large-ensemble offering from Zanzibari vocalist Siti Muharram demolishes expectations of any kind. She manages to pull the Arabic, Indian and East African roots of taarab very much into the present with bold structural and instrumental choices. By drawing from musical and familial lineages, Siti Of Ungula unearths a sound rich with melody, rhythm and mood.
Evan J. Cartwright - DON’t
My most listened-to music of the year by a fair margin. Everyone needs to let this brief, delectable afghan of emotion into their life. After contributing to basically every great jazz and pop project in Toronto (typically behind a kit), Cartwright steps brilliantly into the heart of it all. This is soft, searching, yearning, healing chamber pop with the kindest touch, written with the wisdom of someone at least twice his age.
H31R - ve.loc.i.ty
Debut release from Brooklyn emcee duo Maassai and JWords, supported by the borough’s indispensable iconoclast PTP label. Vocal delivery and lyricism is NEXT LEVEL. Self-assured, game-face, space-age hip-hop with a turn towards futuristic house riddims. Unparalleled.
Leo Takami - Felis Catus & Silence
An unflinchingly tuneful album from the Tokyo-based guitarist and composer. Hovering somewhere above smooth jazz, Felis Catus & Silence develops into a kind of alternate-world holiday TV special soundtrack while remaining entirely applicable to the very real world we’re in. A standout release from Unseen Worlds, one of the best labels going.
Lina_Raül Refree - Lina_Raül Refree
An arresting, brazenly contemporary take on Portuguese fado. The songs trace back to vocal legend Amália Rodrigues, while the execution and delivery are entirely new. Mononymous Portuguese singer Lina and tastemaking Spanish producer Raül Refree tear up the rule book and unleash the barest depths of a passionate music.
Cleo Sol - Rose In The Dark
Straight-ahead, nourishing neo-soul, perfectly poised and lobbed across the plate. The debut collection from this rising West London singer.
JOYFULTALK - A Separation Of Being
Free-thinking Nova Scotia composer, musician and visual artist Jay Crocker channels Minimalism, Japanese environmental music and Maghrebian rhythmic modes in wild combination to create his most focused, vibrant work to date.
Jenna Camille - Pearl + The Time Is Now
Two collections of wonderfully muddied, instrumental hip-hop that stop just short of conceptual. Each with a distinct mood that allows the listener to settle in and get lost. One gets the sense from this pair of digital-only releases, which mark something of a left turn for the Washington artist, that something even better is on the way.
Hanne Lippard - Work
Curious, playful work from the Berlin-based British conceptualist. Short, spoken word pieces that trap the bits of language scurrying about the corners of public consciousness and arrange them in methodical contrast. Dry and very much Steinese.
Beatrice Dillon - Workarounds
A series of exercises in precision and lean groove from the omnivorous UK producer. Despite kicking around the edges for a while, Workarounds is her first album. Unsurprisingly, it spares nothing. Thought-provoking electronic music threaded beautifully with tabla, kora, pedal steel and so much more.
Boldy James - Manger On McNichols + The Price Of Tea In China
It’s been a relatively big year for Boldy James, a low-key veteran of Detroit hip-hop. The Price Of Tea In China sees his classical delivery paired with typically pitch-perfect, shady productions from The Alchemist. Manger On McNichols is another beast entirely: an album’s worth of material fermented over nearly a decade with lesser-known, exploratory producer Sterling Toles. The result is a resonant, mercurial album that laces trad rap, jazz, boom bap and sound collage together.
Still House Plants - Fast Edit
A fresh and instinctive record from a young London/Glasgow trio working at the fringes of post-punk, jazz, improv and performance art. What makes this one outstanding is the group’s pure, unwavering commitment to the form. With such radical approaches to composing, editing and performing, this project could have lost focus by straying into art school cliché or intellectual conceit, but Still House Plants avoid these pitfalls and, for listeners open to abstraction, deliver a wildly guttural, profound, and vulnerable record.
Jon Mckiel - Bobby Joe Hope
Enduring keeper of the swamp song, tender as a bruise. This new Jon Mckiel LP is a collaboration with Jay Crocker (JOYFULTALK) and whoever owned the reels on the tape machine before them fellers got to it. Sweet, sweet rock and roll, dented, second-hand and played with care.
Tara Clerkin Trio - Tara Clerkin Trio
Sideways kinda clunker of a cosmic jazz LP with trip-hop threads. Very much a Bugs-Bunny-hole into an upside-down-jazz-lounge. The outer reaches of the trio’s sound curls into studied, shimmering 70s minimalism.
R.A.P. Ferreira - Purple Moonlight Papers
As he says at the outset of the thirteenth track of his best album, R.A.P. Ferreira is “on a quest to get open and free”. Never has his complex humor and storytelling so beautifully underpinned the Bigger Ideas in the music. A co(s)mic, spiritual work of great eloquence from the emcee also known as Brother Of The Wind In The Wisdom Body.
Shabason, Krgovich & Harris - Philadelphia
This album is a MOOD. Gathering bits of AC, new age, quiet storm and everything adjacent, Philadelphia is the album equivalent of ASMR. Plain-sung pocketbook poetry cozied up with openhanded composition. The collection reveals its depth quietly, holding the listener suspended in wonderment.
Speaker Music - Percussive Therapy + Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry
Two thrilling, perfectly tempered works pulsating with intersecting truths and intellectual grit. One of the sharpest minds in contemporary music putting rhythm and reality front and center. Conceptual electronic music is rarely so embodied.
☉ - ☉
Nick Dourado is one of the most important people working in music on Turtle Island, period. Dourado slipped this solo piano record out into the Bandcamp ether in early April with zero promotion or coverage. Crossing spiritual jazz, new age, new classical and contemporary/timeless composition, it’s a stunning meditation on home, place, lineage and family. Single-take, piano, room sound, soul.
MIKE - Weight Of The World
Currently, my favourite figure in the rap world. MIKE releases a LOT of great music, and this is one of his best. Once again handling vocal and production duties by his lonesome, Weight Of The World crystalizes MIKE’s singular vision of jazz rap: somehow charged/personal and perfectly unexcitable.
REISSUES / COMPILATIONS
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Brother Theotis Taylor - Brother Theotis Taylor (Mississippi Records)
Priscilla Ermel - Origens Da Luz (Music From Memory)
Michele Mercure - Pictures Of Echoes (Freedom To Spend)
I Can I Can't - I Can I Can't (Low Company)
Svitlana Nianio & Oleksandr Yurchenko - Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy (Night School)
Ranil - Ranil y su Conjunto Tropical (Analog Africa)
V/A - For The Love Of You (Athens Of The North)
Mandala - Mandala (Mad About Records)
Luiz Carlos Vinhas - O Som Psicodélico De L. C. V. (Mad About Records)
World Quake Band - Everything Is On The One (Mad About Records)
Guilherme Coutinho E O Grupo Stalo - S/T (Mad About Records)
V/A - Rainer Trueby Presents Soulgliding (BBE)
Admas - Sons Of Ethiopia (Frederiksberg Records)
MORE TO EXPLORE
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Employee - Hold Music Vol.1 | Qu’ran Shaheed - Process | (Liv).e - Couldn’t Wait To Tell You… | Jeff Parker - Suite for Max Brown | Ka - Descendants Of Cain | Rhodri Davies - Telyn Rawn | Manonmars - In Colour | Navy Blue - Ada Irin | HooksArthur - What You Know May… | Dumma & Kechou - Buffering Juju | Horse Lords - The Common Task | Human Error Club - Human Error Club | Irreversible Entanglements - Who Sent You? | Aquakultre - Legacy | No Home - Fucking Hell | KeiyaA - Forever, Ya Girl | Kahil El’Zabar - America The Beautiful | Lido Pimienta - Miss Colombia | Backxwash - God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It | Lucrecia Dalt - No Era Sólida | Liz Durette - Delight | Sam Gendel - Satin Doll | Jennifer Castle - Monarch Season | Bellows - Undercurrents | Rhododendron - Le Jachère | SPAZA - Uprize! OST | New Hermitage - Unearth