Hello and happy (belated) (Gregorian) new year to you! I’m glad to be returning to this exercise: diving deeper into listening and trying to imagine what sounds might resonate with others in this moment. We all have, at the very least, a pandemic in common. Yet our lives continue to diverge, combine, reflect and change in unique and unsuspecting ways. Here goes!
Click on the album covers to listen ~ ~ ~
Dezron Douglas & Brandee Younger - Force Majeure
I’m usually weary of live albums and concept albums; Force Majeure is somehow both and neither. It’s an endearingly low-key collection of recordings from bassist Dezron Douglas and harpist Brandee Younger, a couple based in East Harlem. During the original wave of COVID lockdowns, they hosted weekly livestreams from their apartment where they ran through a wide range of material, mostly covers and standards. The music from those sessions collected here (along with brief snippets of banter from the duo) is incredibly warming and grounding. I’ve had the baseline from ‘Sing’, a Sesame Street original, stuck in my head for weeks.
Angkhanang Khunchai & the Ubon Phatthana Band - Isan Lam Phloen
This landmark 1975 album features Angkhanang Khunchai, a 19-year-old vocalist from the north-eastern Isan region of Thailand. It’s considered the first major recording to combine Molam music, a traditional form dating back to the 17th century, with contemporary, pop-inflected approaches. At the time, the combination was taboo-shattering. To my relatively uneducated ears, the compositions sit a little strange in the best possible way. For every instance of crooked groove, there’s an eerie melody. For every soaring vocal line, there’s a clattering rhythm. The thrill remains vivid.
John McGuire - 48 Variations for 2 Pianos
There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of information readily available online about composer John McGuire. A few brief posts here and there explaining as much and referring to him as a ‘fringe’ or ‘overlooked’ figure in American minimalism. This work falls somewhere near the phasing of Steve Reich and Phillip Glass, but without the tautness or anxiogenic qualities I associate with those composers respectively. 48 Variations is beautiful, crystalline post-minimalism for, you guessed it, two pianos.
Navy Blue - Song Of Sage: Post Panic!
Navy Blue continues his journey towards the centre of the soul of NYC hip-hop, keeping things meditative, laid-back. This new album unfolds and refracts more layers of his identity, his ancestries and all the associated legacies of complex care and pain therein. Finding the finer points of language as a way to make the personal feel expansive and universal.
Vashti Bunyan - Lookaftering + Heartleap
I’ve been returning to these late-career albums by pastoral British folk legend Vashti Bunyan. Sparknotes: she recorded and released a single album (1970’s Just Another Diamond Day) before disappearing into what one can only imagine as rolling fields of tall grass and low sunlight. Lookaftering came 35 years later, bolstered by folks like Joanna Newsom, Max Richter and Devandra Banhart. Heartleap came 9 years after that. Both albums are built by fundamental comforts: plucked acoustic guitar, spare harp, piano, dulcimer and words whispered in quiet, matriarchal wisdom.
Don Cherry - Om Shanti Om
A former roommate of mine hipped me to this recording in video format some years ago. There oughta be a term for this type of document: an absolutely essential figure captured at the height of their powers by a foreign public broadcasting corporation. In this case, it’s cosmic jazz journeyer Don Cherry with his Organic Music Society on Italian public television in 1976. This particular moment in Cherry’s far-reaching career finds him and his cohorts exploring devotional, collective vocals and improvisations on pan-global instrumentation. It’s like campfire music with the sun as its center. Powerful, free.
Andris Mattson - Solo
This came to me care of The Sam Wilkes Radio Hour on NTS. Sparkling solo piano pieces that are fully capable of suspending a well-lit living room in time. The set includes one original composition, one Latvian folk song and six selections from a range of Latvian composers.
Atahualpa Upanqui - Die Andengitarre
Guitarist, vocalist and composer Atahualpa Upanqui (b.1908) is considered one of most important Argentine folk musicians of the last century. He spent his younger years travelling his homeland, learning alongside indigenous communities (his heritage was mixed Indigenous/European) and dedicating himself to the struggles of the national Communist Party. Because of these radical ties, his music career and public life suffered. In the late 1940s, he was detained and incarcerated multiple times, eventually leading to a life in exile in Uruguay. Returning in 1952 and severing many political affiliations, Upanqui’s music finally began receiving the attention it so deserved. He spent his later years touring internationally and living around the globe until his death in France in 1992.
Stephanie Mills - For The First Time
The career of powerhouse vocalist Stephanie Mills sparked at the tail end of the 70s when she was cast as Dorothy in the Broadway production of The Wiz from 1974-79. This album came out on Motown in ‘75, right near the beginning of that buzz. The whole thing was written and produced by Burt Bacharach and Hal David just as the legendary duo was on the verge of splitting up. It’s… really lovely.
Jimmy Giuffre - The Jimmy Giuffre Clarinet
An important figure of the West Coast cool jazz scene of the early 1950s, Jimmy Giuffre is remembered as a creative and unusual arranger. On this, only his third outing as a bandleader, he sticks primarily to the low register of his beloved clarinet. Accompanied throughout by incredibly dialed back flute, piano, bassoon and very minimal percussion, this is delicate, thoughtful music.
DJ Screw - Ridin’ High (Screwtape #75)
I had honest-to-goodness never knowingly listened to DJ Screw until 2021. Shame on me. More importantly, many thanks to Tone Glow’s recent year-end reflections for bringing me to this ~essential~ figure. Listening now, it feels sort of impossible to understate DJ Screw’s contribution to the musical landscape of the last 25 years, from pop and hip-hop right through to the avant-garde. A towering figure who helped push Houston’s rap community into the international lense in the early 90s, Screw died in 2000 of an apparent codeine overdose. The central tenet of his mixes was to slllloowwww shit dddowwwwn. But his mixes are so much more than simply slow. Ridin’ High is the 75th instalment in his series of 300+ unique mixtapes he left behind. Check out this portion of a Vice documentary to get a better sense of the importance of his legacy.
Tsar Teh-yun - Master Tsar: The Art Of The Qin
I’ve long had a soft spot for stringed instruments of ancient China. I’m drawn to their tones, the structures of the music (which can feel strikingly contemporary) and the spiritual practices associated with the playing of them. Tsar Teh-yun (b.1905) was a renowned performer, poet, teacher and calligrapher. These recordings were captured between 1956-1989 and feature her on the guqin, a large seven-stringed zither known as ‘the instrument of the sages’. I often play this early in the morning with a strong cup of tea.
The subtitle and image for this month’s issue come from the show Rectify. In it, Daniel Holden (pictured above), is released from death row after serving 19 years for a crime he may or may not have committed at the age of 18. Throughout the series, he strives/struggles to adjust and find meaning (and importantly for him, beauty) in the outside world.
In the third season, he discovers the magic of a local classical radio show which prompts him to ask his sister: “When you think of a person who has dedicated their life to sharing the talents of others with the world with no rancor or envy… is that beautiful?”
I’m super interested in feedback / dialogue / suggestions. If you have ideas about the newsletter, want to share music with me, have specific questions / requests, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. And please: share this newsletter with a pal if you feel so inspired!