… but I’m giving it to myself as a gift
It’s Pisces season. Which means that I, along with everyone I love and cherish, has a birthday around now (sorry everyone else… except Cancers: you’re alright). For my birthday, I’m asking you to share this newsletter with at least one person. I’m off social media, so the only way this thing gets around is through your generous enthusiasm.
This week’s title is the opening line of ‘Self Portrait At 28’ by the late David Berman, whose work I return to often. Always worried it may be a little less spectacular than I remember, it never is. It’s ever moving. He’s a marvel.
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click on the covers to listen ~~~
Mourning [A] BLKstar - Reckoning (2019)
An incredibly badass collective from… Cleveland? Mourning [A] BLKstar achieve time-collapsing majesty throughout the entirety of Reckoning. They evoke a wide range of Black musical traditions across past / present / future without ever feeling anything but deeply personal and unique. Never does the music feel like a pastiche, a reference, or even a nod. It’s just chin-up, face-forward stunning. An absolute classic beamed from the soul of some beautiful, beautiful people.
Ahmadou Ahmed Lowla - Terrouzi (2019)
An absolute scorcher from a Mauritanian keyboard king. Lowla’s approach stems from his beginnings as a performative wedding musician and finds roots in WZN, a contemporary West African style of pop music. Playing an Arabic modded synth that allows for plenty of pitch bending and micro-tonality, Lowla runs through a number of traditional pieces imbuing them stylistically with trap rhythms and 90s r&b modes.
London Is The Place For Me Vol.2 (2004)
Having just been completely riveted by Steve McQueen’s Small Axe, I’ve been thinking again about this incredible series. London Is The Place For Me provides snapshots of the music made by West Indians living in London (more or less one generation before the folks featured in Small Axe). The calypso, kwela and highlife featured here is incredibly vivid and versatile. As a focus of close listening, as background mood, or as dinner party instigation, the music reveals manifold layers of the cultures that birthed it. I’m recommending Volume 2 because it’s the one I own and am most familiar with, but everything I’ve heard from this series is excellent.
Bremer/McCoy - Utopia (2020)
Music for contemplative evenings. According to their Bandcamp bio, the Danish duo started as a reggae group (big yikes). Over time, their music has morphed into this, beautifully effervescent neo-classical lounge tunes (with, yes okay, some dub influence). Something like Bohren & Der Club Of Gore after a half-dark-half-decaf.
Shirley Collins - False True Lovers (1959)
Shirley Collins, towering figure that she is, has circled my listening for at least a decade, but I’m only now getting familiar (read: obsessed). It’s effectively impossible to understate her importance for British folk revivalism and everything that stems from it. She’s central to so much, it almost feels silly including her here. Surely you all know and adore her work? Well, if not: strap in and brace yourself for unwavering, crystalline trad folk of the highest order. False True Lovers is the second collection Collins released in a career that now spans seven decades (!!). The album features her steady banjo and earnest vocals almost exclusively. And while immersed in the plain beauty of her work, those bare elements can feel like all the nourishment one needs.
Aragon - Aragon (1985)
This self-titled effort, recorded by a group of Japanese studio musicians with ties to heavyweights like Haruomi Hosono, has been quietly fermenting in the dark corners of the internet + cherished by crate diggers, for a few decades. Born in a decade of explosive creativity and experimentation in Japanese music, Aragon succeed wildly where so many fail: they blend avant composition, ambience, outer+innernational instrumentation and stunning pop modes seamlessly. It’s a relatively broad palette, captured immaculately and perfectly structured.
Anna Domino - East And West (1984)
Somewhat sneaky, shadow-slanted pop from this NYC-based vocalist. Anna Domino was born in Japan and spent her youth in Ottawa (and later studied at OCAD). In her early 20s, she planned a vacation to The Big Apple that was meant to last a few weeks and turned into a two-decade stay. Early on in that tenure, a set of bedroom demos caught the ear of Les Disque Crépuscule, a Factory-adjacent label that flew Domino to Brussels to record this debut EP.
Emmanuelle Parrenin - Maison Rose (1977)
A real fever dream of a record. Hazy folk ballads segue into an uncanny moment of proto trip-hop, then scatter into harp-laden wanderings. Emmanuelle Parrenin is a true original and Maison Rose is apparently a tribute to the musical home of her childhood. As the cover suggests, the music within has a dreamlike quality; a form of fairytale replete with a dark undernetting. It’s mesmerizing. This interview with The Quietus provides a broader context for Parrenin’s life and work, including reference to the instance in the early 90s when she suffered major hearing loss in a domestic fire. Spoiler: doctors thought she would never hear again, so she holed up in an Alpine cabin and healed herself through self-directed electro-acoustic therapies.
Khadija Al Hanafi - Slime Patrol (2020)
A niiiice debut from this young Tunisian producer. The music is unquestionably rooted in footwork and juke though she sands back much of the manic fervor of those genres and laces smooth r&b samples and lo-fi moods throughout. Slime Patrol is definitely still a bit hyperactive and labyrinthian in its construction, but humbly so. Its short compositions and slight runtime have me hitting replay.
Tsehaytu Beraki - Selam (2004)
A powerful collection from a pillar of modern Eritrean music. There’s a wonderful internal propulsion and strength to the compositions, stemming from Beraki’s strapping vocals and her spirited work on the krar (a strummed, 5-string lyre). Selam was recorded long after Beraki was active in Eritrea. In fact, according to the producer’s notes, she’d been living in The Netherlands for well over a decade, having fled her native country for fear of her life during the final years of its struggle for independence in the late 80s. Selam was recorded slowly over 4 years, as a means of preserving the music, which is largely unrecorded + unheard in the west, as opposed to the more popular, neighbouring traditions of Ethiopian jazz.
Dave Rich - Ain’t It Fine (1994)
This compilation charts the rise of young Dave Rich, an artist credited with sewing the seeds of rockabilly some years before it took full form. These songs were captured by RCA between 1955-1959 and feature a cast of Nashville royalty, including production and playing by Chet Atkins. Popular narrative suggests that Rich’s timing didn’t pair well with prevailing trends, relegating him to the footnotes of country music history. Later in life, he ditched his musical pursuits to become a full blown evangelist preacher, but don’t hold that against him. Instead, listen to how he stretches the vocal melody in the titular phrase of ‘I Love ‘Em All’. So heavenly.
I’m super interested in feedback / dialogue / suggestions. If you have ideas about the newsletter, want to share music with me, have specific questions / comments / requests, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Write to me: andrewdanielpatterson [at] gmail [dot] com