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It’s an old saw by this point to suggest that while the livelihood of the average working musician has never been more perilous, the curious listener has at the same time never before had access to such an abundance of quality music, from nagging earworms to the experimental margins and everything in between. In a year that saw bubbling anger over Spotify payments and major layoffs following the sale of Bandcamp, record labels from Kampala to Helsinki and from Lima to Shanghai to Hot Springs strove to cultivate local scenes with a global outreach, while artists like DJ K, Arooj Aftab, Klein, Lucy Liyou and Kara Jackson could create music which both suffused and skirted the mainstream. The following list of records counts as a broad assortment of what Culturedarm has been listening to in 2023, and is complemented by a likeminded list of songs plus an assortment of albums ‘from the vault’, which recognises that even the brightest of minds keep one eye firmly on the posterior.<\/p>\n
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ABADIR – Ison<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n For the sixtieth release on SVBKVLT, the club producer ABADIR who hails from the old Heliopolis suburb of Cairo absorbs a childhood routine of churchgoing as his parents took him on Sundays and feast days to the holy places of Egypt\u2019s various Eastern Christian sects. Fascinated by their choral music, for Ison<\/em> the producer uses segments and field recordings from Coptic, Syriac, Maronite, Greek Orthodox and Catholic choirs to present his own vision of fresh hymns or fictional chants, comparing the record to his last release with the suggestion that if Mutate<\/em> was made to make the dancefloor burn, Ison<\/em> instead \u2018is intended to cure last night\u2019s hangover\u2019.<\/p>\n Akira Uchida – Kurayami<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The instrument builder and multi-instrumentalist Akira Uchida was a working saxophonist until 2007, when he came under the tutelage of Satoshi Yoshida and began turning both hands to the piano with a penchant for tuning which carried him across Japan and far overseas. From 2015 he learned to make clavichords under the guidance of Masahiro Adachi, and in 2021 he constructed one of the instruments out of the aged hinoki cypress which once comprised the Kiyomizu-dera temple\u2019s main stage. A popular stunt during the Edo period when the practice amounted to an aspiring leap of faith, the expression \u2018to jump off the stage at Kiyomizu\u2019 still carries resonance in Japan as a euphemism for risk-taking, with Uchida debuting his own clavichord as part of a dedicatory performance in the famed Buddhist temple\u2019s main hall.<\/p>\n Collaborating with Kosaka Osho on the sutra drum and Tono Tamami who plays the seventeen slender bamboo pipes of the sh\u014d, Uchida brings all of his instrumental expertise to bear on a journey through the enchanted darkness for IIKKI, a project based out of Brittany which fosters dialogue between visual artists and musicians, with each release furnishing two physical imprints in the form of a fine art book plus LP or CD. For the two long sides of Kurayami<\/em>, the bristling atmospherics and Buddhist chants proffered by Uchida draw inspiration from and engage in moonlit discourse with the photographs of Yamamoto Masao, who specialises in the medium of gelatin silver print and has exhibited from San Francisco and New York to Moscow and S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/p>\n Named after the most popular beach in Lima, on\u00a0Agua Dulce<\/em> the duo of Ale Hop and Laura Robles dust off the colonial legacy of the caj\u00f3n, a percussive instrument cultivated from upturned fruit boxes and shipping containers during the nineteenth century as stretches of slavery roiled coastal Peru. The native sound of Afro-Peruvian music which later infused everything from the encompassing blend of m\u00fasica criolla to the Spanish flamenco, Cuban rumba and Mexican zapateado, on their electrifying debut Ale Hop and Robles harness the caj\u00f3n as a symbol of defiance and transformation, reinforcing its physical character through recorded improvisations and a live performance at the Heroines of Sound festival, where they were accompanied by the dancer and choreographer Liza Alpi\u017aar Aguilar.<\/p>\n Allen Lowe – In The Dark<\/em><\/a> & America: The Rough Cut<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Describing the worst time of his life, the saxophonist and music historian Allen Lowe circled the dark and brayed against the ravenous morning sun, unable to sleep or breathe then suffering from the lingering effects of peripheral neuropathy as he recovered from surgery to remove a cancerous tumour in his sinus. Somehow in the midst of all that he began to compose and the music poured out of him, culminating in two albums either side of a set of Wadi-Sabi ballads by Alan Sondheim for the experimental New York holdout ESP-Disk. Beyond its title and opening track, which wryly refers to kicking the bucket, on\u00a0In the Dark<\/em> the veteran jazzman swaps the quiet air of desperation for eloquent and rhapsodic compositions which sometimes break free of their moorings, featuring Ken Peplowski on clarinet, Aaron Johnson on clarinet and alto saxophone and Lewis Porter on piano, paying various ode to old Jews, Jelly Roll Morton, The Big Easy, Eric Dolphy and peasant life through the earthy tones and nubby forms of early Vincent van Gogh.<\/p>\n Meanwhile on\u00a0America: The Rough Cut<\/em> the artist diagnoses the failing state of the blues, a form over which he has obsessed for many decades and which he defines for its \u2018disinterest in the polite trappings of (primarily but not only white) society\u2019 and \u2018implicit rejection of basic tonal, sonic and harmonic rules\u2019. Getting back to basics, Lowe invokes the Funky Butt Hall of Storyville, the boisterous gyrations of the Holy Rollers and the attendant whoops and hollers of the Pentecostal church, running through a ragtag blend of jazz, honky-tonk and gospel, minstrelsy, medicine show irony and one-chord ruminations which prefigured the blues, culminating on the album closer \u2018At a Baptist Meeting\u2019 with saxophone squalls that snatch and chafe towards spiritualism, tethered by rowdy percussion and the brio of live performance recorded from a concert several years ago with the late trombonist Roswell Rudd.<\/p>\n Ambrose Akinmusire, Bill Frisell and Herlin Riley – Owl Song<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n For his debut on Nonesuch Records the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire railed against the onslaught of the information age, bidding in his own words to ‘create something that’s oriented around open space’. To that end he enlisted the guitarist Bill Frisell, whose records Akinmusire would play in his youth, and the drummer Herlin Riley treasured by the composer for his ‘commitment to the beauty you can find in the groove’. On the album opener ‘Owl Song 1’ it is Akinmusire’s trumpet which pushes forth warily, carving furrows into the ground or wafting up into the aether, while the six-string of Frisell rounds corners and turns wafts into plumes as Riley on drums creates the possibility of movement in space, like a groundsman raking up leaves or a curler sweeping a rock as a means to decrease friction. The record continues in the same vein with Riley stalking out the space, Frisell tracing its borders and Akinmusire sending up smoke signals as ‘Owl Song 2’ brings everything down to a simmering mellow. Herlin’s lilting grooves hit with a little more swing and funk on ‘Mr. Riley’ before this nagging and gently explorative work draws to a close in fanfares of horn and Frisell’s softly spiralling figures.<\/p>\n\n\n Amor Muere – A time to love, a time to die<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n From Mexico City the avant-garde cellist Mabe Fratti, the composer and vocalist Camille Mandoki, the sound artist Concepci\u00f3n Huerta who specialises in synthesizers, tape manipulation and field recordings, and the classically trained violinist Gibrana Cervantes bring their withering wit and years of experimentation to fruition, reuniting in the forest haven of La Pitahaya in Zoncuantla for their debut album as Amor Muere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Astroturf Noise – Blazing\/Freezing<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n With an appetite for deconstruction, the trio of Sana Nagano on violin and effects, Zachary Swanson on upright bass, and Sam Day Harmet on mandolin and electronics return for their second album on 577 Records as Astroturf Noise, blending a hyphenated understanding of American roots music with screeching improvisations and manipulated samples sourced from Tennessee, Wisconsin and their home borough of Brooklyn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Audrey Carmes – Quelque chose s’est dissip\u00e9<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Described as \u2018a meditation on the vertigo of our existence\u2019, on Quelque chose s\u2019est dissip\u00e9<\/em> the Parisian poet and composer Audrey Carmes spins breathy vocals over evolving layers of synthesizer buoyed by celestial reverberations on the bass guitar, vibraphone and flute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Angel Bat Dawid – Requiem for Jazz<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Partially inspired by dialogue from Edward O. Bland\u2019s seminal 1959 documentary\u00a0The Cry of Jazz<\/em>, which interspersed performances by Sun Ra and a series of conversations on the nature of jazz by a group of intellectuals in a club with scenes of life from black neighbourhoods in Chicago, the composer and clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid orchestrates a requiem with operatic thrust and a cosmic bent, adding interludes and post-production to a project that premiered in 2019 at Hyde Park Jazz Festival. Taking her cue from one of the most contentious lines from the film, which asserts that \u2018jazz is merely the Negro\u2019s cry of joy and suffering\u2019, for the performance which became Requiem for Jazz<\/em> the conductor was joined by a fifteen-piece musical ensemble, dancers, visual artists and a four-strong choir, plus special guests in the form of the saxophonists Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott of the Sun Ra Arkestra, manifesting the triumph of spirit over crushing restraints while carrying black classical traditions into contemporary settings.<\/p>\n ANOHNI and the Johnsons – My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n In the spring of 1971 the release of\u00a0What\u2019s Going On<\/em> saw Marvin Gaye switch things up with a song cycle written from the perspective of a Vietnam War veteran, who returns to the United States to find a country in the throes of poverty, racial enmity, drug addiction and environmental degradation. A clarion call for the vulnerable, heartsick and downtrodden through soulful vocals, unhurried jazz and funk grooves, the singer turned songwriter and producer said \u2018I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realised that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people\u2019.<\/p>\n Now taking What\u2019s Going On<\/em> and the groundbreaking song \u2018Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)\u2019 as a cue, ANOHNI returns for her first album in seven years, reshaping her band in a recurring memory of the gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, regarding climate collapse, the consequences of capitalism and fears of an apocalyptic future within a wider purview. From the frontal assault of Hopelessness<\/em> the singer instead seeks succour for those on the front lines of environmental activism, repeating the refrain \u2018It Must Change\u2019 on the opening track to My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross<\/em> over plaintive guitar and propulsive percussion which combine to provide a sense of sustainable uplift. \u2018The truth is that I always thought you were beautiful in your own way. That\u2019s why this is so sad\u2019 she sings, more than a few crumbs for our collective comfort, embracing immanence as a process of doing as well as dwelling.<\/p>\n Between the burnished guitar lines of Leo Abrahams and Jimmy Hogarth, elegiac strings of Rob Moose, and drums and bass of Chris Vatalaro and Samuel Dixon who provide a rhythm section by turns febrile and sinuous, adorning the duelling identities of hapless scapegoat and guilty party or otherwise witless receptacle of hate, on ‘Sliver of Ice’ the singer ecstatically recalls some of the last words and sensations shared by her friend and mentor Lou Reed, while on the penultimate track ‘Why Am I Alive Now?’ she offers nothing recuperative but only the barest of testimonies, eyeing a world under duress and standing fast as a sigil of freedom.<\/p>\n Armand Hammer – We Buy Diabetic Test Strips<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Still representing the backwoods boroughs of New York, on their first album for Fat Possum the duo of ELUCID and billy woods as Armand Hammer drop the trauma mic and reference the exposed bust of Bathsheba over the junk percussion and pungent production of DJ Haram, test the limits of Siri and grope for the heaving embonpoint over beats by JPEGMAFIA, and pay homage to the jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron on a line from \u2018The Gods Must Be Crazy\u2019 which credits their Def Jux forebear El-P, mythmaking and ruminating with a steely glint across the trans-continental breadth of We Buy Diabetic Test Strips<\/em> while kindred spirits like Moor Mother, Shabaka Hutchings, Willie Green, Pink Siifu and Kenny Segal serve to round out the features.<\/p>\n Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily – Love in Exile<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Taking the stage in 2018 for a spontaneous performance in their adopted hometown of New York City, the trio of Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily shared an immediate chemistry, a strange alchemy which Aftab has portrayed in aquatic terms as less like a shoal than a school. Seeking to recapture the same sort of energy before it slipped away effortlessly downstream, the iridescent foragers reunited for Love in Exile<\/em>, a suite of songs recorded live with minimal editing featuring Iyer on pianos and electronics and Ismaily on bass and Moog synthesizers while Aftab sang in exquisite Urdu. Expanding thematically on her Grammy Award-winning album Vulture Prince<\/em>, which drew from Sufi devotionals and odes to unrequited love, Aftab characterised the opening song \u2018To Remain\/To Return\u2019 as the slow unfolding of a separation anxiety-induced fury, with the jazz innovator Iyer adding \u2018I hear Shahzad and myself establishing these haunted cycles, then slowly transforming them, as Arooj glides across like a dark moon\u2019.<\/p>\n Asma Maroof, Patrick Belaga and Tapiwa Svosve – The Sport of Love<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Conceived as an amorous response to the digital age, the steamy outpouring of soundtrack work for Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton and Bafic whose documentary short\u00a0Sub Eleven Seconds<\/em>\u00a0poetically envisioned the Olympic quest of Sha\u2019Carri Richardson, on\u00a0The Sport of Love<\/em>\u00a0seasoned collaborators Asma Maroof, Patrick Belaga and Tapiwa Svosve unpick the yearning heart and flickering frailty of modern romance, where hot bodies surge to chafe or flash at the binary. Part of the roving band Moved by the Motion which also includes the artist and filmmaker Wu Tsang, the dancers and performers Tosh Basco and Josh Johnson, and the poet and essayist Fred Moten, as a trio the pensive airs, radiating whorls and tangled bursts of Belaga and Svosve on flute, piano, cello and sax are spritzed by Maroof into sparkling fantasies, from the intoxicating first blush of \u2018G Major Kinda Love\u2019 to the extended centrepiece \u2018The Stranger\u2019 which features additional instrumentation from the percussionist Mathieu Edward and harpist Ayha Simone, squaring the circle between the chiaroscuro work of Arve Henriksen, the fourth world splashes of Jon Hassell, and the minor grooves and glissando blues of the jazz greats Alice Coltrane and Dorothy Ashby.<\/p>\n Baaba Maal – Being<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Fringed by mangroves, filaos and coconut palms, traditional fishing villages dotted with canoes or pirogues and opulent white sand beaches, between birdsong from the francolin and flufftail, coucal and heron, cut through by the flat floodplains of the westward-flowing river, the Senegalese fusion pioneer Baaba Maal pays tribute to tender Casamance nights on the closer to his latest album Being<\/em>, still kicking strong on the approach to his seventieth birthday. Elsewhere the elder statesman of Senegalese music returns to the shores of northernmost Podor for a raucous celebration of local fishermen, and teams up with the Hoddu master and griot storyteller Barou Sall, whose instrument is a kind of lute central to the Fulani oral tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n Bill Orcutt – Jump On It<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Following the splintering earworms of Music For Four Guitars<\/em>, the vaunted noisemaker Bill Orcutt performs another about-turn on an album of limpid acoustic solos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n billy woods & Kenny Segal – Maps<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Over production by Kenny Segal for the first time in the four years since Hiding Places<\/em>, the rapper billy woods sips daiquiris and flaunts the restlessness of mundanity, caught in a dissociative state at the dawning of a new day as Maps<\/em> prepares for takeoff, the story of roads taken and untaken and the long route back home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Camila Nebbia – Una ofrenda a la ausencia<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n An offering to absence whose cover photograph by Aur\u00e8lie Raidron evokes the exploded canopies and smudged cerebrums of Francis Bacon and David Lynch, for her Relative Pitch standout Una ofrenda a la ausencia<\/em> the Buenos Aires-born and Berlin-based tenor saxophonist Camila Nebbia explores the harsh extremities of her instrument.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n Bendik Giske – Bendik Giske<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Born in Oslo and splitting his childhood between there and Bali as he learned circular breathing through the resonances of the flute and didgeridoo, attending a music conservatory in Copenhagen before basing himself betwixt the heady nightclubs of Berlin, the saxophonist Bendik Giske spent ten years traversing the margins and peeling away the excesses of his instrument. Seeking a fuller manifestation of the body, drawing upon the diverse influences of gamelan music and techno, the queer futurity and ecstatic time of Jos\u00e9 Esteban Mu\u00f1oz and Jack Halberstam\u2019s low theory which describes the \u2018utility of getting lost over finding our way\u2019, on his third album for Smalltown Supersound the artist collaborates with the composer and synth builder Bridget Ferrill who serves as record producer, stripping away layers of melody to expose the pulses and sinews of his music through a mesmerizing focus on pattern and rhythm.<\/p>\n Carla Boregas – Pena ao Mar<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Best known for her collaborative work, through live performances and site-specific sound installations with the multidisciplinary artist Anelena Toku as one half of Fronte Violeta, and with fellow Rakta member Mauricio Takara on two albums of limpid abstractions which lap at the borders between free jazz, drone, and kosmische, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and an accommodating Nel Frattempo Residency encouraged the S\u00e3o Paulo experimental scenester Carla Boregas to reexamine her solo output. Flicking through song fragments and the pages of her notebooks, she came across an old idea for a wind instrument which could be played collectively by several musicians, the strictures of lockdowns and quarantines coaxing a synthetic alternative with symbolic overtures to community and spontaneity despite the palpable absence of company as normal life screeched then ground to a halt. Seeking the mystery in mundanity, on\u00a0Pena ao Mar<\/em>\u00a0the sound artist uses analogue and digital synthesizers, effects, the Wurlitzer electronic piano, field recordings, gongs, processed cactus sounds, and the ancient Armenian double reed duduk flute to conjure an imaginary wind orchestra, an ode to the diaphanous shifts and bristling indeterminacy of our shared environment which bears comparison to the medieval rhapsodies of Sarah Davachi or the deep-listening exercises of \u00c9liane Radigue and Kali Malone.<\/p>\n Caroline Davis – Alula: Captivity<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n On her latest alula, sometimes called a bastard or spurious wing which birds manipulate to create lift and prevent stall at slow speeds or during landing, the saxophonist and vocalist Caroline Davis pays tribute to birds of captivity from the Waldensian ascetics Agnes Franco and Huguette de la C\u00f4te who were interrogated for many months before being burned as heretics in the 1320s, to contemporary activists like Jalil Muntaqim, Keith Lamar and Joyce Ann Brown who were repeatedly denied parole or fair trials or were else wrongfully convicted. Playing alongside the bassist Chris Tordini, the drummer Tyshawn Sorey and the turntablist and sampler Val Jeanty, some of the proceeds from\u00a0Alula: Captivity<\/em> will go to the grassroots organisation Critical Resistance which strives to end the prison industrial complex.<\/p>\n Chad Fowler, George Cartwright, Kelley Hurt, Christopher Parker, Luke Stewart, Steve Hirsh and Zoh Amba – Miserere<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n From the first Ayleresque thrum and steeped ritual of \u2018Miserere\u2019 to the wailing blues, doleful horns and overlayed piano on \u2018Wonderful Words Of Life\u2019 whose wispy middle section soon scrambles to a rapt climax, and from the percussive roils which shake up \u2018Inhaling and Exhaling\u2019 to accompany a reading from a book called\u00a0Solo Gig<\/em>\u00a0by the avant-garde guitarist Davey Williams to \u2018Ut Queant Laxis\u2019 whose overtures to the didactic hymnal are carried away on the airs of the shakuhachi-like bass flute, a stellar and multi-generational group of players tread a misty line between Gregorian chant and Downtown experimentalism on the full-length\u00a0Miserere<\/em>, a quixotic jazz album whose noxious vapours might emanate from a terraced paddy, a spice bazaar or a wine-soaked brasserie whose musty tablecloths are flung out onto the rain-damp street.<\/p>\n The saxophonists Chad Fowler, George Cartwright and Zoh Amba, pianist Chris Parker, bassist Luke Stewart, drummer Steve Hirsh and vocalist Kelley Hurt holed up in Little Rock to connect musical communities as far-flung as Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Washington DC, Minnesota and New York, with Fowler and Amba also airing their spellbinding proclivities as flautists, the Curlew founder Cartwright wielding the electric guitar, and Parker\u2019s intonations adding to the sense of liturgy as they abut or echo Hurt\u2019s coiled calls. Described as an attempt to evoke \u2018both desperation and hope in a time rife with strife\u2019, the title \u2018Miserere\u2019 which is Latin for \u2018have mercy\u2019 refers to the setting of Psalm 51 which was originally composed in the 1630s for exclusive use in the Sistine Chapel during the Tenebrae services of Holy Week. Replete with Gregorian recitations and late-Renaissance polyphonies, the traditional Tenebrae service in the Latin Church took place over three days and was marked by the gradual extinguishing of fifteen candles, then a \u2018strepitus\u2019 or great noise which occurred in total darkness.<\/p>\n Charlemagne Palestine – DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz ferrrr SSSOFTTT DIVINI TIESSSSS!!!!!!!!!<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Drawn to the art of marginal living, between his first spurts on the conga and bongo drums as a backup musician for Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Anger and Tiny Tim and his more elaborate experiments of the late sixties, where he constructed kinetic light sculptures with Len Lye and devised performances with the dancer and choreographer Simone Forti, for seven years the artist Charlemagne Palestine served as the carillonneur of the Episcopalian Saint Thomas Church in Midtown Manhattan. Taking a uniquely clangorous approach to the unwieldy instrument, which traces back to the Low Countries and consists of at least twenty-three bronze-cast bells which are struck with clappers attached to the wooden batons of an oversized keyboard, Palestine loved the view from the lofty heights of the Saint Thomas bell tower, at some remove yet with broad access to the whole of the city, and it was there that he began to cultivate his distinctive brand of drone music replete with its partial tones and dizzying repetitions, describing the movements of the carillon as like \u2018playing the entire building\u2019.<\/p>\n Born in Brooklyn to Russian Jewish parents, in his youth he trained as a cantor and listened to klezmer bands, the first flush of a lifelong predilection for tethering spiritual refrains to the trance-like states of his secularism. Living in Manhattan in the sixties, Palestine studied under the poet Jerome Rothenberg, who published the collection of spiritual writings\u00a0Technicians of the Sacred<\/em> in 1968, and the Indian classical singer Pandit Pran Nath, whose raga stylings and focus on the precise phrasing of notes would exert a profound influence on musicians like Terry Riley, Jon Hassell and Don Cherry. Palestine found himself at the confluence of the Downtown scene, inaugurated in the loft of a Chambers Street apartment by Yoko Ono and La Monte Young, which soon surfeited its roots in sustained tones and minimalism, and the loft jazz scene which sprung up almost overnight as a spiritual continuation of the free jazz ethos which had been nourished by the likes of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra and Albert Ayler. In the eighties he founded the Ethnology Cinema Project, which was dedicated to the documentation of disappearing traditional cultures from all over the world, and at documenta 8 he exhibited Godbear<\/em>, a massive devotional sculpture of a three-headed teddy.<\/p>\n In early November, Charlemagne Palestine was the honoree of the sixth annual benefit gala by Blank Forms, the New York City-based nonprofit which focuses on the presentation and preservation of experimental performance, where he was joined onstage by the Irish musician \u00c1ine O\u2019Dwyer. To accompany the festivities, for the first side of his latest record on Blank Forms the visionary artist and self-styled \u2018avant-garde Quasimodo\u2019 hunkers down under the high ceilings of his home studio in Belgium, returning to the carillon for an ode to his \u2018divinities\u2019, the thousands of plush toys which he has amassed and often performed or exhibited alongside stretching back some six decades. The flip side of the album issues for the first time on vinyl the inaugural Blank Forms cassette, a cathartic street recording of the maximalist composer\u2019s 2018 eulogy for Tony Conrad, the drone music and structural film pioneer and Palestine\u2019s longtime friend, which he performed above the hubbub of 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue on the venerable bells of Saint Thomas.<\/p>\n Chrisman – Dozage<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The Congolese club sensualist Chrisman, who has headed up the Nyege Nyege and Hakuna Kulala studios in Kampala over the past few years, unleashes his fiercest statement to date in the form of 35 tracks of crossbreed trap and Afrohouse mutations, sticky tarraxinha tempos and skeletal club rhythms, drill, gqom, hardstyle and amapiano, drawing from deepest Durban and the Indonesian pressure of Raja Kirik and Gabber Modus Operandi while calling upon a team of like-minded collaborators including Tracey the Rapper, Blaq Bandana, Ratigan Era, Mc Yallah, Aunty Rayzor and Ecko Bazz.<\/p>\n Cut The Sky – Esz Kodesz<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n After relocating to Poland from the United Kingdom, the composer and guitarist Alex Roth began to survey his surrounds, starting with a residency at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krak\u00f3w as he traced the nature of his ancestry as a Detroit-born and London-bred descendant of Polish Jews. Roaming widely, he made a\u00a0series of field recordings around the neglected cemeteries, forgotten monuments and former ghetto districts of southern and eastern Poland and western Ukraine, then approached two musicians who resonated on the margins of the Polish jazz scene in the form of the drummer Hubert Zemler and the clarinetist and folk trance practitioner Wac\u0142aw Zimpel.<\/p>\n Using his field recordings as a basis for live improvisation, pandemic constraints meant that it was the spring of 2022 before the trio were able to embark upon the recording studio, by which time aspects of the initial sketches as well as Roth\u2019s adopted environment had been absorbed into the interior. On Esz Kodesz<\/em>, the Polish transliteration of a Hebrew phrase meaning \u2018sacred fire\u2019, rangy guitar and roving electronics, clarinet which whirs like a winnowing drone or soars up straight and cleaves the sky, and roiling or emphatic percussion coalesce into a three-forked excavation of the landscape, which closes with layered reeds, padded footsteps and the gentle clanging of cathedral bells.<\/p>\n Daniel Villarreal – Lados B<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Back in August the announcement of Daniel Villarreal\u2019s latest album\u00a0Lados B<\/em> seemed to herald the height of summer, with the track \u2018Sunset Cliffs\u2019 lingering in a twilight groove as Jeff Parker\u2019s lilting guitar played off Anna Butterss\u2019 arcing bass, which descended like a knife through the proverbial cream stuff. Instead the record – culled from the same sessions which produced Panam\u00e1 77<\/em> as Villarreal, Parker and Butterss gathered for the first time during the pandemic at Chicali Outpost in the fall of 2020 – proves a more sombre and reflective affair still animated by the frolic of playing free, as the drummer draws inspiration from the Latinate funk of Fania Records and the otherworldly trance of Brain Records.<\/p>\n\n\n Colin Stetson – When we were that what wept for the sea<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Blowing swirls and eddies, the swashbuckling saxophonist Colin Stetson aerates with ancestral aplomb the billowing mass of When we were that what wept for the sea<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Daniel Carter, Leo Genovese, William Parker and Francisco Mela – Shine Hear<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Collaborating as a quartet for the first time on Shine Hear<\/em>, the improvisational icons and 577 Records stalwarts Daniel Carter, Leo Genovese, William Parker and Francisco Mela pay tribute to the interminable motion of life in New York City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Danny Brown – Quaranta<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yanking the curtain and pulling a face at the midday sun, the indomitable Danny Brown laments gentrification and plies his trade in cybernautic amplification, boasting features from MIKE, Kassa Overall and his Bruiser Brigade buddy Bruiser Wolf on Quaranta<\/em>, which serves as a spiritual successor to XXX<\/em> and bookends the rapper\u2019s fortieth year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n Darius Jones turns his distinctive tone on the alto saxophone – described by The New York Times<\/em> as \u2018widely dilated, yet so rough it could peel paint\u2019 – loose on a radiant manifesto to freedom, creating a Fluxus kit for anywhere art in four movements alongside Jesse and Josh Zubot on violins, Peggy Lee on cello, James Meger on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums as part of a commission for Western Front, an artist-run centre in Vancouver.<\/p>\n David Lang – the little match girl passion<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Seeking \u2018a leaner version of the piece, a more human version, one that emphasises every breath, and that heightens the individuality of each singer\u2019 the Bang on a Can composer David Lang updates his Pulitzer Prize-winning\u00a0the little match girl passion<\/em>\u00a0featuring the vocal talents of Molly Netter, Kate Maroney, Gene Stenger, Dashon Burton, Sarah Brailey and his longtime collaborators Trio Mediaeval. The digital version of the album includes three additional tracks where Trio Mediaeval tackle \u2018i want to live\u2019, a movement from the staged oratorio\u00a0Shelter<\/em>, and offer a fresh version of \u2018just (after song of songs)\u2019, an Old Testament echo of intimacy which was adapted for Paolo Sorrentino\u2019s acclaimed comedy-drama\u00a0Youth<\/em>, while Brailey performs the album premiere of \u2018let me come in\u2019 as Lang renders fresh vistas of accessibility to a beloved work of modern choral music.<\/p>\n DJ K – PANICO NO SUBMUNDO<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n From its birth in the eighties the Brazilian genre of funk carioca cast a wide net, pulling from samba soul, Miami bass and Latin freestyle, the chanted vocals and hybrid rhythms of Afrobeat, the first boasts of gangster rap and seminal tracks like \u2018Planet Rock\u2019 and \u2018Nunk\u2019 which created the short-lived template for boogified electro. Where Afrika Bambaataa and Arthur Baker bonded over their love of the Kraftwerk songs \u2018Trans-Europe Express\u2019 and \u2018Numbers\u2019, the first breakthrough funk carioca hit interpolated \u2018Boing Boom Tschak\u2019, which was known locally as \u2018Mel\u00f4 do Porco\u2019 as funk carioca began to emerge from Rio de Janeiro\u2019s teeming favelas.<\/p>\n As the scene shifted to S\u00e3o Paulo in the 2010s, economic turmoil saw the aspirational sub-genre of funk ostenta\u00e7\u00e3o with its pop hooks and odes to glitzy consumption gradually usurped by funk mandel\u00e3o, a more sinister and nocturnal form steeped in horror tropes, minimalist beats, booming synths and dizzying repetitions. Today bruxaria which translates to \u2018witchcraft\u2019 or \u2018sorcery\u2019 is harsher still, full of eerie tones and rippling distortions. Skewing more towards contemporary trends in electronic music, where funk mandel\u00e3o sought to blow the speakers, bruxaria seeks to ruin headphones or make the eardrums bleed. And one of its foremost practitioners is DJ K, who this year unveiled his debut release for the Kampala outsider bastion Nyege Nyege Tapes.<\/p>\n Breaking out after a year of meticulous study via online tutorials for the digital audio workstation FL Studio, the electronic producer now helms the musical collective Bruxaria Sound and is firmly entrenched within the Baile do Helipa, the street party of Heli\u00f3polis which retains its title as S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s biggest favela. Through Arabic chants, blistering kicks and trilling birdsong, DJ K hones his ultra high-pitched tuin, a shrill siren call which baile funk enthusiasts associate with the auditory hallucinations caused by lan\u00e7a perfume, a cheap drug which mixes chloroethane with an essence or flavouring and provides short spurts of euphoria alongside sensitivity to high volumes. The sound of tuin then stretches towards the limits of consciousness, even as DJ K introduces\u00a0PANICO NO SUBMUNDO<\/em>\u00a0with a nod to the \u2018Erva Venenosa\u2019 of the national rock icon Rita Lee.<\/p>\n Ensemble Dedalus & eRikm – Fata Morgana<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Described alternately as a process of sieving or forestation, the composer, turntablist and visual artist eRikm turns his hand to the acousmographe, a software tool devised by Ina GRM for the graphical representation and analysis of electroacoustic music and other sound spectra, including those outside the field of human auditory perception. Scanning a diverse array of field recordings, including the sounds of cetaceans and amphibians recorded during trips to Australia and Tasmania, through the acousmographe before transposing them into musical notes and handing both parts to a group of outstanding musicians, the result is splayed as a kind of Fata Morgana, a superior mirage comprised of stackings and distortions of the original image. Encapsulated by the smudged strings and fraying electronics of \u2018Ambre Gris\u2019, on Fata Morgana<\/em>\u00a0the renowned collaborator teams up with members of the Dedalus Ensemble from Toulouse, including Didier Aschour on guitar, Am\u00e9lie Berson on flute, Thierry Madiot on trombone, Christian Pruvost on trumpet, and the acclaimed duo of Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker on violin and cello.<\/p>\n F\u00e9licia Atkinson – Ni envers ni endroit que cette roche br\u00fblante (Pour Georgia O\u2019Keeffe)<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n On her latest side for Portraits GRM, the label which now operates in collaboration with her own Shelter Press following the untimely death in 2021 of Peter Rehberg, the French musician F\u00e9licia Atkinson conjures the haunts and attitudes of the American modernist painter and draftswoman Georgia O\u2019Keeffe through snatches of soft-spoken word, faint outcrops of piano, field recordings and the buzz and chime of arid electronics. Described as a meditation on the mystery of art and the act of creation, Atkinson draws not only from O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s cherished canvases but from her home in the village of Abiqui\u00fa, her summer house twelve miles north at Ghost Ranch and her New Mexico surrounds, as daybreak tones stretch like swathes of light over the plains or pitch and drop like searchlights ferreting out new vistas, waves of static decay play like fraying strings or the placid chirp of crickets, and piano keys fall in spurts like steep chasms or surge up in elephantine billows. Over the patient hum of these \u2018somnambulic oscillations\u2019, Atkinson would see through O\u2019Keeffe\u2019s eyes, addressing the painter directly or inhabiting her words, uttering lines like \u2018my skin feels close to the earth when I walk out into the red hills\u2019 which were presented in conjunction with the Tate Modern retrospective\u00a0My Faraway Nearby<\/em>\u00a0a few months prior to the onset of the pandemic. On the flip side of the physical release, Richard Chartier of the LINE imprint continues to dwell at the frontier of audible sound, conjuring the electrical impulses of the sinus node and those heartswells which pinch and flutter at our heartbeat.<\/p>\n Fire! Orchestra – Echoes<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Splayed and arrayed around the core trio of Mats Gustafsson on baritone saxophone, Johan Berthling on double bass and Andreas Werlin on drums, Fire! Orchestra embark on their most ambitious effort to date over the six sides and nearly two hours of Echoes<\/em>. Upping the ante with a mostly Scandinavian cast of 43 members, the record features such longtime practitioners as Susana Santos Silva, Josefin Runsteen and Mariam Wallentin plus newfangled collaborators like Martin Hederos and Mette Rasmussen, maintaining a fine balance between high drama, bucolic wayfaring and moments of slapstick comedy, carefully brandishing the whip while loosing all constraints.<\/p>\n Structured around the seven parts of the title piece, Echoes<\/em> buckles and sways between the cascading jazz vamp of ‘I see your eye, part 1’ and the galloping theatrics of ‘Forest without shadows’, while the screeching crescendos and blunt histrionics of ‘Lost eyes in dying hand’ are buttressed by drain pipe swirls and horn slides as the track maintains a bluesy dirge. Through choral swells and percussive surges, on ‘Cala Boca Menino’ the orchestra pays tribute to the bossa nova pianist Jo\u00e3o Donato, while on the reprise ‘I see your eye, part 2’ the great Joe McPhee on tenor and vocals boasts the last of the great finger wigglers, allowing the Fire! Orchestra to exit stage embers aglow under the cover of a starry night. Swapping out much of the lineup for a cross-generational blend of local musicians, Echoes<\/em> was if anything even more visceral, more ribald and bombastic as the orchestra crammed the stage in Gustafsson’s hometown to cap the first full night of this year’s Ume\u00e5 Jazz Festival.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023-Separator-8.png?resize=380%2C30&ssl=1\")
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Ale Hop & Laura Robles – Agua Dulce<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/Allen-Lowe-In-the-Dark-America-The-Rough-Cut.gif?resize=320%2C285&ssl=1\")
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Darius Jones – fLuXkit Vancouver (its<\/del> suite but sacred)<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/wp-content\/uploads\/David-Lang-the-little-match-girl-passion.jpeg?resize=300%2C300&ssl=1\")
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