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Whatever makes for the wilderness you might well find in this week’s alternative roundup, as the shimmering landscapes of Raphael Rogínski with the vocalist Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė in tow summon venerable grass snake spirits on the Lithuanian border, Waclaw Zimpel adds a wiry and scraping tenuousness to the bronzed arcs and thick furrows of his alto clarinet through a machine which gives musical form to the electrical impulses in living bread dough, and the formidable duo of Jen Powers and Matthew J. Rolin scale back their atomic Americana and hone in on lava flows for a couple of rocky ragas, editing and augmenting their hammered dulcimer and guitar in the tradition of Teo Macero’s groundbreaking work on In a Silent Way.
Elaborating on the patterns of his last album Rhododendron, the Montreal producer d’Eon offers a synthesised take on chamber music, with the twelve tracks of Leviathan sounding typically labyrinthine, much like a cross between baroque down-bow and contrapuntal techniques and the waterlogged ruins of a fabled Sonic the Hedgehog zone, less claustrophobic than sailswept and swashbuckling, a quasi-epic high sea adventure redolent as much of the odorous ambergris which has floated to the surface as those sperm whales which click and burble in the vast below.
The first volume of Shine Hear by the improvisational icons and 577 Records stalwarts Daniel Carter, Leo Genovese, William Parker and Francisco Mela was one of my favourite jazz albums of the past year. The second volume opens with a fine Latin number, inspired once more by Carter’s poetic tributes to the interminable motion of life in New York City. At the instigation of Giovanni Di Domenico, the pianist and his seasoned collaborators Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, Jim O’Rourke and Eiko Ishibashi with the addition of the young saxophonist Kei Matsumaru preserve the cosy yet refined intimacy of the Sakuraza club in Kōfu.
Loula Yorke sails long and speaks vast in her monolithic interpretation of the phrase ‘quiet details’, as tracks by the ambient jazz duo Black Decelerant, the brass-and-reeds instrumentalist Tomin Perea-Chamblee, a Brooklynite whose lo-fi miniatures are aired in honour of his maternal grandmother, and the window gazers and garden wanderers wist in another boon from the Belgian label Stroom complete the latest roundup.
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Daniel Carter, Leo Genovese, William Parker and Francisco Mela – ‘Sentimental Moments’
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Loula Yorke – ‘monolithic undertow’
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Raphael Rogínski – ‘Šilinis Viržis’ (feat. Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė)
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d’Eon – ‘Installation of the Cisterns’
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