Tracks of the Week 01.04.23

Singing through a ring modulator offset by the distortions and amplifications of the surrounding band, which drew upon an unconventional background in aspects of Dixieland jazz, Indian classical ragas, John Cage, and Karlheinz Stockhausen while earning equal renown for the left-wing political content of their music, as the frontwoman of The United States of America the vocalist Dorothy Moskowitz blurred contemporary rock and roll with the avant-garde, contributing to a hardwired sound at the cutting edge of synthesized psychedelia. The United States of America released just one album in 1968, and after forays with Country Joe in the seventies now Moskowitz returns to the fold with the first album under her own name, teaming with the Italian composer Francesco Paolo Paladino and his longtime collaborative partner, the writer and lyricist Luca Chino Ferrari. Once more eschewing guitars, on Under an Endless Sky the voice of Moskowitz swims and swoons, coils and swirls engulfed by the carnivalesque melodies of Paladino plus acoustic interventions by way of strings, woodwinds, and percussion.

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 new album Being, still kicking strong months away from his seventieth birthday.

A street poet with a penchant for Shakespeare and Homer, on Yellow Peril with a tenebrous ode to some of the fear and frenzy of the pandemic, the Korean-American blues musician Nat Myers hops trains and burns up highways in a heady reflection of his growing wanderlust. Multiplying like spores, Björk releases a trippy new video for the Fossora title track alongside Kasimyn of Gabber Modus Operandi. From an Andalusian catholic march to heavyweight dub via jazz, post punk, and the mystical strains of mallet percussion, the addition of the bassist Susumu Mukai turns Holy Tongue into a fully-fledged band, helmed by Valentina Magaletti on drums and the producer and multi-instrumentalist Al Wootton. Guided by the vocalist Danielle Kranendonk and the producer Stephen Raynes, the North London outfit Aurora Dee Raynes braid chillout grooves, funky licks, and soulful hooks like so many ribbons of hot plasma.

Heeding warnings of a mass extinction event and buffeted like the rest by the onslaught of the news cycle, on The Last Quiet Place the saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock rebuffs retreat while seeking a space that might still the mind, a feat she achieves through shifting tone rows, the squibs and squalls of her horn, and staggered bows alongside a new ensemble featuring Mazz Swift on violin, Tomeka Reid on cello, Brandon Seabrook on guitar, and Michael Formanek on double bass while Tom Rainey provides the skittering percussion. With a stark palette of solo trombone, voice, effects, and little more the stately sculptor and sonorous improviser Kalia Vandever opens We Fell In Turn with recollections from the shore. And in the middle of a Norfolk cattle field with her trusty violin and overbowed violin in tow, Laura Cannell ricochets among the metal grooves of an oversized shipping container.

From Kinshasa the Fulu Miziki member DJ Finale steps out solo to brainstorm a dauntless hybrid dance sound, swirling soukous rhythms with scabrous electronics. For the flaring riffs, silvery flutes, and plangent neo-trap beats of ‘Pitschu Debou’, the artist is joined by his Fulu Miziki collaborators DeBoul and Le Meilleur. The seminal Helsinki jazz label Ricky-Tick Records marks its return after more than ten years, teaming up with We Jazz Records for an album of swinging big band, described as Felliniesque for its exuberant sprawl and sense of playfully winsome nostalgia. Kerkko Koskinen composes eight rhythmic scores for UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra and the sax soloist Linda Fredriksson.

After moving to the capital of car culture, the Hyperdub songwriter Jessy Lanza’s fresh start in Los Angeles almost went awry when she narrowly avoided the onrushing wheels of a motor vehicle. Instead on her first standalone single of 2023, she turns her propensity for bubblegum hooks, pulsing beats and piquant dancefloor dysphoria into an upbeat entreaty in the form of ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’, wishing away the cars as they make haste through the sunset haze leaving palm-lined streets strewn with trails of vulcanized rubber. The Ugandan rapper Mc Yallah won’t sell herself short as she reunites to startling effect with the Berlin producer Debmaster. Finally extracting the core groove from a moodier song, Jófríður Ákadóttir slows things down with a deep inhalation of breath and gets walloped in the face by a wave of existentialism.

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Kalia Vandever – ‘Recollections From Shore’