In the blistering August heat past the scorched remains of field fires which set ablaze the Waveney Valley, easing down narrow lanes and edging her way betwixt dotted meadows of immutable dairy, with her overbow violin in tow Laura Cannell pushed open the oak and iron doors of St Andrew’s Church in Raveningham to break the silence of the empty space, buttressed by field recordings of bells and tawny owls plus the medieval drones of the church organ. Hot on the heels of Unlocking Rituals, now the prolific composer unveils the second in a series of live improvisations centred around the pipe organs found inside rural East Anglian churches, described by Cannell as the original loudspeakers embedded within the English landscape.
With Patrick Shiroishi on saxophone, Chris Williams on trumpet, Jessica Ackerley on guitar, Luke Stewart on bass, and Jason Nazary on drums the supergroup SSWAN don an invisible cloak for a debut of searing improvisation and sensitive listening on 577 Records. Originally composed for the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale and the mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, the evergreen Caroline Shaw and Attacca Quartet lay down their take on ‘And So’ from the Is a Rose song trilogy.
Dawn Richard’s boundless vocals sway over the lithe arrangements of Spencer Zahn on the first movement of an album conceived as a love letter to New Orleans. And from Tokyo the producer Taro Nohara issues eight tracks of ambient bliss as he blends elements of downtempo and jazz for his own suspended take on kankyÅ ongaku, the background-blurring environmental music devised and popularised by such luminaries as Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa, and Midori Takada.
Nikolaj Svaneborg and Jonas Kardyb lift the lid on their latest concoction, mixing shades of Scandinavian jazz and electronica with delicate percussion rooted in folk and the blues. With nods to the minimalism of Steve Reich and contrapuntal renderings of the guzheng or kora, the venerable noisemaker Bill Orcutt conjures splintering earworms for four treble-kicked guitars. And following up on a spellbinding set with Lynn Avery, the composer Cole Pulice explores gradient states of liminality through a graceful combination of saxophone and wind synthesizer with live signal processing.
Laila Sakini and the poet Lucy Van return with an expanded and remastered edition of Figures, adding rough desires and tall trees to the enveloping dusk-clad thicket. Enumclaw pray for change a thousand times and make it happen come rain or shine, while Cosima wants to hold and be held hoping for somebody to love again at the wind-down of a shimmering summer. TSHA stays rapt in the shadows, as tracks by Mansur Brown, Sam Wilkes, Jacob Mann, Klein, and Open Mike Eagle complete the roundup of best new music.
Playlists: Spotify Ā· Apple Music Ā· YouTube
* * *
* * *
Laura Cannell – ‘Dried Hands Pluck the Stems’
* * *
Caroline Shaw & Attacca Quartet – ‘And So’
* * *
* * *
Taro Nohara – ‘African Buddhist Temple’
* * *
Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn – ‘Vantablack’
* * *
Sam Wilkes & Jacob Mann – ‘Siri, How Do I Know If I Have Commitment Issues?’
* * *
* * *
* * *
SSWAN – ‘Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster’
* * *
Open Mike Eagle – ‘I’ll Fight You’
* * *
Cole Pulice – ‘City in a City’
* * *
* * *
Laila Sakini & Lucy Van – ‘Rough Desires’
* * *
COSIMA – ‘Somebody!’
* * *
