Following up on the limpid rhythms, percussive riffs and shifting tectonics of Diatom Ribbons, which saw Kris Davis explore the hidden world of unicellular microalgae in the company of such luminaries as Marc Ribot, Nels Cline and Esperanza Spalding plus longtime collaborators Tony Malaby, Ches Smith and Trevor Dunn, this week the pianist unfurls a new live album in the same motley spirit, adding to the core trio of the bassist Dunn, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and turntablist Val Jeanty through the sonorous peaks and chasms of Julian Lage’s six-string. With Lage roiling the waters, forcing the unconventional quintet to wade through in search of a new sound, Live at the Village Vanguard makes Davis only the fourth female instrumentalist to have led a recording from the iconic Greenwich Village venue, tracing the footsteps of Shirley Horn, Junko Onishi and Geri Allen, whose supple and sprightly composition ‘The Dancer’ serves here to frame the first side. Whereas Diatom Ribbons emerged out of a series of tribute concerts to Allen and drew inspiration from the Monk Centennial and the works of Cecil Taylor, who had recently passed away, Live at the Village Vanguard figures the birdsong and blues calls of Olivier Messiaen and Charlie Parker, the intuitive music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, plus compositions by Ronald Shannon Jackson and Wayne Shorter and snippets from Eric Dolphy, Paul Bley, Conlon Nancarrow and Sun Ra.
Radicalising ensembles through her signature blend of Vodou-Electro, which channels her Afro-Haitian heritage, pulling ancient traditions into the future and beyond, the turntablist and sampler Val Jeanty also appears alongside Chris Tordini and Tyshawn Sorey on Alula: Captivity, the latest soaring iteration from the saxophonist and vocalist Caroline Davis, a portion of whose sales will go the grassroots organisation Critical Resistance which strives to end the prison industrial complex. Through the tangy sweetness of ‘Pink Guava’ the juke maverick Jana Rush caps a second album of club pressure from the London label MAL Recordings, with all proceeds from the digital edition of the compilation going towards the cost of living crisis via the national homelessness charity Crisis UK.
An offering to absence whose cover photograph by Aurèlie Raidron evokes the exploded canopies and smudged cerebrums of Francis Bacon and David Lynch, the tenor saxophonist Camila Nebbia explores the harsh extremities of her instrument. Billed as ‘something for everyone’ by way of ten experiments in psychoacoustics, timbre and minimalism, the composer Sarah Davachi unveils two volumes of selected works beginning with the the aching synth drones of ‘Alms Vert’ from her debut album The Untuning of the Sky.
Prompted by a radio programme which featured the strained sounds of a piano being demolished by sledgehammers, an act instigated or otherwise inspired by Al Hansen, Yoko Ono and John Cage, in 1968 the pioneering KRAB-FM radio station in Seattle, the short-lived Helix newspaper which was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the Liberation News Service, and the radio producer and musician Larry Van Over conspired to push an upright piano out of a helicopter which was hovering above Van Over’s farm in the small town of Duvall. Some decades later, in 2019 an exhibition was conceived which for the first time put the instrument’s shattered remains on display.
The Seattleite and rigorously de-trained cellist Lori Goldston happened upon an idea to record new music using the remnants of the piano, noting that ‘The idea had to do with exploring ephemeral aspects of this object that was acted on so violently, finding ways to coax it to speak through resonance’. Performed and recorded live at the Jack Straw Cultural Center, the composer and engineer Alan Jones engaged directly with the piano board via a network of found objects and transducers, accompanied by Goldston on her trusty cello, Greg Kelley on the trumpet, and Austin Larkin on the violin. In their own words the result was ‘a rich lattice of enmeshed feedback and shards of implied melody that focus, merge and give relief to an implied map of the piano at rest’.
Referencing the GOOD Music motto and the exposed bust and middle part of the Hebrew gebirah Bathsheba, with an introduction from Pink Siifu over the junk percussion and pungent production of DJ Haram, the duo of ELUCID and billy woods drop the trauma mic on the first track from We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, a welcome return for the New York City mythmakers and fumy ruminators Armand Hammer. Jaimie Branch brings a boisterous trumpet line to bear on the joyous ‘baba louie’, more than a last gasp but a great billowing from the posthumous album with her flagship ensemble Fly or Die.
Connecting all the way back in 2019 at the Nyege Nyege villa in Kampala, the Welsh noisemaker Elvin Brandhi and Lord Spikeheart of the ravenous Nairobi metal band Duma use glottal percussion as a form of ardent expression on the title track of their scabrous and scintillating long-play Drunk In Love. A meditative project centred around vulnerability and healing, the Yoruba poet and alternative jazz singer muva of Earth elaborates on her upcoming debut for Brownswood Recordings through the celestial quivers and ringing affirmatives of ‘your intuition is your friend’. Using the renovated Hotel Arkada in Croatia as an extended metaphor, recalling the benevolent warmth of a childhood hug from Big Bird of Sesame Street fame, the harpist Mary Lattimore wraps around her close friends the songwriter Meg Baird and accordionist Walt McClements on the opening track of a paean to companionship and loss, the beauty of ephemerality and the ineluctability of change.
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Elvin Brandhi & Lord Spikeheart – ‘DRUNK IN LOVE’
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Armand Hammer – ‘Trauma Mic’ (feat. Pink Siifu)
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muva of Earth – ‘your intuition is your friend’
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Mary Lattimore – ‘And Then He Wrapped His Wings Around Me’ (feat. Meg Baird & Walt McClements)
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Camila Nebbia – ‘deshabitarse’
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Lori Goldston, A.F. Jones, Greg Kelley and Austin Larkin – ‘Three’
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Caroline Davis – ‘burned believers (for Agnes and Huguette)’
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