Following the delicate harmonies and swinging melodies of Mesmerism, the album of standards which Tyshawn Sorey released in the summer alongside the bassist Matt Brewer and pianist Aaron Diehl, the drummer returns to the repertoire for something more freewheeling in the form of a three-and-a-half hour live recording from a performance at The Jazz Gallery in New York. Enlisting Russell Hall on the bass to accompany Diehl, while adding the esteemed alto saxophonist Greg Osby to elaborate the trio, The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism finds Sorey leading his group through searing and spontaneous renditions of songs by Fats Waller, Thelonious Monk, and Billy Strayhorn, by Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and McCoy Tyner, and by Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Jimmy Van Heusen, and Johnny Burke. At the heart of the set, ‘Ashes’ draws out the grace notes embedded within Andrew Hill’s ballad, finding Osby in fine fettle on a tune which originally appeared as the opening track of his 2000 album The Invisible Hand.
As Touch celebrates forty years of fierce resistance to the status and trappings of ‘record label’, the prolific yet never profligate multi-instrumentalist Patrick Shiroishi marks his debut for the renowned audiovisual company with an unusual approach to the genre of field recording. From a couple of trips to Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles where several generations of his family are buried, Shiroishi emanates from within the dotted landscape rather than skirting its borders or imposing melodies atop or alongside of an enveloping hum, the stately and plangent sounds of his woodwinds and the quivering and summoning of synths peeking between the rustle of leaves and background oratory for a stirring treatise on stillness and presence.
Gloria de Oliveira draws inspiration from Agnès Varda, Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, and the accompanying score by Nino Rota as she embarks on a celestial Brazilian island for the video to the seminal song from her recent album with Dean Hurley, the lustrous and languidly introspective ‘Eyes Within’. Rat Heart tries not to be snide while chafing against the ties that bind, Backxwash completes a trilogy of caterwauling catharsis, and Ivo Perelman tells an impromptu jazz supergroup with Chad Fowler, Steve Hirsh, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, and Zoh Amba to ‘stay on one note and really honk it like an old rock song’ on what would become the title track of the imminent full-length Alien Skin.
Eden Samara lays down an ultimatum on the opening of Rough Night, billed as ‘a tragicomedy in seven scenes and an interlude’ as the Canadian artist comes of age with additional production flourishes from Call Super, Shanti Celeste, TSVI, and Loraine James. Tom Skinner wields the scissors and cuts deep to find the journey at the centre of Voices of Bishara, bearing glad tidings between the dovetailing tenors of Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia, who also play bass clarinet and flute with Kareem Dayes on cello and Tom Herbert on acoustic bass. Yves Tumor sees the spectre of God in life’s same old circle, the sound sculptor Sawako returns with her first solo album since 2014, the bassist Dezron Douglas gets caffeinated with a special blend of beans from Ethiopia, and tracks by Klein, Tomu DJ, and Yo La Tengo complete the best of the week.
Playlists: Spotify · Apple Music · YouTube
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Patrick Shiroishi – ‘there is no moment in which they are not with me’
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Backxwash – ‘VIBANDA’ (feat. Morgan-Paige & Michael Go)
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Chad Fowler, Ivo Perelman, Zoh Amba, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, and Steve Hirsh – ‘Alien Skin’
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Yves Tumor – ‘God Is a Circle’
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Dezron Douglas – ‘More Coffee Please’
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Tyshawn Sorey Trio with Greg Osby – ‘Ashes’
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Rat Heart – ‘Operation Always Be A Brave Little Cunt’
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Tomu DJ – ‘At The Club Tonight’ (feat. YoungLove)
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Gloria de Oliveira & Dean Hurley – ‘Eyes Within’
