Born in Oslo and splitting his childhood between there and Bali as he learned circular breathing through the resonances of the flute and didgeridoo, attending a music conservatory in Copenhagen before basing himself betwixt the heady nightclubs of Berlin, the saxophonist Bendik Giske spent ten years traversing the margins and peeling away the excesses of his instrument. Seeking a fuller manifestation of the body, drawing upon the diverse influences of gamelan music and techno, the queer futurity and ecstatic time of José Esteban Muñoz and Jack Halberstam’s low theory which describes the ‘utility of getting lost over finding our way’, now on his third album for Smalltown Supersound the artist collaborates with the composer and synth builder Bridget Ferrill who serves as record producer, stripping away layers of melody to expose the pulses and sinews of his music through a mesmerizing focus on pattern and rhythm.
Like the triumphal march of truth which comes in fits and starts and whose course is furious and vexed or at best only circumambulatory, on O Life, O Light Vol. 1 alongside the legendary bassist William Parker and percussionist Francisco Mela, the tenor saxophonist and flautist Zoh Amba emerged from the Appalachian Mountains bearing the folk patterns, swirling incantations, and full-throated sonority of Albert Ayler at his peak. On the second volume for the New York free jazz bastion 577 Records, the artist continues to honour her roots over two tracks packed full of folk melodies and spellbinding refrains, as ‘Dance of Bliss’ marks the dizzying summit, while ‘Three Flowers’ plays out as a staggered and watery descent as Amba lays down her tenor to lead with a sprightly ditty on the flute.
As labels like Muscut and its archival imprint Shukai continue to draw attention to the Ukrainian independent scene, the avant-garde pioneer and soprano vocalist Svitlana Nianio harbours a second wind following her return to live performance in 2017, with the collaborative album Eye of the Sea alongside the multi-instrumentalist Tom James Scott due out on Skire at the start of next month. Back in the nineties, the conservatory graduate was a member of the experimental Kyiv collective Cukor Bila Smert’, released her debut solo album Kytytsi on the cult Polish label Koka Records, partnered with the illustrator and instrument builder Oleksandr Yurchenko for an album recorded in an abandoned park which featured her Casio keyboard and soprano sublimations over the tender refrains of the hammered dulcimer, and toured extensively in Poland and Germany before the turn of the century saw her briefly fall off the face of the earth.
It was in Cologne in 1994 that Nianio collaborated with the dance group Pentamonia, on a project which would be dubbed with the evocative name Transilvania Smile. Directed by the choreographer Isabel Bartenstein while Nianio played, sang and improvised, the piece of dance theatre was performed at the former gallery space Urania in Cologne and again in Aachen, before the producer Michael Springer invited Nianio to record her compositions at his Phanton studio. Featuring her signature blend of folk motifs, beguiling melodies and vocals which stretch and strain towards the liturgical, here accompanied by the roving and sometimes elegiac strains of piano and harmonium which together conjure everything from the polyphonies of Pérotin to the austere night march of Connie Converse’s haunted reverie ‘One by One’, some of the songs which make up Transilvania Smile were released on cassette compilations during the nineties, now finally gathered by Shukai in their original form.
With the Stradivarius Feuermann in tow and Julien Brocal behind the piano, the Franco-Belgian cellist Camille Thomas closes the first chapter of her three-disc journey devoted to the life and works of Frédéric Chopin with an homage to the inimitable French actress and chanteuse Jane B. The slinky centrepiece of an album-length love letter, the original composition was arranged by Arthur Greenslade as an adaptation of Chopin’s Prelude No. 4 in E Minor for the Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin collaboration also known as Je t’aime . . . moi non plus. Here Birkin reprises her vocal with a wistful redolence, sounding lustrous and honeyed as ever while Thomas and Brocal slowly envelop her voice in an aching swell of strings and keys.
The surrealist blues poet Aja Monet unspools themes of love, joy and Black resistance capped by a call upon the Yoruba orisha Yemaya, who through gifts of papaya, coconut and cotton flower is tasked with summoning ancestors and quieting the rage wrought by the flailing arms and crying voices of those lost at sea. Fresh from his atmospheric journey through fading lights, fog and rain for the collaborative project IIKKI, the Japanese soundscraper Akhira Sano embraces the discreet punctuations and smooth oscillations of sine waves against a layer of noise, static and microscopic on his first release for 12k. Caught between the clamour of dwindling romance as it clatters through his bedroom wall and the spiritual invocations of The Emancipation of Mimi, the shapeshifter Shamir nuzzles inside his oversized sweater and finds just enough nourishment to sustain his inner artist, while tracks by Jess Williamson, Laura Cannell and Rosalía also feature in the latest roundup of best new music.
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Jess Williamson – ‘Time Ain’t Accidental’
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Svitlana Nianio – ‘Episode III’
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Zoh Amba – ‘Three Flowers’ (feat. William Parker & Francisco Mela)
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ROSALÍA – ‘TUYA’
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Laura Cannell – ‘SONAR FORESTS’
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Camille Thomas, Jane Birkin and Julien Brocal – ‘Jane B’
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Akhira Sano – ‘Cytoarchitecture’
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