David Lynch, the transcendental meditator and itinerant Eagle Scout who believes that a daily routine allows the mind to travel unfettered, has at pivotal moments of his artistic career been inspired by the limpid light or electric spark of visions, whether the manicured lawns and picket fences which sprung up one day as he listened to the Bobby Vinton hit ‘Blue Velvet’ or the image of a severed ear in a field which provided a portal to his film of the same name, or the hot roof of a car which conjured when touched the first iconic Red Room scene from Twin Peaks replete with drapes, chevron flooring and backwards digressions. His new album Cellophane Memories with frequent collaborator Chrystabell also hails from a vision, which he experienced during ‘a nighttime walk through a forest of tall trees, over the tops of which he saw a bright light’ which turned out to be the lilt of Chrystabell’s voice and disclosed a mysterious secret.
That might sound fairly rote for Lynch but Chrystabell is at this point not only entrenched within his artistic world but part of the firmament. Having met in the late nineties, she sang the indelible ‘Polish Poem’ which bookends Inland Empire and Lynch served as the co-writer and producer of her records This Train and Somewhere in the Nowhere before she played the FBI agent Tammy Preston in the third season of Twin Peaks, a divisive character for some fans who serves as a jerky third wheel while cracking the fourth wall in typically Lynchian fashion. Chrystabell subsequently worked with other producers over a trio of albums which foregrounded her voice and even flecked across the glitter ball of disco, but these songs for all of their rockabilly twang, woozy synths and propulsive beats still felt grounded in a dreamy pop with an ethereal haunt which despite all of the grind seems indivisible from her nature.
The obvious touchstone for Lynch’s own musical career will always be his work with Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti, particularly Cruise’s debut album Floating into the Night which furnished the theme song for Twin Peaks as well as the standouts ‘Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart’ and ‘Mysteries of Love’, which begat the whole enterprise when Lynch desired This Mortal Coil’s cover of ‘Song to the Siren’ for Blue Velvet but found it prohibitively expensive.
After the bristling electronics and crackling blues of his own solo efforts Crazy Clown Time and The Big Dream, where he worked alongside the composer and eerie sound designer Dean Hurley, for these Cellophane Memories he returns to more dreamy and wistful fare, producing and arranging the record and playing synthesizers and guitar, accompanied briefly by Hurley on synthesizers, drums and bass while Badalamenti, who died in December of 2022 at the age of 85 years old, returns for one final embrace as the familiar rapture and disquiet of his keys feature via a couple of salvaged instrumentals.
More than the ample backing music however, Cellophane Memories is defined by Chrystabell’s layered voice as it laps less like waves than the rustling of leaves in that forest, covering and cosseting or whipping sideways with a hint of menace. Creating a patchwork of not only sound but meaning as it frays and overlaps while she repeats key phrases, her voice might seem simply spellbinding at first but on repeat listens she appears to sing with a surveying eye, those layered vocals offering varying impressions of moments as they occur, both scanning and interpreting even as she unfolds typically abstruse lyrics.
Take the opening song ‘She Knew’ for instance which seems to fracture around the repetition of the line ‘She had been swimming’. An otherwise straightforward depiction of a chance encounter as eligible eyes meet from across opposite sides of the pool, with a sad departure and the emotional rupture of a connection foregone and the thought of never seeing that person again, something seems to flicker as the singer recounts in the past perfect tense that swim and falters over the half-eaten remains of ‘a lunch she had brought from home’. Something more furtive is underfoot as Badalamenti’s synths swell and a sense of knowing, through cooing repetitions and ellipses, gives way to the endless tears of a timeless cry, the act of stepping out of the pool as though playing on loop as covert lovers beckon in their absence.
The vocals on ‘The Sky Falls’ are jazzier while ‘You Know the Rest’ is more bluesy, as the humming overtones of Lynch’s guitar vie with a slack and seductive patter, the spatter of rain and a full garage on a warm but overcast evening as Chrystabell plays the vamp. Lines and images stick out like a sore thumb, spurs to memory like the dinner of ‘meat and potatoes’ here or the refrain on ‘The Answers to the Questions’ where an ‘unshakeable bond’ might be ‘too good to be true’.
Back with Badalamenti on ‘So Much Love’, those sustained keys which land somewhere between trepidation and elegy are redolent of ‘Falling’ or ‘Mysteries of Love’ with its windblown candle and languorous yet liminal romance. ‘Two Lovers Kiss’ which vocally continues in the same vein is a kind of nocturne as a couple consummates their commingling, with a countryfied air almost like those Elvis at Sun recordings given the moonlit reverb of Lynch’s guitar playing.
The lurching drums of ‘The Answers to the Questions’ portend a bit of rockabilly swagger, which does emerge but at a molasses or syrupy pace like a waltz or some other slow dance. ‘With Small Animals’ is a smudged vision which ebbs and flows and buries the bluesy ‘Cyprus Avenue’ image of rainbows and sunshine in a woman’s hair, while ‘Reflections in a Blade’ is even more murky, characterised by an electronic treatment from Hurley which sounds a bit like the ‘ominous whooshing’ from the third season of Twin Peaks. The vocals sustain the ambiance, as Chrystabell outlines a desperate game of hide and seek where the light of a flashlight dances ‘like a shiny knife blade’ before the intended victim wakes up screaming and laughing, for thank God it was only a dream.
Then ‘Dance of Light’ cuts through the clouds, through aching yet transportive chords and circling vocals which seem especially enchanted for their transparent dewiness, their honeyed fragrance and tender silveriness. Cellophane Memories draws to a close with an evocation of the sublime, through a Burkean or Kantian understanding of the concept whereby the sublime object might prompt feelings of terror or defy human comprehension, yet here through the trembling and crying of the lyrics and the tremulous rise and fall of celestial synths the equation resolves as it so often does for Lynch, in the limp yet steadfast arms of love.
The saxophonist Mette Rasmussen and turntablist Val Jeanty continue to be two of the most requested names in free jazz, whether the Danish alto is hollowing out her instrument with Zeena Parkins and Ryan Sawyer as Glass Triangle, adopting oblique strategies with Joe McPhee and Dennis Tyfus or digging out the searing melodies and highland drones of a live performance with Akira Sakata, Jim O’Rourke and Chris Corsano at the old SuperDeluxe in Nishi-Azabu, while Jeanty who defines her sound as ‘Afro-electronica’ might be found improvising with Kris Davis onstage or weaving impromptu stories around such themes as Haitian folklore and the black womanly divine alongside Candice Hoyes and Mimi Jones as Nite Bjuti.
For their eponymous debut album as ØKSE they are joined by the drummer Savannah Harris, who has collaborated on a crossover selection of some of the best records of the past few years in the form of Mali Obomsawin’s gnawing Sweet Tooth, with Angelika Niescier and Tomeka Reid for the blazing interplay of Beyond Dragons, carrying along the warm breezes and fond reminiscences of Phasor by Helado Negro and gazing into a Perpetual Void as part of the all-new Marta Sanchez Trio.
Recording between Studio Paradiso in Oslo and Brooklyn Recording Paradise, it is the versatile Swedish multi-instrumentalist Petter Eldh who completes the lineup on bass, samplers and synthesizers, with his recent work including records on ECM and We Jazz with his longtime musical partners Kit Downes and Otis Sandsjö. The name ØKSE means ‘axe’ in Rasmussen’s native Danish, and while the album notes offer a likeness to the Yoruba philosophy àṣẹ as life flow, the band cleave into their debut offering, which is probably the furthest foray into avant-garde jazz to date on the experimental hip hop label Backwoodz Studioz.
As four rappers come along for the ride, ØKSE squawk and squeal into life on the opening track ‘Skopje’, which features ELUCID of Armand Hammer. The steely ruminator identifies his sound as ‘doom gospel’, pores over the shaping of shifty sentences and with a degree of irony dwells on the task of running a record label, where ‘logistic decisions and safe words’ are the first order of business, covering appearances with the lines ‘Digital overlords don’t need free promo / Church clothes, good shoes, stone-faced in the photo’. Speaking of the discovery process and his efforts on the track, ELUCID writes:
woods came home from somewhere in some nordic region talking about the really cool saxophonist who played free jazz named Mette. he shared a few links from one of her projects and indeed, she had some far out sounds. fast forward a few months, i got word that Mette was putting together a project with a few other players for a Backwoodz release. I hadn’t heard a note of what came to be called ØKSE’s new material but i wanted to be involved. Unfortunately, i was out of town when the band converged in NYC to record the initial tracks for the album. Mette gave me the bands demo. I was immediately drawn to the interplay of the turntablist and drums. The track already seemed complete to me. I wrote to where i found the pockets.
On other parts of the record free saxophone squalls around beefed-up handclaps with growls, spliced African chants and serpentine hisses also used for their percussive qualities. It’s all about the interplay to be found between the highs of Rasmussen’s alto and Jeanty’s bristling electronics and turntable scratches, between those tables and Savannah Harris’s roiling drums which seem to occupy separate sides of the mix, creating a space or chasm in which the other actors might operate, and which together with Eldh’s bass make for a toxically potent rhythm section.
The selection of rappers become part of the tapestry, with the staccato lurch and woozy bass of ‘Amager’ featuring the Backwoodz head billy woods giving a little bit of Madvillainy, as he unpacks what must be the keenest depiction of airport security yet recorded to tape, beginning with the intrusive lines ‘Colourblind drug dog flopped on the floor, head on his paws / The customs palm my clean drawers’. The distant horn and dank shuffle of ‘The Dive’ bears another Brooklynite in maassai, while fresh from his studio rebirth on Different Type Time the transient philosopher Cavalier arrives late over the industrial beats and synth vamps of ‘Kdance 92’, before Rasmussen uncorks the bottle. Then the clave patterns and limpid saxophone runs of ‘Onwards (keep going)’ cede to a street carnival of pan flutes and chimes as ØKSE revel in their album’s closing moments.
The buoyant vibraphonist Patricia Brennan – a Michael Formanek, Matt Mitchell and Tomas Fujiwara collaborator who by virtue of Mary Halvorson’s Cloudward and Stephan Crump’s Slow Water has already starred on some of the best records of the year – is still making her mark as a leader and has found a home on the pianist Kris Davis’s always riveting Pyroclastic Records, where she expands on the deft rhythms and tactile rhapsodies of More Water by adding to that sensile backbone through a trio of horns. The drummer Marcus Gilmore, percussionist Mauricio Herrera and bassist Kim Cass are joined by Jon Irabagon on alto and sopranino saxophones, Adam O’Farrill on trumpet with occasional electronics and Mark Shim on the tenor saxophone for her upcoming septet album Breaking Stretch, whose first salvo is the sparkling ‘Palo de Oros (Suit of Coins)’.
Billed as an exploration of motherhood and a celebration of new life as it enters into our world, the violinist Mari Samuelsen closes her third album for Deutsche Grammophon through a rendition of Bryce Dessner’s spare yet supple, tender and hankering ‘Song for Octave’, a lullaby for the twenty-first century which draws from the minimalist repetitions of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. The piece by the National guitarist was arranged for Samuelsen by Christian Badzura, with the Norwegian string player adding:
To me, ‘Song for Octave’ welcomes you into a different world. A dreamland in slow motion. I imagine being a child and walking in a glass house for the very first time, watching the rays of sunshine coming through the leaves of a big tree. It’s a quiet and peaceful conversation between light and shadow.
Now on their umpteenth collaboration since the 2008 record Sleepthief, the saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and drummer Tom Rainey return as a duo for the vatic dialogues of Brink. The Detroit rapper and Bruiser Brigade member J.U.S. teams up with the Oakland-based producer Squadda B of Main Attrakionz for the throbbing beats and late-night atmospherics of 3rd Shift. And from gaseous science fiction terrains to neon-clad dancefloors, the New York producer AceMo follows a couple of early-year standouts in Moblu and Save The World by bringing his wriggling basslines and far-out techno on tour through the itinerant bounce of his latest long-play Inter-Transit.
The new self-titled album by Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding features a turn by Paul Simon, who is making his first appearance on record since the acclaimed Seven Psalms was released last year. The connection between Nascimento and Simon stretches back to the late eighties, when Simon appeared alongside Herbie Hancock on a track from the Brazilian singer’s album Yauaretê, with Nascimento returning the favour a few years later on The Rhythm of the Saints, a work inspired by West African guitar riffs, Latin rhythms and the Candomblé spiritual tradition which marked the beginning of Simon’s long relationship with Vincent Nguini while spotlighting such percussionists as Naná Vasconcelos, Sidinho Moreira and Grupo Cultural Olodum.
Elaborating on the sweet alchemy of ‘Apple Blossom’ from Spalding’s third solo album Chamber Music Society, for Milton + esperanza, a collection of originals and reinterpretations which is dedicated to the memory of Wayne Shorter and was recorded mostly in and about Nascimento’s home in Rio de Janeiro, the duo reached out to Simon, discerning something of his melodic phrasing in the song ‘Um Vento Passou’. More than up for the task, Simon spent a couple of weeks learning the lyrics, which he sings in Nascimento’s native Portuguese.
Elsewhere the album – which features Spalding’s core ensemble highlighted by the dexterous piano playing of Leo Genovese – is often charming and sometimes beguiling, with the odd misstep along the way. The record fares best when it comes to the reworks of old Nascimento classics like ‘Outubro’ and ‘Cais’, while the Orquestra Ouro Preto and the songbird trills of the flautist Elena Pinderhughes make ‘Wings for the Thought Bird’ a fine centrepiece. But their version of the Beatles standard ‘A Day in the Life’ is a curious mishmash of tempers, starting out in a subdued, easy listening, Sunday morning newspaper and slippers kind of way before straining towards orgiastic romance, then segueing even more rapidly into a bar room shanty, while their take on Michael Jackson’s hyper ballad ‘Earth Song’ is cloying. Yet from ‘Morro Velho’ to Spalding’s own ‘Get It By Now’ the duo regain their footing, ending on a high with ‘When You Dream’ which features Wayne’s wife Carolina Shorter, where Nascimento echoes Spalding’s wordless and awestruck exclamations like a littoral cave or waves rolling out at sea.
Chasing the Phantom by the Balinese master Dewa Alit and his Gamelan Salukat already drew comparisons to electronic music, with its muted strikes and metallic shimmers, its rippling melodies and glitching repetitions being likened to the sampled chaos of Alvin Curran or the skittering rhythms of classic Oval.
On his latest album Teratai Åkande, the Copenhagen producer Anton Friisgaard best known for his tape loops and ambient soundscapes pushes further in this direction, corresponding with Dewa Alit and eventually collaborating with members of the Gamelan Salukat after attending a performance by the ensemble at Roskilde Festival back in 2018.
Pande Made Gangga Sentana, I Nyoman Suwida, Dewa Badukz, Suryana Putra and Pande Made Gangga of the Gamelan Salukat recorded with Friisgaard in Ubud, the town in Bali set between rice paddies and steep ravines which from fashion to traditional forms of music and dance has developed a reputation as a site of cultural interchange. Friisgaard brought their recordings home, editing and processing them over the course of the past few years for a synthesis of acoustic and electronic cadences.
The album opener ‘Syrati’ shows this conflux of environments and forms, with the pagan poetry and vestal charge of its chimes redolent of the Björk opus Vespertine and some of the more plangent or propulsive tracks from Biophilia, such as ‘Crystalline’ and ‘Virus’ for which she commissioned an original instrument called the gameleste, a midi-controlled device which incorporates gamelan-like bronze bars in a celeste housing.
These chimes on ‘Syrati’ are eventually subsumed by fourth world pipes and reeds, whose rise and fall seems to shift the tectonics of the underlying percussion. Through a muffled and faltering wheeze, ‘Havun’ ferries new age choruses, while the impish metallophones of ‘Cemille’ flit and spiral around a central drum beat, which reverberates up and down the sides of a steep ravine or burrows deeper into the forest with all of its attendant creature features.
This is the secret to Teratai Åkande which shows a certain reverence for gamelan and Friisgaard’s experiences in Ubud, while reshaping both the tradition and his own electronic practice as the producer conjures a misty and tenuous yet rhythmically complex jazz and tropics or fourth world ambiance.
The resounding gong of ‘Erantai’ seems to herald less some grand edifice than a bed of silt and sticks, wound through by sinuous reeds, while ‘Kampaka’ is more propulsive, a hurried gamelan overlaid by interstitial and then carbonated synths. ‘Lavitir’ slows everything back down for an immersive exploration or torchlight procession through paddy or thicket.
And after the muted horns and rousing pan pipes of the short ‘Kunyikke’, the album closer ‘Solesia’ unfurls a dolorous horn in the depths of the forest, with a slight winnowing quality as the sound rustles and moans back through the canopy and shrub, plaintive chime duplets giving way to a winding frolic and dank heaves as the whole exhales in one breath.
J.U.S & Squadda B – ‘We Outside’ (feat. Quentin Ahmad DaGod)
Ingrid Laubrock & Tom Rainey – ‘Coaxing’
Patricia Brennan – ‘Palo de Oros (Suit of Coins)’
Chrystabell & David Lynch – ‘Two Lovers Kiss’
AceMo – ‘Space Time Continuuum’
Milton Nascimento & esperanza spalding – ‘Um Vento Passou’ (feat. Paul Simon)
