Best known for her collaborative work, through live performances and site-specific sound installations with the multidisciplinary artist Anelena Toku as one half of Fronte Violeta, and with fellow Rakta member Mauricio Takara on two albums of limpid abstractions which lap at the borders between free jazz, drone, and kosmische, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and an accommodating Nel Frattempo Residency encouraged the São Paulo experimental scenester Carla Boregas to reexamine her solo output. Flicking through song fragments and the pages of her notebooks, she came across an old idea for a wind instrument which could be played collectively by several musicians, the strictures of lockdowns and quarantines coaxing a synthetic alternative with symbolic overtures to community and spontaneity despite the palpable absence of company as normal life screeched then ground to a halt. Seeking the mystery in mundanity, on Pena ao Mar the sound artist uses analogue and digital synthesizers, effects, the Wurlitzer electronic piano, field recordings, gongs, processed cactus sounds, and the ancient Armenian double reed duduk flute to conjure an imaginary wind orchestra, an ode to the diaphanous shifts and bristling indeterminacy of our shared environment which bears comparison to the medieval rhapsodies of Sarah Davachi or the deep-listening exercises of Éliane Radigue and Kali Malone.
When the spiritual revival movement which became known as Hasidism began to flourish in the eighteenth century from what is now part of western Ukraine, song and dance whether celebratory or contemplative were central to the new ethos of immanence. Yet for hundreds of years, the liturgical tunes known as nigunim – vocal repetitions which might draw from Biblical verses, drinking songs, or folk ballads – remained the preserve of musty old men. Chana Raskin and her Raza circle of harmony vocalists change that dynamic on Kapelya, an album which explores the feminine voice in old Hasidic melodies, described as the act of ‘whispering something new into the world’ while asking questions of sacred traditions, yet still abounding in joyous trills and a sense of communal ecstasy as on the climactic ‘Klimovitcher Nigun’, a Chabad rhythm from the Belarusian city where Raskin’s maternal grandparents were born and raised.
For Smalltown Supersound, the Norwegian-Chilean flautist Johanna Orellana renders an intimate debut augmented by the close miking and post-production techniques of Carmen Villain. Composed as a eulogy to her late father, a Chilean political dissident who escaped to Norway in the seventies, flute improvisations and subtle melodic variations combine with audio sourced from film recordings made by her sister in their father’s Andean garden, to which he returned shortly before his death. Taking her cue from the radio, choosing select moments as she flicked between stations from an otherwise incongruous blend of weather reports, talk show segments, advertisements, and musical interludes which she recorded on Vashon Island in Washington State, the experimental cellist Lia Kohl curates transitory quivers on her diaristic new album The Ceiling Reposes, which adds layered instrumentation plus snatches of birdsong and gushing waves.
From the Conservatorio Tomadini in Udine and the Liceu in Barcelona to a diploma in jazz composition at Berklee College of Music before settling in New York, the violinist Ludovica Burtone brings a wealth of experience and her diverse repertoire to bear on her debut album Sparks, which features Fung Chern Hwei, Leonor Falcon, and Mariel Roberts on strings and Marta Sanchez, Matt Aronoff, and Nathan Ellman-Bell on piano, bass, and drums while handing over to the solo tenor of Melissa Aldana whose saxophone carries the swirls and squalls of ‘Awakening’. Helmed by the producer Jacknife Lee with Michael Stipe, Moor Mother, Rokia Koné, Justin Vernon, and Sharon Van Etten among the troupe of fellow travellers, on Oh Me Oh My the cosmic southerner and trenchant bluesman Lonnie Holley leads with a paean to kindness through the vale of tears.
Pipping Curren$y for the title of most prolific rapper in the game, the South Central emcee G Perico teams up with DJ Drama for a lesson on karma. Twisting a contemporary flirt to classical ends, the producer Fatima Al Qadiri and her fellow Kuwaiti vocalist Gumar deliver an homage to lamentation singing built around the timeless and windswept theme of unrequited love. From the Nyege Nyege villa in Kampala, the Ugandan rap dagger Mc Yallah spits over the Japanese chiptune and gabber veteran Scotch Rolex’s pan-global foley-trap splatter. Skittering breaks, pellucid synths, and an invigorating club throwback impart the ninth iteration of the Ilian Skee Series. The Swiss bassist Lukas Traxel deals with the loss of his father through the figure of a one-eyed Daruma doll on his swingingly spare trio debut for We Jazz Records, the Nairobi shredder Slikback emits vaporous trails of breath through the five song salvo of H I K A R I, and the rising vocalist Danielle Wertz lays down a weary heart and mind, letting go on the conclusion to this week’s roundup of best new music.
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Fatima Al Qadiri – ‘Fidetik (I Lay Down My Life)’
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Johanna Orellana – ‘El Jardin III’
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MC YALLAH & SCOTCH ROLEX – ‘Yallah Beibe’
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Lia Kohl – ‘the moment a zipper’
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Lonnie Holley – ‘Kindness Will Follow Your Tears’ (feat. Bon Iver)
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Carla Boregas – ‘Grafia Do Invisível’
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Ludovica Burtone – ‘Awakening’ (feat. Melissa Aldana)
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G Perico & DJ Drama – ‘Karma’
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Danielle Wertz – ‘Rest Your Head (One for Natalie)’
