‘The cock crows / But no queen rises’ begins ‘Depression Before Spring’ by the elliptical modernist Wallace Stevens, a silvery wisp of a poem full of bird call and nonsense syllables from his debut collection Harmonium which was remaindered after selling just a hundred copies upon its publication by Knopf in 1923. An amber inversion, the track ‘Moon Showed But No You’ draws the curtain on The Flower School by the dauntless trio of Zoh Amba, Bill Orcutt and Chris Corsano, collaborating for the first time with an impromptu session at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco the day after the drummer and tenor saxophonist wrapped a tour of the west coast. Putting a cap on his binding glue, Corsano’s circular rhythms sit this one out as the dazzling light and dewy brusqueness of the morning give way to the rippling tides of evening, the soft staccato pluckings of Orcutt’s electric guitar offsetting Amba’s soaring saxophone melody ‘As the spittle of cows / Threading the wind’.
John Koenig of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows defines ‘monachopsis’ as ‘the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach – lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home’. Realising their predicament, that ambient roar comes through all right on Evolution of Perception, which takes its emotional themes and queasy song titles from the evocative neologisms of Koenig’s dictionary, as part of a multi-disciplinary collaboration between the writer Marco Grosse, artist Galya Popova, dancer Anna Koblova, and composer and vintage toy organ performer Molly Joyce.
Expansive and gleeful, wistful and frantic, boasting the intrepid talents of Jesse and Josh Zubot on violins, Peggy Lee on cello, James Meger on bass and Gerald Cleaver on drums, the alto saxophonist Darius Jones unveils a commission by Western Front, an artist-run centre in Vancouver. Jeremiah M. Carter presents the final installment of his Vessels triptych with an epigraph from The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, which reads ‘I could smell the curves of the river beyond the dusk and I saw the last light supine and tranquil upon tide-flats like pieces of broken mirror, then beyond them lights began in the pale clear air, trembling a little like butterflies hovering a long way off’.
From the Japanese chiptune and gabber veteran Scotch Rolex to the São Paulo-based arrocha and kuduros beatmaker DJ Cris Fontedofunk, and from the French Berliner Debmaster to the Kenyan avant-pop futurist Kabeaushé, for her debut album Viral Wreckage the Nigerian rapper Aunty Rayzor assembles a diverse array of producers in a bid to capture the energies and synergies of contemporary Lagos. The Iranian-American ground groover Maral lifts the lid on her latest loosie, described as the ‘slow unravelling of a new vortex’ and the ‘disintegration of a conversation between guitar and setar’.
On vocals, synths and the hand-pumped harmonium, the Pan-Asian couple itta and Marqido together with their son RAAI infuse psychedelic drone songs with the spirit of their annual pilgrimages, here paying tribute to their Mongolian namesake with a milky-eyed ode to the expanded night sky. At the beautiful and bustling centre of her upcoming album Atlas, the producer and composer Laurel Halo unfurls a disarming piano ballad, embellished with undertows of processed vibraphone and a sudden stack of vocal harmonies by way of the Lewisham crooner Coby Sey.
Four years on from his last long play having waded through a nightmare made flesh when he suffered a sudden loss of hearing, the Italian-born and Berlin-based producer Shapednoise plumbs the depths of dankest bass, fusing deft hip hop with industrial abrasions in the company of like-minded sound shredders including Dean Hurley, Brodinski, Zelooperz, Moor Mother and Armand Hammer. Jaimie Branch and Jason Ajemian share vocal duties on a staggering roots rendition of the Meat Puppets’ lapidary classic ‘Comin’ Down’. Yussef Dayes traverses the snowy peaks and steep descents of the Tioga Pass buttressed by the bass of Rocco Palladino, and James Brandon Lewis and his Red Lily Quintet reimagine songs made famous by the gospel icon Mahalia Jackson, which the sax maestro movingly portrays as much more than a tribute, really ‘a three-way conversation between Mahalia, my grandmother and me’.
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J. Carter – ‘Vessel I (Origins of the Shells)’
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Shapednoise – ‘Family’ (feat. Armand Hammer)
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jaimie branch – ‘the mountain’
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Yussef Dayes – ‘Tioga Pass’ (feat. Rocco Palladino)
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James Brandon Lewis & Red Lily Quintet – ‘Precious Lord’
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Zoh Amba, Chris Corsano and Bill Orcutt – ‘Moon Showed But No You’
