Benjamin Lackner plays the piano with a plangent grace at the head of a new ensemble on his latest album Spindrift for ECM Records. Only the trumpeter Mathias Eick remains from his debut ECM offering Last Decade, while the pianist also reconnects with Matthieu Chazarenc on drums who was a member of his earlier trio. Eick with the tenor saxophonist Mark Turner comprises a burnished horn section which tends to move as a unit, whether stately and barge-like as on the standout ‘More Mesa’ or chasing and gambolling like on ‘Chambary’ where the alto traces and giddily trails after the trumpet.
The dextrous and in-demand bassist Linda May Han Oh returns to the label following Compassion with Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey which dropped around this time last year, while Chazarenc on the drums winds deftly through each track, a thread strong enough to gird each composition and fine enough to fill every gap with enough elasticity to provide a little stretch. With an elegant sense of swing that starts with a shimmy of the hips and Lackner’s keys sweetening the earthy manner of the ensemble, the second half of Spindrift becomes more muted and urbane, sometimes even forlorn and a little bit gaseous as brittle drum sticks and the creeping tension of the bass vie with muffled martial tones from the horns, especially on ‘Murnau’ which sounds like a brass band playing an elegy.
Tim Berne with a couple of newfound and longtime collaborators in Gregg Belisle-Chi and Tom Rainey make for a typically stonking trio on Yikes Too, an album which pulls together a studio session and a live recording from last spring as even on the mellower tracks like the album closer ‘Middle Seat Blues’ the laced feedback of Belisle-Chi’s guitar blurs into Berne’s alto saxophone to piquant and peppery effect, as Rainey skirts the borders on his drum kit.
Last week in writing about a couple of exceptional new spoken word albums I recalled the stark reveries and waifish melodies of the Roy Claire Potter and Park Jiha record To Call Out Into The Night which was released on Otoroku back in 2022. This week the acclaimed Korean artist Jiha returns with the second single and closing track of her forthcoming album All Living Things, as she turns from traditional instrumentation on the yanggeum, saenghwang and piri to complete her cycle through the limpid bars of a glockenspiel.
Kedr Livanskiy portrays her upcoming record as the closest she’s come to the skittering propulsions and sawing ambient soundscapes of her breakthrough effort Ariadna, as for the first time the empyrean producer and singer-songwriter undertakes a full-length solo album with compositions by her frequent collaborator Flaty. On the second outpouring and lead single from Myrtus Myth she consciously channels Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac on what is a gauzy yet transparently fond tribute to a lost friend. And the Nairobi producer Slikback barrels out of the murk in typically scabrous fashion, with the dubstep inflections of Data heralding his first extended play of the year.
Formerly a collective effort by the deejays Kolt, Noronha and Perigoso, family members and friends who resided south of Lisbon across the Tejo river, the new album by Blacksea Não Maya is more of a solo undertaking while also serving as something of a kiss off for DJ Kolt, who for now draws an end to his tenure as one of Príncipe’s most far out producers. Billed as an awakening, his goodbye album Despertar offers an especially bold and deviant take on batida whether he embraces the slowed-down syrupiness of tarraxinha or from further afield, elements of electronic dance music, the spectral and downtempo character of contemporary Belo Horizonte funk or even a bit of arena rock and industrial music, as from dank squelches to arid growls Despertar closes with a sun-kissed and reflective ska ballad.
A couple of 577 Records mainstays in the pianist Matthew Putman and the drummer Federico Ughi with Michael Sarian on trumpet and the newcomer Ledian Mola on bass pay a suitably cosmic and sometimes deliriously heartfelt tribute to Sun Ra on the first volume of The Sea, The Space, and Egypt, where Putman wrangles with a Rock-Si-Chord over Ughi’s caveman drums while Mola utters snatches of Cuban folklore between plucks and Sarian blows out a furrowing trumpet, as the result manages to blend the psychedelic manifestations and bluesy fusion romps of albums like Night of the Purple Moon and Cosmos with the more primitive jabs of Strange Strings, a record which Sun Ra famously hailed as a ‘study in ignorance’.
The underground legend Booker T. Williams makes a rare outing on Ode to BC/LY . . . And Eye Know BO . . . da Prez, as the saxophonist with his fellow Seattleite tenor Gary Hammon entrusts the pianist Chris Parker of Mahakala Music to assemble a stellar cast for his driving soul and yearning swoons. Chad Fowler on his distinctive stritch and Marc Franklin on the trumpet join Booker and Hammon for a rousing and formidable horn section, with Luke Stewart on bass and Chad Anderson on drums as Booker shows his penchant for blues and gospel phrasing, as between three short odes, all squalls the track ‘Last of the Tribesmen’ falls into a fine groove while ‘Mama’s Cry’ might seem to belie its title, as the vocals by Kelley Hurt eschew heartache or motherly affection for something more groaning and guttural or even orgasmic.
Finally the guitarist Han-earl Park returns with his Juno 3 trio alongside the saxophonist and sound artist Lara Jones and the pianist and electroacoustic pioneer Pat Thomas, with the Berlin-based Korean-American improviser taking it away to complete this week’s roundup:
I love, love, love this recording, and the camaraderie of the artists (and helpers and supporters behind the scenes) involved in its making. If the trio’s first performance in the spring of 2022, caught between lockdowns and post-pandemic ‘normality’, was about that strange sense of cautious releif and optimism, then this later performance was something altogether more strident, brash, at times harsh and ugly, confrontational and combative. What I hear is Lara punching you unremittingly in the mid-rage gut; Pat throwing down beats of glitchy robotic wasps, and of impossible danceability; and my struggles with an unfamiliar guitar (a silver rocker) that wants to make it all a little too easy.
During the mix, I came to realise this unapologetically unrefined music was probably unreleasable, but I also came to love it more for being delicate as a slab of granite. Listen to it, and think of us. Enjoy.
Benjamin Lackner, Mathias Eick, Mark Turner, Linda May Han Oh and Matthieu Chazarenc – ‘More Mesa’
Booker T & The Plasmic Bleeds – ‘Last of the Tribesmen’
Tim Berne, Tom Rainey and Gregg Belisle-Chi – ‘Clandestine’
