In the fall of 2015 the drummer and composer Mike Reed read a harrowing story in The New York Times about ‘The Lonely Death of George Bell’, a 72-year-old New Yorker who passed away sequestered inside of his Jackson Heights apartment, his body ‘crumpled up on the mottled carpet’ after going undiscovered for almost one week. A hoarder, when investigators working for the Queens County public administrator entered Bell’s apartment, they did so ‘clad in billowy hazmat suits and bootees’, wading through the detritus which included loose change, old snapshots, a silver Relic watch and multiple packages of unused Christmas lights and unopened ironing board covers, with one of the men adding ‘Since I’ve worked here, my list of friends has gotten longer and longer. I don’t want to die alone’. As told in the Times the death of George Bell proves a sad and solemn yet still strangely uplifting story, which whorls outwards as his estate takes fourteen months to laboriously settle, then radiates from within as a tangible life is assembled from a few loose scraps and threads.
Mike Reed then was already dwelling on the theme of isolation long before the coronavirus pandemic distorted life’s daily routine. At the onset of 2022 he assembled some of Chicago’s finest improvisers including the poet and spoken word artist Marvin Tate, the cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, and Rob Frye, Cooper Crain and Dan Quinlivan of the Bitchin Bajas for the first installment of a three-album cycle by The Separatist Party, whose name is a skewed reflection on their shared penchant for sometimes inhabiting the buffed halls and dilapidated streets of lonersville. Between the inverted bass lines, siren synths and typewriter percussion of the opening single, the D-Settlement leader Tate keeps things primal with a spirited vocal, exposing our inner ordeals while serving as a communal exhortation as he repeats the line ‘Your soul is a mosh pit’.
From Mexico City the avant-garde cellist Mabe Fratti, the composer and vocalist Camille Mandoki, the sound artist Concepción Huerta who specialises in synthesizers, tape manipulation and field recordings, and the classically trained violinist Gibrana Cervantes bring their withering wit and years of experimentation to fruition, reuniting in the forest haven of La Pitahaya in Zoncuantla for their debut album as Amor Muere. In dialogue with the rhythmic overtones and minimalist aspirations of his 1982 release Nodal Excitation, the renowned instrument builder Arnold Dreyblatt establishes an all-new version of his Excited Strings orchestra which features the runaway guitars of Oren Ambarchi, Konrad Sprenger and Joachim Schütz plus sine tone generators, snare drums and the inimitable pluckings of his piano wire-strung double bass.
On their first outing for Impulse! the indomitable quintet of Keir Neuringer, Aquiles Navarro, Luke Stewart, Tcheser Holmes and Camae Ayewa as Irreversible Entanglements recuperate past futures amid a roiling entreaty for land rights as far flung as South Carolina, New York, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Palestine and Iran. The free jazz icon Joe McPhee returns to Black Truffle alongside Mette Rasmussen and Dennis Tyfus for a wild trio record etched in Antwerp back in 2018, whose caterwauling saxophones and clattering cymbals, breathy tones, screwed voice and scraped objects summon the African rhythms and microtonalities of John Tchicai, the shamanistic vocal spurts of Ghédalia Tazartès, the multi-instrumentalist McPhee’s own slow-motion blues and the folk motifs of his inspiration Albert Ayler.
On the heels of Three Nights in the Wawayanda the duo of Frank Menchaca and Anar Badalov as Hourloupe inaugurate Opera of the War, a reflection on the creative impulse which animates bodies, art, love and life even amid the tumult of conflagrant destruction. Set in an opera house raided by missiles and flames which opens some weeks later, out-of-doors for the want of a ceiling, the lead single imagines a composer who dispatches notes one by one on the staff, ‘lone semaphores unaware of each other, calls without responses’. In the conception of a new work, an opera to be held ‘outside, in the plaza, studded by glass from shattered brasseries’, the artist is abetted by the sign or symbol of a hawk’s feather which wafts through the beam-lighted air, as Menchaca’s prescient and self-realising spoken word sways on the boughs and huffs through the cracked pipes of Badalov’s production.
James Brandon Lewis and his Red Lily Quintet continue to reimagine the songs of the gospel icon Mahalia Jackson, with a stirring take on ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ which opens through snatches of melody before an extended improvisation full of languorous yearning and wide rambling reassembles the refrain. John Scofield with Vicente Archer on bass and Bill Stewart on drums interprets the bluegrass melodies and close harmonies of ‘Uncle John’s Band’ by the Grateful Dead, ahead of a double album of the same name which also tackles material by Miles Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Neil Young and Bob Dylan. Tracks by Tinashe, Aunty Rayzor and Sufjan Stevens also feature, while over the Bajan-infused beats of the Montreal deejay and producer Honeydrip the Equiknoxx star Shanique Marie sings ‘Aren’t you tired of being part of this broken system’ with a sweetness which belies any notion of pain.
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James Brandon Lewis & Red Lily Quintet – ‘Swing Low’
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Irreversible Entanglements – ‘Our Land Back’
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Joe McPhee, Mette Rasmussen and Dennis Tyfus – ‘Sun Gore’
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Tinashe – ‘Needs’
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Honeydrip – ‘System’ (feat. Shanique Marie)
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Hourloupe – ‘Feather Crossing Light’
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Sufjan Stevens – ‘So You Are Tired’
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Arnold Dreyblatt – ‘Flight Path’
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John Scofield – ‘Uncle John’s Band’
