Following the choppy tumult of High and Low, which saw the classically trained cellist duet with the drummer Dan Sasaki while paying tribute to her erstwhile friend, the illustrator and musician Geneviève Castrée, this week Lori Goldston goes long with her Pacific Northwest collaborator Greg Kelley for the visceral strains and gossamer improvisations of All Points Leaning In. Recorded at the home of the renowned alternative producer Steve Fisk, the record finds the cellist and trumpeter exploring the outer edges of their instruments, with their fellow Washington native Phil Elverum portraying the results as like two freight trains barrelling forth or careening off the tracks as ‘sparks fly’.
Encompassing everything from contemporary classics and cultural ephemera to shifting perspectives on the Great American Songbook, the trumpeter Enrico Rava and pianist Fred Hersch interpret the lilting romance of ‘The Song Is You’ by Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern as part of a dream pairing for ECM Records. The saxophonist Sam Gendel slips inside the squelching bass and cascading shower head of ‘Anywhere’ by 112 and Lil’ Zane, as the shapeshifting jazzman lands on Nonesuch Records with his unique take on fin-de-siècle R&B. And the experimental cellist Lia Kohl takes her cues from the radio, interspersing snatches of weather reports, talk shows, advertisements, and ‘Roses Are Red (My Love)’ by Bobby Vinton with birdsong and layered instrumentation on synthesizers, kazoo, concertina, piano, and wind machine.
The Korean instrumental duo dal:um follow up their acclaimed debut album with another intricate drop on the gayageum and geomungo, traditional plucked zithers with moveable bridges. Calling for miracles meaning the sum of all creation excepting war and gasoline, Deerhoof sit down and unfold their nineteenth studio album – remarkably the first to be produced, recorded, and mixed entirely within the confines of a recording studio – with all of the songs in whooshing and lamp-lit Japanese.
The indomitable Vladislav Delay peers out from behind the silence with a couple of 10-inch releases for his fledgling Rajaton label, one rippling with the heat of reconstituted dancefloor classics, the other cautiously catechistic, while the Rotherham raver Rian Treanor and Acholi fiddle player Ocen James find a meeting place in the tumbling rhythms and tensile squiggles of Saccades for the Kampala-based institution Nyege Nyege Tapes. The ambient pioneer Takashi Kokubo and trombonist Andrea Esperti resonate from deep inside a shared cosmic garden, Skech185 and Jeff Markey drop the title track from their upcoming Backwoodz collaboration, as tracks by Kelela, Glüme, Coultrain, and Early Fern with Joseph Shabason float, flicker, and fleet.
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Lori Goldston & Greg Kelley – ‘Toward Clarity’
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Deerhoof – ‘Sit Down, Let Me Tell You a Story’
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Lia Kohl – ‘sit on the floor and wait for storms’
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Sam Gendel – ‘Anywhere’ (feat. Meshell Ndegeocello)
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Rian Treanor & Ocen James – ‘Agoya’
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Takashi Kokubo & Andrea Esperti – ‘Gaia’s Love Theme’
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Skech185 & Jeff Markey – ‘He Left Nothing For The Swim Back’
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Glüme – ‘FLICKER FLICKER’
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Enrico Rava & Fred Hersch – ‘The Song Is You’
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Early Fern – ‘Softly Brushed By Wind’ (feat. Joseph Shabason)
