At the confluence of the downtown scene inaugurated in the loft of a Chambers Street apartment by Yoko Ono and La Monte Young, which from its roots in sustained tones and minimalist repetition came to encompass everything from the shifting phrases of Steve Reich and Philip Glass to the performance art of Laurie Anderson and no wave abrasions of Glenn Branca and Lydia Lunch, the Iowan composer Arthur Russell landed in New York City and gained a degree of notoriety for his cello distortions, a brief spell as the musical director of the avant-garde venue The Kitchen, and his early embrace of disco which together led to fruitful collaborations with a diverse cast of characters including Allen Ginsberg, David Byrne, Peter Zummo, Julius Eastman, and the DJ and born-again remixer Walter Gibbons. The perception of Russell as a solo artist turned upon the 1986 release of his second studio album World of Echo, which merged bristling cello improvisations and liminal dub rhythms with wispy chamber melodies, shrouds of reverb and his folksy tenor and proved a resounding commercial failure, before the passage of time hailed it as a poignant and inscrutable masterpiece.
When Arthur Russell died in 1992 at the age of forty, he left behind a vast archive of mostly unfinished recordings which together comprised more than 1,000 tapes. With his partner Tom Lee serving as the executor of his estate, since the early 2000s it has fallen to Steve Knutson of Audika Records to wade through all of this material, expanding the scope of his musical interests and the depth of his songwriting talent with reissues of World of Echo and his 1983 orchestral album Tower of Meaning joined by the woolly synth-pop and whirring drum machines of Calling Out of Context, the proto-house beats and heavy metal rumbles of Springfield, and the folk yearnings of Love Is Overtaking Me and Iowa Dream. The latest compilation Picture of Bunny Rabbit cleaves more closely to the shape and spirit of World of Echo, featuring nine previously unreleased performances from the same period, capped by an open-ended solo rendition of ‘In The Light of a Miracle’ whose oscillating strobes are punctuated by sun-flicked backs, rainbow rides and milky ways. Knutson says that after twenty years of digging and dusting, this ‘might be the last major project’ on Audika Records, adding ‘This is the one I’m most proud of though’.
Sharing a penchant for private languages and airy vocalisations which skirt the borders of meaning, Anna Homler pairs up with the saxophonists Sue Lynch and Adrian Northover and the guitarist and double bassist Dave Tucker as Minaru, a new group from four friends who have played together for years on an ad hoc basis. A laboratory where live animals are kept under conditions which simulate their natural environment for the sake of research, the hyper-sampler Franz Rosati compares his latest work to a vivarium as he exploits the materials he previously produced for the audiovisual projects Latentscape and Distantia, traversing his own sound archive to grasp at the lurking memories stored within.
A woozy netherworld conflux of Memphis horrorcore and the Scandinavian and Eastern European genre of dungeon synth, Natural Sciences issues a second compilation four years after the birth of dungeon rap, which it describes as a brutal phantom sound created by the producer Alex Yatsun from Kharkiv. Recorded mostly amid the sounds of artillery fire and falling bombs, Dungeon Rap: The Evolution highlights the Kharkiv natives Pillbox and DJ Armok, who pours one out in the company of DJ Killa C for their fallen compadre DJ Chrome Tone on the record standout ‘Chrome Tone Tribute’. Saint Abdullah and Jason Nazary unleash their scabrous companion to Evicted In The Morning, variously portrayed as oscillating electronics, Sufi chants and the sound of firecrackers going off inside an empty oil drum or ‘like someone amplifying multiple arcade machines and staging a soundclash within a mosque’.
The street poet and Korean-American blues musician Nat Myers vows to lay down his rambling shoes over deftly picked guitar and stomping percussion, longtime collaborators Not Waving and Marie Davidson face down grief and reach through longing on the opening salvo from The Place I’ve Been Missing, and Kedr Livanskiy returns to the dancefloor on the bubbling and burgeoning title track to K-Notes. From a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha with her Fly or Die ensemble, the indomitable trumpeter Jaimie Branch still carries the sheer intentionality and breadth of generosity enough to take over the world.
Coinciding with the release of ‘The Concord Hour’ whose synth arpeggios, cooing choruses and aching trumpet calls amount to the second single from New Future City Radio, the duo of Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek announce a 24-hour global broadcast inspired by the thematic principles of community, transformation and radio piracy, which will culminate in a live performance from Co-Prosperity in Chicago after curated mixes from an all-star cast of record labels including International Anthem, Nonesuch, Spiritmuse, NNA Tapes, Northern Spy, Brownswood and Luaka Bop. Transmitting live and direct via Lumpen Radio to independent record shops worldwide, Tomorrow Is Listening will take place from midnight to midnight Chicago time on Friday 28th July.
Hannah Peel uses samples from Shinjuku Station in Tokyo to evoke teeming scenes and nightswept reveries on the title piece of the fourth studio release by Manchester Collective, describing Neon as ‘opulence and decadence, bustling activity and loneliness’ as she sends chiming missives from the world’s busiest transport hub. From a converted Victorian Dovecote at Snape Maltings in Suffolk to the Salish Sea or the bluffs and beaches of seaport Seattle, the overbow violinist Laura Cannell and rigorously de-trained cellist Lori Goldston resume their partnership ahead of Echolocation. Finally confronting old texts with the Latitude 49 mixed chamber ensemble, the avant-folk vocalist Annika Socolofsky sings feminist-rager lullabies for the new queer era on Don’t say a word.
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Saint Abdullah & Jason Nazary – ‘Looking Through Us’
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Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek – ‘The Concord Hour’
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Not Waving – ‘Beginner’s Goodbye’ (feat. Marie Davidson)
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DJ Armok & DJ Killa C – ‘Chrome Tone Tribute’
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Manchester Collective & Hannah Peel – ‘Neon 1: Shinjuku’
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jaimie branch – ‘take over the world’
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Arthur Russell – ‘In The Light of a Miracle’
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Lori Goldston & Laura Cannell – ‘ALTITUDES’
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Annika Socolofsky – ‘Like a diamond’
