After swapping the conservatory for the computer screen, the Catalan vocalist and pianist Marina Herlop was forced to play a waiting game as it took two years for her debut album Pripyat to be released. Picturing herself as a domestic gardener, a stubborn horticulturalist who might prune her ornamentals only after first raking the muck and planting some seeds, on her follow-up Nekkuja choral trills and cascading production effects inspired by Carnatic music remain part of the mix, but in the process of honing these songs over years of live performance the structures have been trimmed and tightened while the air around the record has grown more sanguine. Harp plucks, reedy Mellotron sounds and field recordings soften the jagged and spiralling synths, while made-up words and nonsense syllables take shape alongside earthy exclamations and interpolations from the song ‘Damunt de tu només les flors’ by the Catalan composer Federico Mompou, like sunlight refracting through cracked glass jars or budding flowers whose vibrant petals and perfumed bouquets belie the tangled roots which coil underneath.
Mike Reed’s new album The Separatist Party was inspired, instigated, galvanised or haunted by a harrowing story which he read in The New York Times about ‘The Lonely Death of George Bell’, a 72-year-old hoarder who passed away sequestered inside of his Jackson Heights apartment, surrounded by loose change, old snapshots, a silver Relic watch, packages of unused Christmas lights and other detritus, his body ‘crumpled up on the mottled carpet’ after going undiscovered for almost one week. In the face of such crippling solitude the percussionist embraced his forte as a bandleader and community builder, pulling together a group of Chicago’s finest improvisers including Rob Frye, Cooper Crain and Dan Quinlivan of the Bitchin Bajas, the cornetist Ben LaMar Gay and the poet and spoken word artist Marvin Tate.
Weaving the mouth mantras of Don Cherry, the minimalism of Terry Riley, and the ecstatic fire of Pharoah Sanders together with the motorik beats of krautrock, aspects of Ethiopian folk music and the rumba of New Orleans rhythm and blues, for the first installment of a three-part cycle Reed and his Separatist Party interpret ‘Rahsaan In the Serengeti’ by the Windy City saxophonist Ari Brown, issue a eulogy or fond fare-thee-well to an old school friend and her father, who would have been one of The Temptations were it not for his propensity to drink, and keep thing primal over inverted bass lines, siren synths and typewriter percussion as Tate delivers a communal exhortation, repeating the refrain ‘Your soul is a mosh pit’.
Shaking off the colonial legacy of the cajón and deconstructing the traditional rhythms of the Peruvian coast alongside Laura Robles, now the experimental musician Ale Hop steps out on Superpang for an album of ruined archaeologies. After traversing the Carpathian Mountains and giving voice to some of the patriotic marches and traditional Hutsul folk tunes which came to prominence following the Russian invasion of Ukraine or previously during the Maidan, the composer Ganna Gryniva seeks some semblance of solace on her new album Kupala, described as the culmination of six years as a solo performer as vertiginous vocals and billowing loops and samples are tethered like the strings of a kite by Julian Sartorius on drums.
With the bow of a double bass and the projection of a horn or trumpet, breaking out into arcing sighs and warbling quivers and occasionally faltering or forcibly repeating his words, the jazz poet Paul r. Harding recites staggered songs of loneliness and defiance, referential and freely associative, grasping up at the celestial heavens, trundling across train lines or groping incredulously through the misty haze of the gypsy dawn. Tutored by Archie Shepp and Charles Gayle while citing Amiri Baraka and Jayne Cortez as signposts and mentors, on They Tried to Kill Me Yesterday the poet is joined by his longtime collaborative partner Michael Bisio, a bassist with Joe McPhee and the Matthew Shipp Trio, and the percussionist Juma Sultan who remains best known for his part in the iconic Woodstock performance of Jimi Hendrix.
From scorched condemnations of the United States of America to Wittgensteinian conundra around the sensation and sharing of pain, on Desolation’s Flower the black metal duo Ragana seek shelter even as they cleave the atmosphere. Recorded between her bedroom in London and her grandmother’s house in Yokohama, the singer Hinako Omori enters the witching hour through beguiling vocals and the Prophet ’08, Minimoog Voyager and binaural UDO Super 6 among her storehouse of analogue synths, unfurling dreamy paeans to softness and self-sufficiency from the cold water bath of ‘cyanotype memories’ to the gurgling turf of ‘foundation’ and the waking lilies of ‘in full bloom’.
Fabio Capanni continues to refine his singular approach to the electronic guitar, eschewing synthetic processing for a careful unravelling of the sonorities of his instrument, played here in close dialogue with the pulsating keys and quavering strings of the piano. Conjuring a sense of inner silence and space, for Outside the Italian musician and architect is briefly joined by Luc van Lieshout on the flugelhorn for a set of dewy and patinated drones which slowly permeate the exterior. And from Greenhouse Studios in the suburbs of Reykjavik, for the close of her first full-length solo album Purnima the violinist and Manchester Collective founder Rakhi Singh tackles with graceful restraint the fading glow and ample theatrics of ‘Light is Calling’ by the Bang on a Can artistic director Michael Gordon.
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Fabio Capanni – ‘All This Blue’
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Paul r. Harding – ‘New World Gypsy Dawn’
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Ragana – ‘Winter’s Light Pt. 2’
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Rakhi Singh – ‘Light Is Calling’
