Playlist, Week of 2019-11-24

The Kinks: great traveling music... Ear-blistering saxophone pyrotechnics from Mars Williams on Fake Music...

Playlist 2019-11-25:

*Marshall Allen/Danny Ray Thompson/Jamie Saft/Trevor Dunn/Balazs Pandi/Roswell Rudd: Ceremonial Healing
*Boneshaker: Fake Music
*Borderlands Trio: Asteroidea
*Miles Davis: Miles at the Fillmore (disc 1)
*Miles Davis: 1970-08-18 Tanglewood (CDR) (discs 1, 2)
*Globe Unity Orchestra: Globe Unity ‘67 & ‘70 "Globe Unity '67"
*Harriet Tubman: Araminta
*Harriet Tubman: The Terror End of Beauty
*Alexander Hawkins Trio: Alexander Hawkins Trio
*Okkyung Lee/Christian Marclay: Amalgam
*Roscoe Mitchell: Conversations I
*New Ting: Five-Minute Cassette Edits (Sextet Version) (CDR compilation)
*New Ting: 2019-11-11 "Five-Minute Infinity" (wav)
*Larry Ochs/Nels Cline/Gerald Cleaver: What Is to Be Done "Shimmer Intend Spark Groove Defend"
*Cecil Taylor/Thurston Moore: 1997-10-04 NYC (CDR)
*Various artists: History of Electronic/Electroacoustic Music (CDR compilation) (disc 36)
*Dark Carpet: Factory Side
*Grateful Dead: Cornell 5.8.77 (disc 3)
*Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland (50th anniversary ed.) (disc 1)
*Kinks: The Anthology 1964-1971 (discs 1, 2, 3) (selections)
*Kinks: Face to Face (Deluxe Edition) (disc 1)
*Kinks: Something Else by the Kinks (Deluxe Edition) (disc 1)
*Kinks: The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
*Kinks: Arthur, or, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (50th anniversary remaster) (disc 1)
*Sheriff Jack: What Lovely Melodies!
*Sheriff Jack: Laugh Yourself Awake
*Lewis Taylor: The Lost Album
*Lewis Taylor: Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica Reborn
*Various artists: Katanga! and Ahbe Casabe: Exotic Blues & Rhythm vol. 1 & 2
*Various artists: Dave Godin's Deep Soul Treasures Vol. 5

Reading List, Week of 2019-11-24

...with its proper title...

Reading List 2019-11-25:

*Rankin, Ian. The Naming of the Dead (started)
*Rankin, Ian. Fleshmarket Alley (finished)
*Bowker, Gordon. James Joyce: A New Biography (in progress)
*Deutsch, David. The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications (in progress)
*Schmidt, Arno. Bottom's Dream (trans. John E. Woods) (in progress)

New Dark Carpet Album Coming Soon: Factory Side

I was happy to receive a pre-release recording of Dark Carpet's new CD Factory Side (no cover yet) (full disclosure: my brother's in the band). A worthy follow-up to their eponymous debut disc (pictured above), Factory Side is a thrusting slab of country-laced hard-driving rock. Basically guitar/bass/drums, with the odd piano or tambourine thrown in, the songs are propelled by grungy guitar, structural bass lines, and a strong backbeat, with Southern-fried unhinged (but channeled) lead vocals balanced by anthemic, often falsetto backing vocals. The rough and the ready. Monster grooves burning down to the soul. Any of these songs could unfold into a long jam you could drive down a backwoods road all night long to, with traces of Stones momentum and a Sonic Youth sense of scale, but they don't; instead, they ride out in 4- to 5-minute bursts. Keep rocking, guys!

Playlist, Week of 2019-11-17

Been on a bit of a Lewis Taylor kick lately... I am particularly quite taken with The Lost Album, with its Todd Rundgren/Beach Boys grandeur and its combination of neo-soul, '70s rock, and sweeping prog guitar... Digging through a lot of recent New Ting improvisations for a possible cassette release... Beautiful, relatively quiet (for him) playing by Mats Gusatsson on A Quietness of Water... Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey always sound great in a quartet setting... There's not much that's cooler than the Duke Ellington version of "All My Loving"... Entire sound universes are contained within the 9-CD Iridium Anthony Braxton box set... as much as I've listened to it over the last 12 years, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface... infinitely rewarding, continually self-renewing, always inspiring...

Playlist 2019-11-18:

*"A" Trio & AMM: AAMM
*Marshall Allen/Danny Ray Thompson/Jamie Saft/Trevor Dunn/Balazs Pandi/Roswell Rudd: Ceremonial Healing
*Anthony Braxton: 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006 (selections)
*Peter Brötzmann/Heather Leigh: Sparrow Nights
*Taylor Ho Bynum 9-Tette: The Ambiguity Manifesto
*Stephan Crump/Ingrid Laubrock/Cory Smythe: Channels
*Miles Davis: Tribute to Jack Johnson (side 2)
*Paul Dolden: L'Ivresse De La Vitesse (disc 2)
*Duke Ellington: The Reprise Studio Recordings (discs 3, 4)
*Peter Evans/Agusti Fernández/Mats Gustafsson: A Quietness Of Water
*Mary Halvorson Quartet: Paimon (Zorn/Book of Angels Vol. 32)
*Robert Landfermann/Ingrid Laubrock/Achim Kaufmann/Tom Rainey: Topaz
*Large Unit: Erta Ale (disc 1)
*Chris Lightcap: SuperBigmouth
*New Ting: 2019-07-08 "Backhand Volley" (wav)
*New Ting: 2019-07-29 "Tardy But Hardy" (wav)
*New Ting: 2019-09-09 "Peace in Transit" (wav)
*New Ting: 2019-09-16 "Simmertime Lubricity Challenge" (wav)
*New Ting: 2019-09-30 "Emulsify My Desires" (wav)
*New Ting: 2019-10-07 "We All Answered" (wav)
*New Ting: 2019-11-11 "Five-Minute Infinity" (wav)
*Craig Taborn: Junk Magic
*Cecil Taylor: Conquistador! (side 1)
*Cecil Taylor: 1997-10-03 NYC (CDR)
*Tri-Centric Vocal Ensemble: Anthony Braxton's Syntactical Ghost Trance Music : 2019-01-25 Brooklyn (CDR)
*Weather Report: Live in Tokyo
*John Zorn: The Hierophant
*Various artists: History of Electronic/Electroacoustic Music (CDR compilation) (disc 35)
*Dark Carpet: Factory Side
*Gentle Giant: Free Hand
*Grateful Dead: 1973-03-24 Philadelphia (CDR) (disc 3)
*Paul McCartney: Pure McCartney (Deluxe Ed.) (disc 1)
*Thurston Moore: 1997-10-03 NYC (CDR)
*Lewis Taylor: Lewis Taylor
*Lewis Taylor: The Lost Album
*Sheriff Jack: Everybody Twist
*Various artists: Latin Rhythms in Hi Fi
*Various artists: Country & Western Hit Parade 1957: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Hillbilly Music
*Yes: Progeny: Highlights From Seventy-Two (disc 1)

Reading List, Week of 2019-11-17

Reading List 2019-11-18:

*Rankin, Ian. Fleshmarket Alley (started)
*Rankin, Ian. A Question of Blood (finished)
*Bowker, Gordon. James Joyce: A New Biography (in progress)
*Deutsch, David. The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications (in progress)
*Schmidt, Arno. Bottom's Dream (trans. John E. Woods) (in progress)

Playlist, Week of 2019-11-10

Fun deep listening with my brother over the weekend...

Playlist 2019-11-11:

*AMM: An Unintended Legacy (disc 3)
*Anthony Braxton: Quartet (New Haven) 2014 (disc 1)
*Anthony Braxton: Sonic Genome 2019-10-31: Jazzfest Berlin 2019 (streaming)
*Rodger Coleman/Sam Byrd: Who Doesn't Fade? "Who Doesn't Fade?"
*Miles Davis: The Complete On The Corner Sessions (disc 1) "On The Corner (Unedited Master)"
*Eric Dolphy: Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (disc 2)
*Herbie Hancock: Sextant
*Robert Landfermann/Ingrid Laubrock/Achim Kaufmann/Tom Rainey: Topaz
*Charles Mingus: Passions of a Man: The Complete Atlantic Recordings 1956-1961 (discs 1, 2)
*New Ting: 2019-10-28 "Improv Impact Assessment Buddy" (wav)
*Wayne Shorter: Schizophrenia
*Three Body Problem: 2019-11-02 Washington DC (wav)
*John Zorn/Insurrection: Salem 1692
*Various artists: History of Electronic/Electroacoustic Music (CDR compilation) (disc 34)
*Area: 1975-08 Ferrara, Italy (CDR)
*Gentle Giant: Free Hand (selections)
*Grateful Dead: 1973-03-24 Philadelphia (CDR) (discs 1, 2)
*Henry Cow: Legend
*Kalyanji–Anandji: Bombay the Hard Way: Guns, Cars, & Sitars
*Kinks: Arthur, or, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (50th anniversary remaster) (discs 1, 2)
*Lata Mangeshkar: Lata … As Never Before (discs 1, 2)
*Rallizes Dénudés: France Demo Tapes
*Sheriff Jack: Let's Be Nonchalant
*Sleepwalker: For This Time Only, Never Again
*Lewis Taylor: Lewis Taylor
*Lewis Taylor: Lewis II
*Lewis Taylor: The Lost Album
*Various artists: Country & Western Hit Parade 1955: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Hillbilly Music
*Various artists: Country & Western Hit Parade 1956: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Hillbilly Music
*Various artists: Squattin' and Sloppin' (CDR compilation)
*Various artists: Bollywood Funk

Reading List, Week of 2019-11-10

Reading List 2019-11-11:

*Deutsch, David. The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications (started)
*Rankin, Ian. A Question of Blood (started)
*Creeley, Robert. Selected Poems, 1945-2005 (finished)
*Ellmann, Lucy. Man or Mango? : A Lament (finished)
*Bowker, Gordon. James Joyce: A New Biography (in progress)
*Schmidt, Arno. Bottom's Dream (trans. John E. Woods) (in progress)

Braxton's Sonic Genome in Berlin on YouTube

                     Alexander Hawkins in the green

Here's an experience that's not to be missed: a 6-hour video capturing the live stream of the performance of Anthony Braxton's Sonic Genome project at Jazzfest Berlin 2019 on October 31. I have listened to the whole thing once, and dipped in on some of the visuals... it's pretty damn amazing. The space it took place in, the Gropius Bau Museum, is a gorgeous space, lots of rotundas, open staircases, balconies, and some kind of plant structure in the middle of one of the halls. It must have been exhilarating to walk around and get immersed in Braxton's music. Here were some of the highlights for me:

0:00:00 - 0:15:00:  Braxton's opening, conducting what looks like the whole ensemble.
2:35:22 - 2:36:02: Close-up of Ingrid Laubrock soloing on soprano sax.
3:45:00-ish - The singers and the great orchestral riff that follows the singing, eventually joined by a sax trio including Braxton and James Fei.
3:58:00 - The whole orchestra breaks into this vocalizing/chanting section that's truly mesmerizing, and it looks like they're having a blast doing it!
4:29:30: A sweet quartet: flute/trombone/bassoon/tenor sax, in front of the plant structure... then joined by Alexander Hawkins at 4:30:35 playing melodica and piano from up within the structure! Great piano at 4:32:22. Augmented by Cymin Samawatie on vocals. (It thrills me to no end that Hawkins will be joining Braxton for a standards quartet tour in January. Oh, to be in Poland or London then...)

Playlist, Week of 2019-11-03

Fun to go back and revisit the music specifically commissioned for the 2012 Sonic Circuits Festival restrooms... I would love to hear any of this music any time I go to the stalls... In the process of populating the Magic Jukebox 2, I've enjoying digging up sonic nuggets... of course, when I think about it, most of my listening is digging for sonic nuggets anyway, so that process isn't really any different... but it has been fun to go through all the discs again and pull out old faves... my collection is in a constant state of flux, with my to-listen piles continually being swapped out with my to-be-filed piles... come to think of it, that's the way my book piles are too... so I spend a lot of time schlepping piles of things around: CDs, albums, books, comic books, papers, dishes, emails...

Playlist 2019-11-04:

*Ask the Trees: The Heart's Message Cannot Be Delivered in Words
*Anthony Braxton/William Parker/Milford Graves: 2007-03-16 Rome (CDR) (disc 2)
*John Coltrane: Live in Japan "Peace on Earth"
*Miles Davis: In a Silent Way (side 2)
*Paul Dolden: L'Ivresse De La Vitesse (disc 1)
*Duke Ellington: The Reprise Studio Recordings (disc 2)
*Steve Lacy Quintet with Derek Bailey: 1976-10-17 Paris (CDR)
*Chris Lightcap: SuperBigmouth
*New Ting: 2019-10-17 Shockoe Denim, RVA (wav)
*Tony Oxley: Ichnos
*Tyshawn Sorey: Pillars (disc 1)
*Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit: April Is the Cruellest Month
*McCoy Tyner: Sahara
*Various artists: Music for Restrooms
*Johann Sebastian Bach: Concertos for Piano and Orchestra (Glenn Gould) (discs 1, 2)
*Mahler: Symphony No. 5 (Solti, Chicago Symphony Orchestra)
*Digital Underground: Sex Packets
*DJ Spooky: The Gift
*Bob Dylan: The 1966 Live Recordings (disc 16)
*Al Green: Green Is Blues
*Howlin' Wolf:  Smokestack Lightning: The Complete Chess Masters 1951-1960 (disc 4)
*Led Zeppelin: In Through the Out Door
*Lucas & Corey: Don't Know a Soul (Flat Fix)
*Paul McCartney: Flowers in the Dirt (Deluxe Ed.) (disc 1)
*National Health: Of Queues and Cures (side 1)
*Prince: 1981-03-22 Ritz NYC (CDR)
*Santana: Welcome
*Various artists: Country & Western Hit Parade 1953: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Hillbilly Music
*Various artists: Country & Western Hit Parade 1954: Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Hillbilly Music
*Various artists: Katanga! and Ahbe Casabe: Exotic Blues & Rhythm vol. 1 & 2

Reading List, Week of 2019-11-03

Now to wait several more years for the third volume!

Reading List 2019-11-04:

*Ellmann, Lucy. Man or Mango? : A Lament (started)
*Schmidt, Arno. Bottom's Dream (trans. John E. Woods) (started)
*Rankin, Ian. Resurrection Men (started/finished)
*Kirby, Jack, and Stan Lee: The Essential Thor, Vol. 3 (finished)
*Pullman, Philip. The Secret Commonwealth (finished)
*Bowker, Gordon. James Joyce: A New Biography (in progress)
*Creeley, Robert. Selected Poems, 1945-2005 (in progress)

Video of New Ting at Shockoe Denim

New Ting at Shockoe Denim, 2019-10-17. Full audio here. Thanks, Katie, for the video!