Performing with veteran free improv percussionist William Winant, Zeena Parkins – probably one of the greatest living harpists – returns with a poetic, magickal set inspired by visual artist Jay DeFeo.
Always reliable, whether she’s working alone or with regular collaborators like Ikue Mori or Fred Frith, Parkins is an incredibly distinctive player. We can’t think of many other artists who can make an instrument like the harp sound so different and so open-ended. And playing against Winant’s microtonally-tuned set of bells and gongs she sounds fully refreshed, playfully following his resonant chimes with plucks and runs that skewer perceptions of the instrument. It’s almost too easy to label Modest of the Magic Thing as hypnotic, but Parkins has a way of casting…
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I had never seen the mighty King Crimson play live before – not surprising, as I was only ten years old when the band last played my home town in 1974! I’m no longer a frequent concert-goer, but when I heard that they had added an extra date at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, I realised that this was probably my one and only chance to see any incarnation of this band live on stage.
Ambient, relaxing music was playing before the show started – probably some Frippertronics. Just before the show started, there was a recorded announcement from the band, asking fans not to take photos or record the show. Even Tony Levin said that he would not be taking photos on this tour (Levin is well known for documenting his many shows photographically).
The Sun City Girls were unlike any band before them or that has come in their wake. Their catalog, their ethos, their *being* – you name it, with the Girls that “it” was singular and became legend. This singularity started early and extended to their release schedule and the means behind the same. While the band would prove to be wildly prolific throughout their existence, during their nascent days they quickly realized that they could not be contained by any sort of traditional label schedule. Ideas were simply coming to the trio too rapidly to even entertain the notion of being constrained by the possibility of “only” releasing at most two albums a year. To best answer the flood of ideas the name of the game was move fast, record, release and move onto the next concept.
Best known for his association with Trevor Horn, Woolley co-wrote ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ with future Buggles Horn and Geoff Downes and notably also co-wrote Grace Jones’ 1985 single/album ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ (with Horn, Stephen Lipson and Simon Darlow).
Despite having created ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ with Horn and Downes in 1978, Woolley bailed out of being in a band with the pair to form The Camera Club in 1979 with himself handling vocals, Dave Birch on guitar, Thomas Dolby on keyboards, Matthew Seligman on bass and Rod Johnson on drums. The band released their version of ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ before Buggles (it wasn’t a hit) and issued their debut album English Garden in 1979 and went on to tour in England…
Accomplished Rhode Island-based guitarist Ryan Lee Crosby fell in love with the Bentonia Blues style when he first heard its most famous proponent, Skip James. The last living Bentonia bluesman is the Grammy-nominated 77-year-old Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, who owns and runs the Blue Front Cafe in Bentonia, as his mother did before him. The 2019 collaboration between Holmes and Dan Auerbach, entitled Cypress Grove, earned that nomination. Crosby and Holmes first met in 2019, when a friend of Crosby’s introduced him to the living legend. Eventually, Crosby booked a flight to better acquaint himself with Holmes and the Bentonia style of the blues. In 2024, Crosby secured his 1980s reel-to-reel tape machine into the back seat of a borrowed Toyota and made…
Squirrels is Jubal Lee Young’s second album release in as many years, and he sees it as a companion piece to 2024’s Wild Birds Warble.
There is a significant difference, though, in that Wild Birds… only contained one self-penned song, and was predominantly a tribute to his father Steve Young’s influence (Young senior had written songs for the likes of the Eagles and Waylon Jennings, and was a significant figure in the ‘outlaw country’ movement of the 70’s).
Squirrels, meanwhile, has an abundance of original tracks, with Young stating eleven are recent songs written as “a late bloomer. And I would say slow learner, but it’s more of a thorough, deliberate, plodding sort of learning process.”
Now in his 50s, Young has found himself in…
In a time of disembodied digital-only releases, luxuriously well-crafted albums like Catina DeLuna and Otmaro Ruiz’s Lado B Brazilian Project 2, with physical disk, album notes, lyric translations and evocative graphics, can really be the balm.
The project was born in 2015 with the release of Lado B Brazilian Project, which received a Grammy nomination in 2016. The idea was to interpret what we might call Great Brazilian Songbook — classics by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chico Buarque, Dorival Caymmi, Ivan Lins, Ary Barroso and their ilk — but focusing mainly on B-sides rather than greatest-hits and giving them an infusion of LA jazz.
Raised in São Paulo, DeLuna was gigging as a solo pianist at age 16 and went on to become a busy jingle pianist and singer.
The alt-folk band that got its start in Traverse City juggles so many musical balls that keeping track of the musicians’ globe-trotting, collaborative and creative ventures is akin to watching a three-ring musical circus.
Multi-instrumentalist and founding band member Sav Madigan tours full-time as a “utility player” and backing singer with country superstar Lainey Wilson, co-founder and multi-instrumentalist Katie Larson is part of emerging country-pop act Brett Young’s band, and drummer/percussionist Katelynn Corll just returned from a European tour with blues-rocker Joanne Shaw Taylor. Together as The Accidentals, the band just wrapped up Time Out 3, a new collaborative studio album with other notable singer-songwriters.
Oscar and two-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop launched his illustrious career with his debut smash album Careless in 1976. Now, he’s closing the chapter on 50 remarkable years in the music industry with his 20th and final album THIMK a lifetime of stories captured in one unforgettable album.
Debut single “Now That I’ve Hit The Big Time,” with guest artists Eric Clapton on guitar and Sting on vocals originally composed in the early 1970s as a heartfelt tribute to his mother, it captures his early musical roots and the lasting influence of a mother’s love. THIMK also features a stunning lineup of Bishop’s closest friends and legendary collaborators, including Art Garfunkel, Jimmy Webb, Graham Nash, Dave Grusin…
There’s something transcendental about this time-bending collaboration between Copenhagen-based composer Jan Kadereit and Balinese gamelan orchestra Salukat.
For those unfamiliar to gamelan music: it’s performed by groups of musicians on drums, xylophones, gongs and various other percussion instruments. It contains unique rhythmic and tonal qualities, which have long fascinated Western composers such as John Cage, and is strongly associated with religious ritual in several faiths across Indonesia. The rhythms and melodies here seem to shift tempo and energy like altering states of consciousness; sometimes busy and sudden, elsewhere slow and elongated.
Here’s Kadereit on the thinking behind Áshira:…
Guitarist Gregg Belisle-Chi’s longtime attachment to the singularly modern jazz of saxophonist Tim Berne led him to make a record of all Berne songs. Koi: Performing the Music of Tim Berne (2021) kicked off a mini-wave of overdue Berne tribute albums and Belisle-Chi himself had ended up playing in Berne-led ensembles, mostly as a duo or trio. But that close collaboration with his musical hero hadn’t quenched his thirst to cover Berne songs apart from Berne in his own voice.
Thus, the Brooklyn based-guitarist is offering a whole new set of Berne covers. Performed again solely on acoustic guitar, Slow Crawl: Performing the Music of Tim Berne, can be regarded as a straight continuation of the stunning Koi collection, and also like that earlier album,…
Some books are divided into chapters — numbered, titled, and carefully structured. The musical equivalent is the tracklist: segmented, labeled pieces presented in order. But Ecliptic by the trio Shifa (Arabic for “healing”) rejects that format entirely. This 46-minute set of improvised music by saxophonist Rachel Musson, pianist Pat Thomas and drummer Mark Sanders unfolds without titles, track divisions, or breaks. It is a single, uninterrupted performance recorded live at London’s Café OTO in February 2023.
Like their previous releases, Live in Oslo (2020) and Live at Café OTO (2019), Ecliptic operates as a musical equilateral triangle — no dominant voice, no designated leader, just balanced collaboration. Each musician contributes equally,…
Insightful collaboration is at the heart of amazing jazz. Australian group Trichotomy joins with singer-songwriter Danny Widdicombe on Iridescence with conviction and conscientiousness. Jazz infused with roots and folk music makes this release something somewhat rare, featuring a variety of songs, from pure instrumentals to vocal tracks; these two artists achieve an amiable and inspired balance. There is a tender warmth, heartfelt devotion, and retro attitude that propels the ten originals.
From the first track, it might seem like this is a soft-rock album, perhaps by Graham Nash or Neil Young. “Ebb and Flow” enlists steel pedal guitar, reverb, and hazy vocals. It is a late-summer sort of track that might be included in…
Many releases highlighting women composers have appeared in recent years. What distinguishes the latest one from violinist Laura Kobayashi and pianist Susan Keith Gray (aka The Kobayashi/Gray Duo) isn’t therefore its programming concept but instead the specific composers featured. The musical partners have made inspired choices in coupling works by living composers Nicky Sohn, Angela Elizabeth Slater, Rhian Samuel, and Gwyneth Rollin with ones by Florence Price, Ethel Barns, Borghild Holmsen, and Hilda Jerea. Adding considerably to the release’s value is the fact all of the pieces are world premiere recordings. The music of Price has recently received a great deal of attention, so the inclusion of her ‘Three Negro Spirituals’, while welcome, isn’t all…
Most think of the origins of the blues in terms of the Delta acoustic guitar style yet Afro-Romani cornetist, saxophonist, historian, and producer Colin Hancock is bent on disproving that notion. In fact, the original Black music of this country was not called ‘blues’. That later became a marketable term for music shaped by violinists, conservatory-trained pianists, and artists rooted in classical, Caribbean, and African American traditions. We all know that later this music, primarily horn-based, took on the term ‘jazz.’ Teaming with revered vocalist Catherine Russell, who is as knowledgeable about 1920s forms of music as anyone, they present Colin Hancock’s Jazz Hounds and the resulting album Cat & the Hounds.
Besides Russell and Hancock, the band includes…
Ecuadorian singer Grecia Albán’s first UK release Nubes Selva, which loosely translates as ‘Cloud Jungle’, reinvents traditional Ecuadorian, and South American, musical modes.
Albán does that by, as she puts it, “honouring tradition by embracing change.” From a family of anthropologists based in Cotopaxi province, Albán’s voice rings out over a panoply of rhythms, beats and colourful ensemble flourishes. Some of the music builds using shifts in time signatures to create surprise and emphasis.
Key to the compelling result is Albán’s vaulting between Spanish and the indigenous Kichwa, which has evolved from the indigenous Quechua language. The set’s first single ‘Virgen y Volcán’ combines melodies and unusual…
It’s been four years since Elisabeth Elektra‘s debut Mercurial, an album which flawlessly explored the possibilities of pop music. Fusing heartfelt lyricism, pitch perfect production and and dash of mysticism, it’s fair to say that Elektra felt like a breath of fresh air.
It’s also fair to say, that pop music can get something of an awkward reception, particularly when you’re operating at the fringes and moving towards something that might be considered “alternative”. Thankfully, in this day and age, genre boundaries are starting to fall. Which is good news, because Elektra has worked towards creating a bona fide pop record with choruses that stick in your head for days. Of course, this isn’t just a “pop” album, there’s plenty of soul…
New England-based Dan Cloutier travelled to Greenland, not to claim the land for the United States but to record his latest album. He took in Newfoundland, too, revelling in the beauty of the frozen north. The result is a record that is shaped by its surroundings. Cloutier has soaked up the air, the cold, and the local music, with its Celtic roots. Excellently played throughout, there are songs of hope to push away the darkness.
Cloutier has a long-time love affair with the tundra and the ice beyond. His previous set, “The Battle of Greenland”, was far more reflective than this joyous latest offering. It is eight years since the sombre, but beautiful collection was released, and after soaking up more of the atmospheric world, Cloutier felt ready to record again.