#greg stuart

Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids — An Angel Fell (Strut)

An Angel Fell by Idris Ackamoor and the Pyramids

What makes An Angel Fell, the latest from Idris Ackamoor and his resurrected Pyramids, such a blast is how effortlessly they mix Afrobeat, Afro-Cuban, dub, free jazz, blues, soul, gospel, bossa nova, and Arkestral vocals without sounding like a pastiche. What makes it important is that this inclusive, post-everything musical approach is married to an equally inclusive and utopian political sensibility: inclusive in the sense that sci-fi parables are given a seat at the table next to real world concerns, and utopian in the sense that the mystical Afrofuturism of songs like “An Angel Fell” and goofy exotica of “Papyrus” never trivialize the album highlight, “Soliloquy for Michael Brown,” which, despite its name, includes the whole damn band. Most importantly, it’s inclusive in the sense that Ackamoor and company want you marching and dancing with them, and utopian in that they whipped up a joyous hour and seven minutes of scorching solos, arresting hooks, and straight fire to get you there.

Isaac Olson

  Anna & Elizabeth — The Invisible Comes To US (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)

Ann Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle have used backlit, hand-cranked scrolls to illustrate the stories they rendered with Appalachian harmonies and strings. On their third album, The Invisible Comes to Us, they reframe their tradition-steeped sound with retro-futurist instrumentation supplied by producer and multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Lazar Davis of Cuddle Magic and accompanists such as drummer Jim White (Xylouris White, Dirty Three) and steel guitarist Susan Alcorn. Vocoders, feedback, brass and Mellotron keep the sound varied and far from by-the-numbers folk, but the duo don’t tamper much with their impassive presentation of Civil War-vintage infidelity. It’s hard to shake the suspicion that the duo could have made just as strong an album with just their voices and strings, but that doesn’t keep this from being an intriguing advancement of the evolving folk music paradigm.

Bill Meyer

  Martin Blume / Wilbert de Joode / John Butcher — Low Yellow (Jazzwerkstatt)

The title of this trio recording is a bit of a stumper. When the CD is playing words like “bright,” “acute” and “mercurial” come more quickly to mind than “low” or any single color. German drummer Martin Blume, Dutch bassist Wilbert de Joode and English saxophonist John Butcher have been playing together since 2004, and this live set from 2016 is a splendid example of the aesthetic and methodological rapport that can evolve over such a span. These men might not know exactly what they’re going to do when they get on stage, but it’s pretty clear what they are doing. They improvise with an exacting attention to process that allows a music to come into existence that would not be possible if you swapped any player for another, yet never involves one musician dominating the others. Each has a highly distinct musical vocabulary and sufficient differences in background for the music to surprise in deeply satisfying ways.  

Bill Meyer  

 Bixiga 70 — Quebra Cabeça (Glitterbeat)

Quebra Cabeça by Bixiga 70

Quebra Cabeça means jigsaw puzzle in Portuguese, and this latest double LP from the Afro-Brazilian ten-piece certainly fits a lot of pieces together here — rattling barrio percussion, twitchy Lagos-funked guitars, 1970s American blaxploitation soundtracks, space-age synths and swaggering sax and brass frontlines. If it sounds like too many parts, that’s where you’re wrong. Cuts like “Pedra de Raio” integrate the mystic chill of trippy fusion with a molten throb of samba rhythm. An effortless propulsion of hand drums, bumping bass and warm West African guitars moves the cut forward; serpentine sax melodies and blurts of brass jut off from the foundation. “Levante” syncopates, but slowly, with undulating, Eastern-toned sax lines weaving snake dances over it all. “Torre” picks up the pace from there, leaning into its Afro-funk influences with an agitated tangle of trebly guitars, cow-bells and blasts of horns. None of these pieces are jammed in willy-nilly, and everything fits. If you like the Budos Band, but wish they’d do a Fela tribute, this is your jam.

Jennifer Kelly

 East of the Valley Blues — Ressemblera (Astral Spirits)

Ressemblera by East of the Valley Blues

Cryptophasia, a.k.a twinspeak, is the phenomenon of twins developing a language of their own, largely or entirely unintelligible to outsiders. East of the Valley Blues, comprised of Andrew and Patrick Cahill, is a twin guitar group, which is to say, they each play guitar and are literally twins, and while their knotty, wholly improvised fourth release, Ressemblera, isn’t entirely cryptophasic, you’ll need to listen closely to start piecing it together. Grab a pair of headphones and you get a brother in each ear, which helps. So suddenly do the brothers Cahill pick up, break off and drop shards of rhythm and melody that Ressemblera never resembles other guitar music but their own for more than seconds at a time. You’ll hear snatches of Fahey, Connors, Bailey et al. but the fun of Ressemblera comes from hearing familiar sounds doubly refracted through the Cahill’s unique styles and responses to each other. Ressemblera plays out in one, dense half hour track and a short epilogue, making it the least accessible East of the Valley Blues release to date, but for those willing to dive in, it might be the most rewarding.  

Isaac Olson

 Flanger Magazine — Breslin (Sophomore Lounge)

FLANGER MAGAZINE "Breslin" by Flanger Magazine

Remember Caboladies? For a few years back at the height of the synth resurgence, they kept up a respectable stream of squelchy sound, only to disappear like memories of Myspace. It would appear that Christopher David Bush of Caboladies has taken a path somewhat akin to that navigated by laptop rockers who swapped their Macs for modular synths; go back, man, peel back the generations of gear. The digital sheen’s gone from his solo music as Flanger Magazine, replaced by an unenhanced analog vibe generated by acoustic guitar, monophonic synthesizer, and field recordings of birds that bath near the Ohio River. Instead of the audio expanse of yore, he crafts shy and pensive themes that would be just about right for that PBS afternoon drama you dreamed up after a few too many mid-day snacks about the adventures of some long-haired Scottish mid-teens in already-outgrown flare-legged pants their friends the runaway redundant robots. Damn, that was a good dream.

Bill Meyer

 Fred Frith Trio – Closer to the Ground (Intakt)

Closer to the Ground by Fred Frith Trio

Rigorously resisting complacency and conformity across stacked decades can carry the consequences of burnout for even the most ardent and resilient of creative musicians. Closer to the Ground is evidence of guitarist Fred Frith coming to terms with this fact and realizing with renewed vigor the pleasures of playing in a band. Ensemble endeavors have been a regular outlet since his youth and while the measure of their enduring value is no epiphany, the company of bassist Jason Hoopes (fielding both acoustic and electric strings) and drummer Jordan Glenn has an obvious and immediate effect of dialing in the guitarist’s mercurial and explosive side. Both sidemen are mere fractions of the Frith’s age, but each is quick to illustrate that when levied against ardor and experience any differential is just a number. Grooves are plentiful, mixing prog rock atmospherics, dub and latticed drones with a flexing, propulsive sense of consensual purpose. Frith syncs his strings to all manner of filters and pigments, refusing to hew to any enduring signature and his partners respond with a similarly colorful palette of support. Titles for the nine pieces are all evocative, but in the end its the assembled aqueous sounds that adhere to the space between the ears above all else.

Derek Taylor  

  Fritz Hauser – Laboratorio (hat[now]ART)

The lede to the liners accompanying Fritz Hauser’s Laboratorio is “Drums and Space,” as an accurate and pithy a synopsis of the Swiss percussionist’s art as a curious neophyte listener could ask for. Hauser’s been active as a Contemporary Classical composer for much of his career, constructing complex music that draws on all manner of drum family devices. He’s also devoted time to associations with world-class improvisers including Joe McPhee and Jöelle Léandre. Here, the focus is on solo pieces devised around the nexus of music and architecture with inspiration provided by students of the latter. As with past Hauser projects the organized sounds are exacting. Identified only by a sequential Italian number, each piece explores facets of his assembled kit (snare, toms, cymbals, woodblocks, etc.) and how those components interact and refract within the crystalline acoustics of the recording space. Ranging from ghostly metallic whispers to strident tumbling rhythms the revolving parts create a recital rich with diaphanous dynamics and precision pivots in direction. Hauser’s an unassuming master of his craft and this hours’ worth of drum-driven dramaturgy delivers on nearly every count.

Derek Taylor

  Sarah Hennies / Greg Stuart — Rundle (Notice Recordings)

Rundle by Sarah Hennies & Greg Stuart

A few years back Sarah Hennies released an album called Work. While that was a solo CD of composed music, and this is an improvised collaboration between Hennies and fellow percussionist Greg Stuart (who, along with Tim Feeney, comprise the trio Meridian), the title comes to mind when listening to this cassette. For while both musicians are well acquainted with realizing profound, provocative and beautiful works by Michael Pisaro, Clara de Asis and Hennies herself, the vibe here is “let’s get to work.”  The two musicians approach the assembled resources of the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity like a couple of tradespeople sizing up a tool shop. “What do you have here?” “What can I do with this?” “What shall we build?” Moving decisively between hard objects, scraped surfaces and hovering mallet and piano figures, they construct an edifice of sound rich in tonal and temporal contrasts. Nice work.

Bill Meyer

 MP Hopkins — G.R/S.S (Aussenraum)

MP Hopkins is a both sides of the coin kind of guy. Heads, you get abbreviation.

G.R stands for “The Gallery Rounds” and S.S for “Scratchy Sentence.” Tales, you get elongation. Each of those pieces lasts a side, and each side is an unhurried investigation of the sounds that happen when not much happens. The first is a collection of degraded field recordings of forced air ventilation, not-quite-heard conversations and other stuff you aren’t supposed to notice when you check out some art. “Scratchy Sentence” is the outcome of Hopkins’ struggle to get something out of some synthesizers he didn’t really know how to use, which he compares to the task of coaxing conversation from a grumpy old man. The old man might say, “well if you learned how I talk, I’d sing!” It’s true, but who is holding classes on the lingo of old EMS and Arp machines? You learn as you go, and the discoveries that you make during that early struggle just might yield some cool sounds. That is the case here.

Bill Meyer

  Sarah Longfield — Disparity (Season of Mist)

Sarah Longfield can shred — but is that enough? Maybe it is, in a field of music that’s as hyperbolically dude-centric as virtuoso-level rock guitar. Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen, the fellows in Animals as Leaders: there’s little restraint in their compositions or performative styles, which feature as much groin-focused acrobatics as tapping harmonics. So, it’s sort of refreshing to watch Longfield do her thing. She plays. Occasionally she nods her head. Much of her music is as overstuffed as the spiraling, wanking, proggy nonsense that acts like Animals as Leaders churn out. But Longfield’s understated presence and her emotionally poignant vocals keep the songs grounded, if a bit mannerly.

Jonathan Shaw  

 Richard Papiercuts — Twisting the Night (Ever/Never)

Twisting The Night by Richard Papiercuts

Richard Papiercuts sings in a gothy baritone, tossing off mordant asides like a 1930s movie star. That is, he’s somewhere in the Venn Diagram where the dank glamor of Bauhaus intersects with the Monochrome Set’s fey wit (it’s a very small slice). To add to the complications, his band is large, multi-instrumented and exuberant, prone to happy squalls of guitar and irresistible blurts of brass and saxophone, but also clearly aligned with punk rock’s brevity and punch. (Think Olivia Tremor Control playing Minutemen covers.) And so, it is very hard to get a handle on Richard Papiercuts, much less to box him in with reference and antecedents, but it is much easier to say fuck it all and just dive in. You can start at the beginning with “A Place to Stay,” a walloping beat galloping between big slashes of guitars, and Papiercuts singing archly about (I think) having a baby. Or move right to the ebullient roar of distorted guitars in “Starless Summer Night,” where a rackety, endlessly repeated groove recalls rave-y shoegaze bands like Chapterhouse. “The Riddle” sounds exactly like the Pixies until it doesn’t, that is until its grinding bass and incandescent guitar gives way to a joyful overload of jangling strings, banged piano keys and loopy riffs of trombone and sax.  “World and Not World (Twisting the Night)” begins in a pinging new wave synth, which is subsumed not much later by a rushing krautish momentum. And over it all Papiercuts presides, morose, poetic, disdainful and stylish. If rock stars still roamed the earth, he’d be one.

Jennifer Kelly

 Dane Rousay — Neuter cassette (Dane Rousay)

Neuter by Dane Rousay

The cassette’s case is pink. The playing is decisive and attentive to contrast, but also reserved. The title cancels gender, and by implication conventionally binary readings of just what a solo drum performance is about. Dane Rousay’s latest recording highlights the communicative power of orchestrated gestures. Each strike, scrape or roll not only fills up space, but asks you to think about the point of that sound manifesting in that space for as long as it is around and as long as you think about it. That’s not just a solo percussion tape you’re hearing; that’s existential expression.

Bill Meyer

 Kenny Segal — Happy Little Trees (Ruby Yacht)

happy little trees by Kenny Segal

For a guy who’s fallen asleep to full-length Bob Ross episodes for years now (ask me about the days when I had to navigate endless hazardous popups on this one Chinese streaming site before the Rawse estate finally brought the whole series to YouTube), I really let myself down not investigating Kenny Segal’s Happy Little Trees closer to its mid-October release. The L.A. beatsmith, who made his name at Concrete Jungle playing drum n’ bass, has done work for Busdriver, Open Mike Eagle and collaborated with Milo, but he’s on his own here painting rhythms into the wilderness of your mind’s imagination sure to satisfy both the ASMR devotee in your life and that person who has fallen down the rabbit hole of Spotify chill mixes and cannot be retrieved. Featuring instrumental assistance including guitars, bass, sax, flute and piano from a tight cohort of co-conspirators, you’ll likely know where you stand based on the title of the seventh track alone: “Adultswimtypebeat.” Come, let’s make some big decisions together.

Patrick Masterson   

 Howard Stelzer — Across The Blazer (Marginal Frequency)

MFCD C | Across the Blazer by Howard Stelzer

The two tracks on Across the Blazer are founded upon a device beloved by sound designers. The Shepard Tone comprises three looped sine tones that are selectively faded to create the impression of an endlessly rising pitch. Imagine pitching a tent inside one of George Martin’s tape creations from “A Day in the Life” and spending the night while it never ends, and you’ve got an idea of what listening to this CD will do to you. It simultaneously instigates the apprehension that something is going to happen and the experience of nothing happening. Stelzer creates this experience with carefully filtered cassette tape noise, but the tools don’t really matter. It’s the vividness of the experience, which is enhanced by the halo-like masslessness of this enveloping sound, that counts.

Bill Meyer

 Szun Waves — New Hymn to Freedom (Leaf)

New Hymn To Freedom by Szun Waves

Much of New Hymn to Freedom, the latest by Szun Waves, a free improv drums, sax and electronics trio tangentially related to that booming jazz scene in London you’ve been hearing so much about, is the burbling and exhilarating aural equivalent of the (in)famous “Star Gate” sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey, except there’s a younger, more hopeful version of yourself at the end of the tunnel. But the best tracks on New Hymn To Freedom, the gorgeous, nocturnal “Fall Into the Water” and the melancholy, swinging “Temple”, are grounded and restrained. It’s as easy to imagine them playing as you lay on the hood of your car as it is piloting yourself through the cosmos.   

Isaac Olson

 Terre Thaemlitz — Comp x Comp (Comatonse Recordings)

Comp x Comp by Terre Thaemlitz

Anyone too lazy (or naïve) to investigate the mammoth back catalog of producer, poet, queer theorist and all around champion of the disenfranchised Terre Thaemlitz beyond the canonized DJ Sprinkles release Midtown 120 Blues has been gifted something special as 2019 dawns: Thaemlitz’s Comatonse Recordings made its way to Bandcamp in early January with a hodgepodge of albums that, as she puts it, “I have sold out of, but there is not enough interest for a physical repress.” Among these releases – which include 1995’s organic Soil and 1999’s bait-and-switch-campaigned Love for Sale: Taking Stock in Our Pride – is something especially noteworthy, Comp x Comp. The 76-track album is, as its title would suggest, a compilation of minimalist glitch, noise, ambient and nigh orchestral pieces that largely eschew dancefloor adrenaline. A series of 10 disorienting audio shorts each around a half-minute, "Mille Glaces.000-009," will intrigue Mille Plateaux completists deprived of a chance to hear it when the label went bankrupt in ’03, but there are also proper tracks like the 11-minute “Get in and Drive” and “A Quiet of Intimacy Mirrors Distance.” Thaemlitz’s idea of filling out the remainder of a CD length with 47 mostly silent one-second tracks occupies much of the tracklisting, but don’t be fooled: You’re getting your 80 minutes’ worth… and not a second more or less.

Patrick Masterson

Mike Westbrook — Starcross Bridge (Hatology)

As befits a man known best as a big band leader, Mike Westbrook has not made many solo records. This is only his third in 43 years, and it freely references things and people who have passed. Aged 81 when he recorded it in December 2017, Westbrook has seen a lot. He’s old enough to remember World War II and the drabness of postwar England; old enough to have been persuaded first hand of swing and modern jazz’s life-giving inspirations; to have seen his band-mates experiment there way into free improvisation while the world went nuts for the Beatles; and to have seen his generation inevitably pass the world on to the ill-gripping paws that have dubious hold of it now. You can hear bits of all of that across this album’s 14 tracks, as well as more personal memories. Cherished favorites by Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk bump up against pop tunes that he played with his wife Kate, and a couple originals are dedicated to musicians who played in his band but are no longer with us. Each performance feels as well framed as a remembered story, the one that you tell over and over to keep that memory alive.

Bill Meyer

 Woven Skull — S/T (Oaken Palace)

Woven Skull by Woven Skull

Ireland’s Woven Skull has a few neat tricks up their sleeve: they use drums, viola, mandola and whatever else is laying around, to whip up furious, black metal-esque squalls and eerie folk hauntings. They harness roiling free improv to mantric repetition and pentatonic, vaguely north African motifs. They mimic (and insert) the sounds of the bogs that surround their home base in Leitrim into their headier jams and, like their spiritual forbears Sun City Girls, they’ve got a penchant for homemade, bike bell gamelan. However, Woven Skull’s greatest trick is convincing you, for as long as they’re playing, that they’re the greatest band in the world. More serious than Sun City Girls and more playful than Bardo Pond, Woven Skull is a great introduction to your new favorite cult band.

Text and graphic-based scores can be licenses to improvise at the same time that the paper is in front of you, but Stuart’s not one to disrespect the parameters of an enterprise. For him, they are puzzles to decode or imparters of freeing implications; the singularity of his renderings Pisaro’s or Akama’s propositions speaks to his own uniqueness as a musician and interpreter. They enable him to delve into the minutiae of sound, which he magnifies and distorts, and also to engage with strong, imposing sounds, such as Pisaro’s beloved sine waves.

Scores like these can be like juvenile fish, which the composer releases into the wild, to survive or die on their own. Or the composers can nurture them by sticking around as performers or conductors. Akama has chosen a middle course. She has co-realized the CD’s four pieces with Stuart, but with the Atlantic Ocean between them, they executed their contributions separately. Thus she could respond to Stuart’s parts, and by responding give him more suggestions. But each musician still had considerable latitude to decide what sounds to place where. 

Stuart seems to be the more prominent player, but that may only be because he has made trenchant use of abrasions and frictions, and because we already know that his percussion has coexisted successfully with long, piercing pure tones in his work with Pisaro. But while Akama’s contributions are harder to identify, it is her score, and just because Stuart could have made a sound doesn’t mean that he did. Over time, questions of who did what fade away, to be replaced by awareness of sounds as presences, as textures and most particularly as layers. They don’t need to interact, although they sometimes do. Rather, by sharing space in a discretely purposeful fashion, they create a whole that is as absorbing as it is confounding.