#michael denning

John Davis

Whenever I read lists like this I’m more interested in discovering one or two things I didn’t know about before, rather than understanding someone’s personal canon of influences. I don’t think it would surprise anyone if I said that “Orange Claw Hammer”by Captain Beefheart and “Know” by Nick Drake were a major influences on my first solo record, or that the drum solo on “Sputnik’s Down” was inspired by Charlie Parker’s “Koko.” I assume if you’re reading a website like this that you already know about those records, and that you’re probably more interested in music as an ongoing process of discovery rather than building something like the Lincoln Memorial dedicated to The Stooges and The Velvet Underground. If there’s one thing that pleases me about today’s indie music culture vs. that of my youth (say 1985-1992), it’s that it seems less narrowly tied to one lineage of influence and more peripherally curious and polycentric.

Art Melody—“Kari Ka Kian Fô”

The emcee is from Burkina-Faso and the producer is French. It’s a very economical record clocking in at 11 songs in 25 minutes with no filler.

Baaba Maal & Mansour Seck—“Muudo Hormo”

I think this is my favorite song of all time. I have no idea what the lyrics mean and have not been able to find a translation yet.

Susumu Yakota—Sakura

Incredible album. The flanger he put on the drums on “Hisen” tickles my spine and “Kodomotachi” sounds like a really pleasant nightmare.

Else Marie Pade—Electronic Works 1958—1995

Copenhagen avant garde electronic artist who was active in the Danish resistance movement and imprisoned by the Nazis in WW2. The avant-garde can have at least as much patriarchal baggage as any other social group, so this Important Records reissue lives up to its billing.

Jacob Kirkegaard—Erdfjall

This is the true rock music: an album of recordings of subterranean geological happenings in Iceland, made by a generational heir of Pade in the Danish avant-garde. (The two have also collaborated together.) Did Led Zeppelin ever record something as hot as the sound of volcanic activity? As sexually provocative as the premise of making a record by sticking microphones deep inside the earth? No, they did not.

Hossein Alizadeh—Hamnava’i

I’ve been listening to a lot of Persian music in recent years thanks to some tips from my former high school art teacher, whose wife is from Tehran. I was lucky to see Alizadeh live a few years ago which taught me to appreciate the popularity of this music in the Persian diaspora - it was packed!

Kayhan Kalhor—Scattering Stars Like Dust

Another master of Persian classical music, this time of the kemenche. I bought a cheap kemenche online but couldn’t really get anywhere with it—I’ll leave it to the experts.

Gary Stewart—Rumba on the River

Fantastic bookon the music of the Congo, about which I knew nothing before I read it, having heard more about music of Ethiopia or Mali to the east or west of Africa. Franco in particular was a revelation.

Michael Denning—Noise Uprising

One of my favorite genres of recordings is 78 rpm records from the first half of the 20th century. I got into 78s via the Secret Museum of Mankind series, Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, and early jazz records I bought because Cecil Taylor had cited them as influences. This book changed my experience of those records from an ahistorical encounter with sounds that were merely unfamiliar and beautiful to a listening experience rooted in the connections Denning draws in this book between working class records made in port cities of colonial empires in the ‘20s and ‘30’s, and the subsequent process of decolonization that unfolded after WW2. Start this video at 5 minutes for a taste.

Michael Hudson—Global Fracture