#robert ham

Jason Bivins

Bisbaye — Le Sens de la Fin (Cuneiform)

Colin Cannon – McGolrick (Infrequent Seams)

Bruno Duplant — Paysages sans Ages III (Sublime Retreat)

Ben Goldberg — Everything Happens to Be (Bag Productions)

Georg Graewe and Sonic Fiction Orchestra —  Fortschritt und Vergnügen (Random Acoustics)

Lingua Ignota — Agnus Dei (self-released)

Michael Gregory Jackson — Frequency Equilibrium Koan (Golden Records)

James Brandon Lewis Red Lily Quintet — Jesup Wagon (AUM Fidelity)

Dominique Pifarely Quartet — Nocturnes (Clean Feed)

Wadada Leo Smith — Trumpet (TUM Records)

Ryley Walker and Kikagaku Moyo — Deep Fried Grandeur (Husky Pants)

Yasmin Williams — Urban Driftwood (Spinster)

Miguel Zenon — Law Years: The Music of Ornette Coleman (Miel)

Tim Clarke

Dry Cleaning — New Long Leg (4AD)

The Notwist — Vertigo Days (Morr Music)

Cory Hanson — Pale Horse Rider (Drag City)

Ryley Walker — Course in Fable (Husky Pants)

The Weather Station — Ignorance (Fat Possum)

Matt Sweeney & Bonnie "Prince" Billy — Superwolves (Drag City)

Elephant9 — Arrival of the New Elders (Rune Grammofon)

Elori Saxl — The Blue of Distance (Western Vinyl)

Liam Singer — The Ocean (self-released)

Andrew Forell

Arab Strap — As Days Get Dark (Rock Action)

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis — Carnage (Goliath)

Madlib — Sound Ancestors (Madlib Invazion)

Dry Cleaning — New Long Leg (4AD)

Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, LSO — Promises (Luaka Bop)

Black Country, New Road — For The First Time (Ninja Tune)

Gazelle Twin & NYX — Deep England (NYX Collective)

Speaker Music — Soul-Making Theodicy (Planet Mu)

The Reds, Pinks & Purples — Uncommon Weather (Slumberland)

Mapstation — My Frequencies, When We (Bureau B)

Thomas Fehlmann — Böser Herbst ((Kompakt)

Sons Of Kemet - Black To The Future (Impulse!)

Ray Garraty

YOUNG SLO-BE — Red Mamba (KoldGreedy Entertainment / Thizzler On The Roof)

Drego — Krazy Man (TF Circle Entertainment / Get Off Records) 

Rio Da Yung Og x Nuez — Life Of A Yung Og (Label?)

Devin The Dude — Soulful Distance (Coughee Brothaz Entertainment)

Ampichino — Quarantine Part 2 (Double F Records / Rapbay / Urbanlife Distribution)

Mac J — Tricky Situation (TrueStory / Thizzler on the Roof)

BlueBucksClan — Clan Virus 2 (Out of the Blue)

Robert Ham           

Alina Kalancea — Impedance (Important)

The Telescopes — Songs of Love and Revolution (Tapete)

Innov Gnawa — Lila (Daptone)

Eximperituserqethhzebibšiptugakkathšulweliarzaxułum — Šahrartu (Willowtip)

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt — Made out of Sound (Palilalia)

Sana Nagano — Smashing Humans (577)

Ryley Walker — Course In Fable (Husky Pants)

Wau Wau Collectif — Yaral Sa Doom (Sahel Sounds)

Elori Saxl — The Blue of Distance (Western Vinyl)

Nightshift — Zoë (Trouble in Mind)

Bryon Hayes

Daniel Bachman—Axacan (Three Lobed)

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt — Made out of Sound (Palilalia)

Colin Fisher — Reflections of the Invisible World (Halocline Trance)

Giant Claw — Mirror Guide (Orange Milk)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor — God's_Pee at State's End! (Constellation)

Anne Guthrie—Gyropedie (Students of Decay)

Kim's Spirit — Blossom Everywhere (Tobira)

Mdou Moctar — Afrique Victime (Matador)

Roy Montgomery — Island of Lost Souls (BaDaBing)

Natural Information Society w Evan Parker — descension (Out of Our Constrictions) (Eremite)

Reds, Pinks and Purples — Uncommon Weather (Slumberland) 

Claire Rousay — A Softer Focus (American Dreams)

M. Sage — The Wind of Things (Geographic North)

Satomimagae — Hanazono (RVNG Intl.)

Sunburned Hand of the Man — Pick a Day to Die (Three-Lobed)

Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy — Superwolves (Drag City)

Ryley Walker  + Kikagaku Moyo — Deep Fried Grandeur (Husky Pants)

Wau Wau Collectif — Yaral Sa Doom (Sahel Sounds)

Mason Jones

Roy Montgomery — Island of Lost Souls (BaDaBing)

Sunburned Hand of the Man — Pick A Day To Die (Three-Lobed)

Speaker Music — Soul-Making Theodicy (Self-released)

Dr Pete Larson and his Cytotoxic Nyatiti Band — Damballah (Dagoretti)

Mdou Moctar — Afrique Victime (Matador)

Wau Wau Collectif — Yaral Sa Doom (Sahel Sounds)

Vapour Theories — Celestial Scuzz (Fire)

Keiji Haino & The Hardy Rocks — S-T (label?)

Ryley Walker  + Kikagaku Moyo — Deep Fried Grandeur (Husky Pants)

Various Artists — Sheffield Revisited:Melkweg, 1985 (In the Nursery)

Jennifer Kelly

Cassandra Jenkins — An Overview of Phenomenal Nature (BaDaBing)

Reds, Pinks and Purples — Uncommon Weather (Slumberland) 

Rosali — No Medium (Spinster)

GG King — Remain Intact (Total Punk)

New Bums — Last Time I Saw Grace (Drag City)

Mdou Moctar — Afrique Victime (Matador)

Jupiter & Okwess — Na Kozonga (Strut)

Chris Brokaw — Puritan (12XU)

Sleaford Mods — Spare Ribs (rough Trade)

Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy — Superwolves (Drag City)

The Mountain Goats — Dark in Here (Merge)

N0V3L — NON-FICTION (Flemish Eye)

Arthur Krumins

Fiver with the Atlantic School Of Spontaneous Composition — S-T (You’ve Changed)

Jeffrey Silverstein — Torii Gates (Arrowhawk)

Drew Gardner — S-T (Eiderdown)

Matt Lajoie — Paraclete Tongue (Flower Room)

Lena Hughes — Queen of the Flat Top Guitar (Tompkins Square)

Yasmin Williams — Urban Driftwood (Spinster)

Ryley Walker — Course in Fable (Husky Pants)

Khan Jamal — Infinity (Stash)

Masahiro Takahashi — Flowering Tree, Distant Moon (Not Not Fun)

Dorothea Paas — Anything Can’t Happen (Telephone Explosion)

Willie Dunn — Creation Never Sleeps, Creation Never Dies (Light in the Attic)

Patrick Masterson

Skee Mask — Pool (Ilian Tape)

Leon Vynehall — Rare, Forever (Ninja Tune)

Oui Ennui — [anything, really] (self-released)

Armand Hammer & The Alchemist — Haram (Backwoodz Studioz)

Emeka Ogboh — Beyond the Yellow Haze (A-Ton)

Tree — Soul Trap (self-released)

Rosali — No Medium (Spinster)

Elori Saxl — The Blue of Distance (Western Vinyl)

Keysound Recordings — Rinse FM mix 1/28/21

Dope Purple — Grateful End reissue (WV Sorcerer Productions)

V/A — Soft Touch Express Vols. 1-3 (Trax Only)

Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble — Now (International Anthem)

Ian Mathers

The Armed — ULTRAPOP (Sargent House)

Blanck Mass — In Ferneaux (Sacred Bones)

Cory Hanson — Pale Horse Rider (Drag City)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor — G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END! (Constellation)

Los Campesinos! — Whole Damn Body EP (Self-Released)

Mogwai — As the Love Continues (Temporary Residence Ltd.)

Nadja/Disrotted — Split (Roman Numerals)

Obay Alsharani — Sandbox (Hivemind)

Whisper Room — Lunokhod (Midira)

Xiu Xiu — OH NO (Polyvinyl)

Eric McDowell

Michael Winter — single track (Another Timbre)

Amani — A Constant Condensation (s/r)

Lea Bertucci — A Visible Length of Light (Cibachrome Editions)

Oui Ennui — Virga/Recrudescence (s/r)

Patrick Shiroishi — i shouldn't have to worry when my parents go outside (s/r)

Ashley Bellouin & Ben Bracken —   String Songs (Debacle)

Sam Gendel — Fresh Bread (Leaving Records)

Landon Caldwell & Nick Yeck— Stauffer —   Unity in Isolation (Astral Editions)

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt — Made Out of Sound (Palilalia)

Matt LaJoie — Paraclete Tongue (Flower Room) 

Bill Meyer

Bruno Duplant—Paysages Sans Âge III (Sublime Retreat)    

Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt—Made Out Of Sound (Palilalia)

Chuck Johnson — The Cinder Grove (VDSQ)

Damon Locks & Black Monument Ensemble — Now (International Anthem)

Daniel Bachman—Axacan (Three Lobed)

Donald Miller — Transgression!!! (VDSQ)

Hafez Modirzadeh—Facets (Pi)

James Brandon Lewis — Jessup Wagon (Tao Forms)

Natural Information Society with Evan Parker—descension (Out of Our Constrictions) (Eremite)

New Bums — Last Time I Saw Grace (Drag City)

Nightshift — Zoe (Trouble in Mind)

Rob Noyes — Arc Minutes (VDSQ)

Roy Montgomery — Island of Lost Souls (Grapefruit) 

Michael Rosenstein

[Ahmed] — Nights on Saturn (communication) (Astral Spirits)

Tucker Dulin/Ben Owen — Cat Guarding Geese (Erstwhile)

Max Hamel — Sounds of Summer: Field Recordings of Solar Electronics (Refulgent Sepulchre)

Haptic — Weird Undying Annihilation (Notice Recordings)

Christian Kobi — Hiden Place of Return (Cubus Records)

Catherine Lamb — Muto Infinitas (Another Timbre)

Sergio Merce — en lugar de pensar (Edition Wandelweiser Records)

takamitsu ohta — three relations among the flock (winds measure recordings)

Tim Olive/Kayu Nakada — Entenka (tss tapes)

Wadada Leo Smith — Trumpet (TUM)

Darcy Spidle — The Thawing of Bayer Lake (Self-released)

Anna Webber — Idiom (Pi Recordings)

Zhu Wenbo — HALF 一半(Self-released)

Sun Yizhou & Mai Mai — Shanghai Live: Electronic Duo (Self-released)

Archival Releases:

Julius Hemphill — The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony (New World Records)

IST — A More Attractive Way (Confront Recordings)

Jonathan Shaw

The Body — I've Seen All I Need to See (Thrill Jockey)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor — God's_Pee at State's End! (Constellation)

Last Agony — The Imminent Slaughter (Sentient Ruin)

Mare Cognitum — Solar Paroxysm (I, Voidhanger)

Rata Negra — Una Vida Vulgar (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Sleaford Mods — Spare Ribs (Rough Trade)

Suffering Hour — The Cyclic Reckoning (Profound Lore)

Derek Taylor

James Brandon Lewis — Jessup Wagon (Tao Forms)

Roscoe Mitchell & Mike Reed — The Ritual and the Dance (Astral Spirits)

Wadada Leo Smith — Trumpet (TUM)

Irene Schweizer & Hamid Drake — Celebration (Intakt)

Jason Moran & Milford Graves — Live at Big Ears (Yes)

Jaimie Branch — FLY or DIE LIVE (International Anthem)

Ches Smith's We All Break — Path of Seven Colors (Pyroclastic)

Julius Hemphill — The Boyé International Crusade for Harmony (New World)

Ray Russell — Forgot to Remember, Live Vol. 2 1970 (Jazz in Britain)

Alan Braufman — Valley of Search + Live at WKCR May 22, 1972 (Valley of Search)

Hassan Ibn Ali — Metaphysics (Omnivore)

This is not an unusual musical landscape in which to find this Virginia-based artist wandering of late. Morning Star, his 2018 release on Three Lobed, opened with a long suite that fed harmonium and fiddle drones into a pool of sound created by his 12-string guitar meanderings and the fuzz of an AM radio. And his 2012 cassette Tamun Shud found Bachman in a tug-of-war with drummer Ian McColm where both players fell in and out of focus. 

Axacan is, then, a continuation of those musical concepts with Bachman’s guitar receding further and further into the distance. Make no mistake, the instrument that he is most closely associated with remains a presence but the bulk of this album is taken up with soundscapes or experimental pieces. “Blue Ocean 0,” for example, is a stormy sea of clashing synth, harmonium, and fiddle overtones (all played by Bachman) with a background drone of what is apparently the sound of the wind blowing through a fishing line. Elsewhere,“Deep Adaptation” takes an already fuzzy field recording and what sounds like a piano and slows the tape way down. The resulting piece feels as if it is being emitted from miles below the earth’s crust. 

When Bachman does set the focus on the guitar, he emphasizes long strums and ringing tones rather than the fleet fingerpicking of some of his previous recordings. On “Year of the Rat,” he explores a single melody with the mind of a jazz improviser — speeding it up, slowing it down, starting the phrase and then quickly abandoning it for another idea. Or just quietly plucking out each note of the main chord to highlight the buzz of the steel strings. “Blues in the Anthropocene” wanes even further. Bachman’s gingerly played guitar passages are nearly subsumed throughout by static and insect chatter for nearly six minutes until a collage of field recordings pushes it aside completely. 

Bachman has reached an exciting stop along his musical evolution. He’s at that point where he keeps returning to the question “What’s next?” as a mantra. After mastering his instrument of choice, it’s a fair thing to ask. Bachman doesn’t try to answer that question on Axacan, but the music teases out a number of possibilities for this curious, restless artist to explore in the hopefully very near future.

Having the backstory on Walker’s path to sobriety isn’t necessary to appreciate Course In Fable. There’s enough allure in Walker and guitarist Bill MacKay’s elaborate latticework of glazed melodies and modal chords that call to mind McEntire’s other band The Sea and Cake, and how drummer Ryan Jewell floats through it all with loose, jazzy flourishes. There are also plenty of details buried within these multi-layered compositions — percussion, electric piano, programmed drum loops and strings that further belie the songs’ deceptively freeform nature. While still featuring elements of unbound improvisation, as heard throughout the swirling “Pond Scum Ocean” and the squawking guitar solo that rudely cuts through “On Axis,” the album still feels like Walker’s most deeply considered work since his 2015 breakthrough Primrose Green. 

The weight of Course In Fable comes through Walker’s lyrics — and knowing his past struggles makes them feel even heavier. The raw details of his addiction are there but playfully jumbled up in cracked imagery and gallows humor. How else to read lines like “I was due disaster in Driggs somehow I didn’t fall off / Would like to think I was saved by the way / Sun gets better in the flatlands / Man is better buried there”? Backed by music settled into a fraying waltz, Walker sings these and the rest of the lines of the album with a restrained croon that sounds, at times, almost exhausted. Who could blame him? Recovery and sobriety is a lot of work. But underpinning that vocal fatigue and the heady fog of the music is a measure of hopefulness as he urges himself and anyone listening to the rambling “A Lenticular Slap'': “Hang onto the loose ends”. In other words, grab whatever stray thread that might lead out of the darkness as tightly as possible. All it takes is a slight change in inflection to turn “Fuck me, I’m alive” from a bone-tired lament into a cry of redemption. 

That does mean, however, that Present Tense can be a relentlessly bleak listening experience. The brief measures of calm and solace within — Alianna Kalaba’s sparse bass intro on “How To See In The Dark”; the phosphorescent guitar tone on the title track and “Strawberry Cough”; the weightless feeling that fills the outro to “Alone Without” — are all underpinned by darker sounds or processed to make them feel slightly off. Homing in on those details or focusing on a small combination of elements (one recommendation: paying close attention to the interplay of Kalaba’s minimalist bass work with the body-shaking snap of Noah Leger’s drumming) is a way to keep this album in regular rotation without sinking completely. 

What the black clouds of Present Tense can’t obscure is how spectacular this all sounds. Even as the needle keeps crashing into the red, there’s a precision to how FACS, recording engineer Sanford Parker, and mixing engineer John Congleton attacked these seven songs. “Strawberry Cough” explodes and smolders like a classic dub production, perfectly pockmarked by layers of noise and stabs of feedback. And while the closing minutes of “Mirrored” feel like chaos as the music firmly implodes, there’s a controlled quality to it. FACS knows how and when to apply the exact amount of pressure to engage pain points and pleasure centers.