dusted

“Maybe partying will help…” ~ boon/watt

Combing over earlier Year End entries going back to 2003, the elevation of music as a means of existential affirmation and assaugement presented itself as probably the most persistent theme. No matter what manner of adversity or affront existence hobbles us with music is always there as a steadfast reminder of what’s estimable and redeeming about the human condition.

This was a year that blew bileful chunks all over our collective consciousness with a regularity that outpaced any I can readily recall. The frequency between outrages fluctuated between weeks and days (sometimes even hours if one was paying close enough attention) culminating in the outcome of a political election that left me gobsmacked with a numbing compound of grief, anger and incredulity. Music’s place as an insulating pillar of positivity in my life was tested as never before.

The albums and collections below are ones released over the calendar that did the most to shore up cracks and fissures in my edifice of optimism. November 8^th was an alarm clock of resounding proportions and I will be relying on these sounds and innumerable others as aids in the task of remaining woke in its aftermath, stomaching the frontal lobotomy that is our incoming political leadership with a stiff bottle in front of me.

Wadada Leo Smith – America’s National Parks (Cuneiform)

As a fixture at the top of my annual list for the last several years, Smith secured the slot again with this outstanding paean to American recreational sanctums both real and figurative. His Golden Quartet augmented by cellist Ashley Walters works as the ideal vehicle for the grand structures with Smith’s trumpet spanning the spectrum from clarion to dulcet. Projects like this one feel even more essential now that the collective solace found in shared spaces geographically and imaginationally appears all the more endangered by the impending status quo.

Evan Parker – As the Wind (Psi)

A departure for the redoubtable British reedist and one that teams him with a percussive duo apart from any he’s previously encountered on record. Metallophones and lithophones could easily weigh in as bid at gimmickry, but both Mark Nauseef and Toma Gouband bring earnestness to their instruments that in turn inspire Parker to some of his most incisive and divergent playing in a long while. Instantly atmospheric and suffused with subcutaneous detail, this is music effortless defies category.

Barry Guy – The Blue Shroud (Intakt)

Guy’s no novitiate when it comes to wielding colossal instrumental arsenal. Witness his consummate discography with the London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra for just a partial affidavit. The Blue Shroud is different though, a fourteen-piece orchestra weaving strings, reeds and percussion into a scarily reliable conduit for spontaneity and surprise. Vocalist Savina Yannatou takes the ensemble even further outside Guy’s usual purview and the hour-long eponymous piece invites the kind of extended scrutiny I’m still happily embroiled in.

BassDrumBone – The Long Road (Auricle)

Four decades is a life span enviable and perhaps unimaginable to any working band. That bassist Mark Helias, drummer Gerry Hemingway and trombonist Ray Anderson have been able to achieve said longevity while remaining true to voluminous pursuits elsewhere is both estimable and edifying as the hide-in-plain-sight secret of their success together. This studio/live travelogue invites guests Joe Lovano and Jason Moran in on the fun and proves another truth in the process that the best musical unions are able to incorporate fresh ears.

Joe McPhee – Flowers (Cipsela)

The solo section of Joe McPhee’s catalog is larger than it’s ever been, a fact that does nothing to diminish the effect of this document of a Coimbra concert in ’09. McPhee sticks to alto and the title riffs on a sentiment first forwarded by Jackie Mclean who argued that flowers (or musical encomiums in this case) should be given while the recipients are still with us. Ornette Coleman, John Tchicai, Mark Whitecage and Anthony Braxton are among the dedicatees.

Avishai Cohen – Into the Silence (ECM)

Further distinguishing himself from the Israeli bassist and countryman who shares his name, Cohen brings an extra reservoir of gravitas to this meditation on the passing of his father. Trumpet, piano, bass and drums are among the most conventional of jazz configurations, but Cohen and his colleagues maximize the spacious ECM-officiated acoustics to sculpt music that is much about the palpable absence of sound as its presence. Quiet, although often bracingly brooding, this personalized meditation on loss is yet another anodyne I’ve reached for to cope with encroaching despondency.

Stirrup – Cut (Clean Feed)

An unapologetic rock-canted  record sheathed in the leathery, scaly skin of an improv one, Fred Lonberg-Holm’s power trio pulled off one of the most purely satisfying efforts I heard this year. Doubling on amplified guitar alongside his usual coruscating cello L-H did a credible job channeling his inner-Sonny Sharrock with ribbons of abrasive feedback coiling around the pounding retorts of more-than-game partners Nick Macri and Charles Rumback. Niceties and decorum are for suckers. Shout outs also to John Lindberg’s pair of releases.

Tom Harrell – Something Gold, Something Blue (HighNote)

Harrell’s paid more dues that most over a long career that’s found him on and off the cognoscenti radar with maddening regularity. An ongoing alignment with HighNote has fortunately kept the switch flipped on in recent years and this date in the company of fellow brass man Ambrose Akinmusire as frontline foil is arguably his best yet under the banner. Self-scripted modal architectures allow for plenty of open-ended blowing and Harrell even has the calm audacity to tackle “Body & Soul” that most antediluvian of fossilized standards with improbable success.

Peter Kuhn – The Other Shore (No Business)

Kuhn’s backstory is a tragic olio of some of the most notorious jazz man stereotypes. Narcotics, crime and spiritual/creative disillusionment spread across decades of trying to make it at a calling beset by public indifference and even antipathy. Kuhn’s present is another story entirely as a man who found a measure of peace with his demons and the means to resume his dream on a more honest and sustainable scale. The Lithuanian No Business label’s trio of releases featuring his work are all worth acquiring, but this date by his working trio of the now features him in the frame of present positive reflection.

Ellery Eskelin – Willisau Live (hatOLOGY)

Eskelin’s organ trio is among my favorite of his recent ventures and as much as I am enamored of drummer Gerald Cleaver the presence of Gerry Hemingway in his place on this live date raised my estimation even higher. Gary Versace’s protracted preface on the concert’s sprawling first piece admittedly requires a bit of patience. But there are verdant pleasures to be had in his piecemeal approach to his instrument, one that recalls Sun Ra’s obsessive attention to tone and texture. Once the three slip into the customary exploration of standards fare any earlier excesses are instantly forgiven.

William Hooker – Light: The Early Years, 1975-1989 (No Business)

A compendium that completely about-faced my shamefully myopic opinion of its dedicatee. Prior to exposure I’d mostly written off Hooker as a player redolent with industrious integrity, but deficient in the requisite technique to reliably bring it across. The hours of archival material here proves how wrongheaded that half-assed appraisal was with a wealth of examples exhibiting Hooker’s uncompromising insistence on the communication of compassion and conviction as the goal rather than some empty demonstration of percussive acumen for its own sake.

TEST – Always Coming From the Love Side (Eremite)

TEST isn’t even two decades dormant and they still carry credibility on par with their higher profile free jazz forebears amongst those fortunate enough to hear them in person or on record. Exercising guerilla-reminiscent tactics whether through impromptu subway platform gigs or venue-dates played gladly for the door they were always about the music. This double-disc concert date recorded at Chicago’s Velvet Lounge, itself another piece of free jazz iconography, completely bears the storied rep out.

Albert & Emil Mangelsdorff – Early Discoveries (SWR Jazz Haus/Naxos)

Albert undeniably got the ink, but Emil arguably had the more riveting biography as a victim of Gestapo-imposed anti-music laws and forced conscription into the Wehrmacht followed by a four years in Russian POW camp. The brothers’ reunion after the War led to a fruitful fraternal partnership some of which is documented on this illuminating two disc set of German air shots recorded between 1953 and 1963. All-Star collaborators include Hans Kollar, Heinz Sauer, Joki Freund and Atilla Zollar among others.

Xanadu Reissues

Producer Zev Feldman’s endeavors with the Elemental imprint continued apace in an ambitious effort began last year to reissue twenty-five vintage titles from the Xanadu catalog. I ultimately failed in my bid to cover them all at Dusted, but came close. As a haven of sorts for bop warriors during the lean years of the 1970s when popular demand for their talents was on the regrettable wane the label was home to some serious talent. Of the titles that completed the project this year standouts included guitarist Jimmy Raney’s Live in Tokyo, drummer Frank Butler’s The Stepper and Charles McPherson’s Beautiful!

Art Pepper & Warne Marsh - Unreleased Art Volume 9: At Donte’s April 26, 1974 (Widow’s Taste)

One of those serendipitously captured conclaves that could just as easily have easily consigned to the category of wishful-thinking by fate. Pepper, the live wire bundle of afflicted personality traits and life choices hustling to stay relevant and solvent and Marsh, in most measurable ways his opposite, who had ended up in much the same marginalized professional state. Seventeen years separates their last encounter and while the resulting music is unvarnished and at times discursive it’s far more often thrillingly honest and exemplary of the sheer improvisatory acumen of the men involved.

Sun Ra – Singles (Strut/Art Yard)

Two of the most recently prolific labels in the Sun Ra reissue game team-up for this omnibus of the Saturnian’s singles output. Sixty-five tracks put the set seventeen beyond an earlier out-of-print offering on the Evidence label and that along with freshly scrubbed sound and a budget-minded price point catapult it to definitive status as a means of delving into this four decade-spanning, jukebox-ready side of Ra’s vast discographical cosmos.

Jimmy Giuffre 3 – Bremen & Stuttgart 1961 (Emanem)

Objectivity is absent in the case of the collection of concert music by the most influential incarnation of the Jimmy Giuffre 3 from their sole European Tour. Producer Martin Davidson takes previously released material, gives it a new remastering and most generously appends nearly a half-hour of additional music to the package. The seeds of so much to come in the idioms of chamber jazz and free improvisation are audible in the interplay of Paul Bley, Steve Swallow and of course the calmly radical clarinet of the leader. Not just a favorite of this year, but of music past, present and future in my estimation.

Lee Konitz & Charlie Haden – Sweet & Lovely (King)/Lee Konitz & Kenny Wheeler – Olden Times (Double Moon)

Konitz in the intimate concert company of two of his most copacetic colleagues. The Haden set from ‘99 is an offshoot of a trio project that added pianist Brad Melhdau. Absent ivories the pair experiences their share of quiet stumbles and collisions, but hearing them extemporize at length is well worth the minor bumps and bruises. The conclave with Wheeler from the same year carries greater polish and cohesion thanks to the grounding presence of piano and bass, but neither gets in the way of the soaring contrapuntal flights of the horns. I wouldn’t want to be without either.

Bob Mould – Patch the Sky (Merge)

Third in a trilogy of Mould’s devising describing life, loss and the inevitability of aging this album took the longest to latch on to my consciousness. It’s uneven and even a little clumsy, but the tracks that work (“You Say You”, ‘Black Confetti” and the prescient “The End of Things”) stick like glue. Mould’s two-night residency took on extra weight this year as the first gig fell on the night after Prince’s sudden passing. Rallying the stage with openers (& mentors) The Suicide Commandos and his road manager on deputized vocals the ad hoc assemblage roared through an impromptu and gloriously ragged rendering of “When You Were Mine.” It weirdly seems like years ago now, but at the time it was just what the audience needed.

Bobo Yeye (Numero Group)

The Numero folks have yet to commission a project that they couldn’t hit out of the park. This lavishly-packaged three-disc box keeps that record intact with a survey of 1970s Upper Volta sounds. One disc apiece for Orchestre Volta-Jazz and Coulibaly Tidiani’s et l’Authentique Orchestre Dafra Star, two of the country’s most popular bands of the era and third sampling a selection of other ensembles. The music is predictably stellar, but the 176-page cloth-bound book is a revelation containing dozens of photographs, album cover facsimiles and multiple essays supplying sweeping context for the music.

Hailu Mergia - Wede Harer Guzo (Awesome Tapes from Africa)

Third in a continuing series reissuing the 1970s work of Ethiopian organist Hailu Mergia. The 1978 set found him swapping his usual Hilton House stomping grounds and Walias backing group for the environs of the Ghion Hotel and the associative six-piece Dahlak Band. The music also marks a departure in its balancing of instrumental charts with those serving vocalists and Amharic funk over the Walias’ jazz-influenced R&B. Mergia brings his customary audience-oriented acumen to the session alternating smoke-wreathed slow jams and burners with equal aplomb.

V/A – Soul Sok Sega: Sounds From Mauritius 1973-1979 (Strut)

Bucket lists aren’t a part of my belief system, but I’ve wanted to visit the tiny island nation of Mauritius and its dwarfing Western neighbor Madagascar since my teens. This compilation tells the tale of its 1970s musical renaissance the transformation of the traditional sega form by a myriad of outside influences including Western (& Eastern) pop, funk and jazz. Electric string instruments join cheap keyboards and drums in the service of spooling grooves and lyrics sung often in the local Creole dialect. Annotations and accompanying essay and photos are up to Strut’s usual standards.

The Aggrovators – Dubbing at King Tubby’s (VP)

Forty-four jukebox-sized slices of prime cut 1970s Jamaican dub from the superlative team of King Tubby and the Bunny Lee-produced Aggrovators, this collection is also a reissue of three Blood & Fire compilations covering the same material. Heavy-hitters (no pun intended) Scientist and Prince Jammy are also enlisted at the mixing controls and the band roster is stacked with A-grade talent that includes Robbie Shakespeare, Sly Dunbar, Jackie Mittoo, Tommy McCook and Roland Alfonso.

Kalan Arsiv Serisi

My infatuation with Turkish music dates back several decades, sparked by a series of pre-WWII compilations on the Rounder label and fueled by detours into classic Anatolian rock and folk. That latter category proved a rabbit hole this year thanks to a serendipitous web search that led me to the Tulumba site, a Jersey-based commercial clearing house for all things Turkish, and a cache of CD releases on the Kalan label discount-priced to move. Covering the archival output of musicians working in myriad variations of the idiom along with classical court music and contemporary pop sounds Kalan is a trove of voluminous proportions.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Criterion)

It’s become a tradition to close this essay out with a pick pulled from my other abiding love, cinema, and more specifically the always reliable Criterion Collection with a definable musical connection. This improvisatory Robert Altman film - part revisionist watercolor Western, part elegiac rumination on the demise of individualism under the inexorable onslaught of proto-corporatism – certainly fits the bill with a hand-in-pocket soundtrack by Leonard Cohen. Cohen was never truly in my wheelhouse, but his laconic, melancholy song-poems fit the murky, elided emotions of Altman’s imagined frontier community beautifully.

And 20 more from the jazz/improv end for good measure.

• Mark Dresser Seven – Sedimental You (Clean Feed)
  
• Hadley Caliman – Projecting & Celebration: The Catalyst Years (Fresh Sound)
  
• Whit Dickey/Kirk Knuffke – Fierce Silence (Clean Feed)
  
• Joe McPhee & Andre Jaume – Nuclear Family (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
  
• Kirk Knuffke & Michael Bisio – Row for William O (Relative Pitch)
  
• JD Allen – Americana: Musings on Jazz and Blues (Savant)
  
• Barry Guy/Marilyn Crispell/Paul Lytton – Deep Memory (Intakt)
  
• Michael Formanek Collossus – The Distance (ECM)
  
• Cherry/Tchicai/Schweizer/Francioli/Favre – Musical Monsters (Intakt)
  
• Peter Brendler – Message in Motion (Positone)
  
• Thumbscrew – Convallaria (Cuneiform)
  
• Andrew Cyrille & Bill McHenry – Proximity (Sunnyside)
  
• Tyshawn Sorey – The Inner Spectrum of Variables (Pi)
  
• Ingrid Laubrock & Tom Rainey – Buoyancy (Relative Pitch)
  
• Kirk Knuffke & Jesse Stacken – Satie (Steeplechase)
  
• Albert Ayler – European Radio Studio Recordings 1964 (hatOLOGY)
  
• Larry Young – In Paris: The ORTF Recordings (Resonance)
  
• Oscar Pettiford & Jan Johansson – In Denmark 1959-1960 (Stunt)
  
• Keefe Jackson & Jason Adasciewicz – Rows & Rows (Delmark)
  
• Brian Groder – R Train on the D Line (Latham)
  

Derek Taylor