Our dear friends at Kalamine Records have surprised me with yet another fine release. This album comes from the project Lezet, which is the working name of my friend Igor Jovanović. It is fair to say that this is true experimental music, or perhaps it’s better to call this sound art. The album is, as Igor puts it, “an album of assorted sounds made in mic’s physical interactions with various surfaces and other accidental sounds recorded during these interactions.”
We had the pleasure of reviewing a soundtrack by former Art Zoyd composer Thierry Zaboitzeff in August, and now we’re happy to announce that he has a 20-minute EP now available to peruse. The title track, Pagan Dances, will sound somewhat familiar to Art Zoyd fans, but he has added much better recording. The spirit of avant-progressive rock, dark and brooding, enriches the track. There is Zaboitzeff’s trademark cello work all over the piece, and this work would have fit well in a rescoring of The House Of Usher starring Vincent Price. Creepy, yes, but engaging. The second track, La…
We’re lucky to have so many talented musicians and composers in Los Angeles covering all genres. One of the most intriguing I’ve come across lately is Yann Novak, who hails from Wisconsin originally, but who is, like myself, a Southern Californian. Yann has recorded with labels such as 901 Editions, Dragon’s Eye Recordings (which I believe may be his own label), LINE, Room40, and Touch, among others. His credentials are impeccable. This release on Room40 (all praise to Lawrence English for running a fine imprint) has as its cornerstone the composition The Ecstasy of Annihilation, which is 7:30 in length. …
The London-based record label Far Out Recordings is killing me a little these days! I was honored to receive tracks from Alex Malheiros’ new album, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be picking it up on disc, but I loathe having to wait too long such treasures to come out. Still, an album of this magnitude is worth the wait, trust me. November 21st will come quickly, judging by how fast 2021 has blown by. For those of you who know something about Brazilian jazz, especially of the fusion variety, Alex Malheiros is not going to need any introduction. For those…
The legendary uilleann piper and leader of The Chieftains, Paddy Moloney, is no more. He passed away yesterday at the age of 83. This is a big loss for the world of folk music. In his honor, we post a track that is near and dear to me. The Chieftains toured China many years ago, and this is one of the tunes they brought back from the Middle Kingdom. May Paddy rest in peace. You can read NPR’s obituary here. UPDATE: The Chinese title of this tune is “Xi Yang Yang” (喜洋洋) by Liu Mingyuan (刘明源, 1931-1996).
It’s nice to indulge in a guilty pleasure on occasion. Growing up in Los Angeles, we were lucky enough to have a pretty good Industrial dance / EBM scene in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. The clubs were amazing, the girls stunning, the beats driving. Jettenbach brings some of these older bands of the era to mind. There are elements of Thrill Kill Kult, Skinny Puppy, and innumerable synth-pop bands. For purposes of nostalgia, this was quite good.
There’s not much to say about Matthew Halsall that hasn’t been thoroughly discussed over the past decade. He deserves the accolades, of course, but this live album is quite a treat. This is really going to appeal to fusion fans, especially Bitches Brew and Live-Evil-era Miles Davis, as well as the More modern works of Paul Schütze’s more free form work. Brilliant, but I expect no less from such a giant. For more info on this release, check out his Bandcamp page here.
Breton musician Thierry Jolif (who records as Lonsai Maïkov here) is a fellow Orthodox who also happens to make boomingly dark experimental drone music. It’s quite something to hear both worlds collapse into each other so violently, but if I could trust anyone to pull of such a feat, it is him. This is an EP’s worth of music, time-wise, but genres covered include ambient, drone, noise, darkwave and there are spoken word elements which tie the album together well.
Peter Zinovieff passed away on June 23, 2021, but he left quite a mark on avant-garde music. The British-born son of Russian aristocrats, he sold his wife’s tiara for his first computer, and from there, he would work with some of the greatest bands of the 20th century including Pink Floyd and David Bowie, Todd Rundgren and a host of Krautrock groups before going into composing for computer on his own. This compilation of artists pay homage to the little-known but highly respected performer. All this came together, apparently, as an idea to give Peter a proper sendoff on Facebook. …
No matter how ardent a collector of music you are, there are going to be some brilliant artists and albums you will miss. One could say that that’s part of the fun of discovering music. Credit for our surprise gem of the day goes squarely to Bandcamp’s blog, where Ashawnta Jackson penned an article on soul jazz. One of the names mentioned was a lovely lady, Shirley Jackson, whom you see depicted in the cover art and her weapon of choice, a Hammond B-3 organ. Jackson’s back story is impressive, as is how she came to focus on the organ. …