• Music

    Omar Ahmad – Inheritance

    Judging by the sole track available from AKP Recordings artist, the Brooklyn-based Palestinian-American Omar Ahmad, this album should be considered one of those albums you listen to at 3 a.m. in order to relax and be at one with God.  The chilled out atmosphere of the track Lapses is shimmering, but not overly so.  What won me over to this release was the interesting one-sheet I received with the promo kit: “At times recalling the emotional landscape of Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Cendre, Inheritance weaves an auditory narrative that evades genre constraints. Enveloping orchestral ambience gives way to hypnotic Arab…

  • Music

    Johnny Gandelsman – This Is America – An Anthology 2020-2021

    Before I left to China in 2018, the last concert I caught was Iranian-Kurdish master Kayhan Kalhor along with Brooklyn Rider.  As it turns out, their violinist, Johnny Gandelsman, was selling one of his albums on vinyl, which I duly purchased (and have nearly worn out).  I’m pleased to say he has new work out, though this album was released on the 1st of July of 2022. From his Bandcamp site: “To say that 2020 was a difficult year for the United States would be an understatement. Covid 19 took the lives of 385,000 people. Racism and police brutality took the…

  • Music

    Various Artists – Shaytoon Records: Sounds from the Iranian Ultraverse

    Shaytoon Records has released a compilation introducing some of the finest minimal techno coming out of Iran these days.  The label is based in New York, but the bands come, more or less, from the motherland, though America’s Persian diaspora is well-represented. The beats are rather icy and cold, reminding me of acts like Front Line Assembly and Delerium, though bearing a more mellow hue.  These acts are definitely worth exploring.

  • Music

    Allegra Krieger – Precious Thing

    It’s very rare for me to review a folk album that doesn’t involve an element of rock in it, but this is something special.  Allegra Krieger is a singer-songwriter based out of New York, and the songs on her album especially Precious Thing, are some of the most gentle ballads I’ve heard in a long while.  Her voice is fragile, almost to the point of breaking, but she sings so calmly that these tunes almost qualify as lullabies. This was a surprisingly relaxing, warm album.  Well done.

  • Music

    Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, Ryan Sawyer – Glass Triangle

    Relative Pitch Records is making a great case for becoming a favorite label of mine.  There are so many great releases covering the best of improvisational and free music that I’ll probably go broke trying to purchase all of them. It’s fitting to make my first review that of avant-harpist Zeena Parkins, whose work should need no introduction to the initiated, but for those new to her work, she recorded on labels such as John Zorn’s Tzadik Records and No Man’s Land, a German improv label best known to American and British audiences thanks to their distributor, Recommended Records, who…