Having found her voice and her sound with Vulture Prince and following on from her 2023 jazz trio release Love in Exile with pianist Vijay Iyer and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, Arooj Aftab returns with a fourth solo project. Released on the Verve Record label on 31 May 2024 last, Night Reign majestically blends South Asian classical music, jazz singing, acoustic guitar and Americana, folk and electronic music influences with an impressive cast of collaborators.

Some songs can only be heard at night – lunar lyrics for evening ears. It’s the songs of the night that stand us tall in the day, eyes filled with the work of stars. What voices will we take into our liminal slumber? What patterns and pieces will break open the night mind’s path?

Translating as “Queen of the Night” and referring to a flower from the Jasmine family which only blooms at night, the song “Raat Ki Rani” evokes for the singer night time parties and growing up in 1990s Lahore. As the original working title of the album, “Raat Ki Rani” also suggests the overarching nocturnal theme of Night Reign. “I am a night-time thriver” or “the night is my biggest source of inspiration” she often states in interviews. For the singer, after dark and nightly experiences are more conducive to the songwriting process.

The core ensemble of musicians on Vulture Prince, namely Maeve Gilchrist (harp), Gyan Riley (guitar), Petros Klampanis (double bass), Darian Donovan Thomas (violin) and Nadje Noordhuis (flugelhorn) all return. And perhaps in a conscious effort to avoid repeating a similar formula, a large cast of additional guest musicians complete the line up.

James Francies (Fender Rhodes), Linda May Han Oh (double bass), Mark Anthony Thompson aka Chocolate Genius (piano, bass and strings), Shahzad Ismaily (synthesiser), Vijay Iyer (piano), Cautious Clay (flute), Kaki King (guitar) and Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother (vocals) all contribute to stunning arrangements.

The repertoire ranges from adaptations of 18th century poetry (“Na Gul” & “Saaqi”), an old love song reworked as an impressive collaboration with Afro-Futurist poet Moor Mother (“Bolo Na”), new original songs in English (“Whiskey”) and Urdu (“Kaat Ki Rani”) and two covers.

Night Reign features a reprise of “Last Night”, the only song with English lyrics on Vulture Prince. But instead of a cover or a remix, “Last Night Reprise” completely eschews the Dub Reggae arrangements and radically reinvents the original Rumi poem with an experimental jazz take arranged for double bass, harp, flute and a cameo by Elvis Costello on Wurlitzer piano.

Originally a French song composed in 1945, “Autumn Leaves” was transposed to English in the 1950s and quickly became a hugely popular jazz standard with covers by Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra among many others. Bill Evans, John Coltrane or Miles Davis also recorded the song in its instrumental version. On Night Reign, Arooj Aftab rises to the challenge of releasing yet another version of the song by completely stripping the harmonic layers and turning it into a modal and percussion-led piece where the original chord structure is only hinted at in James Francies’ keyboard solo.

By borrowing elements from ancient South Asian traditions, from classic jazz singing and from modern jazz or hip-hop production techniques, Arooj Aftab and her musicians craft a unique style that has no equivalent on the contemporary music scene. Central to Arooj Aftab’s music and completely transcending language barriers is a haunting voice, which she describes herself as an alchemy of “displacement, reinvention, exile, chaos, feminism and the maddening fabric of love and loss and tragedy in the world.” Continually alternating between loops or solo sections, Scottish harpist Maeve Gilchrist’s lever harp also acts as a prodigious catalyst throughout the album.

Featuring a perfect electro acoustic balance between a large ensemble of musicians, breaking down genre and geographical barriers, intersecting past, present and future timelines, Night Reign is a flawless production.

https://www.aroojaftab.com/

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Originally formed in 2014 in Germany, Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek is another fascinating band whose repertoire blends Turkish folk songs and 1970s Anatolian rock with vintage psychedelia, contemporary pop music and a hint of jazz.

Following on from a debut EP and LP in 2017 and 2019 respectively (Nem Kaldi and Kar Ya​ğ​ar), an enchanting diptych of short LPs cemented the band’s magnetism of the European music scene. Co-distributed by Swiss-based Bongo Joe Records and French independent label Catapulte Records, Dost 1 was released on 25 June 2021 followed by Dost 2 on 11 November 2022 last. Both LPs were then re-released as a double LP on 21 June 2024 last.

Born in Hamburg and now based in Berlin, Derya Yıldırım is a second-generation Turkish singer songwriter and classically-trained multi-instrumentalist who grew up on a diet of traditional folk songs from her homeland. An accomplished piano, guitar and saxophone player, the musician anchors the band’s sound around the Bağlama (or saz), the 7-stringed lute traditionally used in Turkish and many Middle-Eastern and Balkan traditions.

It was while rehearsing for a folk festival in Hamburg that the singer met with Antonin Voyant (guitar & bass), Graham Mushnik (keyboards), two French men based in London and Greta Eacott, a British percussionist based in Denmark. Since 2022, Berlin-based South African drummer Helen Wells has joined the band on their live sets.

In the first section of Dost, Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek are almost reverse-engineering the nuts and bolts of classic songs from 1960s and 1970s West-Coast US psychedelic rock bands or prog-rock British groups to rewrite a contemporary psychedelic East-meets-West playbook. Wah wah and saturated guitars, winding keyboards and synthesisers, funky basslines all feature heavily in the mix of covers and new compositions. Two songs also feature solos on the flute (Antonin Voyant), another staple instrument heard in classic psychedelic prog rock.

When intertwining with the reverberating keyboards, Derya Yıldırım’s mellifluous vocal style takes on a hypnotic turn at times. Singing exclusively in Turkish, her music is strongly anchored in a folk tradition that she inherited from her parents who emigrated from Turkey in the 1950s as “Gastarbeiters” or from her aunt, also a singer, whose voice can be heard on “!Ayşe Halam Arıyor” closing Dost 2. As for the anthemic and synth-heavy “Haydar Haydar”, the song was adapted from a 17th century poem.

The Bağlama remains the driving force throughout Dost, either used as a melodic or a harmonic instrument. “Mola” for instance on Dost 2 is a solo improvised instrumental on the Bağlama in the great tradition of the Arabic maqam.

Following “Mola” is the stunning “Bal”, a true electro-pop banger whose killer bassline accentuates the fact that Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek are first and foremost a Dance Music outfit. The contrasting transition is striking. Yet, it highlights with great accuracy the band’s cultural stance on the German and wider European music scene.

It is a question that every musician should ask themselves: ‘Who are you in this whole system and where do you want to go? What are you believing in? If you believe in playing the makam as it is and imitate what the others did before, it’s your decision. But you can also be aware of its limitations, and jump out of the border and come back. And if you are influenced by so many other things in life—living in diaspora, growing up in a country that you’ve never been welcomed in—it should also affect your music. And why not be free in music when you can’t be free in life?

Derya Yıldırım – Bandcamp

With the band now signed to Brooklyn-based Big Crown Records, expect new music soon from Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek.

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Lending its name to the album, the word Cadence has a multitude of meanings, all referring to rhythm, count, measure or beat. From the old Italian Cadenza via the Latin verb Cadere meaning “to fall”, Cadence points to the rhythmic flow of a sequence of sounds or words, to its intonation or modulation, like in the pitch of the voice as it falls at the end of a sentence – as exemplified by the descending chord progression on the title track. All the songs on Cadence express this feeling of slowly hovering between two worlds, of having homes in two places separated by the ocean and constantly ebbing and flowing between both, either physically or mentally.

“These songs have a feeling of being lost in the woods, but writing from that place, they were written in a process of getting unstuck.”

Following a deliberate downtempo pace accompanied by a down-tuned and open electric or resonator steel guitar to suit her voice, Amelia Baker’s singing is both rooted in the modern Californian folk scene and in the “high lonesome sound” of the Appalachian rural folk tradition. As suggested by three covers on her 2020 album No Summer, the singer likes to dig deep into a repertoire of slow ballads, laments and tunes from the Anglo-Irish repertoire such as Kentucky singer and banjo player Roscoe Holcomb’s “Wandering Boy”, Kentucky singer Jean Ritchie’s version of the traditional English song “The Cuckoo” or West Virginia old time fiddler Edden Hammons’ “Queen of the Earth, Child of the Skies”.

Accompanied by sparse drums (Phillip Rogers), bass (Neal Heppleston), organ, (Nich Wilbur), viola (Jake Falby) and fiddle (Lankum’s Cormac MacDiarmada), Amelia Baker chronicles an in-between magical-realist world of ancient forests, moonlit caves, waterfalls, silent streets and windswept empty fields. Her melodic, slow burning and droning ballads are populated by mythological selkies (“Two Heads Grey Mare”), goats and talking birds. Amelia Baker is also a fiddler and following her move to Ireland, she spent time completing a Master’s Degree in Irish Traditional Music Performance from the University of Limerick. A song like “A Scorched Lament” for instance is beautifully set to the beat of a slow jig, and subtle string arrangements embellish every song on the album.

Even though the album emerged from a post-pandemic sense of uncertainty and isolation, Cadence is a striking collection of new songs amplified by an arresting voice quietly soaring through multiple layers of lulling bass, strings and down-tuned guitars sometimes on the brink of saturation.

https://cinderwellmusic.com

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An Ever Changing View

Approximately one minute into the YouTube video for Mountains, Trees and Seas, one can briefly glimpse a vinyl copy of Francis Bebey’s “Psychedelic Stanza 1982-1984” displayed on top of a record shelf. A pioneer of African electronic music, Francis Bebey (1929 – 2001) was a Paris-based writer, singer, songwriter, broadcaster and musicologist from Cameroon who was instrumental in breaking down barriers between Western and African traditions by integrating early electronic samplers alongside acoustic instruments in a DIY fashion.

Released posthumously in 2014, Psychedelic Stanza 1982-1984 is an outstanding compilation of new instrumentals and songs showcasing the sanza, the small African lamellophone also known as thumb piano, kalimba or mbira. Every song on the record is built around circular rhythmic patterns and sometimes amplified grooves generated by various thumb pianos, percussions and flutes. To this day, the vintage collection exerts an influence that extends far beyond the confines of roots music circles and more than likely contributed to channel the creative energy underpinning An Ever Changing View.

If Matthew Halsall started introducing the kalimba on Salute to the Sun to add additional colour, the instrument becomes the foundation stone to most compositions on An Ever Changing View. Practically every track is built around hypnotic loops on thumb piano, glockenspiel, log drum, bells, xylophone (Chris Davies) and custom-made instruments including a set of 17 triangular bells. The thumb piano is both a rhythmic and a melodic instrument and as a result, the traditional drum kit (Alan Taylor) tends to feature less prominently in favour of other percussion instruments and congas (Sam Bell, Jack McCarthy). Interspersed by three short field recording interludes, the seven airy compositions feature magnificently intertwining ostinato patterns on piano, Rhodes piano (Liviu Gheorghe, Jasper Green) and Harp (Alice Roberts, Maddie Herbert), all chiming in unison with the thumb piano loops and sustained by the bass lines of Gavin Barras. Alto saxophone (Matt Cliffe) and higher pitched wind instruments such as the soprano saxophone and the flute (Chip Whickham) all trade solo sections alongside the crystal-clear lines of Matthew Halsall’s trumpet. On the last trumpet-less track on the album “Triangles in the Sky”, subtle wordless vocal lines by singer Caitlin Lang can also be heard.  

I decided to find places by the sea with beautiful views […] that would inspire me. I was trying to record compositions with a landscape painting process in mind where I was looking at a view for eight hours a day and trying to create sounds that captured the things I was seeing.

The mood is clearly contemplative throughout and reflects on the part of the musician a conscious effort to move away from the perpetual commotion of city life. Most of the tracks were conceived during residencies in four different houses on the British coastline – Bridlington in the North East, Penmaenmawr in North Wales, Newborough beach on the island of Anglesey and a small wooden lodge in a forest outside Holyhead. The majestic seaside landscape provides the creative and even visual backdrop to the album as it features on the cover and inner sleeve artwork. But it’s the natural cycles in motion such as the weather, tidal and solar patterns generating this “Ever Changing View” which provide the entire palette of colours and sounds informing the arrangements.

In addition to commissioning custom-made instruments for the album, Matthew Halsall also commissioned London-based artist Sara Kelly to design a giant hand-dyed tapestry for the album, showcasing floating coloured shapes that beautifully echo American artist Alexander Calder’s kinetic art and mobile sculptures. Like a software developer mocking up the early stages of a new system design by sketching the process on paper, the multicoloured canvas prefaces the album by mapping all the diverse instruments used on the recording, each with their own shape, colour and vibration. The giant frames were then shot in situ in some of the residency locations on the coastline to illustrate the cover artwork of the album. The frames did also travel on tour with the band as a stage prop.

Bright Sparkling Light

A three-track EP featuring music from the same sessions as An Ever Changing View, Bright Sparkling Light was originally meant as a tour-only release sold after concerts. But the demand was such that the EP was subsequently made available to the general public and re-pressed, with the artwork cover echoing the shapes of the original commissioned tapestry. The EP format allows the ensemble to feature its longest composition of the entire project on the B side with “The Tide and the Moon” spanning 10 minutes.

Drawing the listener in from the outset with a stunning colourful floating canvas against a backdrop of coastal hills in the distance, boasting an impeccably-designed vinyl package for both the double LP and the EP with an original font and embossed lettering, Matthew Halsall’s two most recent releases compile a flawless creation at the intersection of contemporary visual art, experimental jazz and ambient music.

https://www.matthewhalsall.com/

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If Radie Peat and Katie Kim first performed together as a duo in 2018, January 6th 2021 witnessed the first live performance by the four musicians as a quartet. It took place during the COVID lockdown in Dublin and was broadcast as an “audio-visual collaborative streaming event” with striking visuals by Cork-based artist Vicky Langan. It coincided with the traditional Christian feast day known as Epiphany which is referred to in Ireland as Nollaig na mBan, Women’s Christmas or Little Christmas. The date marks the end of the Christmas period and is meant as a celebration of women where roles as reversed at home. The tradition had died out but has somewhat enjoyed a revival in recent years.

What was originally a once-off collaboration focusing on women-centred narratives paved the way for the formation of ØXN as a band. Opening the record and setting the tone, a nine-and-a-half-minute murder ballad “Cruel Mother” metamorphoses from a traditional a-capella song into a doom-laden and spectral goth-rock anthem propelled by a sustained motorik beat. Released on 27 October 2023 last, CYRM is an outstanding début.

Radie Peat is best known as a singer with Dublin-based four-piece Lankum whose 2023 Mercury Prize-nominated False Lankum has been widely praised by the music press. Lankum’s success has also generated several fascinating side projects, including Ian Lynch’s podcast and subsequent anthology Fire Draw Near or his One Leg One Eye project for the excellent Nyahh Records. The formation of ØXN as a band could also be considered as another Lankum spinoff as both projects share John “Spud” Murphy as producer.

But the genesis of the band probably goes back much further. Since 2009, John Murphy has also been playing bass alongside drummer Ellie Myler with experimental shoegaze and krautrock-influenced three-piece band Percolator. He also first collaborated with Waterford singer songwriter and experimental musician Katie Kim on her 2008 début “Twelve” and produced Katie Kim’s dark, hypnotic and doom-laden 2016 masterpiece Salt. As for the Ox imagery, it probably finds its origins in Katie Kim’s latest 2022 release The Hour of the Ox.

Collectively, ØXN draw from a hugely diverse set of musical and film references, from ambient drone music to experimental rock, independent cinema and horror films, all of which help to steer their unique take on one aspect of the folk repertoire. Every song on CYRM is a murder ballad, either traditional, recently composed or it alludes to a crime.

The murder ballad is a rich sub-genre within the folk tradition which has been mined extensively by the likes of Nick Cave for instance. Over the last few years, Irish folk outfit Lankum, whose name derives from the title of a murder ballad, has been tapping into this rich cultural vein by juxtaposing the thematic doom of the traditional songs with haunting and experimental drone-based arrangements.

While Lankum base their drones on acoustic instrumentation as much as possible (hurdy-gurdy, uillean pipes, strings, accordion and concertina), ØXN don’t hesitate to embrace the sub-bass potential of synthesisers, electric guitar and bass as well as samples to weave a low-pitched and textured tapestry of sound.

Four of the “murder” ballads introduced by ØXN tend to feature female characters or are told from a female perspective. Both “Cruel Mother” and “The Wife of Michael Cleary” feature female characters that become ostracised from society, either because they have illegitimate children or are accused of being a changeling by their husband.

“Cruel Mother” was adapted from an arrangement of the traditional song by American performance artist and musician Andy Fenstermaker aka Andy the Doorbum. The influence of Galway dark folk singer songwriter Maija Sofia cannot be understated either. She originally composed “The Wife of Michael Cleary” and the song featured alongside another cover version of “The Trees They Do Grow High” on her excellent 2019 début Bath Time.

“The Feast” is another original composition by Katie Kim which first appeared on her 2012 release Cover & Flood. Concluding the album, the 12’50’’ long “Farmer in the City” is a daring and sweeping reinterpretation of a Scott Walker song taken from his 1995 avant-garde album “Tilt”. The song evokes the murder of Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.

The Claddagh Records label was originally founded in 1959 by Garech De Brún and Ivor Browne. From 1962 onwards, Claddagh Records was home to traditional Irish folk band The Chieftains who in their time revolutionised the performance of traditional Irish music. Following on from the groundbreaking work of Ceoltóirí Chualann in the late 1950s, The Chieftains completely rejuvenated the style by transforming what was originally a soloist-based tradition – or group-based in the case of Ceili Bands performing in unison for dancers – into a more sophisticated and arranged act. The Chieftains were of course instrumental in heralding the folk boom of the 1970s which saw the emergence of trailblazing bands like Planxty, De Dannan or The Bothy Band who all approached the tradition with a progressive rock attitude.

In that context, ØXN’s transfiguration of a traditional and contemporary folk repertoire through the prism of doom folk, post punk, drone and noise rock is a consistently radical choice for the reborn record label.

https://oxnmusic.com

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As an all-woman rock band blending 1960s West Coast surf-rock and Doo Wop with psychedelia, La Luz also revel in the beauty of sophisticated vocal harmonies as pioneered by many sometimes forgotten 1950s and 1960s all-girl R&B, pop or soul bands such as the Chiffons, the Marvelettes, the Supremes, the Bluebelles, the Angels, the Chantels, the Dixie Cups, the Shirelles, the Velvelettes or the Tammys.

But if the music of La Luz is electric and drenched in Fender vibrato and reverb, Shana Cleveland’s solo work is acoustic and dominated by a trademark finger-picking style, leading to much slower-paced songs and a more meditative approach. At that point, it is interesting to highlight the musician’s obsession with guitar players. Back in 2012, Shana Cleveland released The Obscure Giants of Acoustic Guitar, a set of 37 trading cards available from the Tompkins Square label. Manzanita features two guitar instrumentals, “Bonanza Freeze” and “Sheriff of the Salton Sea”, both reminiscent of the bluesy and minimalist primitive guitar style of John Fahey.

I feel so relieved to be
Back in the country
Mystic Mine

Now I am a Californian
I never want to leave the state again
For too long, I’ll write a thousand songs
I’ll write a thousand songs before I’m done
Mayonnaise

With the songs on Side A “conceived” during “the psychedelia of pregnancy” as the singer puts it while side B was written after the birth of her son, Manzanita follows on from her previous album Night of the Worm Moon (2019). It also continues to chart the singer’s move from urban LA to rural Nevada County in Northern California where “Everything is blindingly in bloom”. Nature is omnipresent, from the album’s name – Manzanita refers to a small evergreen shrub native to California – to songs like “Walking Through Morning Dew”, “Quick Winter Sun” or “Mystic Mine”, the latter an acknowledged nod to a song like “Heart of the Country”, from Paul & Linda McCartney’s 1971 second post-Beatles album “Ram”. “We used synthesizers as a way of recreating the atmosphere of being outside in the natural world while in the studio”, suggests the singer, “they are actually the best vehicle for conveying the sounds of nature (bugs, wind, birds, chainsaws – rural white noise)”.

For all its contemplative qualities underpinned by the constant drone of reverberating vocals, vintage synthesisers, bowed double bass and pedal steel guitar, the album is also imbued with a darker side, a latent tension elicited by the constant threat of drought and devastating forest fires in songs such as “Faces in the Firelight” or “Ten Hour Drive Through West Coast Disaster”.

From the outset, La Luz have staged many of their songs using a brand of DIY surrealism reminiscent of the 1960s era psychedelic collage art with constant references to vintage films or cartoons and even tapping into the afro-futurism and sci-fi spirit of Sun Ra.

Shana Cleveland’s previous album Night of the Worm Moon for instance derived its title from Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra’s 1970 Night of the Purple Moon, and the science fiction and outer space vibe of the video for “Don’t Let Me Sleep” was captured in her back garden. On Manzanita, the video for “Walking Through Morning Dew” was filmed in her kitchen in front of a hand painted backdrop and entirely animated with home-made props and cut-out cardboard drawings. The video for “Faces in the Firelight” features human flowers, a colourful picnic and oversized bugs. This deep surrealist dive into a parallel domestic reality illustrates to perfection the nature-induced magic already permeating the entire album.

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2018 also saw Laurel Halo compose her first full-length film score with Dutch experimental documentary film-maker Rob Schröder’s “Possessed”. The score includes solo piano compositions performed by Laurel Halo herself as well as cello (Oliver Coates) and Galya Bisengalieva (violin).

Aggregating all these disparate influences into the first release on her own “Awe” recording label – which is also the name of her NTS show – Atlas (September 2023) is a radical recording intently designed as a discombobulating experience which makes for a surreal deep listening sound journey best enjoyed on headphones.

Awe

Awe is something you feel when confronted with forces beyond your control: nature, the cosmos, chaos, human error, hallucinations.

Starting with the cover artwork, the artist makes a point of “blurring” visual standards. The front cover picture is deliberately out of focus and one needs to rotate the back cover 180° to read the track listing for Side B and the credits.

This initial meddling with spatial awareness introduces a haunting musical score which also confuses traditional conventions associated with composition. While most modern ambient music releases will still feature at least a slow beat, a chord progression, a loop or a recurring pattern, Atlas is completely devoid of any recognisable time signature or melodic development, apart perhaps on the piano-led “Belleville”.

Relying extensively on orchestral Virtual Studio Technology, the record is a dizzying collage of field recordings, orchestral snippets from various instrument libraries and drone layers alongside processed acoustic instruments performed by choice guest musicians: experimental saxophonist Bendik Giske, cellist Lucy Railton, violinist James Underwood and Laurel Halo herself on piano. “Belleville” also features vocal harmonies by electronic musician and vocalist Coby Sey.

But what makes Atlas radically stand apart from contemporary ambient releases is the musician’s approach to composition. Laurel Halo stacks her strings, acoustic and vocal layers like a jazz musician and a modal improviser. It is interesting to note that the musician played keyboards on the 2021 electro-jazz release “Dissent” as part of the Berlin-based Moritz von Oswald trio. This also coincides with a pandemic-era period during which Laurel Halo reconnected with the piano through the prism of jazz theory. This improvisational approach resurfaces extensively throughout Atlas with repeated jazz chords punctuating “Abandon” for instance or a slightly dissonant piano on “Naked to the Light”.

Late Night Drive

And I had these various sets of night time imagery because often, when you are touring and traveling as a musician, you experience cities at night, imagery that you see, perhaps, when you’ve gotten off of a long shift at work. And it’s night, and it’s pouring rain, and a car goes by. And you see the reflection of the headlights in the wet pavement, or you see steam coming out of portholes.
NPR interview

As hinted perhaps by one song title, the eerie freeform textural improvisations on Atlas musically transposes this feeling of being on the move constantly as a jet-lagged working and performing musician. As well as that, having lived in New York and Berlin for long periods, Laurel Halo is after relocating to Los Angeles following short stints in London and Paris during the making of the album. The entire record plays like a never-ending “Late Night Drive” between airports or across various cities with the car windows opened, sometimes eavesdropping on other cars at traffic lights, taking in all the street noises and catching the music coming out of bars and clubs.

The distorted and twinkling piano notes scattered around the record or the wandering bass on the title track are the only elements anchoring the music in the real world. Like a musique concrète experiment whereby the musician is pointing a microphone while walking past orchestras rehearsing or tuning up in separate rooms inside a labyrinthic mansion, the 10 tracks on Atlas summon a collection of hallucinatory memories and dreams stitched together into one majestic continuous soundtrack.

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From the outset, the band’s name, which is almost expressed as a question, implies a binary perspective encompassing both the physical nature of existence and a more elevated state of consciousness, empathy and compassion. This duality is further emphasised by the Ernest Hemingway quote included in the press release and illustrated on the cover artwork – “Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name”. On Disappearance, the trio sets out to explore this dualism through the prism of rhythm – in particular with the extensive use of irregular meters – as well as wide-ranging musical influences or instrumentation.

Introduced by a propulsive bass line and a raw funk groove for instance, “Continuation Day” constantly sways between two distinct musical traditions. Borrowing from a late 1960s jazz-funk style as exemplified by influential bands such as The Meters on the one hand, it also references a melodic Scandinavian tradition.

The title track “Disappearance” toys with multiple key changes, polyrhythms and scales while on two superb ballads – “Together Again” and “Aware” – a soaring piano and an expressive double bass take turns in leading the melody.

The entire album is enhanced with subtle electronic layers throughout, but on a track like “When You Find It, You Will Know”, Esben Tjalve clearly alternates between acoustic and electronic keyboards.

Supremely well recorded to sustain a crisp sound, Disappearance is replete with vibrant rhythmic and melodic intricacies which gradually reveal themselves on repeated listening. Concluding the record, “Big Bang” ties in with bassist Torben Bjørnskov’s minimalist modus operandi when it comes to approaching his craft and his teaching practice.

Practising the minimum is something Bill Evans ones said in an interview. And it did not mean that he was practising as little time as possible, but that he was practicing a little amount of material at a time from as many angles as possible.

Thus reigniting the conceptual cycle of life and death underpinning the record, all compositions prompt the listener to marvel at the wonders of our fleeting existence since, as is the case with many jazz trio recordings, “God is in the details”.

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Following on from two well-received LPs with Dos Santos for the excellent Chicago-based International Anthem label, a 2019 impromptu gig in Los Angeles with a small ensemble sowed the seeds for what would become Daniel Villarreal’s first solo album.

Recorded over 5 sessions between 2019 and 2020 in three different locations, featuring 12 guest musicians and released on 20 May 2022 last, Panamá 77 is a fantastic instrumental album brimming with a vibrant creative energy. Released a year later, Lados B features unreleased music from the same performances and showcases Daniel Villarreal’s music in a striking trio formation.

Panamá 77 

This album is an affirmation of both my origin story and who I am today. I see my life and my music as a collaboration of improvisation and intention all in the spirit of community and joy.

Kicking off his musical journey as a member of various progressive punk bands in the 1990s in his native Panama, it wasn’t before he emigrated to the United States in the early 2000s that the musician started exploring his Latin roots and probing the rhythmic intricacies of percussive dance music traditions. Transposing those skills to the drum kit alongside an assortment of shakers, bells, congas, bongos, claves and tambourines, Daniel Villarreal gradually integrated the Chicago jazz scene from the 2010s onwards where he became a sought-after sideman.

All the tracks on his début album emerged from collective jams and impromptu sessions with a vast cast of different musicians including Jeff Parker on electric guitar, Cole DeGenova on keyboards, Anna Butterss on double bass, Elliott Berg on baritone saxophone or Aquiles Navarro on trumpet.

An undeniable euphoric spark immediately transpires from swirling riffs like “Ofelia” or “In/On”. Song titles like “I didn’t Expect That” or “Uncanny” underline the musician’s sense of wonder whereby some songs didn’t turn out exactly into what was expected at the outset. “I remember starting the main groove and Bardo [Martinez – bass guitarist] jumping in with a wacky bass line. We celebrated how weird it was even though we weren’t playing the same groove together, it came out in a strange, wonderful way that surprised us” recalls the drummer.

There are beautiful string arrangements for violin and viola (Marta Sofia Honer) on “Cali Colours” and the soul-funk “18th & Morgan”, the latter song a celebration of the Chicago strip in the Pilsen neighbourhood where the musician resides. Panamá 77 is also a record where the psychedelic funk of “Sombras” or the cosmic jazz-tinged “Parque En Seis” overlaps with the reprise of a haunting and vintage organ-led waltz (“Patria”) originally composed by Avelino Muñoz harking back to 1950s Panama.

Daniel Villarreal’s follow-on release features double bassist Anna Butterss and guitarist Jeff Parker and was recorded over two days at the same outdoor venue in Los Angeles on 15 and 16 October 2020. It is impossible to ignore the fact that those sessions are closely associated with another recording released last year and sharing a similar aura.

Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy

In 2018, guitarist Jeff Parker set up a residency with a rotating cast at the Enfield Tennis Academy, a small jazz club in the Highland Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles. Curated from dozens of shows and released on Eremite Records (US) / Aguirre Records (Europe) on 28 October 2022 last as a digital download and a double LP, Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy showcases four extended side-length tracks. Each track is named after the day they were recorded on and features a live quartet comprised of Jeff Parker on electric guitar, Anna Butterss on double bass, Jay Bellrose on drums and Josh Johnson on saxophone. The recording captures the performances in what is probably an ideal environment for jazz music – an informal setting and a small audience.

The mesmerising long form improvisations see the musicians take turns at leading and supporting and pluck magic out of thin air in the process. Changing direction on a whim, the quartet nevertheless sustains a head-bobbing hip-hop groove throughout the entire sessions. As the extensive notes suggest, “The music is more free composition than free improvisation, more blending than discordant.” – an approach that Jeff Parker has perfected from the mid-1990s onwards together with the post-rock band Tortoise, Isotope 217, as a leader or a hugely prolific sideman in recent years.

The recordings for Lados B therefore ran in parallel with the Los Angeles residency and one can assume that the performances for each distinct recordings share a similar artistic impulse and feed off each other creatively.

Lados B

The “Chicali Outpost” where the sets were captured is not a recording studio as such but an outdoor backyard at the house of recording label International Anthem’s co-founder Scott McNiece which features on the cover of Panamá 77. To put the house gigs back in their original context, “[…] it was the first ensemble recording session they’d done in-person since the pandemic locked the world down just seven months prior”, hence perhaps the gleeful dedication on the part of the musicians at the opportunity to play live again after such a long break.

This feeling of musical liberation is illustrated with “driving” videos, (“Sunset Cliffs” for Lados B and “18th & Morgan” for Panamá 77), emphasising at that time the sense of rediscovered freedom to move around.

Australian-born and LA-based upright double bass player Anna Butterss is a driving force throughout Lados B. She is equally present on the energetic “Chicali Outpost” as on quasi ambient-jazz tracks like “Bring It”. The bass player already shared the stage with Jeff Parker on the Tennis Academy sessions as well as on the Los Angeles side to Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings. On the indie scene, she can be heard alongside Phoebe Bridgers, boygenius, Aimee Mann or Jenny Lewis on the electric bass. Anna Butterss released her début solo album Activities in July 2022 last.

Translating as “B sides”, it would be easy to infer that the recordings are just surplus tapes that didn’t make the cut to feature on Panamá 77. On the contrary, the record pursues a similar musical spontaneity, but this time within the much tighter constraints of a trio formation with minimal post-production. There is no leader as such and the entire record plays like a blissful and free-flowing three-way conversation underpinned by Daniel Villarreal’s deep pocket groove on a huge array of percussive instruments – including a delightful marimba-like loop on “Things Can be Calm”.

https://danielvillarrealmusic.com/

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Equally informed by her studies of fine arts, all the musical ideas developed hitherto slowly matured over the following months into the writing and composition of her sophomore LP Living Circle released via FatCat Records’ 130701 imprint on 23 June 2023 last.

Featuring seven extended, slow moving and immersive pieces, Living Circle marks a radical departure for the composer. The quasi-orchestral opus witnesses the return of cellist Linnea Olsson as well as the inclusion of Gus Loxbo on double bass. Hampus Norén, who also co-produced the record, contributes to three tracks on the Moog synthesiser and additional field recordings.

Both “Kinsei” and “Deep Violet of Gold” intertwine slowly moving cello lines with textured layers of decaying drones. The piano is only heard for the first time on the third and haunting title track which also features a choral element with the voices of Julia Ringdahl, Nina Kinert, Sara Parkman alongside Shida Shahabi’s.

The continuous cello glissandi in conversation with the female voices lend the piece an undeniable dystopian feel, all the more so when the choir reaches a high-pitch siren-like cry. Are these fictional sirens from the classical western mythology or the piercing sound of an alarm anticipating an emergency? The sharp and decaying synthesiser motifs against broken-down static and noise on “Tecum” cast a similar ominous aura, somewhat framing the music as the unlikely soundtrack to the current global climate breakdown.

With its loitering piano chords pitched against strings, the sub-bass droning cello lines and the choral element, Shida Shahabi’s music occupies a similar space as artists like A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Hildur Guðnadóttir or Jóhann Jóhannsson respectively. Common to all these musicians is producer is Francesco Donadello who also mixed and mastered Living Circle.

Some of these pieces started to take form three years ago and the process since then has been slow and at times more undefined compared to previous works. I didn’t want to push or force things early on in the process, and I was hoping that this would give more space for what happens spontaneously; the things that appear naturally when recording in a creative course.

Back in 2019, drone metal band Sun O))) deliberately turned the “doom” concept of the genre on its head by naming their current opus Life Metal. To a similar extent, for all the eerie sense of foreboding permeating the record, Living Circle ultimately stems from a patient and uplifting creative process.

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