This is a Recording

My favourite album of last year was Fatigue by L'Rain. I can't recall how I first heard about it - did I read a review and then seek it out? Did I catch one of its tracks played on the radio? Had the YouTube algorithm, in its finite wisdom, suggested something from it? I suspect my first introduction to it was on-line, and took place about this time last year. By whatever means I made its acquaintance, I fell under its spell almost immediately. Even so, I hesitated for a short time before buying, as it was not made available on CD. It irked me to spend more on a larger disc when I might otherwise have paid less on a smaller one. I don't think there's any special benefit derived from its being on the older medium - if anything, some tracks (such as the opening 'Fly, Die', which begins with snatches of music - overlain by noises of sirens, gunfire and helicopters - punctuated by brief silences) might have had slightly more impact in digital form. Tightfisted qu...

For the almost-completely out-of-touch, end-of-year best-of lists can be useful and instructive. Having stuck my head in the musical sand in the Spring of 2020, I'd missed the advent of Sault's two Untitled albums until I saw enthusiastic praise for them that December. After trying on a few tracks for size, I ordered CD copies of them both (from Juno, as I recall) in January last year, It hadn't been long since I'd first seen the name "Inflo": in the credits for Michael Kiwanuka's eponymous 2019 album. Impressive as that record was, it's as captain of the good ship SAULT that his vision & talent have truly come into their own. Untitled (Rise) can seem an uplifting carnivalesque counterpart to the oftener mournful & angry Untitled (Black Is) - but that's an oversimplification, as they're meanwhile cut from different parts of the same cloth. Even a dance music ignoramus like me can appreciate some of the strands skilfully interwoven he...

Having fallen for the late, lamented Jaimie Branch's wonderful album Fly or Die II , I wondered if there might be anything else on the same label - International Anthem - that I'd also enjoy. Via YouTube I began listening to Irreversible Entanglements, and, while the music was a little freer than I typically take my jazz, I was hooked by the video for the track 'No Más', and had soon acquired the Who Sent You? album on CD. Irreversible Entanglements are a quintet with four instrumentalists (Keir Neuringer - saxophone; Aquiles Navarro - trumpet; Luke Stewart - bass; Tcheser Holmes - drums) and a vocalist (Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother). Ayewa recites rather than sings her words, yet the rhythmic quality of her delivery enhances the music as well as providing the message. Who Sent You? released in 2020, is their second album. There are five tracks over the disc's forty-three minutes. The first half of the second number, which gives the album its name, is another hig...

Nala Sinephro's debut album Space 1.8 could have been among my favourite records of 2021, if it weren't for its initial issue being vinyl-only. Having heard a few tracks from it on-line, it seemed to me like music that could easily sound a little better on CD (and it would be cheaper too). So I waited - and my patience was rewarded when a re-issue early this year brought forth CD copies as well as more vinyl ones. In that way it has become one of my favourite records of 2022. I've listened to it many times and feel very far from exhausting its delights. At Discogs, the album has been categorised as "Contemporary Jazz, Ambient" which seems about right. There are saxophones and double basses and drums involved, and a few tracks are unquestionably jazzy - but there are also other textures too, courtesy of Sinephro's mastery of two highly unalike instruments: the harp and the modular synthesizer, which both excel at laying on soothing ambience. All eight tracks a...

Saxophonist and composer Shabaka Hutchings evidently likes to keep himself busy as the leader of The Comet is Coming, and, until very recently, of Sons Of Kemet; not to mention his work as a soloist and sideman. Out of the music of his I've heard, my favourite thus far is this album We Are Sent Here By History by Shabaka And The Ancestors, the second record from the band who, apart from Hutchings himself, are based in South Africa. I acquired it last year, on CD. The two obvious focal points of the music are Huthchings' lead tenor sax and clarinet, and poet Siyabonga Mthembu's compelling chants and recitations, delivered in English, Zulu and Xhosa. Also immediately impressive is Ariel Zamonsky’s work on the double bass, but the whole band blends together beautifully. The disc gets off to a powerful start with the ten-minute opener 'They Who Must Die'. The musicians are more than capable of delicate virtuosity, but meanwhile not above playing with simpler blunt forc...

If I hadn't all but stopped listening to the radio in the wake of the pandemic, I may well have found my way to this album sooner. As it was, its appearance on several best-of-2021 lists tempted me to take a listen, and what I heard induced me get it on CD. I think I bought it from the HMV in Cribbs Causeway back in January. It's a lovely thing: mellow songs with heartfelt lyrics, neatly packaged to sound at once classic and contemporary. For me it's front-loaded, with the more arresting songs on the first half of the album. I'm especially fond of 'Hurt' and 'Hope'. Here and there the mellowness skirts around the edges of blandness, but not off-puttingly so. The first track - the title track - is a short poem recited over  acoustic guitar and synthesizer chords. Although I can't say I love it as a poem, I do appreciate it as a confident statement of intent ahead of the songs that follow. The closing track, meanwhile ('Portra 400') joins the s...

I first heard some of Khruangbin's music not long after the release of their debut album, but at that point it didn't grab me, nor did it on a number of other occasions thereafter when I heard it on the radio. What eventually turned my head and made me listen properly was seeing them play (as I recall it was this performance ), which is odd, as there's scant obvious showmanship involved, and yet they're mesmerising to watch. My eyes and ears newly opened, I ordered their then-current second album Con Todo El Mundo , and later, in 2020, its follow-up: Mordechai - both on CD. At first I wasn't sure if the newer record was an improvement on the one before, but, on further aquaintance, I grew to believe it was indeed a step up. I've heard it many times, but even now can only bring to mind a couple of its tunes from just looking at the track titles ('Time (You and I)' and 'Pelota'). I don't have strong favourites among the songs but rather enjoy...

I was delighted and a little surprised to hear a harp in the mix of the opening tracks on Makaya McCraven's 2018 album Universal Beings , and looked up the musician responsible: Brandee Younger. I watched and enjoyed several YouTube videos featuring her playing solo and as part of a quartet. It seemed her own recordings weren't readily available in the UK at that point, but when Force Majeure (a collaboration with her partner, bassist Dezron Douglas) came out in 2020 I was eager to listen.  It's an album that grew out of a series of (I think) Facebook videocasts from their New York apartment in the early months of the pandemic, under the title 'brunch in the crib with Brandee and Dezron'. So it's domestic music-making but for public consumption, and serves as a record of that strange time and the ingenious ways some musicians found to reach out and find an (often captive) audience. It's also a beautiful album with tremendous charm, and vividly-recorded too....

It seemed for a while that nearly all the jazz I loved was over half a century old. While not a problem in itself, I did feel a nagging dissatisfaction at not finding much of anything newer that floated my boat. The proliferation of newly-popular 'nu-jazz' and jazz-adjacent releases from the middle of the last decade was timely for me, and while I've plenty more still to explore, I've already found much to enjoy in this newer music. Nubya Garcia's debut album Source is a case in point. The title track is particularly appealing, with its jazz-flavoured solos built upon dub-like foundations, and further embellished by vocal harmonies. Among my other favourites on the album are the two where Garcia's saxophone is complemented only by percussion and voices: 'Stand With Each Other' and 'La Cumbia Me Está Llamando'. Despite their relative sparsity, in both tracks the available space is filled with admirable economy, and with impeccable timing. Other t...