Small Medium Large (SML) Window Sill Song

SML · Jeremiah Chiu · Gregory Uhlmann · Josh Johnson · Booker Stardrum · Anna Butterss Small Medium Large ℗ 2024 International Anthem Espécie de super grupo de Los Angeles em estreia na International Anthem, o quinteto de Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum e Gregory Uhlmann não passa sem nos fazer lembrar as composições mais sintetizadas de Herbie Hancock - e não fosse a terceira faixa do disco chamar-se “Herbie for Commercials”. mas tudo vai além disso: há aqui uma liberdade de mudança entre paisagens, de uma mestria da gramática dos sons que é raro encontrarmos noutros lugares - em “Rubber Tree Dance”, mais pelo fim, a naturalidade com que revertem o sentido da faixa e desaguam num mar de sons etéreos, calmos e bonitos - potenciados por efeitos e pelas técnicas de estúdio - é fascinante. Improvisações circulares e cruas editadas e arranjadas resultaram no que ouvimos no disco. Há funk, jazz, música ambiental com laivos de new age (não fosse Chiu membro integrante deste projecto), tudo ancorado por ritmos electrónicos e com uma improvisação de tom mais freak, psicadélica, como mote. Um piscar de olhos aos delírios kraut e jazz com inovações texturais electrónicas? Música de dança fora do baralho? As influências cictadas corroboram isto: Pole, Susumu Yokota, Can, Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock. Encontram tudo aqui no novo International Anthem. Flur one of the best 2024 album Sounding at various points like a contemporary electronic dance record, On the Corner–style 1970s fusion, or 1980s New York mutant disco like Liquid Liquid and ESG, the West Coast quintet SML’s first album is constructed from live improvisations transformed through postproduction editing and processing. The group has its roots in Jeff Parker’s Los Angeles jazz venue ETA, which closed last year; bassist Anna Butterss and saxophonist Josh Johnson are also both on Parker’s superlative double album this year, The Way Out of Easy. Circular and raw improvisations edited and arranged resulted in the album. There is funk, jazz, environmental music with hints of new age (if it weren't for Chiu being an integral member of this project), all anchored by electronic rhythms and with a more freaky, psychedelic improvisation as the motto. A nod to kraut and jazz delirium with electronic textural innovations? Dance music off the deck? The influences cited corroborate this: Pole, Susumu Yokota, Can, Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock. But the shimmery, pulsing sound of SML, with its synthesizers, guitars, percussion, and loops, has the potential to entice a listenership not usually drawn to free-jazz types, perhaps the way Chicago’s Tortoise did in the 1990s—with the squared-off anti-funk of “Industry,” for instance, or the near-ambient pit-a-pat of “Window Sill Song.” Enfield Tennis Academy. The tiny Los Angeles cocktail bar, with its specialty in avant-garde jazz and a name that winked at David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, dodged any accusations of snobbishness by cutting out the usual strictures: no two-drink minimum, no ban on talking or cell phones, and for a while at least, no cover charge. ETA became a destination for the new jazz scene’s westward migration from Chicago to L.A.; a weekly improv session led by Tortoise and Isotope 217 guitarist Jeff Parker was the highlight of the schedule, and a phenomenal recording of those shows, 2022’s Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, finally let the world know what was happening in the cramped back space of that long, narrow club. But despite its momentum, ETA officially shut down at the end of 2023, closing another chapter in the history of West Coast jazz.

The Chills - Pink Frost (Live on KEXP) - RIP MARTIN PHILLIPS 2024

RIP MARTIN PHILLIPS 28 july 2024 Indie rock band founded in 1980 in Dunedin, New Zealand

Poppycock - Magic Mothers THE FALL

wonderfully varied album Poppycock are a predominantly female collective built around Una Baines, a founder member of both The Fall and Blue Orchids and a symbolic godmother to many Mancunian artists and musicians who cite her as an aspiration and mentor. Following low-key releases over the years, finally a full-length album on Tiny Global, and it is utterly spellbinding. (If that’s the right word thinks Ged Babey realising it alludes to witchcraft…) I am a feminista I am your sacred sister No means no Stop Means stop (Magic Mothers)

English Teacher This Could Be Texas song Broken Biscuits 2024

English Teacher storms through with debut record This Could Be Texas, an essential piece in the ever-growing puzzle of the British music scene When you start the month and your major concern is a fear of flights and a font change on Word Online, life must be good. It is better when soundtracked by the quality artists of the last few years – the boom of UK music culture must be noted. Either the trees are dropping the signal intermittently or some shock radio static precedes the calm wash of acoustic beauty on opener Albatross. Wonderful stuff is expected of English Teacher. They have stacked the odds in their favour and paid back their self-confidence and the tall order of their own work on This Must Be Texas, a debut to die for. Perfect music for the Hull to King’s Cross train as the sun starts to reflect in your glasses and blind you. Spring is here in its full form, and so too is This Must Be Texas and all its simmering instrumental joy. Lily Fontaine delights with inspired, punchy lyrics. Nothing less should be expected. The World’s Biggest Paving Slab still lingers as a damnation of those who walk across people, they think nothing of. Look how they grow. English Teacher depended on some exceptional singles, with Nearly Daffodils and the roaring perfections of Albert Road still fresh in the mind. The world’s smallest celebrity, as Fontaine describes it on Broken Biscuits, hits out at the lack of change despite the cultural cling-on.

Nadine Shah - Food For Fuel 2024

Apocalyptic, "cyber", hieratic, urban, tribal, mental but at the same time visceral is "Filthy Underneath" by Nadine Shah Always the author of excellent works including "Love Your Dum And Mad" (2013), "Fast Food" (2015) and "Holiday Destination" (2017), Nadine Shah, with "Filthy Underneath" (EMI), becomes ecumenical, abandoning the more rock and acoustic declinations that had given life to songs such as "Dreary Town", "The Devil", "To Be a Young Man", "Fool", "Evil" ... and making a definitive "cybernetic" upgrade, he exasperates his writing with apocalyptic, hieratic, urban, tribal, mental but at the same time visceral tones and rings a sequence of lightning-fast, nitric and nitrent compositions that explode and impose themselves right from the splendid opening entrusted to "Even Light", in which the singing is exalted on a perfect rhythmic base, sealed by abrasive and incisive instrumental openings ... "Tame the favourite child/Overweight on praise/Go and throw him to the wild/Leave him there to graze". This is followed by the swirling "Topless Mother", with the sublime refrain "Sinatra, Viagra, iguana/Sharia, Diana, samosa/Varuca, Tequila, banana/Alaska, Medusa, gorilla". "Food for Fuel" is sinuous and fluctuating in the assonances of words and in the preciousness of electronics where "Human nature petty feud". The pace of "You Drive, I Shoot" is pure electro-rock steeped in industrial, which hides Kraut references of Kraftwerk matrix between the grooves. "Keeping Score" is another gem in its quiet invocation and exact melody: "The world is on fire/You are a lifeline/There's nothing that's painless/Look how I am trying/The world is on fire/Take one more good time/Contagious and nameless/Seeking the divine/The world is on fire/You are a lifeline". "Sad Lads Anonymous" is rhythmic and deconstructive for a spoken word in which "Or what's worse/Dying before your time or living beyond it".

Thurston Moore / Rie Nakajima / Phill Niblock - Cafe OTO 2023-05-06 RIP PHILL NIBLOCK age 92

"No harmony. No melody. No rhythm. No bullshit." Phill Niblock rest in peace