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.

TURNSTILE - MYSTERY 2021

One of the most conspicuous musical trends of 2021 has been quiet introspection. Across genres, artists have folded inward. Clairo relinquished the indie-pop of her 2019 debut in lieu of a softer style that evokes ‘70s singer/songwriters like Stevie Nicks. Vince Staples deserted his high-energy delivery (and producer Kenny Beats abandoned his frantic arrangements) for something more lo-fi and muted. Though records such as these are captivating in their own rights, it’s also interesting to hear artists go against that current. That’s exactly what the Baltimore-based hardcore band TURNSTILE have done on their latest album, GLOW ON. With production from Mike Elizondo (now Grammy-nominated for his work) and co-production from TURNSTILE’s vocalist Brendan Yates, GLOW ON is the group’s most fully realized work yet. They use the full-throttle blueprint of their sterling sophomore album, 2018’s Time & Space, and expand upon it. GLOW ON puts TURNSTILE’s sheer amount of ambition on display, and they deliver on that ambition with a record that widens their scope. Throughout its 15 tracks, their newly expanded sound never falters, and it sees them toying with fresh effects and textures while still maintaining their forceful approach. At the same time, TURNSTILE move forward without losing sight of what made them so intriguing to begin with. GLOW ON isn’t just one of the best hardcore albums of the year; it’s one of the best albums of the year in general. —Grant Sharples

Dry Cleaning - Scratchcard Lanyard

British quartet Dry Cleaning extract the profound from the mundane and the meaningful from the nonsensical. On “Viking Hair” from the band’s 2019 EP Boundary Road Snacks and Drinks, frontperson Florence Shaw’s everyday sexual fantasies stood in for the arbitrary guidelines determining acceptable and shameful desires; as she surreally rattled off “traditional fish bar, chicken and ribs, bus pass” and more on “Traditional Fish” from the band’s other 2019 EP, Sweet Princess, she scorned the very idea of commerce. And she did it all in a bone-dry, comical sing-speak set to rollicking, if not straightforward, post-punk courtesy of guitarist Tom Dowse, bassist Lewis Maynard and drummer Nick Buxton. New Long Leg, Dry Cleaning’s debut album (and first release for 4AD), is all of that and none of that. Shaw’s semi-accidental revelations about the ridiculousness of being alive when we live in a society are sharper than ever, and her voice newly takes the tone of a psychic waking up from a 70-year nap. Dowse, Maynard and Buxton have massively upped their game, too: The EPs’ post-punk foundation remains, but atop it come stomping glam riffs, dream-pop arpeggios and razor-sharp melodies that loosen Dry Cleaning’s prior tension without entirely taming the mania. —Max Freedman

SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE - BAD SON 2021

Shapeshifting. If there’s one descriptor for Philadelphia rockers Spirit of the Beehive, that’s it, so we figured we’d get it out of the way early. Transformation surrounds their fourth album and Saddle Creek debut ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH, affecting the band itself—founding members Zack Schwartz and Rivka Ravede are now joined by Corey Wichlin—as well as their recording process and, of course, the music itself. While the band recorded their breakout 2018 album Hypnic Jerks in only a week, they took four months for ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH, self-recording and producing their most adventurous album yet. Just take “I SUCK THE DEVIL’S COCK,” the record’s near-seven-minute third single, which they describe as “our take on ‘a day in the life’”: The song begins as glitchy, drum machine-spiked jangle-psych, but quickly devolves into borderline ambient noise, eventually reconstituting itself as dreamy indie-pop with the oddest refracted textures. It, like all of ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH, is thrillingly unpredictable from moment to moment, and a mind-expanding exploration of the innumerable forms rock music can take. —Scott Russell

Squid - G.S.K. (Official Audio)

Toward the end of Squid’s debut album Bright Green Field comes a brief moment of liberation. “Well, I’ve always been told what to do,” the narrator of “Peel St.” mumbles, “but now, I’m free / There’s no warden following me.” Whether the prison from which this character has been released is literal or one of the mind is left for the listener to decide, and most of the details underpinning Bright Green Field’s paranoid, dystopian universe are similarly vague. More immediately apparent is Squid’s utter disregard for rock convention—where drummer-vocalist Ollie Judge’s words leave gaps in his Orwellian brutalism, his chainsaw of a shout-speak and his band’s squawking guitars fill in the blanks. Though Bright Green Field is easily Squid’s most musically varied and ambitious work yet, the British quintet—whose contemporaries include black midi and Black Country, New Road—remains thematically tethered to the pervasive anxiety and fear that have defined them from their 2019 breakout single “Houseplants” through last year’s Sludge / Broadcaster 10”, their debut for storied electronic and experimental label Warp. If anything, Bright Green Field—co-written by the entire group and produced by Speedy Wunderground mastermind Dan Carey—raises the band’s longtime stakes. Where “The Cleaner,” the highlight from 2019’s Town Centre EP, hinted at simultaneously more abrasive and hooky grooves to come, Bright Green Field delivers on that promise without diminishing Squid’s madness. —Max Freedman

Lingua Ignota - PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA (Official Video)

Following her titanic, devastating mesh of metal, opera and noise, Caligula, Kristin Hayter (aka Lingua Ignota) retreated to the desolation of central Pennsylvania for her new album, Sinner Get Ready. Steering in the opposite direction of her previous work, Hayter embraced the isolation of her environment for a comparatively sparse, minimalist album that loses none of its emotional potency. The songwriter’s lyrics are dark and calamitous, foretelling hellish prophecies and painting brutal pictures almost as a form of worship, frequently recalling familiar religious icons in devotion. Sinner Get Ready thrives in these profound feelings, achieving something hauntingly beautiful. —Jason Friedman