Music Media Monthly

Béla Bartók
44 Duos for 2 Violins
Duo Landon
MSR Classics MS 1401

When I was a freshman in college, I read Agatha Fassett’s Béla Bartók: The American Years, and found it both fascinating and heartbreaking. I had known that much of Bartók‘s music was derived from or inspired by the folk music of his native Hungary and that he felt a deep and powerful attachment to his home country, but I’d had no idea how miserable he was living in New York during his final years (he apparently absolutely hated the urban environment) and how alienated he felt from his home during that time. The years he spent in America were musically productive, but personally very difficult. Listening to this wonderful disc brought back memories of reading that book. During the decade before he emigrated, he had spent a lot of time with his friend and colleague Zoltán Kodály roaming the Hungarian countryside, collecting and transcribing folk melodies, and those provide the musical material for the 44 brief violin duos presented here by Duo Landon (violinists Hlíf Sigurjónsdóttir and Hjörleifer Valsson). The purpose of these compositions is partly pedagogical and partly evangelical: Bartók wanted to provide a set of technical etudes for young violinists, but he also wanted to inculcate in them a love for the astringently beautiful melodies of his homeland. Duo Landon make the (modest) technical demands of these pieces seem inconsequential, and the melodies come alive under their fingers; many of the pieces dance thrillingly, while others keen with longing and others seem to scold or laugh. There are lots of drones and vinegary open harmonies, and moments of delicate loveliness as well. This is an unusually impressive recording. Grade: A

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
The Complete Psalms
Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam / Harry van der Kamp
Glossa GCD 922407

Anyone who loves the music of the Flemish polyphonic masters will feel a little visceral thrill at the series title Het Sweelinck Monument. A monument indeed, this three-volume series consists of three boxed sets: one containing Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck‘s complete secular chansons, another his complete Cantiones Sacrae, and this one, a twelve-disc set containing all of his psalm settings. In each case, the Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam first sings the simple melody as found in the Genevan Psalter; this was the sourcebook upon which Sweelinck drew for his basic material. Then the ensemble sings Sweelinck’s motet-style polyphonic setting. The relentlessness of this arrangement and the length of the program make listening through the entire box something of a challenge, but few would want to approach it in that way in any case; instead, the wise listener will take it in one disc at a time, relishing the gorgeous part-writing and the expressive text settings. The Gesualdo Consort’s one-voice-per-part texture can get a bit wearing over time, but it does expose the musical structure nicely, and the ensemble’s sound is colorful rather than smoothly blended. Recommended to devoted fans of the composer and his period, and to all libraries. Grade: A-

Mauro Giuliani; Ferdinando Carulli; Anton Diabelli
Duos and Serenades
Ensemble Consolazione
Ars Produktion ARS 38 515

Ensemble Consolazione is a duo consisting of guitarist Jan Tulacek and flutist Karel Valter, and on this utterly gorgeous disc they perform duos, serenades, and grandi duetti concertanti by Mauro Giuliani, Ferdinando Carulli, and Anton Diabelli. Two things are particularly interesting about this recording: first the pieces themselves, which are lovely exampels of the early Romantic period at its best. All the structure and rigor of classicism are still apparent in these pieces, but the emotional effusiveness of the Romantic aesthetic and an emerging structural adventurousness are coming into view as well. And although the flute carries the main melodic burden and occupies the more prominent register, it’s the guitar writing that is the more interesting on most of these pieces–at the turn of the 19th century the guitar was a tremendously popular instrument in Italy, and the three composers represented here were all guitarists. The second interesting thing about this recording is the instruments used. Tulacek (who is also himself a builder and restorer of guitars) plays a Rudert guitar from 1814 which has been “entirely preserved in its original state”–remarkable in itself, and noteworthy also because the guitar has such a lovely tone. Valter’s flute is a modern copy of an eight-keyed flute from the late 1700s. I happen to play a similar one and can attest to the difficulty of coaxing an attractive tone from the higher registers; Valter’s ability to do so is highly impressive, and his playing is exceptionally good. This recording is a pure delight all around. Grade: A+

Nicholas Ludford; Richard Pygott
Missa Regnum mundi; Salve regina (Music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, Vol. 2)
Blue Heron Choir / Scott Metcalfe
Blue Heron BHCD 1003

The Boston area has been a hotbed of world-class early music ensembles ever since the founding of the Boston Camerate in the 1950s. More recently, the Blue Heron Choir (under the directorship of Scott Metcalfe) has emerged as one of the most impressive vocal ensembles in the area, and perhaps on the entire east coast. Possessed of a tone that is transcendently rich and sweet, the group not only brings devotional luster and gentle intensity to everything they sing, but has also been unwilling to simply fall back on the standard Renaissance repertoire. This disc is the second in a projected five-disc series that will bring to light music that has been effectively lost for centuries–liturgical works from the Peterhouse Partbooks, collections put together in the mid-1500s for Canterbury Cathedral and partially destroyed during the upheavals of the English Reformation. The music has been reconstructed by scholar and composer Nick Sandon (who wrote his 1983 dissertation on the partbooks in 1983), and is in the final stages of publishing the reconstructed versions. Fascinating as the history is, it would matter little if the music were less gorgeous–but as it turns out, this is music of rare beauty, and as always, the Blue Heron Choir does it full justice. Very highly recommended. Grade: A+

– Rick Anderson

Benny Goodman Orchestra feat. Anita O’Day
Big Bands Live
Jazzhaus 101704

Listening more than fifty years after it was recorded in 1959, it’s hard not to read a sort of melancholy defiance backwards into the tone of this brilliant live album by the Benny Goodman Orchestra. Goodman’s brand of sunny, deceptively straightforward-sounding big-band swing had withstood the onslaughts of bebop (from the east) and the cool jazz movement (from the west), and was still standing proud. But this was 1959, and the knockout punch was only inches away: very soon, rock and roll would decisively take over the role that swing music had played in youth culture for decades. The threat is nowhere in evidence here, however: the band (which, that October night in Freiburg, included vibraphonist Red Norvo, trumpeter Jack Sheldon, pianist Russ Freeman, and other notables) swings mightily through such standard tunes as “Air Mail Special,” “Raise the Riff,” and Goodman’s signature number “Let’s Dance.” Best of all, Anita O’Day is on the date contributing saucy and bell-toned vocals on “Honeysuckle Rose,” “Let Me Off Uptown” and several other tracks, notably a wonderful medley featuring “Not for Me,” “Four Brothers,” and an unidentified twelve-bar blues on which she scats irrepressibly. The inexcusably sketchy liner notes are irritating (is that Jack Sheldon forgetting half the words to “Gotta Be This or That”?), but they constitute the only significant flaw here. Fans of old-school swing should snap this up without hesitation. Grade: A

Well Wishers
Dreaming of the West Coast
That Was My Skull

The Well Wishers is essentially a one-man-band. Multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Jeff Shelton came of age as frontman for Bay Area power-popsters the Spinning Jennies, who broke up in 2004 after an eleven-year career. Over the course of five albums with that band, Shelton honed his hookcraft to a razor’s edge, and has now recorded six albums of his own under the Well Wishers moniker, each of them a showcase of rough-edged pop sweetness and muscular guitar crunch. The latest one is more of the same, which is great news. As usual, you’ll hear hints of the Beatles (“Nothing Ever Changes Around Here”), of REM (“Here Comes Love”), of Material Issue-style postpunk (“All I Got” and “Free? No”) and you’ll even get the occasional whiff of Byrds-style country rock (“Honoree”). And there’s a wry nod to 1960s herbal culture in the form of an excellent cover version of one-hit wonder The Smoke’s “Have Some More Tea.” But despite all the obvious influences, Shelton’s sound remains solidly personal and reasonably unique; his guitar playing is consistently interesting but always tasteful, his voice is plainspokenly attractive, and his hooks are indelible. Only a curiously boxy and home-demo-ish drum sound keeps this album from being an unalloyed pleasure. Grade: A-

10 Ft. Ganja Plant
10 Deadly Shots, Vol. II
ROIR RUSCD 8321

10 Ft. Ganja Plant (who are way overdue to get the award for Least Subtle Reggae Band Name Ever) are a semi-secretive ensemble whose membership is never published, but is nevertheless widely known to overlap significantly with that of Ithaca, NY’s brilliant neo-reggae outfit John Brown’s Body. Over the course of eight albums, these guys have historically focused on 1970s-style roots reggae, most of it instrumental, with a heavy emphasis on dubwise production. On the second entry in their 10 Deadly Shots series, they hark back even further, to the bouncy “rock steady” sound that acted as a stylistic bridge between the galloping off-beats of 1950s and 1960s ska and the slower, smokier grooves of roots-and-culture reggae. They’re abetted in that endeavor by the presence of keyboardist Roger Rivas (of Los Angeles rock steady revivalists the Aggrolites), who brings the multifarious organ sounds that were so centrally important to the rock steady era–you’ll hear echoes of the great Jackie Mittoo here, and of course more than a hint of the Upsetters from their instrumental-heavy days around the turn of the 1970s. This development may not be greeted with unanimous glee by the band’s growing legion of fans–anyone who has been following 10′GP’s career over the past decade has come to expect something very different from what’s on offer here. But fans of vintage rock steady and early reggae will find plenty to enjoy on this album. Grade: B+

Francesco Cavalli
Vespro della Beata Vergine
Glossa GCD 922509

Those who recognize the name of Francesco Cavalli almost invariably know him as the composer of over 40 operas (nearly 30 of which still survive) during his 60-year career at St. Mark’s in Venice. Unfortunately, his sacred compositions have not survived in similar numbers. This truly excellent recording draws on one extant collection, Cavalli’s Musiche sacre, which includes a variety of pieces that can be drawn upon to populate a full vespers service. Those familiar with the early baroque repertoire will immediately recognize musical similarities between the service recreated here by Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and Concerto Palatino (under the joint direction of Bruce Dickey and Charles Toet) and the much-beloved and identically titled 1610 vespers by Claudio Monteverdi: like Monteverdi’s, this program begins with the standard versicle “Deus in adiutorum meum intende” and its standard response “Domine ad adiuvandum me festina,” and then proceeds to a “Dixit Dominus” and a variety of other psalm settings, hymns, and antiphons–though in this case, the antiphons are replaced by instrumental pieces: the six church sonatas included in Cavalli’s compendium are interspersed among the psalms and the Magnificat setting, creating a wonderful diversity of sounds and textures and, in some cases, truly glorious polychoral sections. It’s enough to make a music-lover downright depressed about how much of this gifted composer’s sacred music has been lost to posterity. Grade: A+

– Rick Anderson

Biokinetics
Porter Ricks
Type 100

Too often, in the world of techno, the word “minimal” is used as a euphemism for “simplistic” or even “content-free,” while the qualifier “dub” often actually signifies “sonically spacious but oppressively boring.” Of course, minimalism and dubwise spaciousness can both be wielded by talented producers with great skill, and therefore the line separating high-quality minimal dub techno from self-indulgent twaddle can be microscopically thin. Case in point: this classic of the genre (originally issued on the Chain Reaction imprint in 1996), now reissued with new artwork. Porter Ricks is the shared pseudonym of production duo Thomas Köner and Andy Mellwig, and they had collaborated on several 12″ singles prior to making this full-length album, though it actually feels more like a set of singles than a unified extended program—largely because the track titles are presented in obvious pairs (“Port of Call/Port of Nuba,” “Biokinetics 1/Biokinetics 2,” etc.). The music itself often feels muted and boomy and oddly claustrophobic, even though the sonic spaces it defines are generally quite large. With some exceptions, such as the relatively sprightly and colorful “Port of Call,” the timbres are mostly cast in shades of grey, and all sonic edges are soft and gauzy, as if heard through wads of cotton in the ears. This approach is least effective on “Port Gentil” and “Nautical Dub,” both of which are something of a challenge to sit through; however, the two “Biokinetics” tracks and the deeply dubbed-up “Port of Nuba” are both quite a bit more engaging, and “Nautical Nuba” introduces some interesting rhythmic displacements and subtle glitches that, by this point in the album, the listener grabs ahold of as if to a life preserver in a vast, cold, and mostly featureless ocean. This is objectively good music of its type, but not particularly recommended for newcomers to the genre. Grade: B

The Fourth Wall
The Vespers
Black Suit

I have to confess that when I look at an album cover and see bearded hipsters in vests wielding banjos and serious expressions, I immediately get suspicious. When the second track on the album attempts an acoustic-reggae groove and incorporates a glockenspiel, full-on grumpiness begins to set in. By that point, the only thing that will ultimately win me over is hooks: I’ll swallow almost any level of pretentiousness and self-seriousness if the songs are ones that will stick in my head and make me want to sing along. I kept waiting for such songs on this debut album by the earnest two-sisters-plus-two-brothers quartet the Vespers, and some of its tracks did come tantalizingly close to grabbing me. The opener, “Better Now,” was promising: singer Phoebe Cryar has a sharp-edged and supple voice that delivers both an attractive melody and tastefully executed filigrees of ornamentation with attention-grabbing grace. But the faux reggae of “Flower Flower” disappointed, as did a by-the-numbers pastiche of blues-based and string band elements titled “Got No Friends.” On the other hand, “Jolly Robber” is a very nice little skiffle number, and the group delivers a fine and stripped-down version of Son House’s “Grinnin’ in Your Face.” “Daughter” is as delicate and lovely as hand-tatted lace, but never delivers the hook that would have convinced me fully. There’s no question that the Vespers are both talented and sincere; hopefully as time goes on their songcraft will continue to grow and tighten. Grade: B-

Wrapped Tight
Coleman Hawkins
Impulse CIPJ 87 SA

The slow wave of super-audio CD reissues of classic jazz albums continues to roll on. This one was originally issued in 1966 on the Impulse label, and finds tenor sax legend Coleman Hawkins in one of his last truly great sessions, working in a shifting quartet configuration with trumpeters Snooky Young and Bill Berry, trombonist Urbie Green, and a rhythm section consisting of pianist Barry Harris (misidentified as a bassist on the back cover), bassist Buddy Catlett (uncredited on the back cover) and drummer Eddie Locke. Hawk’s tone is as rich and full as always, though his trademark vibrato is much more subdued by this point than it had been earlier in his career. The program consists mostly of mid-tempo numbers, all of which swing mightily; highlights include excellent renditions of the title track, the strutting “Red Roses for a Blue Lady” (which showcases particularly nice ensemble playing from the horn section), and a tune—probably a Hawkins original—titled “Bean’s Place,” which sounds oddly melancholy, almost valedictory, despite its resolute groove. The music deserves an A+, but this reissue gets docked a couple of notches for sloppy and inaccurate annotations, for failing to provide a tracklist on the exterior of the package, and for offering a skimpy 35 minutes of music (no bonus tracks? seriously?) despite its premium-level, SACD price. Grade: A-

Harmonielehre; Short Ride in a Fast Machine
John Adams
San Francisco Symphony / Michael Tilson Thomas
SFS Media 0053

John Adams came out of the minimalist scene in the 1960s and ’70s, one that was dominated by the hypnotic arpeggios of Philip Glass and the pulsing phase-shift compositions of Steve Reich. But by the 1980s, his work was showing clear heretical tendencies, among them an expansive expressionism that was becoming obvious despite his continued allegiance to the straightforward tonality favored by the minimalist school. Where Reich’s music unfolded with a structural inevitability and Glass’s built up colorful but repetetive layers of broken chords, Adams was writing melodies that would not have sounded out of place at the turn of the 20th century. From the beginning, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas has been a champion of these composers (he participated in the premiere performance of Reich’s Four Organs), and here he presides over a reminder of how exciting Adams’s 1980s orchestral output could be. Both of these pieces–one essentially a symphony, the other a charming and exhilarating miniature–will be familiar to longstanding fans of the composer, but Tilson Thomas brings fresh energy and vigor to the performances. Harmonielehre‘s rather Mahleresque tendencies are instructively emphasized, following which the joyful Short Ride is presented almost as a palate-cleanser. Adams ceased being a minimalist in any meaningful sense a long time ago, but this valuable recording reminds us of what a great contribution he made to that tradition while he was still (at least partly) within it. Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

Lux Perpetua: Requiem
Anonymous
Ensemble Organum / Marcel Pérès
Aeon AECD 1216

The polyphonic Requiem mass emerged as a liturgical form in the late 15^th century, and in its earliest examples it can provide both a deeply moving and a hair-raisingly eerie listening experience. I have found no performance of an early Requiem more unsettling or weirdly beautiful than the one on this recording by the Ensemble Organum. The Lux Perpetua burial Mass dates from the late 1400s, and its authorship is unclear; many scholars attribute it to Antoine de Févin (of Louis XII’s court), while some believe it to be the work of Antoine Divitis (a Flemish contemporary of Pierre de la Rue and Alexander Agricola). It’s an unusual work—the ordinary contains no Credo or Gloria, and settings of New Testament texts are scattered throughout along with plainchant sections. But the singing style is what you’ll really notice: basses introduce sections with dark, reedy declamations that sound like Tibetan throat singing; a reading from the Gospel of John is sung by a solo voice in a melismatic style that sounds more Arabic than European; melody lines are ornamented in ways that bring to mind Balkan music. In between all of these moments of musical oddity is a constant sonic tapestry of rich polyphonic part-writing that conveys all of the solemnity, sadness, and devotion that one would expect from a 15th-century burial mass. This is an extraordinary recording, and a tremendously moving one. Grade: A+

The Leiden Choirbooks, Vol. 1 & 2
Various Composers
Egidius Kwartet & College
Etcetera KTC 1410/1411

Moving forward a few decades into the early- to mid-16^th century, we encounter sounds that are more familiar and certainly more refined. In 1566 there was major upheaval in the Dutch city of Leiden, during which several churches were sacked; one of them, the Pieterskerk, lost all of its valuables except for a set of choirbooks containing masses, motets, Magnificat settings, and other liturgical works by such eminent composers as Nicolas Gombert, Clemens Non Papa, Jean Richafort, and Thomas Crecquillon. The excellent Egidius Kwartet and College is now two volumes into what will eventually be a six-volume series of recordings documenting the music in these remarkable books. Each volume consists of two discs; the first set includes a disc of ten motets and a second disc containing two masses, one by Gombert and the other by an anonymous composer. The program on the second volume consists of motets, hymns, and Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis settings. The Egidius ensemble includes only men (as any 16^th-century choir would have), and their sound is clean but not too stark. The music itself is consistently excellent—this was the high-water mark of polyphonic writing in northern Europe, and anyone who loves the music of this period will want to get ahold of these discs and put some money aside for the forthcoming volumes in the series as well. Grade: A

3 String Quartets
Mihály Mosonyi
Festetic Quartet
Hungaroton HCD 32692

The liner notes to this recording inform us that Mihály Mosonyi “was one of the most influential figures on the nineteenth century Hungarian Romantic musical scene,” which leaves me feeling a bit embarrassed at never having heard of him. But I’m very glad to have made his acquaintance; this world-premiere recording of three of his six string quartets, all written during the late 1830s, is both interesting and thoroughly enjoyable. Although Mosonyi was something of a protonationalist composer (anticipating the folk-based work of Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók), the two early quartets presented here tend to stick to the Viennese-School verities; there is plenty of charming melodic invention, but not much innovation. The fifth quartet, also presented on this disc, is more forward-looking but no less accessible. The Festetics Quartet plays on period instruments, which must have been something of a challenge with these sometimes passionate pieces, but they acquit themselves beautifully. The recorded sound is rich and clear. Grade: A-

Tribute
Carsten Lindholm
(self-released)

I came across this disc when an ad popped up on my Facebook page — if memory serves, it said something like “If you like Jon Hassell, you’ll like this.” I’ve loved Jon Hassell since I was a teenager, so I clicked and was immediately entranced. Drummer Carsten Lindholm characterizes his music as “Filmic Ambient Jazz,” but don’t be fooled–while its textures are generally pleasant, this music is far from easy listening and it is “jazz” only in the broadest sense of the term. Tracks like “Elefantastic” and “Bazzland” give guest musicians like trumpeter Rene Damsbak and guitarist Eiven Aarset space for improvisational soloing (including some very Hassell-ish electro excursions), but the overall flavor of Lindholm’s album is that of a long and winding journey into a deep, dark cave filled with a wide variety of electronic beats, textures and melodies. Some of the beats are jazzier, some are more funky and jungly, but at all times the focus is on the big picture: Lindholm is less interested in exploring melodic and harmonic variations than in building layer upon layer of sound design until he has created a dense but accessible construct of multiple moving parts, any of which rewards close attention. The album is titled Tribute because several of the tracks were composed in specific homage to musicians who have inspired him, including Mike Mainieri, Nils Petter Molvaer, Jens Melgaard. This is an intriguing and lovely album. Grade: A-

– Rick Anderson

Like many people of my generation (the awkward one that comes between the Baby Boomers and the Gen-Xers), I was introduced to the concept of “ambient music” back in the 1970s when I encountered Brian Eno’s seminal album Discreet Music, a very aptly-titled disc that consisted of four long tracks: the title track, which filled up one side of the album with unbelievably soothing but somehow never cloying loops of simple piano figures, and three variations on Pachelbel‘s “Canon in D Minor,” a baroque potboiler that is rendered barely recognizable by the extension and slowing of different parts by different instruments. This music came as a revelation to me: it was easy to listen to and utterly undemanding, but at the same time rewarded close attention. As it turns out, Eno had hit on something powerful and basic, and the ideas he developed during this period (which, it’s worth pointing out, were not entirely original) have been picked up and carried further by many other composers and sound artists, especially in the world of electronic music. Having received a number of interesting releases over the past few months that come from various neighborhoods in the ambient tradition, I offer here a rundown of some of the best of them—along with suggestions as to their possible uses in everyday life.

Erik Wøllo’s Silent Currents consists of two discs, each a 50-minute performance recorded live on the radio, one in 2002 and the other in 2007. Each contains of a blend of prerecorded and improvised material. This is beatless, floating ambient music—the kind on which it is nearly impossible to focus one’s attention for very long. Texturally it resembles Robert Fripp’s “Frippertronics” tape-loop experiments of the 1970s, but is, if anything, even more formless and harmonically static, though quite lovely in the way that a particular color of wallpaper might be lovely. Compared to this, Brian Eno’s ambient music was punk rock. Suggested uses: Putting babies to sleep; meditation; lowering (to the point of somnolence) the energy level at the end of a party. Grade: B

Where Erik Wøllo’s music floats, the music of Stormloop (a.k.a. Kevin Spence) alternately throbs and shimmers. But the overall mood of Snowbound is perfectly encapsulated by the album title: this is not so much music as sound sculpture, and what the sculpture looks like is an enormous and nearly featureless snow field, punctuated only by mile-deep, echoing chasms. Here questions of “beauty” and indeed even of “music” seem rather beside the point—this is programmatic music intended to evoke a physical environment of equally balanced beauty and terror. Suggested uses: Put this on when you feel the need to be reminded how grateful you are to a) live in a civilization b) with central heating and c) other human beings. Grade: B

On Dokument .02, the latest release from the Dadavistic Orchestra, there’s not much in the way of harmonic movement, but lots of color and many pitch variations; listening to this album is kind of like watching a bunch of slow-moving clouds change into a series of interesting shapes. Among the fogbanks and drone layers will emerge sudden glistening features: a long series of arpeggios, a series of echo-laden water drips, tiny Buddhist chimes, an occasional swell of iron-bar clangor. There is a pervasive analog warmth to the Dadavistic Orchestra’s sound which should not be confused with emotional accessibility: this is music of warm, soft surfaces laid over a core of cold metal. While much of this music is attractive, it’s ultimately rather forbidding. Suggested uses: Making unwanted guests feel vaguely uncomfortable; accompanying silent horror films. Grade: B+

Flumina consists of 24 brief pieces, each of them a partially- or fully-improvised piano composition by legendary film composer and electronica artist Ryuichi Sakamoto. On each of the two discs are twelve pieces, each of them written in one of the 12 key centers available in the Western chromatic scale. Sakamoto played one of these pieces at the beginning of each of his shows on a Japanese tour; when all 24 had been recorded, he sent them to Christian Fennesz for overdubs and other manipulation using electronics, guitars, and synthesizers. The result is strange and deeply lovely. Sakamoto’s piano pieces are aimless in the best sense: there are lots of chords, but little sense of harmonic momentum; despite this, he manages to convey a mood of deep melancholy. Fennesz, for his part, counterbalances that mood with the eerie and detached electronic sounds he brings to bear on Sakamoto’s pieces. The result is a bit like listening to Debussy and Alva Noto simultaneously. Suggested uses: To accompany reading on a rainy day with a cat on your lap; looking through old high school yearbooks. Grade: A

With Ishq’s And Awake, we start getting into slightly (very slightly) more rhythmic territory, and also, interestingly, something that starts edging closer to the easy ambience and pseudo-mysticism of New Age music. The pictures of dervishes whirling on this album’s cover and inside artwork might lead you to expect music with a Middle Eastern flavor and of an explicitly mystical cast, but neither turns out to be the case; while there are touches of exotic percussion, much more prevalent are luscious washes of synthesizer chords, water sounds, and gently rocking chord changes (note in particular “Mizu,” which explicitly evokes Brian Eno’s early experiments in ambient music). Given that Ishq is a duo consisting of guitarist Matt Hillier and vocalist Jacqueline Kersley, it’s interesting that this album contains very little sonic material that comes recognizably from either a guitar or a voice. All of it, however, is sumptuously beautiful and should be welcomed both by fans of New Age music and by those for whom the New Age is anathema, but who have a taste for ambience. Suggested uses: Snuggling with a loved one; reading Persian love poetry; taking a nap. Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

Here’s a straggler from the Christmas pile, one which I’m pleased to give a slightly more thorough treatment than the ones in last month’s holiday round-up got. The jaded music buyer will notice that the label is “Steinway & Sons,” which means that this disc is basically an advertisement for a piano company—an advertisement for which the listener must pay (kind of like buying a Coca Cola t-shirt). The good news is that the music on this album is well worth the purchase price, regardless of the company name on the title and imprint. A Steinway Christmas Album (Steinway & Sons 3005) is a beautiful solo piano recording by Jeffrey Biegel, an artist possessed of both formidable chops and admirable taste. The program includes a variety of secular and sacred selections, opening with a bravura arrangement of “Sleigh Ride” and continuing on to selections from the Nutcracker, gentle seasonal lullabyes of various types, and wonderful new arrangements of traditional tunes—most wonderful of which are Donald Sosin’s affectionate “Hark the Herald Angels Sing (In the Style of Beethoven)” and Carolyne Taylor’s arrangement of “Ding Dong! Merrily On High” incorporating material from Bach‘s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Needless to say, the piano itself sounds great. Grade: A

For those of you already sick to death of holiday music, allow me to recommend one of the least festive releases I’ve heard this year: Bay Area Dubstep, Volume 3 (Full Melt FMRCD004). Dubstep is the bastard zombie offspring of techno, drum’n'bass, and dub, a dark and shambling brand of dance music whose shuddering basslines and staggering, off-kilter rhythms can be danced to only by the exceptionally gifted. This is music for those who like their grooves powerfully abstract , their moods grim, and their vocal referents Jamaican. Like most interesting dance-music developments of the last twenty years, dubstep originated in London, but its impact has been global. An ocean and a continent away from its English home, dubstep has found fertile soil in the underground clubs of San Francisco and Oakland; on this third volume in the Bay Area Dubstep series you’ll hear bangers from such local eminences as Djunya (the lovely and south Asian-flavored “Bura”), Natty Nation (the paradoxically dark and cheerful “Love Each Other [Blackheart & Rastatronics RMX]“), and Arch Rival’s spooky and bracingly minimalist “Hideout.” A couple of tracks are tedious, but most everything here is good, grumbling fun. Grade: A-

If your tastes run to more decibels of guitar and fewer decibels of bass, then join me in welcoming back to market the sharp and hooky debut album of Australia’s own Screaming Tribesmen, probably the best power-pop band to emerge from the Land Down Under during the 1980s. Originally issued in 1987, Bones and Flowers (Grown Up Wrong GUW 004CD) was actually the original Screaming Tribesmen’s only proper album release (there was an earlier EP, and a couple of other albums would be released by later versions of the band after its original lineup dissolved). This reissue adds two B-sides, a handful of demos, and a live version of a song that never appeared on any other release. The Tribesmen’s sound is dated in some ways: Mick Medew’s vocals are kind of thin and weedy in a particularly 1980s way, and the production style is characterized by that strange blend of grit and gloss that was so popular during the period. But in other ways it’s timeless: the combination of jangling guitars, hooky choruses and tight song structures never goes out of style. Grade: B+

Liquid Stranger is an electronica artist who seems to recognize no genre borders, which means his albums tend to be something of a sprawl; but he’s also a genius of groove, which means the sprawl is always luxurious. On The Arcane Terrain (Interchill ICHILLCD42), he attempts to “obliterate the boundaries separating dubstep, grime, dub, breaks, hip hop and outernational crunkadelica,” and he arguably succeeds. There are guest appearances from post-dancehall toaster MC Zulu, old-school rapper KRS One, and producer Heavyweight Dub Champion, among others, and the beats really do range all over the place: heavy monster dub on “Bombaclaad Star,” squidgy dancehall hip hop on “Rise,” slippery electrofunk on “Totem,” straight-up space dub on “Vigilante.” Like all of Liquid Stranger’s other releases, this is top-quality stuff. Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

Over the past few months, a pile of Christmas releases has been gradually deepening on my desk—and I do mean “Christmas,” not “holiday,” releases; for some reason, not a single Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Festivus disc has come my way this year. Since the Christmas-music season would seem to be well underway (based on my recent experiences in a variety of grocery and department stores), I figured it would be a good idea to provide a little bit of a clearinghouse in this month’s Sound Recordings column for those who may be in the market for something new and maybe a bit unusual in the Yuletide music department.

Do you like Gypsy jazz? (Of course you do.) If you want a general idea of what Django Reinhardt and the Quintette du Hot Club de France might have sounded like swinging through lighthearted holiday fare like “Let It Snow,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and even “Sleigh Ride,” then look no further than A Very Gypsy Christmas by guitarist Doug Munro and La Pompe Attack (GotMusic GMR-002). This disc isn’t quite as much fun as it really should have been—the Djangoesque groove seems curiously subdued in a few cases, and the recorded sound is maybe just a bit dull around the edges. But there are lots of genuinely fun moments, and the vocal contributions by Cyrille-Aimee Daudel are a very nice plus. Grade: B

In a much different jazz vein, consider the elegantly understated but richly complex and very rewarding A Child Is Born, by pianist Geri Allen (Motema MTM-69). Relying mostly on solo piano and electric keyboards (overdubbed in some cases), Allen achieves what very few other artists have been able to: she creates an album that is recognizably Christmassy while still making a unique and personal artistic statement. She does this, in part, by putting her own stylistic stamp on familiar material like “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “We Three Kings”—her arrangements are original and at times fairly abstract, but they leave enough of the source material in place to convey their meaning clearly. She also does it by bringing in new material: thematically appropriate original compositions and a handful of traditional tunes from a variety of other cultures round out a program that is both pleasingly varied and comfortingly familiar. Her playing, it should almost go without saying, is exquisite throughout. Grade: A

For yet another completely different jazz approach to Christmas themes, we turn to the Harry Connick, Jr. Trio’s The Happy Elf (Marsalis Music MARS 0017). The title track is actually a story based on a musical theater piece of the same title by Connick; the album opens with a recitation of the story. The remainder of the program is purely instrumental, and although every track has a Christmas-themed title, none of them bears any obvious melodic relationship to a Yuletide melody. This being Harry Connick Jr., the music is consistently good, rollicking fun, with lots of blues and New Orleans influences. But none of it is likely to pass muster with your local Holiday Music Enforcer (at least I know it won’t with mine). An interesting side note: an animated special based on the story will air on NBC on December 2. Very nice stuff, but only marginally Christmassy. Grade: B+

Perhaps the strangest and most disappointing Christmas disc I’ve received so far is Appalachian Christmas, by multi-instrumentalist and composer Mark O’Connor (OMAC Records 16). O’Connor is a wonderful fiddler and guitarist, but I’ve found myself often disappointed by his forays into grand themes. Here he seems, pretty explicitly actually, to be offering an Appalachian-themed Christmas album. One would expect to hear traditional Christmas tunes performed in styles that have something to do with the American mountain south. Instead, we get tunes played in a welter of disconnected styles: an orchestral arrangement of “Away In a Manger” with vocals by soprano Renee Fleming; jazz settings of “Winter Wonderland” and “The Christmas Song”; a lovely lullabye sung by Alison Krauss; schmaltzy and undistinguished arrangements of tunes like “Sleigh Ride” and “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” This isn’t a terrible Christmas album, by any means, but it feels thrown-together and disjointed—and only sporadically does it have anything to do with Appalachia. Grade: C+

I’ve saved the best for last. Led by singers John Roberts and Tony Barrand, the English folk quartet Nowell Sing We Clear has spent the last several decades making some of the most delightful and unusual Christmas albums you’ll ever hear. I usually restrict myself to covering new releases in this column, but as a special Christmas gift to our readers this year I’m going to draw your attention to several of this group’s past albums, any one of which would make a spectacular gift for the folks music lover(s) in your life. The group’s albums are more or less interchangeable, which I mean as a compliment: each of them offers an interesting and thoroughly enjoyable blend of familiar songs in unusual (often quite old) settings, newer songs written after traditional patterns, and songs you know and love performed in the group’s uniquely powerful harmony style. Each member of the group is an accomplished instrumentalist and the songs are often accompanied by a shifting complement of accordion, fiddle, and banjo, but it’s the voices and the repertoire that really set Nowell Sing We Clear apart. Whether revisiting classic material like the “Cherry Tree Carol” and “While Shepherds Watched,” or unearthing obscure wassail songs, or featuring new (and sometimes political) compositions, their albums are always humorous, moving, and strikingly beautiful. My personal favorite is Just Say Nowell, but I haven’t heard a disappointing album from this wonderful group yet. All can be found (and ordered) at http://www.goldenhindmusic.com. Grade (cumulative): A+

– Rick Anderson

Belgium’s Ricercar label has been at the forefront of early-music recording since 1980, when it was established at the same time as the Ricercar Consort. Over the course of thiry years and about 250 releases, the label has introduced the world to the legendary ensemble leader Philippe Herrweghe with both the Collegium Vocale and the Chapelle Royale, and at various times its roster has boasted such eminent groups as the Namur Chamber Choir, Les Agrémens, and Vox Luminis. In recent years, Ricercar’s excellent single releases have suddenly begun to be augmented by projects much more ambitious: a series of boxed sets, each of them featuring a 200-page hardbound book and eight discs of music culled from the Ricercar back catalog.

So far the series includes three entries: the first one was titled A Guide to Period Instruments (the term used to indicate the instruments used during the Renaissance, baroque, and classical periods, many of which are structurally different from modern versions and quite different-sounding), and its recorded tracks were mostly excerpts arranged with the text for didactic purposes. The second is called Reform and Counter-reform and uses musical examples to trace the sometimes wild and bloody history of Protestant reform and Catholic counter-reform that roiled English and European society throughout the Renaissance and baroque periods. Bach‘s Lutheranism and William Byrd‘s Catholicism are placed in what is often a startling and even alarming context by both the music and accompanying book.

But to my mind, the best of these beautifully presented and attractively priced boxes is the one that is just being released this fall: Flemish Polyphony. The composers of the Flanders region (which during the 15th and 16th centuries included the Netherlands, Belgium, and part of northern France) developed multipart choral writing to an unparalleled level and created what is still some of the most heart-stoppingly beautiful music ever to emerge from the human mouth. This box focuses on the great early polyphonic masters of the 15th century: first-generation pioneers like Gilles Binchois and Guillaume Dufay, mature stylists like Johannes Ockeghem, and his pupils Josquin Desprez and Pierre de la Rue, among others. These composers’ innovations would later be taken further by successors elsewhere in Europe (most notably the brilliant Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina), but the best of their early work would endure up to the present day and can still be heard in chapels and cathedrals across England and Europe. This box features great performances by such ensembles as Diabolus in Musica, Discantus, Capella Pratensis, and the always-wonderful Piffaro wind band, and with a list price of around $65 it should really be considered an essential purchase for any lover of Renaissance music. Grade: A+

Before there was Pere Ubu, and before there were the Dead Boys, there was Rocket from the Tombs, one of several mid-1970s bands that prepared the way, like a crazy-eyed desert prophet, for the coming of punk rock. Today, Cleveland, Ohio may not be the first city that springs to mind when the word “protopunk” is spoken, but the fact is that punk fans owe Cleveland almost as much a debt as they do New York City or even London, for it is there in 1974 that Rocket from the Tombs (featuring singer Crocus Behemoth, a.k.a. David Thomas, and guitarists Peter Laughner and Cheetah Chrome) first began tracing the outlines of both the Dead Boys’ metal-tinged punk rock and Pere Ubu’s “avant garage” style. The band lasted only about a year and never formally recorded an album, but scattered singles were gathered into CD titled The Day the Earth Met Rocket from the Tombs in 2002, and in 2011 a new lineup (featuring Thomas, Chrome, original member Craig Bell, legendary guitarist Richard Lloyd, and current Pere Ubu drummer Peter Mehlman) got together to make an album of new material. The result is enough to make you question whether any other music has been made in the past 37 years. Apart from the sharp, crisp production quality, there’s nothing on this album to make you believe that it isn’t still 1975. These guys still roar with an economic and single-minded aggressiveness, as if the bloviations of prog-rock still needed to be refuted and the fattening disco baby still needed to be killed in its crib. When Thomas warbles “Honey, I Sell Soul” or mutters about how “Good Times Never Roll,” you believe him both times, and Chrome and Lloyd’s guitars are corrosive and coruscating by turns. This is music by men who have gotten old but not tired—or at least, whose irritation at getting old and tired has prodded them into new and increasingly desperate action. It’s a great reminder of the absurdity of the idea that rock’n'roll is “young people’s music.” Excellent. Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

I’m something of an aficionado of South Asian electronic dance music, but until recently I had never heard of either Dhamaal Soundsystem or its cofounder Janaka Selekta, whose solo debut has now been released on the Chaiwalla’s Boombox label. The breathtaking quality of this album has quickly sent me scrambling to learn more about this artist’s backstory and to catch up with the related releases that I’ve missed. Pushing Air is, as its title suggests, strongly concerned with matters of the bass, but it gives equal sonic attention to intriguingly complex and melismatic vocals from singers like Hema Ram (on the gorgeous “Nomadic”) and Taamara (on the even prettier and multilingual “Time”). There are also appearances from reggae great Lloyd Hemmings, Asian Dub Foundation bassist Dr. Das, globetrotting percussionist Karsh Kale (who offers a fine remix of “Awake”), and singer Sukhawat Ali Khan. The grooves vary widely from electro dub and dubstep, to breaks, house, and techno, all of them richly textured and interwoven with Asian instrumentation. There is hardly a weak track to be found anywhere on this exceptional album. Highly recommended. Grade: A

The combination of guitar and piano is kind of a problematic one: both are chordal instruments that operate in more or less the same pitch range, and in chamber ensembles accompaniment is usually provided by one or the other. Put them together and you raise the question of sonic redundancy. Pair a classical guitar with the delicate tones of a fortepiano and the difficulty is compounded: why pair two instrument with such similar range and timbre? One answer is offered on this fine recording by guitarist Philippe Villa and pianist Carole Carniel, who perform a completely winning program of light works for guitar or mandolin and keyboard by Ludwig van Beethoven and Anton Diabelli. These are not the famous variations that Beethoven wrote by invitation on a waltz tune of Diabelli in 1819, but rather a brief set of two sonatinas, one adagio, and an andante with variations written for keyboard and mandolin alongside a longer set of sonatas and other pieces (including six Scottish dances) for piano and guitar by Diabelli. One obvious challenge with this repertoire is that of keeping the two instruments aurally separated enough to make them distinguishable, a problem handled in this case by means of production technique: the guitar is mixed somewhat more forward. All other aesthetic questions quickly fade away. Villa and Carniel play with both tenderness and vigor, embuing the Scottish dances in particular with completely charming energy. Any lover of late classical chamber music is bound to enjoy this wonderful album. Grade: A-

The death of Kate McGarrigle in 2010 came as a blow to all lovers of American and Canadian folk and folk-rock. She and her sister Anna had been performing together as a duo since the 1960s, eventually producing some of the most engaging and sometimes willfully quirky music of the 1970s. Anna’s song “Heart Like a Wheel” was an unlikely hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1974, and Kate gave birth to two children who would eventually become icons of modern indie pop: Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright. In the wake of Kate’s death, the Nonesuch label remastered and reissued the McGarrigles’ first two albums (Kate & Anna McGarrigle and Dancer with Bruised Knees) along with a third disc of demos and outtakes and a booklet with lyrics, a few new photos, and some brief essays from Anna and the production team, titling the whole package Tell My Sister. For newcomers, the two proper albums should come as something of a revelation–Kate’s slightly warbling voice may take a little bit of getting used to, but the songs are utter gems, particularly the aching “Heart Like a Wheel,” the wryly political rock steady of “Complainte pour Ste.-Catherine,” and the gently rocking “Be My Baby.” Established fans will want this set for its improved sound quality and the odds-and-ends appendix (although I personally found the third disc less than consistently compelling). Grade: A-

Echoes of Swing is a German jazz quartet that specializes, as its name suggests, in music from an unfashionably early era. Not what we usually would consider the “swing” period, but earlier: back when tunes would end with the “twank” of a quickly-muted cymbal, when piano parts still harbored audible echoes of ragtime, when Harmon mutes were deployed with abandon, when the word “swing” hardly needed to be used because it was taken as a given. Despite playing without a bassist, the group plays with absolutely impeccable time and a sense of swing that is simultaneously dead serious and lightly, elegantly fun. On Message from Mars they adapt classical melodies by the likes of Chopin and Shostakovich(!), and take on respected standards like “Don’t Explain” and “Spring Is Here” with new arrangements that are as respectful as they are innovative. There are even a few originals slyly thrown in, among them a very fine blues composition by saxophonist Chris Hopkins playfully titled “Twilightnin’ Hopkins.” This album is a delight from beginning to end. Grade: A

Some kinds of pop music achieve popularity quickly, then fade away just as quickly, but never really die. One of these is rock steady, a subgenre of Jamaican music that acted as a transitional style between the jazzy headlong gallop of ska in the early 1960s and the slower, smokier rhythms of roots reggae that had taken hold by around 1970. Characterized by a loping, rubbery rhythm that accentuates both the off-beats of ska and the heavy third beat of the emerging reggae sound, rock steady enjoyed popularity in its native land for only a few years but has left an indelible footprint on the worldwide musical landscape. As evidence for that assertion, consider At Low Fyah!, a brilliant and pitch-perfect evocation of the classic rock steady sound from Smooth Beans, a great band (with a terrible name) that hails from Madrid. Being able to recreate the classic rock steady sound is impressive, but much more impressive is the quality of both the songwriting and the performances on this album–every song boasts a solid hook, the vocal harmonies are seamless, the grooves are effortlessly powerful. The fact that every track is an original composition just makes the album that much more impressive. I would strongly recommend this disc to any fan of old-school reggae. Grade: A+

– Rick Anderson

Few musical fusions seem quite as unlikely on the surface as that of South Asian folk music and Anglo-Caribbean techno, yet upon further reflection it seems inevitable that they would eventually intersect and form something new. Both India and Jamaica are former British colonies, and immigrants from around the Caribbean and South Asia have enriched London’s cultural mix for nearly a century–and those influences have been brought back to the subcontinent in turn. In London’s and New Delhi’s various ethnic enclaves and dance clubs the sounds of reggae, bhangra, mento, ska, and calypso have intermixed freely with those of punk rock, hip hop, and disco over the past several decades to create a wide variety of exciting musical hybrids. If you want to hear some of the most exciting of those experiments, check out dimmSummer Presents: Subcontinental Bass (available by download only from High Chai Recordings), which includes tracks from artists based both in and out of Asia: you’ll hear dubstep, L.A. bass, drumstep, reggae, and related electro genres from the likes of Naz, Liquid Stranger, Kush Arora, Piyush Bhatnagar, and label head dimmSummer himself. Much of it is brilliant, and all of it is well worth hearing. Grade: A+

For another take on Anglo-Indian musican fusions, consider the case of the Suns of Arqa, a 30-year-long experiment by bassist Michael Wadada in exploring the mystical connections between reggae and the raga-based classical music of India. Purist aficionados of either form may scoff, but over the years Suns of Arqa have produced an impressive number of entrancing and sometimes deeply moving recordings, most of them organized around Wadada’s richly melodic basslines and featuring varying combinations of funk or reggae drums, sitar, tabla, breakbeats, devotional chants, and any number of other musical elements depending on whom Wadada has encountered and decided to work with at any given moment. The description may make Suns of Arqa’s music seem like woolly-headed New Age noodling, but in fact it is anything but: even at its most meditative, this is music that feels as if it’s plumbing the depths of the human experience while simultaneously celebrating mankind’s ability to dance in about 100 different ways. Case in point: their latest release, titled Stranger Music, draws on beats originally created by the late Muslimgauze and lyrics by Leonard Cohen. Like so many of the Suns’ projects, it’s an objectively crazy idea that works surprisingly well. Grade: B+

Another band that has been exploring the margins of electronic dub and avant-garde reggae sounds is the New Zealand-based Pitch Black, a duo consisting of multimedia artist Michael Hodgson and producer Paddy Free (the latter also known for his ongoing Salmonella Dub project). Whether recording their own material or remixing the work of others, Pitch Black’s sound tends towards the spacious, dark, and expansive — imagine The Orb with a more compelling rhythmic framework — and is very frequently informed by the richly melodic and rhythmically off-kilter traditions of the reggae bassline. Pitch Black’s latest release is exactly what its title indicates: a collection of remixes that the duo has created based on work by Mirror System, Katchafire, Laya Project, International Observer and others, along with some rare and previously-unreleased material pulled from their own vaults. Very nice. Grade: B+ 

And if what you prefer is a more undiluted version of dubwise reggae in a more traditional (but still modern) style, then by all means check out this convenient and attractively priced two-disc best-of compilation just out from the UK-based (but pan-European in orientation) Zion Train, whose strictly roots-and-culture orientation has never stopped them from collaborating with artists from Poland, Crete, Brazil, France, and other far-flung locations. Reputed to have been one of the late producer John Peel’s favorite live bands, Zion Train is a versatile combo led by Neil Perch, who performs on his own with a vocalist for sound system gigs and is joined by a full band when occasion calls for it. Dub Revolutionaries: The Very Best of Zion Train offers an excellent overview of the group’s twenty-year recording history, including the brilliant and pioneering “Follow Like Wolves” single that established their reputation in the early 1990s, a previously unreleased Peel Sessions track, some vinyl-only rarities, and their first singles: “Dub Power” and “Dub to Power” (originally issued as “Power One” and “Power Two”). Setting oneself apart from the crowded pack of neo-dub experimenters is a tall order, and Zion Train has been doing it consistently for more than two decades now. Highly recommended to newcomers as an introduction to the band’s rich and deep back catalog. Grade: A-

– Rick Anderson