First Impressions 030: jazz and rap apocalypse, shining pedal steel, synth-prog ear candy, rich cello ambience and more.

Initial vibes on new music

Hello,

It’s really just the reviews this week, though I wanted to go back briefly to last week’s thoughts on The Guardian article around the rise of minimal piano artists through streaming platforms. I received a lot of comments seeing them - happily or not - as a takedown of these artists and the music they make.

Perhaps I didn’t convey it well, however I was more interested in the way streaming platform infrastructures have rewired the conversation around music and listening, where quantity is heralded over quality and the endless connectivity between forms of music is somewhat of a ruse for your ongoing attention. I thought the author fell for it.
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OK, let’s go:

Sun Glories - Chuck Johnson: Chuck Johnson is one of a select few who has deepened the textural and emotional resonance of the pedal steel guitar, tracing a new sonic arc of peaking feeling across several enveloping albums. Sun Glories path to elevation is broader, with a seamless dynamic swallowing both the emotion valve of post-rock and Arvo Part’s symphony-high hush. Johnson has often hewed to Pärt’s minimalist spirt, inverting the solitary air of the pedal steel into shining rays of light. Feeding into that force are a host of sensitive players to underscore its majesty, including Cole Pule (saxophone, electronics) Clarice Jensen (cello) and Ryan Jewell (drums).  It’s easy to absorb the wonder of this album, where the healing power of warmth buoys the rejuvenating energy in Johnson’s mission.

All Of the Colours Are Singing - Jessica Ackerley: Guitarist Ackerley and her trio of upright bass, drums and violin / viola prod and punch for breaking points in her compositions, wringing tension from their vivid interplay to explore where they could wind up once instinct kicks in. While that’s not a terribly new move in either the jazz or avant-garde worlds that Ackerley’s music straddles, she is careful to offset combustible moments with mirroring gestures of uncommon beauty. While each get the space to play out, when Ackerley brings them together, she creates a strange and joyous harmony that thrives on the flux of taking chances.

43/80 - Samara Lubelski - Bill Nace Duo: Guitarist Bill Nace’s approach to noise has often been to liberate it from a reflexive coldness into pure hot feeling. This is a welcome return of his pairing with violinist Samara Lubelski, who first recorded together in 2018. Side one features Nace playing the taishogoto, a two-stringed instrument also known as the Nagoya harp, and it finds the duo in perpetual gnaw mode, with sustained guttural tones set to throttle. It’s a kind of epic chokehold, while the flip side hangs more brightly with an eerie, echoing squall— I felt like I was caught deep inside a cave of bats— before shifting into more claustrophobic buzz ‘n scrape.

Tomutonttu ja Lehtisalo - Tomutonttu ja Lehtisalo: Two Finland artists who regularly venture off the ledge team up here to gleefully double down on their eccentric expertise. Jussi Lehtisalo is founder of the long-running Circle - a sort of motoric metal-wave outfit for the uninitiated – joins Jan Anderzén whose Kemialliset Ystävät made weirdly endearing, rag-tag psych folk, updating the blueprint with Tomutonttu’s digital dicing. The surprise is not how wilfully weird this is, but more how these winkingly dinky tunes have the ring of ear candy, as they play in crosspoints of synth-prog, new age and video game music. R2-D2 would not be out of place on vocals, as the pair pop off their sticky melodies with woozy whistles and tweets that come off with all manner of cute.

ØKSE – ØKSE: Formed after a request from an Austrian jazz festival in 2022, ØKSE are at that thrilling early point of group alchemy between a diversity of musicians where nothing’s solid, flying on spark alone. Their brand of free jazz jump cuts into experimental turntablism and electroacoustic improv, and on this debut album they find the lightning to their thunder in connecting with American rappers who can outline the apocalypse in a verse. Armand Hammer’s ELUCID and billy woods lead the fray, their surreal street visions bleeding onto the urgency, fire, and groove damage with abstract shock quality.

Falling – Henrik Meierkord: The Stockholm composer’s cello-led compositions hold the glow and mystery of a distant light at sea. Against that luminous signal, it’s the sea’s infinite sense of space, tension and grace that Meirkord rejoices in, casting deep, long tones in pursuit of a majesty of melancholy. There’s not much that’s subtle with Falling—it’s an indulgence like a rich dessert. But if you’re willing to be overtaken, Meirkord’s use of the sea metaphor creates a powerful sense of rapturous overwhelm.

Thanks for reading.
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Andrew Khedoori is the curator of Longform Editions.
First Impressions visual by Mark Gowing.