Foxy Digitalis
I’ve reached the point in my life where if you say ‘Don Cherry’ in front of me, I will simply hand you my money and say thank you. And you know what? That’s not a bad thing. Anyway, NU was the band Don Cherry led in the mid-80s that doesn’t seem to get as much […]
Faten Kanaan is as much a storyteller as she is an artist or musician. A Mythology of Circles sounds timeless, an album as much rooted in the past as it is a soundtrack for a distant future where technological advancement has stripped the world bare. Kanaan weaves countless layers – all impressively played live without […]
Sprawling, cathartic, and adventurous, Instant Opaque Evening, is a tactile and immersive listening experience. The Underflow – the trio of Mats Gustafsson, David Grubbs, and Rob Mazurek – find new ways to mix disparate sounds into intricately woven, free moving pieces. None of these guys need any real introductions, but their combined prowess digs out […]
String Songs is an exploration of two stringed instruments built by Ashley Bellouin and Ben Bracken. As they describe them, they’re roughly five feet long and each has 35 strings. Envisioning the instruments alone takes on a life of its own as I start imagining a vibrant, fantastical universe where instruments like these are the […]
Sonny Rollins has one of the greatest jazz nicknames of all time. When you hear ‘Saxophone Colossus,’ you picture a towering, imposing figure that will own any room he walks into or any stage he graces with his presence. In that, it’s spot-on. On this officially sanctioned (Rollins himself signed off on it) collects three […]
I also released an album called Avenoir recently so I was already biased toward City of Dawn’s album of the same name because, well… it’s a great word. On City of Dawn’s Avenoir, a hazy spirit permeates the entire affair. Cool, airy drones overlay field recordings, all swimming in an echoing, gauzy pool. This is […]
I honestly don’t remember how I stumbled onto Atsuko Hatano’s beautiful, melancholic compositions last summer, but I’ve been hooked since. Her latest album, Fossilized Dreams, follows in familiar footsteps with timeless drones built around violin and effects, slowly rising and falling like a body taking its final breaths. Both “Bear’s Den” and the first half […]
Inside the silver goop, time stands still as Solid Waste’s sounds flow like a viscous river of spectral delight. This former trio of St. Louisans ride a wave of aural drifts and synthesized dreams into a lost future. City of the Cosmos creates a new world through weightless, heady drones. It connects on an astral […]
Lucy Liyou makes me cry and I like them very much for that. Their debut album, Welfare, was a kaleidoscopic soundscape jumping between moods and styles with elegance. Practice continues that journey, but in a way that feels more expansive and closer than ever at the same time. So much of what makes their music […]