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An occasional blog about populist politics and popular music, not necessarily at the same time. LinksLocal Links Social Media My Other Websites Music Politics Others Networking Music DatabaseArtist Search: Website SearchGoogle: Recent Reading
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Monday, September 7, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 25453 [25408] rated (+45), 426 [429] unrated (-3). Spent nearly the whole week listening to old jazz from Werner Uehlinger's Hatology label (or hatOLOGY, as he prefers), knocking off another 29 albums this week. As expected, the quality (at least as reflected in my grades) is dropping a bit: 6 A- records this week, so 20.6%, down from 28.5% (6/21) last week and 36.1% (26/72) from the previous database. Three of those six were from Anthony Braxton, so that won't happen again, and one of the others featured Ellery Eskelin -- I'm only aware of one more record by him that I haven't heard, something called Arcanum Moderne. Still, the next few weeks -- I have a list of 55 more Hatology albums I haven't heard yet, and I'm only up to about 2006 in Discogs' listings -- are bound to reveal some surprises. As the rated count shows, I've been working very fast. Two Braxton albums fell just short, mostly because at the time I didn't feel like giving either a second spin (the one with Max Roach was most deserving of further attention). I pulled the earlier Urs Leimgruber albums off my unplayed shelf. The first (Statement of an Antirider) was by far the best solo sax album I've heard in the last two weeks, out of way too many. I played it twice, wrote it up as an A-, then dialed it back a notch. I took a couple flings on related non-Hat albums (Ran Blake, Anthony Ortega) but they didn't turn up much. Not much new jazz this week, but I did manage to check out three new albums with saxophonist Jon Irabagon. I was surprised to note that I had only given one of his own albums an A- in the past -- 2010's Foxy -- because he must have more than a dozen side credits rated that or higher (mostly MOPDTK, but most recently Barry Altschul & 3Dom Factor: Tales of the Unforeseen). I took a look at his website calendar for July-August and he was working virtually every day, with almost as many different groups. He may be spreading himself thin, but he sure gets around. I expected better things from the Dave Douglas (with Irabagon) and Irabagon (with Tom Harrell) and gave them plenty of line. Nice things on both, but neither managed to break out of the postbop mold. Still, I came up with one superb album for the week, from guitarist Liberty Ellman. He writes good parts for all three of his horns, and I love Jose Davila's thumping tuba, but the solo that always grabs my attention is by alto saxophonist Steve Lehman. Ellman gets a lot of side credits for mixing, including the last several albums by Lehman and almost everything else on the label they share, Pi. This is the third A-list album of four releases on Pi, the highest batting average of any label (pretty much year after year, by the way, so don't let the small sample size fool you). The others are Henry Threadgill's In for a Penny, In for a Pound and Amir ElSaffar's Crisis are the others; I have Steve Coleman's Synovial Joints way down at B+(***), and a fifth release, Jen Shyu's Sounds and Cries of the World just arrived and in the queue. Probably have enough for a Rhapsody Streamnotes column, but I feel like I'm in the middle of all this Hat stuff. (I do: 128 records; but just 48 new, only 5 A-.) Also, I don't know how useful this file is (even to myself), but I fixed some typos in Music Tracking 2015 so now at least it's viewable. I also added everything in AMG's weekly "featured releases" up through last Friday, although I haven't gone through the other "review sources" in at least three months. Having an absolutely miserable day today -- perhaps a cold on top of the worst allergies I can remember since moving west. Comes on the second straight 100-degree day here, although only the seventh such day this year. (It may be a record hot year for the world world, but not for Kansas.) Happy Labor Day: a good day to remember that working people, and not profits or property, built everything you hold dear in America. New records rated this week:
Old records rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
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