Dear Afterword brothers and sisters,
Well, the first half of the year is just over, and I reckon I can put together a decent list of 25 Favourite albums with a 2016 release date that may be of interest to the Afterword community. I haven’t listed the albums in a strict 1 to 25 order, because many of them I haven’t really heard enough to judge fully yet. So often, a record’s qualities manifest themselves gradually, over a longer period.
I’ve just divided the albums into two groups: 10 favourites so far, in alphabetical order, with a few comments about each, and an additional 15 good‘uns, also in alphabetical order.
I’ll keep the compilations, reissues and historical recordings for another list.
To make things very exciting, we’ll start with the lower fifteen…
Nos 11 to 25, in alphabetical order
Brigaden – Om Lill, Jesus, Alberto och våra föräldrar
Brassy, good-time Swedish folk-jazz
David Bowie – Blackstar
Erm … you know this one, right?
Peter Broderick – Music for Confluence
A beautiful piano-based soundtrack from the versatile and prolific Oregonian.
Dana Falconberry & Medicine Bow – From the Forest Came the Fire
All Joanna Newsom fans, please step this way
Chris Forsyth & the Solar Motel Band – The Rarity of Experience Pts. I & II
Forsyth’s full, casually abrasive guitar sound still reminds me a bit of Television, but with fewer vocals and a somewhat more down-home style.
Kenneth James Gibson – The Evening Falls
A fine, fine slice of US ambient loveliness
P.J. Harvey – The Hope Six Demolition Project
A bit like “Let England Shake”. But not quite as good.
Per Oddvar Johansen – Let’s Dance
Typically plangent Norwegain chamber jazz.
Chuck Johnson – Velvet Arc
Absolutely first rate ‘American primitive’ guitarist. Not quite as stripped-down and bare as his two previous outings. More of fleshed-out band sound.
Glenn Jones – Fleeting
Another fine US guitarist in the John Fahey/Jack Rose. Lovely.
Bartosz Kruczyński – Baltic Beat
Beautiful, relaxing piano-based ambient work inspired by the beaches on the Baltic coast of Poland.
Mathias Landaeus – From the Piano
Landaeus states categorically that the only instrument used on this album is an upright piano. So the bits that sound like a synthesizer and percussion must be him doing very weird things with the piano. Bizarre but intriguing.
Jan Lundgren – The Ystad Concert: A Tribute to Jan Johansson
Concert given by Swedish pianist Lundgren (and a string quartet) in tribute to an illustrious predecessor of his, the great Jan Johansson, who died in a car crash in 1968, aged only 37.
Palle Sollinger & Fredrik Hermansson – Brännkyrkagatan 44
Some exquisite, brief jazz piano and double bass duets recorded in someone’s front room in central Stockholm (plus a little clarinet here and there). Anyone who likes the Keith Jarrett/Charlie Haden duet albums would go for this, I reckon
Three Cane Whale – Palimpsest
The Bristol trio continue to make enchanting small-scale chamber folk music somewhat in the spirit of the Penguin Café Orchestra.
My favourite 10 will be posted later today or tomorrow…
In amongst all the current uncertainties comes the certainty of me having never heard or heard of most of Duco’s splendid recommendations. Many if not all will no doubt fail to please my cloth and closed ears but once again I thank you Sir Duco of Cool
Kenneth Gibson and Bartos Kruczynski , of whom I can only say me, neither, perk my interest meter.
At last! A music thread we can all get our teeth into!
If PJ Harvey’s latest is not as good as Let England Shake, then I’ll have to give it a wide berth.
Dana Falconberry’s voice is far more palatable than Joanna Newsom’s but the music is equally intricate. The best bits, in my view, are the long instrumental passages. She is part of that movement of chamber pop I lumped Laura Mvula into. Others would include Meilyr Jones and Cat’s Eyes.
However, shame on you, duco. Blackstar must be top five, at least! Here’s looking forward to seeing Beyoncé in your top ten.
I hate to break it to you Tigger, but the Beyoncé album didn’t make the Top Ten. Because … erm … I haven’t heard it. Let’s see … Beyoncé … is she famous?
However, I was listening to some tracks from the new Jeff Parker album “The New Breed” the other day, and my first thought was “Tiggerlion would like this!”. It’s a slow, left-field, undeniably funky experimental jazz album… Great cover photo, too.
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/the-new-breed
Ǿtto Schnœdlßtraßßőlloeck’s “The Pines, The Woe Of The Fjōrds; A Herring Expires On The Harsh Land” doesn’t get a nod, Duco? This elegiac meditation on loss was recorded in the rabbit hutch of a deserted Silesian prisoner of war Death Camp, and features Schnœdlßtraßßőlloeck on Treated Zither. At once hauntingly evocative yet immersively bleak, this album deserves to be on every music lovers’ Best Of The First Six Months Of 2016 list!
Plangent!
Wow! A personal recommendation from the Duke!
Funnily enough, I was listening to some Tortoise only last week. I’ll certainly give this a thorough listen.
Thank you.
I’ve heard that.
Sounds like the Beatles.
I think I’ll wait until these have been placed in the correct order.
Would a Spotify playlist be too much to ask, assuming the artists are Spotifyable
Sorry Mr Wells, but I’m such a terrible technophobe that I don’t have Spotify.
I can console you, however, by revealing that my absolute favourite album of the year so far is by an Australian gentleman. Watch this space!
The Kenneth Gibson is on Spotify – I checked it out after Poppy recommended it in Tigger’s Best Albums so far list. It’s good, definitely worth a listen.
Nick Cave?
Slim Dusty?
Peter Dasent?
Peter Andre?
Rolf Harris?
Judith Durham?
Judith Chalmers?
I’m afraid Ms Chalmers is disqualified, Gary. She’s from Stockport.
But she is a gentleman.
I played the PJ Harvey again on Wednesday night and have to say it sounded marvellous. I think better than Let England shake although reviewers were not quite as enthusiastic. (What do they know).
The Chris Forsyth will be up there too at the end of the year.
Okey-dokey then good people! It’s time for numbers 2 to 10, in alphabetical order:
Aziza Brahim – Abbar El Hamada
Charming, very accessible desert blues from Western Sahara
Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano & Jan Lundgren – Mare Nostrum II
Kaisfatdad bought me this for my birthday. A trumpet, accordion and piano trio. The telepathy between thee guys is really something.
C Joynes & Nick Jonah Davis – Spill Electric
Two English guitarists duelling mightily through two sides of caustic instrumentals. A bit like Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd trying to play different selections from the John Fahey songbook at the same time. Obscure but well worth tracking down. The cover is a disfigured image of the first issue of Kerrrang! magazine. Ha!
Leyla McCalla – A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey
Second solo album by cellist and vocalist McCalla, a former member of Carolina Chocolate Drops. She lives in New Orleans and her parents are from Haiti, and so the francophone influence on her music is strong from two directions. A lovely sparse sound. Spiritual, deep roots music from the Americas. Highly, highly recommended.
Allison Miller’s Tic Tic Boom – Otis was a Polar Bear
I reviewed this one in the original ”Favourite albums of 2016 so far” general thread.
Einar Scheving – Intervals
Let’s show the Icelanders there’s no hard feelings about knocking out of Euro 2016 by buying the finest Nordic jazz album of the year so far! I’ve had a little email contact with Mr Scheving, who’s out on a volcanic glacier somewhere with only puffins for company, and he seems a nice chap. A very inventive and ‘musical’ drummer.
https://einarscheving.bandcamp.com/releases
Djelimady Tounkara – Djely Blues
The aging Malian guitar maestro records fairly sparingly nowadays, but when the albums finally arrive, they’re always ones to cherish.
Yorkston/Khan/Thorne – Everything Sacred
Did you hear the one about the Mancunian, the Scotsman and the Indian? They made one of the best jazz/folk/Indian fusion albums of all time! Succeeds spectacularly where many such crossover projects flounder.
John Zorn (and the Gnostic Trio) – The Mockingbird
Bill Frisell (guitar), Carol Emanuel (harp) and Kenny Wollesen (vibes) present another delicate, mesmerizing suite of compositions by the superhumanly productive Zorn.
I found Zorn a bit meh. Yes, even with Frisell’s presence. Leyla, on the other hand, is superb!
This is my final selection, and I have to say that it’s also the record that’s currently in pole position for the coveted duco01 Album of the Year award at the halfway stage.
Lloyd Swanton – Ambon
Lloyd Swanton is the double-bass player of the veteran Australian improvisational trio the Necks, a band that have quite a following here on the Afterword. But “Ambon” sounds nothing like the Necks.
Ambon is a 2CD + book package which tells the true story of Lloyd’s uncle, Stuart Swanton, who was a gifted musician and devout Christian. Stuart enlisted in 1940 and found himself on the Indonesian island of Ambon when the Japanese invaded in overwhelming numbers. He spent the rest of the war in the Ambon prisoner of war camp – the PoW camp with the second highest death rate in all of World War II. Throughout those years, he kept a secret diary, which exists to this day, and it’s this that Lloyd hangs his story upon. Tragically, Stuart succumbed to beriberi the day before the Japanese surrender in 1945.
Lloyd Swanton has done his uncle proud. He’s assembled a 13-piece ensemble to tell the musical story of camp life in those terrible years. He’s set three hymns written by his uncle in beautiful jazz arrangements. Many tracks include traditional Indonesian instruments. One piece veers into free jazz territory to reflect the ragged camp band that the PoWs put together with rudimentary instruments. The whole thing is clearly a labour of love, and the lengthy and beautifully illustrated book is almost worth the price of admission on its own.
I understand that, in Australia, Lloyd and his band have played the whole album from start to finish as a full concept show, to universal acclaim. I’d love to see it.
The whole work is such a moving tribute to a family member, whom Swanton was never to meet. If you love jazz – and particularly if you’re interested in World War II history, you must hear it.
http://www.buglerecords.com/buy-music
And finally, three records that sound good, but I’ve not really heard them enough yet to assess them:
Ilya Beshevli – Wanderer
Steve Gunn – Eyes on the Lines
Alasdair Roberts & James Green – Plaint of Lapwing
This is beriberi good.
I’m sorry; I have to dysentery from that point of view.
Thiamine agreement with HPS.
The Yorkston/Thorne/Khan album sounds very nice so far.
Same sort of vibe as J McL’s “Shakti” stuff but with some vocals.
Has an interesting version of an Ivor Cutler song “Little Black Buzzer”. And ooh look. “Song For Thirza” is a Lal Waterson song.
Yes, I love that version of “Little Black Buzzer”, especially when Lisa O’Neill sings “I’m sitting on top of the world and my bum is cold” . Marvellous.
I can’t help noticing, @duco01, there seems to be a lot more singing than usual for one of your lists.
This thread has also confirmed my belief that should write Nights In or Out. Your writing is sharp and succinct, the words are chosen with admirable precision.. I’d enjoy a lot more from you, especially as the musical path you explore is somewhat unusual.
Seconded!
It’s kind of you to say that, Tigger (and ip33).
I keep meaning to write a Night In or a Night Out, but somehow I never do.
For now, I’ll have to concentrate on putting together a summary my favorite reissues and historical recordings of the first six months of 2016…
I’ve heard precisely two of these, the obvious one and the Yorkston, Thorne, Khan which is indeed wondrous. The Leyla McCalla sounds right up my street – will check it out…
There are several significant gaps, like Ambon. And if the most recent album isn’t on Spotify I’ve added a track by the artist anyway, so that we can get a taste of what they sound like.
So, here it is: the DuCool Half Time Sampler 2016.
What a lovely groove Aziza Brahim has. I think you could actually dance to this one. You don’t hear that often on a DuCool thread!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asknPyorPX0