Newly Released Audio recordings I enjoyed in 2020

In more or less the order I heard them. 

Horace Tapscott and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Orchestra: Ancestral Echoes: The Covina Sessions 1976 (Dark Tree) 

Tapscott was an inspired pian­ist and a stag­ger­ing com­poser and bandlead­er. It’s both amaz­ing and not at all amaz­ing that he’s not bet­ter known, but if you yearn for 100-proof spir­itu­al jazz this will be your bag. 

Brandon Seabrook with  Gerard Cleaver and Cooper-Moore: Exultations (Astral Spirits)

Guitarist Seabrook’s pri­or out­ing was called Convulsionaries and the change of back­ing play­ers sug­gests a change of mood/mode (Cooper-Moore is an often ebul­li­ent play­er). Still pretty galvanic.

Bill Laswell: Against Empire (Method of Defiance) 

This falls on the more ano­dyne end of the Laswell spec­trum but it still sticks to the ribs. Members of its all-star cast include Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders, and Jerry Marotta, but giv­en Laswell’s enthu­si­asm for aur­al mont­age I don’t believe they all con­vened togeth­er in an approx­im­a­tion of a Rudy Van Gelder session. 

Henry Kaiser: Problems Are Only Opportunities In Dress Clothes (Fractal)

Some typ­ic­ally bra­cing HK solo­ing on a record that his label offered as a free add-on to shop­pers at var­ied forward-looking retail­ers, as a way to spur business. 

Tisziji Muñoz: Drop Dead (MRI)

The heal­er (and Paul Schaffer’s favor­ite free musi­cian) gets a little brutal. 

Not Two…but twenty (Not Two) 

The excel­lent European label chron­icles the products of a live fest cel­eb­rat­ing its 20^th anniversary

Milford Graves and Don Pullen: The Complete Yale Concert, 1966 (Corbett Vs. Dempsey) 

As cos­mic as its artist team­ing suggests.

Ivar Grydeland and Henry Kaiser: In the Arctic Dreamtime (Rune Gramofon) 

Chilled geni­us.

Sam Rivers Trio: Ricochet (No Business) 

Fronting a trio with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul sup­port­ing, Rivers plays a vari­ety of instru­ments over the course of one long impro­vised set. This is a musi­cian who resets your expect­a­tions every time you hear him.

Threadbare: Silver Dollar (No Business) 

An ener­get­ic trio jug­gling prac­tices from the trad, the free and the fusion. 

Ikue Mori, Phew, YoshimiO: I.P.Y. (Tzadik)

You know their names. Their concept of space music is exhilarating.

Terje Rypdal: Conspiracy (ECM)

A sur­pris­ingly rip­ping quar­tet date from the always stim­u­lat­ing gui­tar god.

Code Girl: Artlessly Falling (Firehouse 12) 

Mary Halvorson stretches elec­tric gui­tar lan­guage with a tone both crystal-clear and elast­ic. With the band Code Girl she stretches the art song. On this per­fect album she brings on Robert Wyatt to sing a few of the tunes. Moving and magnificent.

Harvey Gold: It’s Messy Vol. 1 (Smog Veil)

An Electric Love Supreme  (Cuneiform)

Henry Kaiser and Vinny Golia are the lead voices for the most part; Wayne Peet brings some Larry Young to the concept; drum­mer John Hanrahan shakes some action; and Watt from Pedro on bass is both in the pock­et and around the world. 

The Underflow (Corbett Vs. Dempsey) 

Horn and elec­tron­ics men Mats Gustafson and Rob Mazurek meet David Grubbs for some­thing they all clearly found exhil­ar­at­ing: while the voices are recog­niz­able, the pieces are rather dif­fer­ent from what I’m accus­tomed to hear­ing from them.

Thumbscrew: The Anthony Braxton Project (Cuneiform)

The trio of Mary Halvorson, Mark Furmanek and Tomas Fujiwara pay trib­ute to a teach­er, ment­or, and col­lab­or­at­or and provide an iter­a­tion of his music both tidy and labyrinthine.

Schnellertollermeier: 5 (Cuneiform)

Imagine Polyrock without the key­boards and vocals, then think more aus­tere. That’s KIND of what this is like, but not quite. But if that descrip­tion made you curi­ous, you ought to check this out

Ray Russell: Fluid Architecture (Cuneiform)

On the fusion end of the Russell spec­trum, and pretty great. 

Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley: Being Astral and All Registers/Power of Two (Discus)

There have been a couple of Taylor/Oxley record­ings issued recently, and this is my favor­ite. But all of them are worth having.