The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week’s theme is electronics: albums that draw from the jazz tradition or feature players associated with jazz music, that also incorporate synthesizers and electronic textures. Harpist and composer Nala Sinephro uses a modular synthesizer and pedal harp on her debut album for Warp Records, entitled ‘Space 1.8’. Nala is joined by a wide range of collaborators including saxophonist James Mollison of Ezra Collective and Cykada, guitarist Shirley Tetteh of Nérija, and Mercury Prize-nomiated saxophonist Nubya Garcia, amongst others. The album is testament to the healing power of music and the importance of improvisation. Producer and bassist Petter Eldh has joined Edition Records for his latest album, ‘Projekt Drums vol. 1’, which finds Eldh collaborating with six outstanding drummers to create six beat-heavy compositions. These drummers include Savannah Harris, Eric Harland, and Richard Spaven, amongst others. Eldh plays a number of synths on the record, including a Korg Poly6 and Moog Matriarch. Zebularin recorded their album ‘Hermetic Topography’ across various sessions in Spring, 2020. Band members Yoshihiro Kikuchi and Daniel Vujanic bring electronics, synths and audio manipulation to the sound, complementing the acoustic wind, string, and percussive instruments also used in the project. Many pieces on the new Kinkajous album ‘Being Waves’ make use of enormous-sounding pads and detuned synth leads, blending beautifully with strings and a tight rhythm section to create a layered, finessed sound. Barney McAll’s new album features two twenty-minute-long ‘transitive cycles’, within which modular synths and Moog instruments play a key role. The album was captured live from a performance at the site of the Federation Bells in Melbourne’s Birrarung Marr park, an installation consisting of 39 upturned bronze bells which can be heard on the recording. You can support each of these brilliant projects on Bandcamp!
Petter Eldh – Projekt Drums vol. 1
Barney McAll – Transitive Cycles
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz album of the week is composer and conductor Miho Hazama’s ‘Imaginary Visions’. It finds the GRAMMY-nominated artist, who has been the chief conductor of the Danish Radio Big Band since 2019, creating an album with the DRBB that consists entirely of her own compositions. Hazama’s inspiration for the compositions comes in part from the big band and its previous conductors. As Hazama explains: “These compositions are hugely inspired by DRBB members; their tone color, character of playing, strength, uniqueness and authenticity. Also, these are secretly inspired by compositions from the former chief conductors (music directors) of DRBB, such as Thad Jones, Bob Brookmeyer and JimMcNeely.” The album is out on 24th September via Edition Records and you can support the project on Bandcamp!
Classic Album
Released fifty years ago, our NQ Jazz classic album this week is Eero Koivistoinen’s The Original Sin. Recorded at Scandia Studio in Helsinki and released in 1971, the record features six tunes, with double drums throughout from Esko Rosnell and Reino Laine, and some beautiful horn parts from an array of players. From the formidable riff of the title track, to the blissed-out vibe on Summersea and the double-drum solo on Sinner, it’s a record packed with highlights. The album was recently reissued by Svart Records, so you can find it on CD, wax, and on streaming services.