This selection is a little more reflective and a tad more esoteric than usual…..all new releases with a blend of dub, neo classical, dark ambient, jazz, and improvisation. Features cuts from a new dub compilation and also pieces from albums by Julian Loida, Christopher Whitley, Gridfailure & Interstitia, Henry Threadgill, The Jazz Warriors, and Paul Flaherty with Jim Matus and Larry Derdeyn.
Various Artists – King Size Dub 23
There is a dub series that has been around since the release of Volume 1, in cooperation with the cult magazine SPEX, in 1994. In the series, there have trips to obscure places and regions, labels or bands (Dubmatix from Toronto)! This latest compilation in the series presents Dub as a multi-layered art of sound mixing.with a focus on cover versions of famous songs. I have sprinkled these throughout the podcast.
Dubinator featuring Alan Moore – Magic Art – King Size Dub 23
From a personal perspective, Interesting to hear the Northampton dialect in a dub reggae setting (I am originally from Northampton). I’m also a big fan of Alan Moore’s writing.
Julian Loida – December Dreams – Giverny
Called “one of the Boston music scene’s most valuable players” by The Art Fuse, Julian Loida is a percussionist, composer, and producer. Loida’s musical curiosity and open-mindedness has propelled him towards a wide-range of sounds, genres, and artistic endeavours. His thirst to participate in and experience this range of sounds is partly a product of Loida’s synesthesia. Music is a full-body experience for him, with sounds often invoking involuntary sensations of colour, texture, or even taste. His album, Giverny, is a new age, indie classical collection of songs. During songwriting, he had the realisation that memories often come to us before we even remember, and similarly that’s how songwriting/composing feels – that they have been laying dormant until they feel it’s time to appear. With this album, Loida was influenced by French philosophy, arts, and music, from his time visiting, creating, and meeting people there.
Dub Mode ft. Joseph Holiday – Personal Jesus (DUB) – King Size Dub 23
Christopher Whitley – In Bruniquel Cave (Fjóla Evans) – Describe Yourself
Out: 23 June, 2023 on Redshift Records
US-based Canadian violinist and composer Christopher Whitley has already produced several albums featuring his own spellbinding music on Patient Sounds and Fluid Audio. Describe Yourself, for Vancouver’s Redshift Records, marks his first recorded foray as an interpreter. These varied sessions feature him performing on a violin built by fabled luthier Antonio Stradivari’s from 1700, and although Whitley also performs music from that same era, his choice of music here is a far cry from standard repertoire. The artists involved are all living, and also happen to be Canadian, what’s intriguing about his approach here is how it reflects the eclectic, unorthodox, and inquisitive approach found in his other body of work.
The album’s hushed final cut comes from Fjóla Evans, a Canadian/Icelandic cellist and composer also residing in the United States. As she amusingly states in her bio: “autocorrect describes her work as a texturing fog” and this strangely evocative phrase is more than applicable to “In Bruniquel Cave”, a delicate multitracked work that layers Whitley’s whispered violin playing over itself. Winner of the 2017 Robert Fleming Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, Evans has had her work presented and performed by cellist Maya Fridman, Gaudeamus Music Week, Toronto’s Music Gallery, Bearthoven, India Gailey, Le poisson rouge and other notable artists and organisations.
Misled Convoy meets Uncle Fester On Acid ft. Bim Sherman; – Mafia (Dub) – King Size Dub 23
Gridfailure & Interstitia – Sunyata Ontology – Sunyata Ontology
Out: 9 June, 2023 on Pax Aeternum
Interstitia is the ambient, electronic, instrumental solo project of Graham Scala, also of Bleach Everything, US Christmas, Harmonic Cross, Collapse Culture, and more. Since its inception in 2019, he has released multiple albums, EPs, and singles, independently and through the Pax Aeternum label imprint which he co-runs. The work is psychedelic and transportational, looping mutated techno rhythms and fried ambient textures into something immersive and disorienting.
Gridfailure is the audiovisual solo project of David Brenner, also of Diminishing. With dozens of records and recordings released since its 2016 inception, the unit operates both as a solo act as well as a collaborator-heavy collective, with countless notable musicians taking part in the records and a rotating cast of live improvisers. While regularly releasing music through Nefarious Industries confirmed upcoming records for SuperNova Records, Anti-Corporate Music, Disorder Recordings, and more, a wide array of instruments, percussion, vocals, and more deals in dark ambient experimentation , infusing elements of jazz, world music, dark hardcore, extreme metal, and more. The work was created separately in North Carolina and New York and then mixed and mastered by Scala.
Conceptually based in a new Cold War, Scala and Brenner merge their primary elements on the dense Sunyata Ontology collaboration. The ten-movement album envisions a disparate not-too-distant dystopian America, with military/espionage tactics, civil unrest, off-the-grid cults and militant factions, covert government police, the takeover of artificial intelligence, and the looming threat of nuclear catastrophe more realistic than ever. The signature, psychotropic, sci-fi, techno beats, structures, and electronics Scala creates are here doused in ominous low-end tones and broken communications through an amorphous blend of Brenner’s caustic guitar, bass, percussion, keyboards, synths, pedals, field recordings and more, with his demoralising vocals sporadically erupting in the mix.
Kleer meets Dubinator – Solution – King Size Dub 23
Henry Threadgill – Of Valence : Movement II – The Other One
Out May 26, 2023 on Pi Recordings
The Other One, the latest from Henry Threadgill, is the musical component of a large multimedia work performed and recorded live at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, New York in 2022. The recording consists of a three-movement composition entitled “Of Valence,” which was inspired by the percussionist and theorist Milford Graves, in particular, his integration of the human heartbeat into his musical works, and is performed by a 12-piece ensemble. All the hallmarks of Threadgill’s music are here: unpredictable forms, unusual instrumental combinations that create surprising timbres, percolating rhythms, interwoven melodic strains, and masterful interlacing of composition with improvisation. The New York Times described the performance as possessing “a galvanic sense of swing,” and “in lock-step with his every surprise rhythmic feint — producing an obliquely danceable, straightforwardly joyous Threadgillian energy.” There is nothing else like it.
Mexican Dubwiser – Trouble In My Soul (Dubvisionist Dub Remix) – King Size Dub 23
The Jazz Warriors – Pollo Picante – The Jazz Warriors
Out June 30, 2023 on Tipping Tree Music
The Jazz Warriors is the latest project from the prolific drummer, Ken Serio. His international line-up of musicians includes the fabulous Japanese pianist Tomoko Ohno, Greek guitar maestro Sakis Zachariades and Jedd Chlebowski on Bass. They are joined by Ali Ryerson on Flute and Josi Davis on vocals. The eponymous record was several years in the making, The Jazz Warriors is possibly Ken Serio’s best to date.
Noiseshaper ft. Simple Straw – Rock Your Bone – King Size Dub 23
Paul Flaherty, Jim Matus, Larry Derdeyn – Shadow Sees It’s Groundhog – Wednesday Weld
Out July 21, 2023 on 577 Records
Musician Paul Flaherty believes that the difference between pre-composed music and free-form improvisational music is a bifurcation of the mind, “The logical mind is reduced to a witness during free playing and the emotional mind is fully released.” Free from concept, outline or even leadership, the music is a free-form experience. This is realized on the newest release from Paul Flaherty (Tenor sax, alto sax) and his long-time collaborators Jim Matus (Electric guitar, Baritone guitar) and Larry Derdeyn (Keyboards). Though all of the musicians had played together in some arrangement since the 80’s, they finally joined to improvise as a trio. Decades in the making, the album came together as spontaneous compositions, represented by freeform records.
Different Noises 