Bird is the Worm Best of 2014: Albums 16-20

Today’s post reveals the 16th through the 20th Bird is the Worm Top 30 jazz albums of 2014.

*****

A Best Of album has to hit me right in my heart and provoke a strong emotional reaction.  A Best Of album has to engage my head and elicit a cerebral connection.  Give me some intrigue.  Show me your music has got personality.  Extra points are awarded for doing Something Different.  I want to hear music that embraces the best qualities of creativity.  Strong musicianship alone is not enough.  Many excellent albums fall short of earning a slot on the list.  It literally pains me when I see some of the albums that aren’t included on my Best Of lists.  But I listen to a lot of music, and one of the rare downsides to encountering so much great Jazz is that some of it won’t receive the recognition it deserves.  So there you have it.

No matter how diligent a listener is and no matter how thoroughly that person covers the music scene, there will always be albums that slip through the cracks.  It’s a matter of the scarcity of time vs. the overflow of music.  It’s also a matter of subjectivity.  I try to instill an objectivity into the affair, judging each album’s qualities without consideration for my own personal preferences… at least, as much as I am able.  I can say for certain, my Best of 2014 list looks different than my personal Favorites of 2014 list.  No attempt to encapsulate the 2014 jazz album landscape will be fully comprehensive, but I humbly offer up my list with a confidence that these albums represent the best that 2014 had to offer.  But it’s a list that’s likely to gain a few addendums with the passing of time.

What you’ll read below are not reviews.  They are simple thoughts, reminiscences, fragments of recollections, and brief opinions about how each album struck me both now and when I first heard it.  There is a link to a more formal write-up following each entry… that’s where you go to find out what’s what about each recording.  Those write-ups are accompanied with embedded audio of an album track, as well as personnel and label information, links to artist, label, and retail sites, and anything else that seemed relevant at the time I wrote about the album.  Follow those links.  They might just lead to your next most favorite album ever.

So, with all that out of the way:  Let’s begin…

*****

16.  Sylvain Rifflet & Jon Irabagon – Perpetual Motion: A Celebration of Moondog

The brilliant re-imagining of the music of eccentric composer, musician and poet, Louis Thomas Hardin (aka Moondog) by the saxophone duo of Sylvain Rifflet and Jon Irabagon possesses an intelligence exceeded only by its delirious sense of fun and adventure… qualities embodied by the music of the original composer himself.  This is unconventional avant-garde music made supremely approachable… a sneaky kind of challenging music.  And that they are able to take Moondog’s compositions and shape them both into things familiar and vastly different from the original reflects the thoughtfulness that lies beneath all the delirious fun.

Released on Jazz Village Music.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

17.  Alexander Hawkins Ensemble – Step Wide, Step Deep

There isn’t a moment of Alexander Hawkins‘ 2014 release that doesn’t demand the listener’s attention.  Avant-garde music that doesn’t turn its back on the traditional forms of music… blues, jazz, folk… that led to the point where music can evolve and reshape and re-imagine itself to take the form of Step Wide, Step Deep.  The clash and fray of dissonance occasionally subsides and allows a passage of down-home blues or post-bop melodicism to appear.  These bursts of tunefulness amidst the ramshackle chaos are the moments that define the distinct personality of this album in all its phases and goes a long way to illustrating why this album is so fascinating.

Released on Babel Label.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

18.  Steve Lehman Octet – Mise en Abîme

This is perhaps the most cryptic album on the Best of 2014 list.  Steve Lehman‘s newest possesses a slippery kind of dialog, one where the entire context of the song can change depending on whether the prevailing motion of woodwinds or the rhythm section is the dominant attribute at any one particular time.  But these aren’t opposing forces… they work in tandem even as they seem to exhibit different perspectives on what’s what.  It’s one of those recordings where there’s really nothing pretty about it, but it’s so damn compelling that it’s difficult to look away.  Undoubtedly, you’re going to encounter Best Of lists that has Mise en Abîme slotted as the album of the year.  It’s a scenario unlikely to draw much controversy.  This album has the qualities you look for in a champ.

Released on Pi Recordings.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

19.  Lo-Res – La Sortie

This melodically charged album utilizes its ethereal presence and forms its own rules of engagement.  The music of Lo-Res hangs like clouds heavy with rain and lightning and thunder, and just the mere insinuation of the potential for elemental violence is enough to provide the intensity to these lovely, drifting tunes led out by the airy lightness of Belinda Woods‘ flute.  The infusions of folk and pop music provide a personable quality to this music, balancing out its strongly meditative tendencies.  That huge presence and the album’s potent melodicism secure it a spot among 2014’s best.

This album is Self-Produced.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

20.  Bob Stewart – Connections: Mind the Gap

Jazz veteran Bob Stewart has lent his tuba to a number of straight-ahead and avant-garde projects over the course of his career, and so it’s no wonder that he’s able assimilate the qualities of both into this fascinating panoramic of jazz, both old and new.  That he’s also able to seamlessly incorporate a string quartet into a tightly woven fabric only makes the feat that much more impressive, not to mention, the music that much more substantive.  Everything about this music is challenging, and yet it’s also so damn alluring that it negates any potential difficulty to connect with it.  Complex music made simple, creative depth so light one could float upon it.  Strange & beautiful music is a phrase that is occasionally overused, but in this instance, it is wholly applicable.

Released on Sunnyside Records.

Read more at Bird is the Worm (LINK).

*****

Tomorrow’s post reveals the 2014 Bird is the Worm #11–#15 albums of the year.

Cheers.