Beyond Jazz Reviews

Because some of us may be suffering from hangovers this Sunday morning, I offer up today’s specially curated daily album recommendation.

Music for Sleeping is a Ray Dickaty project that is the perfect antidote for attempting to have a pain-free experience of sitting on the sofa while hoping to make the hurt go away through sheer force of will (because what else are you gonna do, since the damn aspirin aren’t helping any).  Dickaty’s project Mesma is a series of drones that are wonderfully soothing, just right for the occasion.  The music can lull you into a bit of drowsiness, if you want it to.  However, the drones waver and fluctuate and they can enchant like watching ripples stretching out over the water’s surface.

Your album personnel:  Ray Dickaty (saxophones, electronics and effects).

Listen to more of the album at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Music from Warsaw, Poland.

Available at:  Bandcamp

And if you’re looking for another side of Dickaty’s music, go check out the write-up of his quartet Pulsarus, which was covered in one of the For-Tune label rundowns (go read it).  It’s just one of many solid projects from that scene.

Also worth nothing that Dickaty was the saxophonist for Spiritualized Let It Come Down and his own group Moonshake.

Speaking of Spiritualized, if you miss some of the old-school Lazer Guided Melodies action, you should scope out Dickaty’s Pure Phase Ensemble.  Check out the song “David Bowie” on the Live at Spacefest recording (go listen to it) and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

A solo trombone recording isn’t one that is often going to be described as ambient or intoxicating, but the newest from Dave Nelson can’t really be described any other way.  Thirty Thousand Feet begins with a simple image, a brief melodic fragment from trombone, but through the use of pedals and effects, Nelson adds one layer after the next, and suddenly that improvised note becomes an expansive vision rich with details.

This process manifests in the slow lighthouse pulse of opening track “Twenty Thousand Feet” and the chipper bounce of “Freeway” that sings out curls of melody, and also in the luxuriant yawns of “Jewell” that expand into the hazy impressionism of vivid dreams.

Sometimes Nelson dives headfirst into the effects, and the warbled effect of a track like “Newsroom” is no less hypnotic than the slowly enveloping harmony of “Mesosphere.”  But then there’s a track like “Eastman” where he brings all of his different emphases into the same fold.

There are a number of references I could make here.  Nelson contributed to Steve Coleman’s Synovial Joints, which was one of the best things to come out in 2015.  He’s also performs on a couple of Kenosha Kid’s earlier recordings; it was their 2015 release Inside Voices that got an enthusiastic recommendation by this site.  He’s also performed with jazz legend Yusef Lateef.  But in the end, the most relevant (and useful) reference I can make here is Brian Eno’s Ambient tetralogy… the minimalism, the looping and effects, the mesmerizing ambiance… it’s all there in all its loveliness.

Seriously captivating music.

Your album personnel:  Dave Nelson (trombone, effects).

The album is Self-Produced.

Listen to more album tracks at the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Music from NYC.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon | eMusic

This music drifts aimlessly at times, melodic fragments at the tender mercies of improvisational passages that will it onward in endless directions.  But moment after moment, the music sounds as if arriving right on time, of rhythmic conversations coalescing into the same thought, of harmonic convergences that perilously stretch the seams that bind them, and of hazy melodic visions suddenly manifesting out of thin air, full and complete for one brief, perfect moment.

The duo that goes by the name of Linus has pulled this off before, but not with the sustained improvisations that mark their newest, Felt Like Old Folk.  Looking back over guitarist Ruben Machtelinckx‘s body of work, it’s marked by radiant melodies that shine bright no matter how ambient and formless becomes the foundation its built upon.  But on this new project, which sees the Linus duo of Machtelinckx and multi-reedist Thomas Jillings joined by the Hardanger fiddle and euphonium of Nils Økland and Niels Van Heertum, the melodies are infused with that same ambiance and formlessness normally reserved for tempo and tone.

The music is thick with the influence of the Nordic scene, weighted far heavier to the folk end of the spectrum, which lends the music so much of its rustic charm.  This is music that barely disturbs the air, yet often emerges with a huge presence that can fill the entire room with its sound before drifting away again.  The quartet manages to hold things together with this approach on the album’s 17+ minute opening track and they also succinctly fit it all in with the album’s other three, shorter tracks.  All of it ends up sounding as peaceful as it does beautiful.  It’s a frail sense of serenity that imposes its own version of tranquility upon the room, and its something very easy to fall happily into.

Your album personnel:  Ruben Machtelinckx (acoustic baritone guitar, banjo), Thomas Jillings (tenor & C-melody saxophones, alto clarinet), Nils Økland (hardanger fiddle) and Niels Van Heertum (euphonium).

Released on Smeraldina-Rima.

Listen to more album tracks on the artist’s Bandcamp page.

Available at:  Bandcamp | Amazon

Here’s some links to similar projects: Flock (link) and Linus+Skarbo/Leroux (link).

And also check out a recent recommendation for Nils Økland (link).