May 15 2019
Album of the Day: Karl Bjorå’s Aperture – “The Most Obvious Solution”
Artist: Karl Bjorå’s Aperture
Album: The Most Obvious Solution
Label: Øra Fonogram
Style: Chamber jazz
Favorite Track: “Lightheaded Lizard”
Music from: Trondheim, Norway
What I like about it: There’s something quite thrilling about the way each melody takes every sharp angle it encounters, and how these sudden changes of direction emit a sense of careening wildly about… even as the changes are executed with a surgical precision. And so in this context, I find myself immensely enjoying how fluid and melodious each piece presents itself. There’s a sense of complex clockwork mechanics at play, and yet these melodies are as ephemeral as the effect of light beams on a sundial. This album resides in a shared place with New Jazz visions like Todd Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors and Allison Miller’s Otis Was A Polar Bear, and if recent history is indicative of the future, I will be addicted to Karl Bjorå’s Aperture‘s The Most Obvious Solution for a very long time.
Your album personnel: Karl Bjorå (guitar), Adrian Løseth Waade (violin, viola), Bárður Reinert Poulsen (double bass), Andreas Winther (drums, electronics) and guest: Astri Hoffmann-Tollaas (cello).
Available at: Amazon
Listen to more of the album on the artist’s Soundcloud page.
Be sure to check out the artist’s site.
Artist: Wako
This is a piano trio recording to get lost in. The melodies are open doors that draw you in, and once inside, you discover that it’s more wide open than anything you could imagine. The trio of pianist Kjetil André Mulelid, double bassist Bjørn Marius Hegge and drummer Andreas Winther explore every facet of those crisp melodic statements, and the sensation is one of roaming far and wide, and experiencing the passing of time only when the trio suddenly returns to the opening melody. Was the piece three minutes long? Fifteen minutes? More? The track specifics will never sync up to the lingering impression.
Bakkekontakt are variations on a love song. There’s as often a bit of wistfulness as there is a pang of hope, and the weight of heavy emotions doesn’t settle in long before a lightheartedness breaks through. With the Kjemilie trio of vocalist Emilie Storaas and violinist Håkon Aase , Mulelid approaches the music with a different melodic perspective. Whereas on Not Nearly Enough To Buy A House, it was deep dives into the melody, but with Bakkekontakt, it’s brief glimpses of a wide array of melodic stills. And when viewed in the context of the ephemeral nature of love, these fleeting images present them in their truest form.
Dec 24 2019
Now up: September’s Best Jazz on Bandcamp recommendations
And here we go. Let’s do some catch-up on notifications about my latest Best Jazz on Bandcamp recommendations posting on The Bandcamp Daily. This monthly installment covers albums for September 2019. There’s ten primary recommendations in total, plus some bonus recommendations, to boot. There’s been no let-up on the deluge of new music in 2019, so if you were thinking about maybe settling into a prior month’s purchases, forget about it… you’ve got more excellent new music to discover. I have been saying this same thing nearly every month, and every month it is true. On that note, let’s begin.
Follow this LINK to read those recommendations and listen to music from each album.
Check out past recommendations by running through my contributor archives.
Have fun going through the list!
Cheers.
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By davesumner • Announcement - Music • 0 • Tags: Anupam Shobhakar, Bandcamp articles, Ben van Gelder, Best Jazz on Bandcamp recommendations, Clean Feed Records, Firehouse 12 Records, Gondwana Records label, Guillermo Klein, Husmo HAV, João Lencastre, Joel Harrison, Jonathan Scales Fourchestra, Led Bib, Matthew Halsall, Nakama Records, PMG Recordings, RareNoise Records, Reinier Baas, Ropeadope Records, Self-Produced, Sunnyside Records, Svetlost, Taylor Ho Bynum, The Big Yes!, Whirlwind Records, Øra Fonogram