What have you been listening to this week?

Roland Kirk – I Talk With Spirits
Country: USA
Release Year: 1965
Genres: Post-Bop
Featured Instruments: alto flute, bass, celeste, clock, drums, flute, male vocals, music box, piano, spoken word, vibraphone
My response to the music: There are restless spirits in those flutes. As a folk and prog fan, I’m slain by woodwinds when they’re done well, and I can’t think of an album where they go better. There are moments in this album where I just turn to the speaker and say “yes...yes”. I feel this music through and through, like Kirk’s summoning my soul out of me to meet him up there somewhere. Almost enough to scare me.

Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson – Searching for the Disappeared Hour
Country: USA, Switzerland
Release Year: 2021
Genres: Avant-Garde Jazz
Featured Instruments: guitar, piano
My response to the music: What I love most about this album is how it will be tiptoeing along, and then someone pulls the carpet out, and it goes all unceremoniously tumbling; how it will be flowing along, and then someone belly flops into the water; how it will be creeping along most dexterously, and then it faceplants. All according to its wonderful design. The piano and guitar spar in alternating bouts of earnestness and jest, while the electronic effects simultaneously buoy and subvert the music.

Cecil Taylor – Unit Structures
Country: USA
Release Year: 1966
Genres: Free Jazz
Featured Instruments: alto saxophone, bass, bass clarinet, bells, drums, oboe, piano, trumpet
My response to the music: Obviously the focus here is the piano, that tumbling downhill wonderful mess of a piano, tumbling and losing all sense of direction as you are bruised from head to foot. And if you survive the fall, you find yourself in an underworld of deep shade, where the black eaves hide only more confusion as the music, a capricious guide, pulls you this way and that. You’re on your feet, but you might as well be tumbling again. You may love the music, but you don’t trust it.

Raíces de América – Raíces de América (sorry but I can’t find a streaming link)
Country: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay
Release Year: 1980
Genres: MPB
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, autoharp, bass guitar, bombo, bongos, charango, cuatro, female vocals, flute, kalimba, male vocals, maracas, organ, quena, rabeca, reco-reco, spoken word, surdo, triangle, tumbi, viola, viola caipira, zabumba
My response to the music: Although I've got nothing to do with these cultures, I recognize a lot of what I'm hearing, at least tangentially, as I am somewhat familiar with the pan-Latin works of Parra, Neruda, and Viglietti. This album has opened my ears to more of the musical voices of South America, and I am blessed. The pattern here for the most part is one vocalist starting a song with such delicacy, both in instrumentation and voice, and that beauty is then taken up by an overwhelming chorus, the stream becoming a flood.

Robbie Lee & Mary Halvorson – Seed Triangular
Country: USA
Release Year: 2018
Genres: Avant-Folk, Free Improvisation
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, baroque flute, bells, chalumeau, flute, harp guitar, melodica, six-string banjo, soprillo
My response to the music: Fearless, imaginative improv that's easy on the ear, unlike so much of the more challenging free improvisational music out there. This one's chock-full of rare acoustic instruments, and rumor has it Halvorson is playing these particular instruments for the first time. A bold move that pays off! This is the magic of what folk and jazz can do together.

James Horner – Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Country: USA
Release Year: 1982
Genres: Film Score, Cinematic Classical
Featured Instruments: the majority of the instruments you’d typically here in an orchestra
My response to the music: A brilliant, foreboding score for a brilliant, dark film about revenge and Satanic pride. As a fan of Star Trek and an expert on Melville, this film (and thus the music that, in my mind, cannot be separated from it) really hits me where I live. There is at once a sense of boundless space as well as a claustrophobic feeling to the music. Every bit of music perfectly fits the scene it’s highlighting: Spock’s music, for example, is beautiful and clear, just like he is; the music detailing Kirk’s actions is suitably optimistic and heroic.

Sturgill Simpson – A Sailor's Guide to Earth
Country: USA
Release Year: 2016
Genres: Country Soul, Alt-Country, Progressive Country
Featured Instruments: 12-string acoustic guitar, acoustic guitar, alt-country, alto saxophone, bagpipes, baritone saxophone, bass, cello, drums, electric guitar, flugelhorn, keyboard, Moog synthesizer, organ, slide guitar, steel guitar, tenor saxophone, trombone, trumpet, violin, Wurlitzer
My response to the music: This is as good as his first two perfect albums, but it's certainly different. It's country that's not afraid to offend its listening base, both lyrically and musically. So many great lines that speak to me. And that voice: so pure, so effortlessly real. This album is basically a father's metaphorical lovesong to his beloved son. Oh, and this might be the first time a country song referenced Tokyo neighborhoods. That last track, too... conjuring some John Prine anti-war brilliance there.

Anaïs Mitchell – The Brightness
Country: USA
Release Year: 2007
Genres: Contemporary Folk, Singer/Songwriter
Featured Instruments: acoustic bass, banjo, baritone saxophone, cello, drums, female vocals, guitar, lap steel guitar, male vocals, organ, piano, viola
My response to the music: She continues her understated magic on this album, simultaneously being intimate yet keeping us at arm's length. We get a few glimpses into her life, but she still seems to be the kind of artist who plays her cards close to her chest.

Electric Masada – At the Mountains of Madness
Country: USA
Release Year: 2005
Genres: Avant-Garde Jazz, Jazz Fusion
Featured Instruments: alto saxophone, bass, drums, electronics, guitar, keyboard
My response to the music: The moment this live album starts you'll know whether you want to listen to it or not. It punches you in the face, galvanizing the listening audience with tortured horns, wonderful organs that are part cosmos, part frenzy, part contemplation. Speaking of contemplation, it's not all madness on the mountain, and if you're patient, you'll find hidden gardens with secret grottoes on the slopes. But if you tarry overlong, you'll get caught in the storm. The kind of storm mountains are so fond of: one of fits and starts. And if you listen closely, you might just hear the denizens of the mountain communicating to one another in bird whistles. Watch your step, though. Everything and the kitchen sink is dumped here.

Kacey Musgraves – Pageant Material
Country: USA
Release Year: 2015
Genres: Contemporary Country, Singer/Songwriter
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, banjo, baritone guitar, bass, bells, cello, drums, electric guitar, female vocals, guitalele, guitar, Hammond organ, harp, Mellotron, pedal steel guitar, piano, shaker, spoons, tambourine, upright bass, viola, violin, whistling, Wurlitzer
My response to the music: This is the catchiest country album I've ever heard, and it's certainly one of the most self aware. I mean, she's proud of who she is and where she's from, and it is from that place of security that she can poke fun at not only herself but her heritage. She's white trash, and she's okay with that. This is such a fun, warm album that everyone should give a chance. Kacey is weed-smoking trailer-trash, but she's 100% real. Like Sturgill Simpson in "Old King Coal", she doesn't try to romanticize small towns like so many country singers in the past have. Look, people, Ms. Musgraves (the Ms. Texas that never happened) actually does care about world peace, but the problem is that she’s just not sure how she’s supposed to fix it while wearing a swimsuit on a stage.

Kaja Draksler Octet – Out for Stars
Country: Slovenia
Release Year: 2020
Genres: Avant-Garde Jazz, Chamber Jazz, Vocal Jazz
Featured Instruments: clarinet, cowbell, double bass, drums, female vocals, kalimba, male vocals, piano, spoken word, tenor saxophone, viola, violin
My response to the music: Everything I like in jazz thrown into one album: fearless exploration of the space between the notes, free, meandering instrumentals that are in no hurry to get where they’re going, beautiful yet quirky female vocals. The poetry of Robert Frost seems like a tame choice, but it’s handled experimentally within the octet’s contributory framework.

múm – Loksins erum við engin
Country: Iceland
Release Year: 2002
Genres: Indietronica, Folktronica
Featured Instruments: drum programming, female vocals, trumpet
My response to the music: Sleepytime faerie music from the land that houses the darkest, most alluring fae of all.

る＊しろう (Le Silo) – 8.8
Country: Japan
Release Year: 2004
Genres: Avant-Prog
Featured Instruments: male vocals, drums, guitar, piano, female vocals
My response to the music: With some touches of Zeuhl and piano rock, this album is a wild ride of intermittent percussion, playful, experimental guitar, fiery piano phrasings, and sparse, half-shouted vocals. Miyako Kanazawa, the pianist and composer, also plays in Koenjihyakkei. Don’t play this one in mixed company. They won’t appreciate it.

Jrpjej – Şefitse: Circassian Songs of XX Century
Country: Russia
Release Year: 2023
Genres: Circassian Folk Music
Featured Instruments: female vocals, male vocals
My response to the music: More songs, more political defiance. The war might be over, but the effects of prejudice and oppression lives on. Remember, and march, even when they won't let you.

Heilung – Ofnir
Country: Denmark
Release Year: 2015
Genres: Dark Folk, Nordic Folk Music, Neo-Pagan Folk
Featured Instruments: female vocals, male vocals
My response to the music: In my book, it's quite all right that this album is rather shapeless and directionless, since this is the band's debut, and they're introducing us to their world. There's a lot to explore here, to get lost in, if you're brave enough. This is definitely not the kind of music to fall asleep to, unless you want some painted pagan growling in your ear half the night, maddening your dreams, grinding your skull between the rusted chain and the iron wheel.

Tenhi – Folk Aesthetic
Country: Finland
Release Year: 2007
Genres: Dark Folk
Featured Instruments: guitar, piano, drums, bass, male vocals, synthesizer, violin, viola, flute
My response to the music: I feel like this one, as many archival releases go, is for the fans. Clocking in at three hours with some heavy repetition of musical themes and phrasings, I feel a casual listener or someone not acquainted with Tenhi would find this a tedious listening endeavor. I love this because it shows an evolution and exploration of the band's sound over the span of a decade. The music is like a tapestry, its threads spreading out in different directions but pulled back together at the right spots to complete the pattern. It's not as repetitive as some people criticize it for being, instead using common themes only to build unified, thematic music. This is all atmospheric darkness, the vocals nothing more than these whispered croakings.

Gérard Manset – Long, long chemin sample
Country: France
Release Year: 1972
Genres: Chanson à texte, Psychedelic Pop
Featured Instruments: male vocals
My response to the music: My goodness. There are very few obscure albums like this where I listen and think, "Damn! Did this influence a ton of music that came after and no one knows it?" I feel like the progressive elements of this pop album can be heard in music from the 21st century. Very very lyrically focused, but even if you don't understand the language, the music still slays.

Tenhi – Valkama
Country: Finland
Release Year: 2023
Genres: Dark Folk
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, drums, female vocals, flute, male vocals, piano, synthesizer, tambourine, violin
My response to the music: This album is a victorious warrior striding across a field of broken and dying enemies, and with the glow of the distant burning village on his face, he wonders if the war was worth the triumph. Meditative, depressive. Longing for something lost. Very Tenhi, but with an overall comforting atmosphere.