Poignant, Tersely Crystallized Songs Without Words From Antonija Pacek

Pianist Antonija Pacek plays vivid, often haunting songs without words. Her new album Forever – streaming at Spotify – draws on the highest of the High Romantic, but tersely and poignantly. Her righthand typically carries a vocal line, the left either spare chords, arpeggios or a bassline. If you were the pianist in an artsy rock band, this album is what you would give the rest of the crew to learn. Any third-year student can play every track here. There are no solos, no dynamic shifts, just melody – and an invitation to write lyrics. One can only wonder what a great songwriter like Karla Rose or Hannah Fairchild could do with this. Every piano teacher should own this album: it’s the best kind of example of this type of music.

A cynic would say that there are a million wannabe youtube stars with sad rainy day solo piano or synthesizer playlists that rip off every classical composer from Bach to Dvorak. But this is a cut above. The first track, Sofia is an absolutely shattering, toweringly angst-fueled requiem without words, Chopin through the prism of 20th century Slavic balladry.

Pacek follows that with If Only Time Allowed, neoromantic righthand over Lynchian lefthand. Gone Young is another requiem, a portrait of someone obviously full of life cut down unexpectedly, and too soon

The title track is a saloony Tom Waits-ish theme. Lullaby has playful Asian allusions, while Light is a neoromantic analogue to the Church’s classic, haunted Bel Air. If Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen had been a neoromantic guy, he would have written Almost Goodbye.

Before the Rain is catchy, minor-key, almost amusingly insistent and youtube-friendly: it could be Yann Tiersen. In Deep Red, Pacek makes a conflicted piano ballad out of Debussy and a little blues. Inspiration runs thin toward the end of the record but picks up with

Taken on face value, Wanna Dance has to be the most morose pickup line ever written: as sad waltzes go, this is killer. Pacek finally has fun shifting the melody to the lefthand in the stadium-rock theme What’s Waiting for Me. The album’s “secret” track, Before the Storm follows a familiar descending progression, a castle dark, a fortress strong….a melody secret?

Warmly Drifting, Epically Atmospheric Instrumentals From Numun

Atmospheric instrumentalists Numun comprises members of cinematic, pastoral noir band Suss as well as New York’s most popular Balinese bell orchestra, Gamelan Dharma Swara.  Multi-instrumentalists Joel Mellin and Bob Holmes’ new album Voyage au Soleil – streaming at Bandcamp – is pretty much what you would expect from those influences: vast, slowly hovering tableaux with the occasional Asian tinge.

The opening track, Tranceport rises from slowly shifting atmospherics and the occsional boom of what could be a gong, to a swaying, gorgeously lush acoustic guitar groove spiced with cumbus lute and airy, tremoloing keys. First Steps starts with wry, robotic keys over a trip-hop beat, percolating organ and menacing reverb guitar, then rises to a darker but equally sweeping crescendo.

With its keening, tinkling synth lines and surreal spoken-word vocals half-buried in the mix, Tranquility Base is a hyperactive stab at a nocturne: the slow acoustic guitar-based sway returns, more loopy this time. The alarm motif that kicks off Mission Loss could have been faded down more mercifully for the listener, as a thicket of short pulses and then the warmly predictable acoustic guitar vmp takes over.

Expanse is the one track that begins with guitars and then drifts into an echoey vortex with dubwise bass anchoring starry keys: it’s the album’s most interesting and psychedelic number. The final cut is the title track, which with the cumbus could be an Asian-tinged outtake of an interlude from Pink Floyd’s Animals. Cue this up and set the controls for the heart of the…

Deep Space Glimmer From Alicia Enstrom

Art-rock violinist Alicia Enstrom has a background in circus music. But on her most recent album Monsters (an anagram of her last name), she tackles immersive spacerock and chamber pop. Her lates single is Bardo Tide, a swirly, deep-space instrumental, which could be a backing track to a Julee Cruise hit from a David Lynch soundtrack. Kill the lights and enjoy.

Flickering Nocturnes and Big Sky Atmospherics From Suss

Back in 2018, this blog called New York cinematic instrumenalists Suss “the missing link beween Brian Eno and Ennio Morricone.” Their debut album was aptly titled Ghost; the release show, at a black-box theatre in Long Island City, was magically sepulchral and unexpectedly energetic, the band taking their time expanding on the record’s distantly Lynchian themes. Their new vinyl album Promise – streaming at Bandcamp – is even more vast and atmospheric. It’s best appreciated as a cohesive whole – with a pause to flip the record over.

The opening number, Midnight is a characteristic, glacially unwinding big-sky tableau, pedal steel player Jonathan Gregg’s minimalist lines washing over the ambience from guitarists Pat Irwin, Bob Holmes and keyboardist Gary Lieb.

Drift, the second cut, is exactly that, a flicker of low, twangy reverb guitar finally puncturing the enveloping, misty layers. Individual instruments become more distinct in Home, a minimistically folksy Great Plains nocturne.

The guitars get a little grittier and starrier in No Man’s Land – and is that a harmonium shadowing them? Mission is Pink Floyd spacerock with half the notes and layers of guitar, while  Echo Lake is a clever study in sound bouncing off one distant surface back to another.

Pensively strummed acoustic chords and the occasional troubled, watery electric guitar phrase linger beneath the hovering atmospherics in Winter Light, the album’s most ominous and memorable interlude. They close with the hypnotically twinkling Nightlight.

Darkly Enveloping, Vastly Symphonic Atmospherics From Elif Yalvaç

It’s impossible to imagine a more inspiringly apt title for an album released in 2020 than ambient composer Elif Yalvaç’s Mountains Become Stepping Stones, streaming at Bandcamp. May we someday look back and see how accurate her metaphor was. And it should be, dammit: there are seven billion of us and only a few thousand, maybe many less, actively plotting or enforcing the lockdown. We have the numbers!

This is a long album and a great wind-down record. The opening track is Broken Spectre, shifting through storm-drain sonics, channel-changing blips, crescendoing loops and then calm. Under the Aurora is built around a couple of spare, plaintive minor seventh guitar chords and morphs into a surreal blend of clock chimes and white noise. Yalvaç revisits the theme later in the album as a rainy-day spacerock anthem cloaked in dense clouds.

Sketchy, gritty echoes, dopplers and majestic whooshes pan the channels in Painted In Pitch Black. Stormy waves of sound surround a simple C-A-B loop in Breaking My Rose Tinted Glasses. In the next track, Huginn and Muninn, Yalvaç constructs similarly looming density around what sounds like a nest of ravens.

Icily processed jazz chords ring out over echoey washes in Black Sand Beach. The waves grow longer in Bifroest, while Freak Box could be R2D2 under siege – or in lockdown, for that matter, finally escaping (escaping?) into the storm drain introduced in the album’s initial track.

Tense industrial low/high contrasts resonate in Mossy Moon; Two Compartments follows the same dynamic, blips and nebulosity versus barely concealed roar and rumble. Yalvaç closes this stormy dreamscape of an album with the unexpectedly delicate Kintsugi, its pinging web of temple bells and forest sounds.

A Long Overdue New Live Album From Tom Csatari’s Drifting, Haunting, Maddening, Defiantly Individualistic Uncivilized Big Band

Back in 2016, this blog characterized guitarist Tom Csatari’s Uncivilized as a “tectonically shifting ten-piece ‘drone-jazz orchestra.’“ They earned a glowing New York Times review for a show at a short-lived Bushwick strip club. That gig also earned them a listing here on what was then a monthly concert calendar. Nobody from this blog ended up going.

The prolific bandleader’s compositions fall into a netherworld of film noir themes, bittersweet Bill Frisell pastoral jazz, the Grateful Dead at their dark early 80s peak and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. During the band’s long, mostly-monthly Barbes residency, they played several cover nights. Chico Hamilton night was shockingly trad and tight. It would have been fun to see what they did with John Fahey. The best of them all was Twin Peaks night in October 2017, where they played Angelo Badalamenti’s David Lynch film scores. The group’s transcendently haphazard take on that iconic noir repertoire was captured on the live album Uncivilized Plays Peaks.

They also released another, considerably shorter record as a salute to five separate music venues which were shuttered during the pandemic of gentrification that devastated this city right up until the lockdown. Their latest live album, Garden, is streaming at Bandcamp.

The title seems to stem (sorry, awful pun) from the fact that the tracklist matches the setlist they played at another killer show, outdoors at Pioneer Works in late summer 2018 with guest Jaimie Branch being her usual extrovert self on trumpet. There’s some of that show here along with material captured at various venues, including the Barbes residency.

Csatari’s arrangements span the sonic spectrum in a vast Gil Evans vein, Tristan Cooley’s upwardsly fluttering flute often engaged on the low end by Nick Jozwiak’s slinky bass and Casey Berman’s solid bass clarinet. A series of fleeting modal interludes separate the individual themes here, many of which are barely a minute long: fades and splices are usually subtle but inevitably obvious. Colorful, imperturbable drummer Rachel Housle is the Casey Jones who manages to keep this ramshackle train on the rails – barely.

Levon Henry’s alto sax bubbles and sails alongside Luther Wong’s trumpet, Dominick Mekky’s transistor organ ranging from spacy ambience to ripples and washes. Csatari tends to fling low-key but persistently uneasy chordlets and jangly riffs into the ether, Julian Cubillos typically carrying the harder-edged guitar lines, although the two sometimes switch roles.

Henry provides shivery ambience in a brief portion of Pink Room, from the Twin Peaks soundtrack. They segue into a starry, pulsing take of Csatari’s Melted Candy and soon edge their way to a slowly coalescing, genuinely joyous crescendo in the Twin Peaks title theme. You might think that joy would be completely out of place in that context but it isn’t.

Csatari’s Rowlings – in several parts – makes an optimistic, soul-infused segue. Likewise, the take of Joni Mitchell’s Woodstock rises from a brief, broodingly sway to a triumphant country-soul anthem. The coda is Evil, deviously quoting at length from Paul McCartney: if we ever get out of here!

If this is the last album the band ever release – and it could be, since the lockdowners are hell-bent on destroying music and the arts – they went out with a bang. On the other hand, if we destroy the lockdowners, music like this will flourish. It’s a no-brainer: Microsoft, or Tom Csatari’s Unciviiized. At this point in history, we can’t have both.

Be aware that you need to make a playlist out of this to enjoy it as a full-length album. Otherwise, constantly having to reach for the play button in between these often very short tracks is like driving a loaded tractor-trailer along a steep mountain road, distracted by the need to double-clutch and downshift.

Andrée Burelli Builds Elegant Ambience with Classical Tinges

Keyboardist Andrée Burelli writes drifting, hypnotic ambient music with pensive, sometimes distinctly dark neoromantic themes. Her album De Sidera- streaming at Bandcamp – is a good choice for meditation, multitasking to a pleasant backdrop, or drifting away in a cloud of bluish smoke on a rainy weekend afternoon.

As she sees it, the first track, Mediterraneo, is a sad place, portrayed by loopy, stark piano awash in echo and spiced with frequent splashes up against the shore. Those, in turn, eventually waft through the echo patch, a recurrent device here.

In the title piece, Burelli positions a distant, spare bassline amid washes of sound, raising the energy with her wordless, melismatically Balkan-tinged vocals.

Ultimi Raggi has what sounds like mutedly flaring guitar amid the swirl and the occasional shooting star falling to earth. In Pezzi Sopra La Tua Pelle is a sunny, slowly uwinding, Eno-ish tune, followed by the cheery miniature Aquilone Perduto, an evocation of birdsong.

Burelli’s airy vocals raise Cum Sidera out of desolation and suspense, then she brings back the spare, elegant piano in Natura Domina. She winds up the record with Cuore Di Piume, a sort of baroque chorale study in wave motion, and the windswept, pensive Leggeri Come Cenere.

Still, Spacious, Meditative Sounds From Shida Shahabi

The title of keyboardist and ambient composer Shida Shahabi’s Lake On Fire triptych – streaming at Bandcamp – is a misnomer. Her new ep is calm, centering music. For a quick, ten-minute meditative interlude, this fits the bill just fine.

Slow waves and gently rising guitar-like figures permeate the prologue. The main theme rises like a plane on takeoff and then morphs into a gentle, distantly baroque-tinged organ prelude. The final movement follows a series of minimalist, spacious sustained chords. The ep also includes a stately piano version of the main theme including a creaky percussion track, as if the levers inside the instrument were close-miked.

A Pretty Close to Perfect Score For This Year’s Halloween Celebrations

Just the two opening notes of Daniel Hart’s 2017 soundtrack to the film A Ghost Story are a dead giveaway that it’s not going to be just a rehash of old monster-movie cliches. The pregnant pause after that stunned violin riff speaks volumes. If you want a musical backdrop for this year’s Halloween party – you’re not going to let the lockdowners ruin your Halloween or anyone else’s, are you? – this electroacoustic score is a good choice. It’s still streaming at Spotify.

The soundtrack’s first movement is a dead ringer for Philip Glass in sinister mode. After that we get fluttery wave motion, stygian voices from the deep and lumbering footfalls over brooding ambience. Somber minimalist cello…allusions to Angelo Badalementi’s iconic Twin Peaks soundtracks…tinkling piano and melancholy violin over grey noise. And a deliciously moody faux-baroque song! Tracks six and eleven, a pair of cliched 90s-style trip-hop pop songs, are something to skip if you’re making a playlist out of this.

What we don’t get is cheesy Iron Man or Godzilla themes: this is all about persistent suspense, and ultimately, loss. This ghost can’t come back and knows it. That’s why he’s hanging on by his nails.

Ride the Highway to Hell with the Death Wheelers

The Death Wheelers play heavy psychedelic rock instrumental soundtracks to imaginary sleazy biker flicks. They like gritty, gear-grinding bass, heavy drums and guitar textures that shift from sandpaper distortion to blue-flame Lynchian twang, Their new album Divine Filth – streaming at Bandcamp – is the heaviest one yet.

They open with a swooshy, crunchy title theme that’s over in less than two minutes, slide guitar hovering over Max Tremblay’s chainsaw downtuned bass and Richard Turcotte’s drums. Ditchfinder General is an epic mashup of a twisted ba-BUMP theme as early Sabbath would have done it, along with the Stooges’ TV Eye, thrash metal and spaghetti western textures.

Suicycle Tendencies is a heavy biker theme: imagine Agent Orange covering a Davie Allan & the Arrows tune, with an outro by Sabbath. The title track is a gritty battle theme where the whole gang unites against the enemy, throttles rumbling at full volume beneath Ed Desaulniers and Hugo Bertacci’s shreddy wah guitars.

Lobotomobile, a creepy spiderwalking horror surf tune, is the album’s most gleefully phantasmagorical track. Corps Morts starts off like a heavier Radio Birdman, decays to grim sludge and then rises from the lagoon. Murder Machines – Biker Mortis, true to its title, is part horror film theme, part evilly strutting Harley chopper rock.

The voiceover that kicks off Motorgasm – Canal Pleasures Pt. 1 is pretty priceless: the song. part Isaac Hayes psychedelic funk, part crunchy stoner riff-rock, is just as tongue-in-cheek. Chopped Back to Life is a 70s stoner boogie repurposed as crispy all-terrain vehicle music.

Road Rite shifts between hardcore punk and a strutting, vaguely Stonesy tune. The group close the record with Nitrus, a pummeling horror surf number, like Strange But Surf with distortion and a chunkier rhythm section. It’s the band’s best album so far and one of the most entertainingly cinematic releases of the year.