We have here some albums we rather think are worth your time, that is still the policy here, if we don’t think the albums t obe any good we don’t cover them, that;s the way we’ve always done, nowhere enar enough time to be bothering the the not so good….
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Monika Roscher Bigband – Witchy Activities And The Maple Death (Zenna Records) – An Avant-Pop-Math-Jazz-Experimental Prog Bigband? Well that sounds like just about the perfect brew. It was a single from this new album that led us to Monika Roscher and her big band earlier this year. That single, a glorious nine minute piece, 8 Prinzessinnen, that opens the album, that single led us off exploring previous releases, live footage, especially that excellent footage at that Zappa festival (it was that footage that really got us shouting about the Bigband). We really knew very very little until that single landed here. Seems that Monika Roscher Bigband is made up of eighteen or so rather impressive musicians and, according the band themselves (or maybe the record label?) they make something that “exists somewhere between math-rock, prog-jazz, avant-pop and experimental electronics”. Formed in Munich in 2011, we’re told they “soon made waves with thrilling live performances and the inventive ideas of Roscher, their founder, singer, guitarist and conductor”, the live footage we’ve seen certainly back those claims up.
So here we are in 2023, with a whole new album to unpack, their third, a first proper proper listen rather than just dipping in and out of things (as you tend to do online, especially when bands and labels are firing hundreds of things at you on a daily basis and then demand to know if you’ve listened to them yet). 8 Prinzessinnen is a fine fine, it is some kind of blend of poppy progressive rock and full-bodied orchestral jazz. Monika herself has a touch of Bjork about her, that witchy way she sings, she leads the band in a very fluid way, it never really gets that hard-boiled or difficult it is always fluid though, big, bold, laced with detail. It could maybe do with being a little more hard boiled and a touch more difficult at times, their way is a poppy way when you really want them to Strav it up and dare to really grab the avant and take you out there on their high wire. If anything they’re making some kind of very dramatic big band jazz pop that at times really is rather magical, yet at other times a tiny bit too polite and needing to repeat the pattern or the line one too many times.
Witches Brew: The Summoning really does like you’d expect a song with a title like that to sound, actually they do quite often sound like a poppy Danny Elfman as they bounce off each other. They’re certainly dramatic, full bodied, alive with ambition, big, they are a big band and not just in terms of the number of players. Everything here is big, bold, dramatic, ready to lead you astray, but then there is a need for a key change, a different level, there’s a passion here, there’s clever detail, but the tune, the key, it needs something more and you kind of find yourself thinking, this album is kind of going on a little bit isn’t it?
The closing song, Unbewegte Sternenmeere, is the only one in German, that brings something extra and adds to it all, an unmoving seas of stars so it seems. Witchy Activities And The Maple Death is a fine album, do recommend you check it out, it feels like there could be so much more though…
Find the album on Bandcamp
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Clark – Sus Dog (Throttle Records) – The Textures that are being played with here really are rewarding, there’s a luscious glow to this new Clark album and the rather easy way it all fits together. Clark albums are always worth your time, and once again here this is a beautiful album. The voices, the gentle glitch of the electronica, the slow build of power, the warmth, the soul, there’s lots of soul here. The fact that Thom Yorke features strongly on one of the pieces of music on here (I don’t want to call them tracks, they feel like much more than that) will tell you lots. Of course, like Clark, you never quite know what Thom Yorke is going to be doing, both Yorke and Clark do have an identity though. There a gentle flow or organic electronic warmth, a glow as well as a flow (did we say glow already? This album really does glow).
Across a career spanning nearly twenty years and ten albums with the Warp label, “Clark has constantly shifted and evolved his sound. Shining throughout is a love of melody, surprise, detail, texture and exploration. Equally likely to melt your heart and face, often both at the same time”.
“Sus Dog is really an album about trust. I’ve only realised, since re-singing versions of Town Crank everyday (see Instagram), what I’ve been tapping into. The idea of “I don’t need to know what you mean”. It’s a sparse phrase, scratching at themes embedded in other lyrics throughout the album. Trust, surrender, letting go.Sus Dog is about unknowing, non defensiveness, beginner’s mind. Discovery. The idea of being telepathic is seductive but a bit dangerous. It’s all contingent, we’re animals with minds more like morphIng vapour than anything solid. Constantly becoming/changing. Sus Dog is a dedication to the love of that process. I’ve written a bunch of love songs, ha never thought I’d say that”.
Town Crank has a Wireless feel to it, (obscure Cardiacs reference there), the whole album has a healthy Radiohead feel, a positive feel, mostly it sounds like Clark album, an album that’s alive with colour, with different flavours, with beautiful warmth, a fragile album, a radiant album, a strong powerful affirming album, a very human record, just something that’s really really enjoyable, that continues to surprise and a week of constant playing, that feels like an album I suspect we’ll want to return to again again. Rather recommended.
Find the album on Bandcamp or more here
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Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group – Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group (Mississippi Records) –
A spiritual record for the ages so were told, a self-titled album from “Portland’s finest practitioners of Great Black Music”. They’re an earthy jazzy trio (sax, drums and organ) augmented by additional percussion, occasionally soaring vocals and on the final track, a vocal appearance by a toddler (although how much the toddler actually know about it is questionable).
Across six rather colourful rather expansive tracks, Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group build “from free-flowing ceremony through meditative groove-based prayer and into full-on gales of improvised music”. The whole thing sounds and feels kind of spiritual, something that’s in the zone, “We build our own time,” said Norfleet.
“A collective act of liberation through sound. Raised in the Baptist church and trained in the Hindu/Vedic philosophy of Swamini Turiyasangitanada (Alice Coltrane), Portland multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Roman Norfleet travels a lineage of Great Black Music and the world’s spiritualities”.
The album apparently emerged out of drum gatherings in Washington DC’s Malcolm X Park – “a pocket of freedom built on collective improvisation and shared rhythm”. In Portland, Norfleet gathered a collective of artists including Jacque Hammond and members of Brown Calculus to transmit the spirit of those DC sessions. A formative encounter with Pharoah Sanders furthered the young saxophonist’s journey via the spaceways, through Sun Ra and into the universe of contemporaries like Angel Bat Dawid. The album, something that concludes with Turiya the Butterfly, sung by two year-old Turiya Raiah. A daughter of band members Andre and Mia and named after the great Alice Coltrane (Turiya, we’re told “completes both the intergenerational circle”), an album that feels deeply spiritual, that feels very much of then, of the jazzy, gospel, soul, blues of the 60’s and maybe before that while at the same time being something very much for now. It feels free, it feels right, at times very experimental without ever getting difficult or inaccessible, rather joyous actually…
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And while we’re here, something from 2019, we mention this again today because Yuvel Ron is playing the UK for the first time this July, June 6th 2023, at the Fidler’s Elbow in Camden, London on what we’re told is a Sci-fi rock night.
“Guitarist and composer Yuval Ron performs original tunes that transcend the boundaries of any specific musical genre. Inspired by a crossover of modern jazz-rock, progressive music, cinematic and orchestral music genres, it is all well blended into an own fresh and distinct musical direction, best described as Cinematic Prog or Jazz-Rock”.
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As we were saying in that Clark piece, enjoy this piece of beauty…
THE ORGAN 
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