Albums, more albums, more crossing the teacakes, eating some apples, cleaning house before the year finally does end, that botanist album from yesterday took us to this one, a whole lot of experimental music turned up and well, read on, the year still hasn’t ended, we’ve not made the list yet, we haven’t got anywhere near thinking about checking twice, and when it all comes down to it what’s words worth anyway?
Botanist – Paleobotany (Prophecy Productions) – Now this is what we wanted from Botanist, they haven’t totally abandoned their roots or their stems, they still have those cookie monster vocals in there but now they’re not the only thing, there are different voices, melodic vocals, lyrics you can actually hear alongside those epic slices of progressive experimental metal, this time around there’s a more mature set of plant cultivated. Lyrically, the band from San Francisco have always revolved around green growth, around botany rather than the usual metal stereotypes. Yes, this is what we wanted, Paleobotany does expand Botanist’s dark green avant-garde metal into something a touch more accessible and dynamic without ever losing what the extreme metal band have always been about. Some of it here is quietly reflective, The Impact That Built the Amazon is almost minimal in a rather beautiful way, the mood continues with the colourful restraint of Sigillaria
This is Botanist’s twelfth full-length album, an album that came out back in May of this year – yeah, we’re doing the end of year catching up thing yet again as Botanist take us back more than 70 million years to a time when dinosaurs ruled the planet and early forests began to turn to coal. The a time “before the age of giants ended in flames with the apocalyptic impact of the Chicxulub asteroid, many plants also grew much larger than their descendants that we know today”. They do it with far far more light and shade than they have on past albums, yes they have always experimented, they have always been expansive, always taken on the epic, they’ve always laced that avant-metal edge with colour, ambition, this time there something a little extra, well far more than just a little extra, this is what we’ve always wanted them to do, this is a far more mature sound, they’ve stopped backing out. No they haven’t sold out, they are still very black metal at times, their music is still anchored in metal, but instead of conventional 6-string guitars they use 110-string hammered dulcimers, percussion-stringed folk instruments and distort them through various perverse means that range from amplifiers via analogue tape to digital manipulation a more open, avant-garde style, leading towards an even more complex sound than the progressive complexity they’ve always had… Yes, this is what we wanted.
Nubdug Ensemble – Third (CatSynth Records) – “Over two years in the making, CatSynth Records is proud to release this ambitious project; indeed, ambition is the subtext of this album, a musical adaption of Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Featuring a cast of seventeen of the most incredible musicians nimbly navigating a set of sophisticated scores, a convoluted confluence of prog rock, jazz, and funk, this is the Shakespearean adaption you’ve always wanted to hear”.
Third is a little too much on the jazz side of life for these noise-loving ears, a little polite, yes it is progressive, it is complexed, never overbearingly so though. They are almost in the lounge at times, maybe a foot in the Canterbury scene and bits of Hatfield and The North. The Ensemble are really seriously good at what they do, give it a go, there’s a sense of playfulness at time, it is rather bright, some of it feels like it has a touch of the West End musical to it and there is some delightful detail
Featuring an all-star lineup once again – “some of the very best musicians in Creative Music!” Composer and Director Jason Berry is joined by such musicans as Steve Adams (ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic) on saxophones, Myles Boisen (Tom Waits, John Zorn) on guitars, Sheldon Brown (Clubfoot Orchestra, Bob Weir) on bass clarinet and alto flute, the incredible Amanda Chaudhary on keyboards and synths, Mark Clifford on vibraphone, Chris Grady (The Residents, Grassy Knoll) on trumpet, Crystal Pascucci on cello, drums and percussion by John Hanes (Chrome, Romeo Void, John Schott Trio), bass virtuoso Brett Warren on all manner of basses, and the Regent of Rhythm himself, drummer G Calvin Weston (Ornette Coleman, James “Blood” Ulmer, Lounge Lizards)! Vocals are primarily handled by jazz chanteuse Sami Stevens, known for her work with JG Thirlwell, Kazemde George, Tredici Bacci and more, along with additional voices by the incredible Jill Rogers.
Camila Nebbia, Dietrich Eichmann, John Hughes, Jeff Arnal – Chrononaux (Generate Records) – And talking of Jazz, here’s a group of people who won’t take no for an answer, only sent the album in a couple of day ago and the follow up e.mails and landing already, give me time, there’s only so many hours in the day people and I don’t want to spend every single one of them listening to jazz music! Two tracks, almost an hour and a half of it, all jazz spiders running up and down the legs of trumpet players, sax blowers and double bass pickers or whatever it is I am hearing jousting with the colourful percusion. Here comes a flavour of their thinking….
“The parallel in the music of Chrononaux to our perceived physical plane of existence reflects an intense group gravitation and realignment, even despite lapses of time and physical distance. Arnal and Hughes began collaborating in the 1990s, working in Baltimore nearly exclusively with saxophonist John Dierker in trio, quartet, and quintet. In the early 2000s after years apart, they continued in Germany with the internationally acclaimed trio Tripwire with Lars Scherzberg. This led to meeting Eichmann, which sparked the duo collaboration of Eichmann and Arnal, most notably documented in the span from their first release “The Temperature Dropped Again“ on Leo Records 2004, to their upcoming 2025 release “Tides of Unrest” on NoBusiness Records. Their collaboration with the addition of Hughes and bassist Astrid Weins with “Pail Bug” in 2012, marks a personal milestone in their ongoing exploration of free improvisation…..” and on it goes, read more of it on their Bandcamp page
It is painterly, a bit Jackson Pollock in places, it is very much jazz, how much more jazz coulds it be, none, none more jazz, it is all very clever, here’s some more of their words; “Even before her arrival in Europe, the trajectory of Argentinian saxophonist Camila Nebbia has been unstoppable. She has become one of the most prominent figures in the current free improvisation scene and can be heard on festivals and bandstands throughout the world. Almost immediately after arriving in Germany, Nebbia began an intense and deep collaboration with Hughes, and the two have worked and played in ad hoc ensembles, often presented at one of Hamburg’s most significant art and performance venues, the Westwerk. Nebbia and Hughes’ mutual understanding can be witnessed on their Bandcamp duo release, “The Myth of Aether.”
Chrononaux operates as a living organism, each member bringing a unique voice that blends into a collective dynamic, shaping the band’s distinctive sound….” Is it distinctive? Maybe to the trained chin-stroking jazz ear? It sounds like a lot of clever Jazz improv to my uneducated lugholes, it does feel like I hear a lot of things like this? It does sound like they really have a chemistry, that they really connect with each other, it never sounds like things are out of control, it sounds like it would be rewarding to witness live in the actual room with the different instruments comeing at at slight diferent angles rather than all from the same speaker. I mean if I’m going to listen to Jazz I’m going to reach for the no-wave punked up jazz noise danger of those Flying Luttenbachers or maybe Earth Ball’s thrilling experiments, this album Chrononaux is more for the jazzheads who have no time for the Luttenbachers of this world…
Abacaxi – Quetzal (Carton Records) – “Quetzals are strikingly coloured birds in the trogon family. Their wings are suited to camouflage under rainy conditions. The name quetzal , from the mesoamerican Nahuatl language, refers to an upstanding plume of feathers in terms of standing up” and that is kind of what this rather strange album sounds like. More musical experiments, what did I do to deserve all this? Actually this is really good and if wasn’t for the endless demanding parade of it all I’d be wanting to tell you that yes this is some kind of colourfully experimental electronic not quite drone not quite Kraut flavoured percussive goodness (from France). There compositions certainly are different, a little too serious to be fun but this is kind of fun, all those beeps and pecks and pumping bits. All instrumental, pushing the all the right buttons and you imagine those buttons to be carefully colour coded and thought about, nothing throwaway here, this feels precise, this feels good, rather thrilling actually…
THE ORGAN 