Adam Torres - Pearls To Swine 2016

Arriving ten years after his debut, Pearls to Swine is the spacious sophomore LP from Austin-based singer/songwriter Adam Torres. While few had access to Nostra Nova, Torres' compelling 2006 small-batch release, the chamber folk opus slowly gained an air of cult status, finally earning itself a proper national reissue from Misra Records in 2015. As for its creator, Torres moved on from his college days in Athens, Ohio, dedicating several years to charity work in South America and eventually landing in the Lonestar State for graduate school and life beyond academia. He emerged just once in 2012 with a set of ethereal, lo-fi demos released in a limited run by a Washington, D.C. cassette label. His reemergence as a performer and the mystique of his brief back catalog landed him a deal with Fat Possum, yielding this dusty, lonesome follow-up. More focused than his comparatively sprawling debut, Pearls to Swine was tracked live to tape with Torres' lofty, warbling falsetto and delicate guitar picking accompanied by violinist Aisha Burns, percussionist Thor Harris (of Swans fame), and bassist/pianist Dailey Toliver. Almost cinematic in tone and timbre, these are songs of the contemporary indie folk rambler, evoking scenic beauty and the journeys of both mind and body. At his best, Torres offers bucolic road meditations like "High Lonesome" and paeans to the natural world like "Mountain River," honing in his soaring toward an earthbound nadir. If the rest of the album is a hair more mystical in scope, his wide, introspective vistas are still quite compelling. AMG.

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Eyeless In Gaza - Caught In Flux 1981

Lacking the fascinating flaws of Photographs as Memories, the anti-pop of Rust Red September, and the unpolluted minimalism of the band's post-reformation releases, Eyeless in Gaza's Caught in Flux was a frustratingly isolationist transition piece. The fractured funk of Peter Becker's basslines and Martyn Bates' garroted Pere Ubu vocals combined with a refreshingly underproduced sheet of electronics in unquestionably interesting ways, but the end effect felt more exploratory than experimental. Recalling the best bits of the band's debut, only "Every Which Way" retained its impact over time, a haunting art rock funeral hymn that sounded like Alphaville's "Forever Young" watching its leg melt off. AMG.

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Chip White - Harlem Sunset 1994

A fine drummer who performs in advanced jazz settings, Chip White is also a talented composer. He began studying percussion when he was nine. White attended Ithaca College, studied at the Berklee School of Music and later took orchestration and arranging lessons from Frank Foster. In the '70s,'80s and '90s, he played with many top jazz musicians including Carmen McRae, Jaki Byard, John Abercrombie, Johnny Coles, Enrico Rava, Mulgrew Miller, Gary Bartz and John Hicks, recording with many of them. He formed the Chip White Ensemble in 1984, produced a jazz musical (Manhattan Moments) in 1990 and toured with the Houston Person-Etta Jones Quintet. In 1994, Chip White recorded Harlem Sunset (for Postcards), his debut set as a leader. AMG.

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David Sylvian & Robert Fripp - The First Day 1993

Robert Fripp and David Sylvian's first official release together, The First Day, is a much funkier and more percussive affair than its bootleg predecessor, The Day Before (which contained radically different versions of these songs). An obvious reason for its higher quality is that it was recorded in a studio, while the bootleg consisted of in-concert demos, and the songs here have been worked to completion. Fripp has found an extremely talented singer/partner in Sylvian, who adds a lot to his quirky compositions. Trey Gunn (who plays a bass-like instrument called the stick) makes each track practically groove and breathe on his own, and allows Fripp to stretch out and experiment in ways previously unheard by this guitar icon. The First Day is a very consistent album, with the musician's excitement and energy easily being felt on such tracks as "God's Monkey," "Brightness," and the ten-minute tour de force "Firepower." Other lengthy tracks follow (the 11-minute "20th Century Dreaming" and the 17-minute "Darshan"), but it never becomes self-indulgent or boring. Certainly one of Robert Fripp's best and more inspired King Crimson side projects. AMG.

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Femi Kuti - One People One World 2018

In the five years between Femi Kuti's Grammy-nominated No Place for My Dream and One People One World, he's been a busy man. He regularly performs at The Shrine, the performance space he built as a memorial to his late father Fela Kuti, he's a touring musician, and he also serves as a traveling ambassador for Amnesty International. (He also found time in 2017 to break the Guinness world record for the longest-held single note on a saxophone -- 51 minutes and 35 seconds.) 
One People One World is Kuti's tenth album with his longstanding band Positive Force and its musical director and guitarist Opeyemi Awomolo. Unlike the righteous anger that inspired almost all of his previous recordings, One People One World is by contrast more affirmative; it's celebratory without sacrificing its activism. While Afrobeat is at the core of these 12 songs, Kuti picks up on the mosaic he began weaving on No Place for My Dream by incorporating the harmonies and rhythms of reggae, highlife, soul, R&B, hip-hop, and other global sounds into its mix, adding depth and complexity without sacrificing immediacy and accessibility.
The title-track single commences with driving Afrobeat horns, but the rest of the band erupts into calypso and highlife celebration as Kuti and his backing singers deny racism, greed, and hatred the power to conquer the earth. With an infectious, swinging organ, "Africa Will Be Great Again" is a protest jam that details the corruption and greed that hold her back as a continent, but its pulsing wave of salsa, soca, and highlife makes it an irresistible anthem as Kuti posits the reclamation of the continent as the cradle of civilization and the heartbeat of the world. The D'Angelo-esque soul in "It's Best to Live on the Good Side" is carried by slinky, bubbling basslines, vamping R&B guitars, and a swirling organ. When the horns enter, thunder cracks as circular drumming and percussion thread in Afro-Cuban (Yoruban) rhythms. Second single "Na Their Way Be That" opens with cooking reggae before Femi's soulful saxophone solo and an Afrobeat chant cut in from the margin. "Evil People" is stomping, funky R&B, fueled by J.B.'s-style horns, layers of breakbeat drums, chunky wah-wah guitar, and congas. Immediately following is "Equal Opportunity," where Kuti and his backing chorus evoke the celebratory vibe of Curtis Mayfield's "Move on Up," and add jazzy Rhodes piano and Afrobeat horns and rhythms. Even straight-up Afro-funk jams like "Dem Militarize Democracy" open to embrace driving son rhythms, popping R&B basslines, and souled-out vocal and guitar choruses. The dubwise soul of closer "The Way Our Lives Go" is the set's most poetic and inspiring track. Kuti and Positive Force don't let up at all during One People One World. Impeccably sequenced, it runs from strength to strength, dazzling with expansive sonic textures, killer arrangements, and a musical genre palette that exists seemingly without boundaries. As a recording artist, Kuti has been reliably consistent, but this date is his masterpiece.

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A. Savage - Thawing Dawn 2017

The debut solo LP from Andrew Savage of Parquet Courts finds him singing more intimately about love in quieter, more rustic settings. In its own peculiar way, it speaks to our current condition.

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16 Horsepower - Low Estate 1998

Sixteen Horsepower's second full-length album, Low Estate, finds them at the peak of their powers, moving their hypnotic, rustic country-rock into neo-gothic territory. Producer John Parish helps the group reach its potential, accentuating the darkness and mystery inherent in its music. There are still a few weak moments on the record, but overall, Low Estate is an impressive leap forward for Sixteen Horsepower, an album that clearly separates the band from its alt-country contemporaries. AMG.

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Earthless - From The Ages 2013

The San Diego-based Krautrock/stoner rock trio Earthless feature the talents of Nebula guitarist Isaiah Mitchell, Electric Nazarene bass player Mike Eginton, and Hot Snakes/Clikitat Ikatowi drummer Mario Rubalcaba (who also played with Rocket from the Crypt under the alias Ruby Mars). The band's debut, a collection of jam-heavy instrumentals titled Sonic Prayer, was released on the Gravity label in 2005. It was followed in 2007 by Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky, which marked the band's first release for Tee Pee Records. Live at Roadburn appeared the following year, showcasing the band's strength as a live act. From the Ages, the band's third studio long-player, arrived in 2013, with a pair of concert albums, Live at Freak Valley and Live at Tym Guitars, Brisbane Australia, arriving in 2015. The following year saw the trio release a split LP with fellow West Coast psych-rockers Harsh Toke, and in 2018, they issued their fourth full-length outing Black Heaven.

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Barney Wilen - Sanctuary 1991

Barney Wilen's mother was French, his father a successful American dentist-turned-inventor. He grew up mostly on the French Riviera; the family left during World War II but returned upon its conclusion. According to Wilen himself, he was convinced to become a musician by his mother's friend, the poet Blaise Cendrars. As a teenager he started a youth jazz club in Nice, where he played often. He moved to Paris in the mid-'50s and worked with such American musicians as Bud Powell, Benny Golson, Miles Davis, and J.J. Johnson at the Club St. Germain. His emerging reputation received a boost in 1957 when he played with Davis on the soundtrack to the Louis Malle film Lift to the Scaffold. Two years later, he performed with Art Blakey and Thelonious Monk on the soundtrack to Roger Vadim's Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1960). Wilen began working in a rock-influenced style during the '60s, recording an album entitled Dear Prof. Leary in 1968. In the early '70s, Wilen led a failed expedition of filmmakers, musicians, and journalists to travel to Africa to document pygmy music. Later Wilen played in a punk rock band called Moko and founded a French Jazzmobile-type organization that took music to people living in outlying areas. He also worked in theater. By the mid-'90s, he was working once again in a bebop vein in a band with the pianist Laurent de Wilde. Much of Wilen's later work was documented on the Japanese Venus label. AMG.

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