Music Monday: Twin Albums, Molecular, and Mediated Mingus

As the year wraps up there seems to be an abundance of interesting new music between new releases and year end lists. (Of course, this is perfectly timed for holiday music gifting season!). It’s keeping my playlist full to overflowing and this is keeping me from being able to focus for too long on any album. This can be a bit distressing because, on the one hand, I really enjoy the experience of diving deeply into an album or even a single track. On the other hand, there is always something exciting about the experience of a new sound.

There are four albums that have stood out to me lately in my rather erratic listening habits.

First, I’ve been really enjoying the fruits of Chad Fowler’s record label Mahakala Music. In August, Fowler,  a saxophonist by trade, but equally adept on stritch, saxello, and flute released a pair of albums titled Broken/Unbroken and Thinking/Unthinking. Both albums feature William Parker on bass and Anders Griffen on drums. As readers of this blog know, Parker is a favorite of mine and he also joins Fowler as part of the Dopolarians. I don’t know Anders Griffen’s work as well, but his drumming on these two albums is simply splendid. Fowlers woodwinds are in turn gentle and abrupt, soothing and reaching, and wild and restrained. Parker’s bass is probing and wise. The tracks are long, improvised, and have the capacity to engage your listening and disrupt your day. 

To be clear, none of this stuff will transform your understanding of modern music, but it will all make you sit up and listen.

Second, I’ve also been enjoying a somewhat different sonic experience. If the twin Fowler albums offered a kind of minimalist excursion into the ethereal realms of improvisation, James Brandon Lewis’s working Quartet offers a more maximalist approach in their recent live release MSM: Molecular Systematic Music which is a performance of music from their studio album Molecular. The first two tracks in this almost 2-hour concert recording show the quartet in full flight. James Brandon Lewis’s saxophone playing and especially his remarkable 2019 release Jesup Wagon with a group he called the Red Lily Quartet which attracted the attention of critics and fans alike. There are some quiet moments in this live show, “Of First Importance,” for example is a lovely ballad full of gentle lyricism. The album is at its best when the performers put their familiarity (on a molecular level) on display and engage with each other in densely wrought solos. Aruan Ortiz’s piano is particularly compelling in this context and James Brandon Lewis presents a full range of moods, techniques, and attitudes to make this concert worth more repeat listens than I’ve given it so far.

Finally, I had never listened to Ethan Philion before, but somehow his 10-piece band’s performance of Meditations on Mingus appeared in my playlist. Generally, I don’t find that kind of album very interesting, but I was doing some book layout and I put it on. Most of it was pleasant and at times interesting, but the final track “Better Git It In Your Soul” (originally from Mingus-Ah-Um) made me stop what I was doing to any pay attention. I’m sure part of it was the near perfect imitation of the opening bars of the Mingus recording, but as the song danced its way across my desk and the soloists took their turns (cleaving relatively close to the solos on the original), I found myself pleasantly transfixed.