Playlist 15.12.24 – Best of 2024 Part 1!

Utility Fog

Here we are at the end of the year. As is traditional, I’m doing THREE Best of 2024 shows, starting with “songs” tonight, instrumentals & sound-art next week, and a DJ mix of stuff with beats on December 29th. Of course there’s some overlap, so you’ve got sound designy stuff and beats tonight, in the context of songs & raps.

LISTEN AGAIN and sing along with the best of songs… Stream on demand @ FBi, podcast right here!

Mary Ocher – Sympathize (feat. Your Government) [Mary Ocher Bandcamp]
Last year’s Approaching Singularity: Music for the End of Time from Mary Ocher was a revelation. A Russian Jew who grew up in Israel and has based herself in Berlin for her adult life, her leftwing politics are inescapably intertwined with her music – each album comes with an accompanying text, and this album’s essays is “A Guide to Radical Living“, which articulates one part of that politics (it’s subtitled “Why wealth needs poverty and how not to play along”). On the new album, one song is directly aimed at Israel (the satirical “I am The Occupation” that also features processed harp from Serafina Steer), but this single, which comes with a great video, addresses the world on behalf of all seekers of asylum.

House of Gold – Blues [Sofa music/Bandcamp]
Earlier this year I played some remarkable music from ambroise, the project of Eugénie Jobin from Tio’tià:ke/Montréal. Jobin is also a member of the new music quartet House of Gold, who perform the music of composer Isaiah Ceccarelli, a jazz and improv drummer and percussionist who also composes chamber music and is a self-confessed enthusiast for earyl choral music. And truly all of that is found in the song cycle that is the band’s self-titled debut album, with harmonised vocals from Jobin and Frédérique Roy, both of whom also play keyboards alongside Katelyn Clark, while Ceccarelli plays drums and percussion. Much of the music is comprised of minimalist piano, even more minimalist organs and other keyboards, sparse percussion and pure voices – only to break, at times, into bursts of postpunk or krautrock drums and keyboard drones & pulses. If the music of the current age is characterised by anything, it’s the final and complete breaking down of any genre boundaries (which incidentally makes Utility Fog either prescient, redundant, or never more relevant). House of Gold show us one such permutation, with beauty and grace.

Simon Fisher Turner – Barefeet [Mute/Bandcamp]
I nearly fell off my chair when a Bandcamp email turned up early this year with a new release from Simon Fisher Turner – and it’s a full new album! And there’s vinyl but no CD, because we can’t have nice things. SFT has been many things in his career, from child actor and young pop idol to composer and sound-artist who’s worked with Derek Jarman and created some of the most alluring and boundary-pushing audio work in the last few decades. So it was nice that “Barefeet”, the first single from Instability of the Signal, was a sweet, tender song in which the harmonised vocal is accompanied by a stark glitched loops, and adorned with bursts of electronic squeals, fragments of found sound, and a six-note bass riff at the end of phrases. This is a quietly alluring album, sprinkled with his humour and frequently pulling the heartstrings. It’s deconstructed pop, constructed from four “S”es: “Slivers” of samples from David Padbury’s Salford Electronics, “Strings” from the Elysian Collective (previously the Elysian Quartet), found “Sounds” and field recordings, and “Singing” primarily from SFT himself. It’s a gentle & unassuming tour-de-force of the sort that an accomplished, adventurous artist of 5 decades can create.

Martha Skye Murphy – Need (ft. Roy Montgomery) [AD93/Bandcamp]
I first heard English experimental singer/songwriter Martha Skye Murphy on a duo release with double bassist Maxwell Sterling on American Dreams in 2022. The two long tracks were the result of long improvisations melding Sterling’s processed double bass and Murphy’s wordless vocals. Martha Skye Murphy’s solo work is a stark contrast, with emotive songs using piano and guitar as well as electronics, although nothing is quite so straightforward. The album is, after all, released on AD93, best known for experimental club productions (albeit by no means exclusively), and the home also of Sterling’s early solo work. It’s full of beautiful, unusual songs, which evoke the likes of Joni Mitchell and Tori Amos, but wilfully go in strange directions or pile on the noise like the end of “Kind”. Then there’s the delicate collaboration with claire rousay, field recordings and all, and the stunning single “Need” that was created with legendary NZ guitarist Roy Montgomery.

Chelsea Wolfe – Tunnel Lights [Loma Vista/Bandcamp]
For 14+ years and over a dozen albums, Chelsea Wolfe has combined her love of heavy metal with gothic folk and, increasingly, electronics, and an undeniable ear for great songwriting. On She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She, Wolfe and longtime musical partner Ben Chisholm conjure songs that can move between shoegaze, darkwave, folk and industrial metal. It’s really good.
Later this year there was an excellent remix EP entitled Undone, and a set of stripped-back versions called Unbound.

Meril Wubslin – Un calme [Bongo Joe Records/Bandcamp]
And here’s a wonderful discovery, courtesy I think of one of the Bandcamp Daily posts. Meril Wubslin are a Swiss trio, singing in French, combining post-rock and krautrock and indie rock and French chanson. The two singer/guitarists, Valérie Niederoest and Christian Garcia-Gaucher, have a history in Swiss indie bands, but when they’re joined by French hardcore/math rock/noise rock drummer David Costenaro the band comes into their own: cyclical melodies and guitar lines powered by muscular percussion – probably helped by the production of Kwake Bass here, on their fourth album Faire ça. Anyway, it’s always good to be reminded that the Francophone music scene is really rich and creative, and the two albums I’ve heard of Meril Wubslin easily attest to that.

Kim Gordon – I’m A Man [Matador/Bandcamp]
The second album from Kim Gordon continues her collaboration with producer Justin Raisen, who provides overdriven beats that back Gordon’s familiar speak-singing drawl – often stream-of-consciousness stuff, as encouraged by Raisen. If No Home Record was a shock, the first solo album from a figure of such huge significance in indie rock/postpunk for over 4 decades, The Collective has no less impact from following it. Career highs from an artist now in her 70s.

The Body & Dis Fig – Dissent, Shame [Thrill Jockey/Bandcamp]
A considerable part of The Body‘s career has been collaborations – so much so that 2021’s I’ve Seen All I Need To See, with not a single guest and just guitar/drums/vox, was a sharp surprise (Another crushing “solo” album, The Crying Out of Things, came out later this year from the duo). I first heard Felicia Chen’s astonishing work as Dis Fig on her solo album Purge, linking her operatically-trained voice with industrial and noise music, but her collaboration with The Bug, In Blue, rightly brought her further notoriety. Orchards of a Futile Heaven is a suitably horrifying and moving piece of work, not a departure for either artist but a perfect synthesis. Rhythmic noise sputters into noisescapes of guitar or electronics; Chip King’s high-pitched squeals lurk within, but Chen’s voice can scream as much as sing melodies or provide a multitracked choir; Lee Buford’s programmed and live drums thunder; but you really can’t tell at any point who’s responsible for instruments or production, and that’s great. It’s some of the best material from either act.

Moin – Guess It’s Wrecked (feat. Olan Monk) [AD93/Bandcamp]
UK postpunk/breakbeat/electronic duo Joe Andrews and Tom Halstead aka Raime have for a while been focusing on their trio Moin, which finds them officially joined with percussionist Valentina Magaletti, who contributed drums to many of the Raime releases. Previously, Moin has been a kind of ersatz postpunk thing, with jagged, minimalist guitar riffs and taut rhythms embellished with Raime’s characteristic sampled vocal jabs. For this year’s album You Never End, they invited singers to guest on about half the tracks, drawing the music further into postpunk “band music”, although Olan Monk‘s singing still finds itself interrupted (or hyped?) by little vocal snatches.

John Glacier – Steady As I Am [Young/Remote Control/Bandcamp]
I hopped on an EP late with English underground rapper John Glacier. Her first EP for 2024, Like A Ribbon, came out in Feb, and Duppy Gun followed on June 20th. Unlike some of the shiny stuff on Young (fka Young Turks) like Jamie XX, hers is a determinedly experimental, lo-fi expression of what hip-hop can be in 2024, produced with Kwes Darko (fka Blue Daisy). Whatever – this is good shit.

Andrea Belfi plays Robert Wyatt – Dondestan [Stray Signals]
As the situation in Gaza worsened in 2024, a problematic situation in Germany – particularly Berlin – was also getting worse, whereby any voices in support of Palestine are being branded as antisemitic, and are systematically silenced – even when they are Jewish. There couldn’t be a more irony-laden illustration of the weaponising of “antisemitism” to shield Israel from scrutiny than German authorities feeling empowered to shut down Jewish self-expression. This is the background for the compilation Dedicated To Palestine from Berlin-based Stray Signals, which donates all revenue to two German-based NGOs, Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost (Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East) and Palästina Kampagne. Among the artists featured are Emanuele Porcinai’s WSR and his sister Elisabetta’s EPRC, Planet µ artist Herva, Berlin-based Lebanese musician & DJ Jessika Khazrik and many others. It’s a varied collection of electronic and electroacoustic work from across the Berlin scene. A revelation is Andrea Belfi‘s cover of “Dondestan”, a beautiful fable of Palestine from 1991 by the committed leftist and (like Belfi) drummer Robert Wyatt, rich with instrumentation in support of Belfi’s fragile, rarely-heard vocals.

Snakeskin – Waiting [Mais Um/Bandcamp/Ruptured/Bandcamp]
The situation in Lebanon – indeed Beirut – became horrifying as Israel extended the devastation, seemingly unchecked, into the heart of its neighbour. Of course this is by far not the first time Israel has invaded Lebanon, but it does seem like the deadliest – ceasefire notwithstanding – treating towns, neighbourhoods, buildings with the same disregard for civilian lives as in Gaza. So for Beirut natives Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal (co-founder with Ziad Nawfal of Ruptured Records), releasing an album during this onslaught was truly disorienting and bittersweet. The two were in fact in Europe at the time, but were also supporting a fundraiser via Tabbal’s Tunefork Studios along with Beirut Synthesizer Centre to help displaced families in Lebanon. A little later on this turned into an extraordinary compilation called Land 01 which I featured recently, and recommend highly.
In any case, Snakeskin’s second album They Kept Our Photographs is co-released by the wonderful Beirut/Montréal label Ruptured and the London-based Mais Um. Their debut was one of my favourite albums of 2022, its title now naming the duo. Both albums combine the vocals of Sabra – who is also lead singer of Beirut dreampop/shoegaze band Postcards – with guitars and other instruments performed by both, radically processed and produced by Tabbal. Guitar chords stutter and loop, drums are cut up, while at other times Sabra’s voice floats in uneasily sparse soundscapes. This is deeply emotive music – not surprisingly, as the writing for the album began on October 6th, so it’s been indelibly stained by the genocide in Gaza. Cannot recommend this work highly enough.

Mayssa Jallad & Fadi Tabbal – Ad-Douar [Heartists for Palestine]
Counting the strips of light is the second compilation put together by the Paris-based Heartists for Palestine. The beneficiary for both of their compilations is Palestinian Medical Relief Society, and the musical focus is mostly indie singer-songwriter but with some interesting/inspiring inclusions – John Parish, who has worked consistently with PJ Harvey and others; Kate Stables of This Is The Kit doing a lovely Ben Folds cover; Adrian Crowley; and Aidan Baker of Nadja with Frédéric D. Oberland of Oiseaux Tempête and Saåad; and more! Lebanese singer Mayssa Jallad, who put out one of the best albums of last year, works again with Fadi Tabbal of Snakeskin on an incredible piece of experimental song. It turns out their piece is a Frankensteinian creation in which Jallad added vocals to a piece of Tabbal’s from his recent album I recognize you from my sketches. Jallad’s lyric (the title means “dizziness” in Arabic) follows a woman suffering from loss and displacement, inspired by the work of Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah and photojournalist Belal Khaled in Gaza. More details about the song can be found here.

Abdullah Miniawy – Fall down wiseman يسقط الرأي الحكيم (Awrah) ﴾عورة﴿ [Hundebiss/Bandcamp]
Carl Gari & Abdullah Miniawy – Oktof أقْطُف[Amphibian Records]
ZULI – Plateau (Reprise) ft. Abdullah Miniawy [Subtext Recordings/Bandcamp]
Egyptian vocalist, poet, trumpeter and producer Abdullah Miniawy has been responsible for a remarkable range of music for some years: the kraut-dub of his work with German trio Carl Gari; the mutant bass music with trumpet & vocals with French producer Simo Cell; the cross-cultural experimental work with Copenhagen-based DJ Hvad; and the brilliant sax-trumpet-cello jazz with Miniawy’s spoken & sung poetry in Le Cri Du Caire. The November-released NigmaEnigma أ​ن​ي​ج​م ا​ل​ن​َ​ج​م is an entirely solo affair: other than some electronic experiments and poetry self-released a while ago, this is Miniawy’s first solo album. It’s very much centred around his voice, often singing melodies bare of any musical accompaniment – with field recordings, amelodic electronic textures and vocal processing. Some tracks are made of murmered spoken word with fragments of melody; at other times there are rhythmic proto-industrial scrapes and clunks. This is very avant-garde stuff, but also deeply moving, even for those of us who don’t understand Arabic.
With Carl Gari, there’s a distinct dub/bass music influence too, with a certain freeness that comes from live performers. Shoot The Engine ا​ق​ت​ُ​ل​ْ ا​ل​د​ا​ف​ع is the first full album (released on luscious CD, if you can afford the postage!) from Prague label Amphibian Records, and it’s a richly rewarding listen.
Now resident in Berlin, the brilliant Egyptian beatmaker and electronic producer ZULI has released his first album on Berlin-based (originally Bristol) Subtext Recordings. Lambda takes ZULI the furthest away from the dancefloor than ever, with few beats through its 13 tracks – but the sound design is still drawing from bass music and “deconstructed club” as much as industrial and ambient. The album had a long gestation, conceived in Cairo in 2020, and completed in Berlin in July 2023. I’m fairly sure that his live sets in Australia earlier this year would have included music from this. There’s also a lot of mutated pop – including contributions from MICHAELBRAILEY and Coby Sey, but also processed and destroyed vocals of unknown origins – granular effects are used throughout. And one of the most touching pieces (along with its reprise) featured Abdullah Miniawy.

Lord Spikeheart – REM FODDER ft. James Ginzburg, Koenraad Ecker [HAEKALU]
Back in 2020 Nyege Nyege Tapes unleashed the intensity that was the self-titled album by Kenyan noise metal/grindcore-infused duo Duma. In April, Duma’s incendiary singer Lord Spikeheart launched his HAEKALU label with The Adept, with a full house of experimental producers and collaborators throughout. “REM FODDER” brings both James Ginzburg of Subtext Recordings & emptyset and Koenraad Ecker of Lumisokea & Stray Dogs, with jackhammering beats, heavy bass and Spikeheart’s voice fed through reverberating delays. Intense as fuck.

Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja [Nuclear Blast/Bandcamp]
It’s good to finally play this brilliant Finnish heavy metal band on the show. Oranssi Pazuzu started off as ostensibly black metal, but each album has been an evolution, with synths becoming more prevalent early on, psychedelic influences and synth-ambient often taking over altogether. On Muuntautuja the band takes on an even more electronic approach, with sub-bass kicks driving the title track, and a loping trip-hop beat on “Hautatuuli”. The band namecheck Death Grips and Portishead as well as Boredoms, whose heavy punk beginnings morphed into electronic and percussive experimentalism. And yes, you can hear something of the hammering beats of Portishead’s aptly-named “Machine Gun” for sure. I can’t tell you what any of this is about, but as music qua music, love it!

Teether – Chrysalis (ft. Stoneset) [CONTENT.NET.AU/Bandcamp]
Early last year Melbourne underground rapper Teether released an incredible album through Chapter Music with producer Kuya Neil. But with It Must Be Strange to Not Have Lived, released on Kuya Neil (Neil Cabatingan)’s CONTENT.NET.AU, Teether returns to self-production, comfortably sauntering through indie r’n’b, sample-based downtempo beats and nods to jungle (featuring Stoneset), postpunk (working with Nerdie) and more. It’s all gold, all adorned with Teether’s effortlessly laconic flow.

bani haykal – SAVE YOUR SPIT FOR THE GRAVE OF YOUR CONSCIENCE [bani haykal Bandcamp]
ANONYMOUS CURSES from Singaporean musician/artist/writer bani haykal is full of eerie, distorted, glitched electronics, crushed percussion, distorted drum machines, and also incisive words, spoken, whispered, growled: whatever it takes. The EP is dedicated to a truth-speaking or prayer/curse-casting against those creating a world of destruction, through colonialism, extractivism, occupation and apartheid. He also links to Gaza Funds, a source for campaigns helping families evacuate to safety. Like a South-East Asian Saul Williams with contemporary electronics, spitting wisdom over technology.

E L U C I D – IKEBANA [Fat Possum Records/Bandcamp]
While we tend to hear more from his Armand Hammer partner billy woods, E L U C I D is just as distinctive a rapper, and a weird & creative producer himself. His latest album REVELATOR is his best yet, with incisive lyrics about this current era, and dense, uncompromising music. “BAD POLLEN” is produced by the brilliant Saint Abdullah, with desolate lyrics and a verse from woods. “IKEBANA” is co-produced by Elucid with Jon Nellen, juxtaposing artful Japanese flower arranging with… I think, feeling out of place or out of step in a complicated world. Intense stuff.

BEANS – ZWAARD 7 [BEANS Bandcamp]
An editorial in The Wire this year waxed lyrical about how forward-thinking Antipop Consortium were in the late ’90s & early ’00s, and I do kind of agree – their mix of IDM and glitch with avant-garde lyricism while staying true to hip-hop was pretty groundbreaking, although I always found their releases kind of hit & miss, and they didn’t touch me, somehow. After a long silence, the band is getting back together, which is good news – although when I say silence, that’s only as a collective (er, consortium). High Priest of Antipop has been active with experimental sound and melding jazz with electronica as Hprizm, and BEANS, BEANS just does not stop, and dude is dedicated to abstract raps with experimental electronics. In March 2017 he released three albums all at once (see the bottom three albums on his Bandcamp music page), and there’s been at least one album a year since then – I recall Nibiru Tut being rad too. Well, BEANS is a good enough reason to check out ZWAARD, his latest album, but there’s another hook: the whole thing is produced by Sasu Ripatti aka Vladislav Delay. Crazier still: Mr Delay sent BEANS a bunch of sample tracks to start a collab, material from about 10 years ago, and BEANS insisted on making his tracks directly from those demos – only a little tweaking from Vlad. If we go looking, we’ll see that 2013-2014 was when a series of phenomenal tricksy dance EPs came out under his surname Ripatti – they’re there on his Bandcamp, Ripatti01 to Ripatti07, footwork/idm hybrids that were the precursors of the recent Dancefloor Classics EPs. So honestly they sound up-to-the-minute, and a perfect sound base for BEANS to riff on. Ridiculously great stuff.

Julián Mayorga – No te comas las blaquísimas mofetas [Glitterbeat/Bandcamp]
Sometimes you just come across something so insane and new that it’s somehow recognizable, as if it somehow had to exist. Hamburg-based label Glitterbeat has form, finding fantastic music from across the globe – but that said, Julián Mayorga is pretty famous in Colombia, for his surreal, madcap humour & satire as much as for his madcap music. Attempting to translate the song titles does mostly result in contextless nonsense-poetry, which is kind of fun, but it’s the music that draws you in – mutated, updated cumbia and other Latin American styles, sharpened with the vinegar of discordant harmonies, sprinkled with weird electronics, delivered into your head with Mayorga’s flamboyant vocal style. And just incredibly fun.

Mabe Fratti – Enfrente [Unheard of Hope/Bandcamp]
The latest album from Mexcio-based Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti may be her most accessible yet, although it’s still highly adventurous. It’s co-produced by Hector Tosta aka i.la católica, whose duo with Mabe Fratti, Titanic, released their album Vidrio last year. Some of that album’s chamber jazz sound finds its way into Sentir que no sabes, but there are also snatches of trip-hop and rock here as well as electronic manipulation. But Fratti’s centring of the cello as well as her soft voice keep the music as sui generis as ever.

9T Antiope – Ready Player One [American Dreams/Bandcamp]
Listeners of this show know I’ve been a fan of 9T Antiope for a long time. The duo of Sara Shamloo and Nima Aghiani are Paris-based Iranians, who also record as Taraamoon, in which Shamloo sings in Farsi – but for the more experimental 9T Antiope her songs are predominantly in English. Nima Aghiani’s violin is a frequent presence alongside electronic noisemakers, but Shamloo’s lush voice is often juxtaposed against harsh sounds, throbbing drones, digital glitches. Their new album Horror Vacui, out now through the excellent American Dreams (incidentally now based in Paris like 9T Antiope), is possibly their most accessble yet, though no less experimental for that. The “horror vacui” of the title is the fear of empty spaces, but also refers to the spaces in between – the in-betweenness of being expatriates from your country, neither here nor there. These fears, and the void itself, are welcomed in by Shamloo’s voice and Aghiani’s often rhythmic, looped violin, octave violin and octave mandolin. The crunchy string loops and warm vocals dispell any looming emptiness.

ROMÆO – Worlds [ROMÆO Bandcamp]
Young Eora/Sydney artist ROMÆO combines electronic experimentalism with a fine ear for pop songwriting. Her new song “Worlds” laments a world in which every person is isolated from every other – an acknowledges that her own world is not the whole world. The song moves from indie guitars to electronic pop replete with saxophone, and climaxes with hammering kick drums.

Marla Hansen – Chains [Karaoke Kalk/Bandcamp]
American violist/violinist Marla Hansen has played with Sufjan Stevens, My Brightest Diamond and others in the indie world over many years, and that hasn’t stopped since she’s been based in Berlin. In 2007-8 I played her debut EP Wedding Day quite a lot, a collection of indie/folk songs based around her viola and voice. Her last album Dust came out on the Cologne label Karaoke Kalk in 2020, an album of full band and electronics alongside her string arrangements, with musicians sourced from the Berlin scene. Salt came out from the same label in March, produced by Berlin-based English violinist Simon Goff, featuring string and brass arrangements along with electronics. First single “Chains” is just a beautiful song, a yearning melody with electronic pop backing that folds down to simple strings.

Happy Axe x Butternut Sweetheart – Curious [Provenance/Bandcamp]
The Provenance label/collective has slowed their releases these days, but still put together the always-excellent compilations. The latest was Marks of Provenance VII, out in March with many Prov artists including ROMÆO, Aphir, Arrom, Shoeb Ahmad and more. Happy Axe aka Emma Kelly has been collaborating with Butternut Sweetheart for a while, and this is a classic gorgeous song with her voice & violin along with piano and lovely production.

toechter – me she said [Morr Music/Bandcamp]
So how does a trio of string players end up being released on the Morr Music label? The three members of German trio toechter, Marie-Claire Schlameus, Lisa Marie Vogel, Katrine Grarup Elbo play cello and violin, and classical composition filters through their self-composed works, but they also use their instruments to create percussive sounds and process them in other ways, and the musicians’ voices join these acoustic & electronic elements so that what we hear is a seamless blend of songwriting and composition with electronics. In the early days of Utility Fog, Morr Music was home to various Notwist side-projects (Lali Puna, Ms John Soda etc) as well as acts like Styrofoam who feel awkwardly under the umbrella of “indietronica”. Here, another generation takes those tropes and somehow reconstructs the sounds purely on strings. It’s a thing of beauty.

Hochzeitskapelle – We Dance feat. Enid Valu [Alien Transistor/Bandcamp]
We have the brothers Acher from The Notwist to thank for bringing us this understated EP from Munich acoustic/folk (wait, “rumplejazz”) ensemble Hochzeitskapelle through their Alien Transistor label. Made up of viola, banjo, tuba, trumpet, trombone, drums, and perhaps other acoustic instruments at times, they have a ruffled, ramshackle sound that instantly lends the music a kind of “authenticity”. On two of the four tracks here they’re joined by Enid Valu, who is a filmmaker and photographer, usually documenting rather than performing, and her relatively unschooled voice is beautifully touching. Oh and this is a covers EP – indie heroes Pavement, Yo La Tengo and Low, plus German pop-rock band Wir Sind Helden. Initially Low’s “Silver Rider” seems a little too bare-bones, with the melody carried on banjo, but at the chorus the trombone takes over, gloriously. This is really special stuff. Tonight I played the cover of Pavement’s “We Dance” (the opener of Wowee Zowee), already a languid song from the quintessential slacker band, which effortlessly translates into the band’s acoustic world.

Wendy Eisenberg – In the Pines [American Dreams Records/Bandcamp]
And we finish with the avant-garde songwriting and contemporary jazz of Wendy Eisenberg, a talented and unique guitarist working in the jazz & improv worlds, with solo albums of aleatoric improv and extended techniques a la Derek Bailey, but also songwriterly albums of spiky, lo-fi songs the closest comparison to which I can find is London-based American musician Ashley Paul. Eisenberg’s latest album Viewfinder is released by the impeccable American Dreams Records, and is one of the songwriterly albums, but brings in more musicians so Eisenberg can expand their arrangements with bass, drums, horns, piano and electronics on various tracks – and some of those tracks are very long! The middle pair of tracks are 22 minutes and 12 minutes long, ranging from fully composed to improv sections. The album arose from Eisenberg’s experience with laser eye surgery, the disorientation that comes with seeing the world with new clarity, and the questions that remain about the ways that seeing imposes the see-er’s assumptions upon the visual world. Hence “Viewfinder”, the title track of which appears as a sparse 4-minute work for voice and solo trumpet (“Viewfinder (Intro)”), and then a 4 minutes of grinding distorted guitar interleaved with that avant-garde trumpet, percussion and bass, with Eisenberg’s vocal melodies not quite sitting in key with the rest.
But the best is saved for last, after all this chaos… For over two minutes, “In the Pines” begins with the soft, warm plucked double bass of Tyrone Allen II, before falling into a slow waltz-time jazz-blues, with Eisenberg’s two-note guitar chords, and Booker Stardrum’s brushed snare all that accompanies Eisenberg’s heart-pulling vocal melody. And then the second verse adds Andrew Links’ piano, a gorgeous moment that opens the song up while keeping the Andante tempo and the general sparseness. And then on into a completely restrained trombone solo from Zekereyya el-Magharbel. “In the Pines” is, I think, my song of the year – I’ve listened to it obsessively and my mind returns to it often. Pure poise and gentle bittersweetness. “God what a lonely / lonely point of view… Can you be / can you be / can you just be?”

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