Best Albums of June 2024 | Sun NeverSetsOnMusic
uNomkhubulwane
NDUDUZO MAKHATHINI
Released 7 June 2024
Blue Note Records
*****
South African pianist, composer, healer, and philosopher Nduduzo Makhathini's third Blue Note album uNomkhubulwane is a transcendent three-movement suite which pays homage to the Zulu Goddess uNomkhubulwane and explores Africa’s tragic history of oppression and features Makhathini’s trio, with bassist Zwelakhe-Duma Bell le Pere and drummer Francisco Mela.
Since making his international debut for Blue Note in 2020 with Modes of Communication: Letters From the Underworlds, and his 2022 master work In The Spirit Of Ntu, Makhathini has earned widespread acclaim for the genuinely spiritual transcendence of his music. For Makhathini, a Zulu healer and educator who has delved deeply into the histories and traditions of his ancestors, improvised music has never been merely about aesthetics or idioms. As the New York Times put it when naming Modes of Communication one of the Best Jazz Albums of 2020: “In a moment when spiritual jazz has become a dangerously buzzy concept, trust a musician who has truly devoted his life to As always, Makhathini’s message is ultimately one of perpetual optimism for his people, and for all people. “Essentially, this offering is an invitation to humanity to cultivate ways of being that yearn for freedom and balance,” he says. “Here I invite you to a new mode of humanism that is oriented towards singing the songs of uNomkhubulwane.”
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Read more ... BlueNote
Night Reign
AROOJ AFTAB
Released 31 May 2024
Verve Records
*****
On this, the Pakistani-American singer, composer, and producer's fifth studio album, the music holds visual context, a cinematic soundscape that brings life to the divinely ominous space we call the dark.
Some songs can only be heard at night - lunar lyrics for evening ears. It’s the songs of the night that stand us tall in the day, eyes filled with the work of stars. What voices will we take into our liminal slumber? What patterns and pieces will break open the night mind’s path?
Arooj Aftab answers these questions through, Night Reign. Within the realm of darkness, Night Reign points to layers of depth that blend each song into a narrative of uplifting surrender.
Night Reign is an act of tender defiance. Protest and prayer. It’s not geographical affiliations or the details of her birth certificate that awakens Arooj’s listeners. It’s her refusal to adhere to the limitations of race, borders, and gender, though her work is intricately tied to these malleable ideas.
Night Reign is an invitation or a call to action. This album permits us to give into the night because, in the night, we come into form, into the messiness of our whole beings.
Read more ... Verve Records
A Sorcerer or a Madman (EP)
ABDULLAH MINIAWY,
BAPTISTE-FLORIAN MARLE-OUVRARD, GUILLAUME HUMERY, YOM
Released 28 June 2024
Planetes Rouges / Phosphoric Passport
*****
This trio produces another astonishing work in which Miniaway's Arabic poetry, BFMO's pipe organ and Yom's clarinet are each given equal voice to soars free in majestic harmony.
Abdullah Miniawy born 1984 is an Egyptian expressionist poet, songwriter, musician, actor and activist who since 2019 has produced an extraordinary output of collaborative works, often with German trio Carl Gari (made up of musicians Jonas Yamer, Till Funke and Jonas Friedlich). The most recent release from this pairing was the acclaimed "Shoot the Engine", released only last month.
Now, for the evocatively titled "A Sorcerer or a Madman", Miniawy collaborates with French pipe-organist BFMO (Baptiste-Florian Marle-Ouvrard, the resident organist of the great organ of the church of St Eustache in Paris and the St Vincent-de-Paul church in Clichy-la-Garenne) and French clarinetist Yom (birth name Guillaume Humery).
No more information was available at the time of compiling this page.
Read more ... Abdullah Miniawy
Love Changes Everything
THE DIRTY THREE
Released 28 June 2024
Anchor & Hope
*****
To describe them is indescribable, but at a stretch, I’d call them post-punk-jazz. Music made with subtlety, freedom and empathy, that rides on waves, that narrates without the need for lyrics. There is a vibe…
Love Changes Everything comes 30 years after the trio's - violinist & pianist Warren Ellis, drummer Jim White and guitarist Mick Turner - self-titled (official) debut, though they weren’t harbouring hangovers this time around and they took more than a day and a half to create it, 5 in fact plus a year to mix it in Melbourne with Nick Huggins who had worked with the band previously.
All the compositions carry the album’s title, except the following numeral I-Vi, and as one would expect not a word is uttered.
So of course the question is how does Love Changes Everything sound… It sounds free, free for the three members of The Dirty Three to create without boundaries. There is a freshness that 12 years apart brings, Love Changes Everything harks back to discovering the band for the first time. That maniacal response to being able to listen to Jazz, but Jazz played by punk rockers and rastas has returned.
Read more ... 13th Floor NZ
Love Heart Cheat Code
HIATUS KAIYOTE
Released 28 June 2024
Brainfeeder
*****
For its high number of pleasurable components and intricacies, Stevie Wonder-worthy changes in key and tempo, and philosophical goodwill, "Make Friends" is the band's new creative apex. Palm's morphing into a one-woman Wonderlove seals it at the end.
Early into it, Love Heart Cheat Code seems to have the makings of the first concept album by Australia's premier hardcore avant-soul/jazz/funk/hip-hop band.
(The album-opening) "Dreamboat" enables dynamic-as-ever singer/guitarist Nai Palm and the preternatural rhythm section of Perrin Moss, Paul Bender, and Simon Mavin to travel the spaceways.
It leads to "Telescope," a glimmering groove of interstellar wonderment where everything apart from an interpolation of the Temptations' "My Girl" seems otherworldly. The following "Make Friends," however, departs from any perceptible sci-fi narrative with Palm praising a he, a she, and a they for being down-to-earth companions.
"Everything's Beautiful" is one of several songs that both references the sun and incorporates flute and harp, and on the lysergic Dilla-fied funk of "Dimitri," though that could be set in the Land of Oz.
Surprises and oddities flourish - "Cinnamon Temple," is a spasmodic eruption of technical life metal and "Longcat" pays swirling tribute to the Japanese feline whose figure became an Internet meme.
The band finishes off the album with a raucous remake of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" that shoves the acid rock classic in front of a fun house mirror. Increased chaos and whimsy only heighten Hiatus Kaiyote's ability to enchant and exhilarate.
Read more ... AllMusic
Alibai
EMMA VOLARD
Released 14 June 2024
The Operatives Records
*****
Alibi sees Emma stepping confidently into their own sonic world, expanding further on their introspective storytelling and pushing the limits of the future soul sound.
Emma Volard is one of Narrm’s | Melbourne's most enigmatic and staunchly authentic acts. Her music is entrenched in lavish harmonies, broken-beats and gut-wrenching lyricism, and has garnered attention from national and international tastemakers alike.
After the avalanche success of their debut album ‘Deity’ in 2022, future soul artist Emma Volard's sophomore album ‘Alibi.’ represents years spent honing a signature sound that encapsulates Naarm | Melbourne’s experimental neo-soul and jazz scene.
Emma has never shied away from being a warrior for inclusivity, and these themes are often at the forefront of their storytelling. This has placed them as a leader within the Naarm music community, and turned the heads of industry heavyweights such as Gilles Peterson, Jamz Supernova, Thundercat, Cory Henry and Zan Rowe.
Read more ... Bandcamp
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Umoja (Joaquin Joe Claussell Sacred Rhythm Music & Cosmic Arts Remixes)
NICOLA CONTE, JOAQUIN "JOE" CLAUSSELL
Released 28 June 2024
Far Out Recordings
****-
Claussell's collaboration with Nicola Conte and Far Out Recordings helps mark the label’s 30th anniversary, as Claussell joins fellow producers such as Theo Parrish, Ron Trent, Kenny Dope and 4hero in remixing music from the label’s catalogue.
Nicola Conte is an Italian spiritual jazz master, DJ, producer, guitarist, and bandleader. He has released on Blue Note, Impulse!, Far Out Recordings and Schema. Since founding the Bari-based bohemian cultural movement and club night Fez at the dawn of the nineties, Conte has proven to be a pillar of the contemporary, intern/
Joasquuin "Joe" Claussell is an American electronic dance producer, remixer, label-head and record shop owner from New York city.
Extending the tracks from Umoja for full length, dance-floor focused mixes, Claussell has accentuated the original music’s global, afro-futurist vision with comprehensive rearrangements - featuring additional percussion, guitars, keyboards, synthesizers and drum programming - excavating the source music and re-recording many of its parts under the auspices of his Sacred Music & Cosmic Arts banner.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Sentir Que No Sabes
MABE FRATTI
Released 28 June 2024
Unheard of Hope
*****
Guatemalan cellist and vocalist Mabe Fratti seems most interested in using her avant garde background as source material to make pop that’s completely devoid of cliches. Her songs are abundantly melodic and her melodies surprise without jarring. They travel smoothly in unexpected directions
Even after scanning Fratti’s inspirations, you struggle to come up with anything to pin her music to.
Talk Talk circa Laughing Stock? Only in so far as the brass arrangements, the work of Tosta, lean more towards jazz than rock or pop. Cult French post-punk artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux? There’s certainly a disjointed funk feel to some of the rhythms, but you wouldn’t have volunteered her name without Fratti’s own prompting.
The opening track seems to be named after Lenny Kravitz and features a distorted funk-rock bassline, but there the similarity seems to end. Under the circumstances, you might as well )chuck avante garde cellist, the late Arthur) Russell’s name into the ring: at least they share an instrument and a delightfully off-message approach to songwriting.
The latter aspect of what Fratti does feels important. It’s easy to read her press, conclude that she deals in austere experimentation and abstraction and decide on that basis whether her music is for you or not: phrases such as “electro-acoustic improv”, “collaboration with celebrated noise artist” and “experimental jazz” abound. There are scattered interludes when Sentir Que No Sabes sounds like what the advance publicity might lead you to expect, although the improvisation feels full-blooded and emotionally driven rather than an intellectual exercise. The drones of Elastica I give the impression that her cello is being heavily amplified, that she’s playing sparsely but at immense volume so that every movement of the strings is attended by squeals of feedback – with shades of John Cale’s treatment of his viola in the Velvet Underground.
Read more ... The Guardian
Rectangles and Circumstance
CAROLINE SHAW, SŌ PERCUSSION
Released 14 June 2024
Nonesuch Records
****-
Composer and vocalist Caroline Shaw’s second album with the four multi-instrumentalists of Sō Percussion is a true collaboration, with writing and performing duties shared between all five musicians. There’s a gleefully eclectic range of sources and influences woven into the sequence of 10 songs.
Caroline Shaw is a musician who moves among roles, genres, and mediums, trying to imagine a world of sound that has never been heard before but has always existed. She works often in collaboration with others, as producer, composer, violinist, and vocalist. Caroline is the recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Music, several Grammy awards, an honorary doctorate from Yale, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.
For almost two decades through its sensational interpretations of modern classics, innovative multi-genre original productions, and “exhilarating blend of precision and anarchy, rigor and bedlam, Sō Percussion has redefined the scope and role of the modern percussion ensemble, placing it at the leading edge of 21st-century music.” (The New Yorker).
"Rectangles and Circumstance" follows Cartoline Shaw / Sō Percussion's Grammy-winning Nonesuch debut, Narrow Sea, and their first record as a band, 2021’s Let the Soil Play Its Part, with Shaw on vocals backed by Sō (Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting).
Sliwinski says in the new album’s liner notes, “Most of the songs started with instrumental pieces or fragments of pieces from Jason or Eric. As both a songwriter and a classical composer, Caroline is accustomed to writing lyrics as well as setting them. Going over texts with her is like working on music: I collect a handful of poems and send them over to her, waiting to see if anything catches her interest, then I modify my search based on her feedback. For this album, Caroline, Eric, and I sourced a group of nineteenth-century poems that shaped its expressive mode [and] ended up using verses by Christina Rosetti, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and William Blake … The lyrics on this album by members of the band contain wordplay that explores the same profound feelings explored by Blake and Dickinson.”
Read more ... Caroline Shaw, Bandcamp, The Guardian
Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan
ZARA MCFARLANE
Released 14 June 2024
Eternal Source Of Light
****-
Multi-award-winning singer-songwriter and leading UK jazz vocalist Zara McFarlane honours the jazz great who inspired her on her own artistic journey and whose centenary year is marked in 2024.
‘Sweet Whispers’ is more than a run-through of some of Vaughan’s most popular songs. It’s not hard to imagine the immense task in selecting those songs, after all, Vaughan’s recording career spanned 50 years notching up almost 60 albums (plus nearly 30 again in compilations and box sets). Through a thoughtfully chosen selection of songs, formed across months in collaboration with producer, and the album’s clarinettist and saxman, Giacomo Smith – Zara journeys through the musical life of Sarah Vaughan, from her first to last recording, bringing to life and breathing new life into some of her best and less familiar songs. But importantly, the songs that mean the most to Zara.
Read more ... Bandcamp
Time and Again
ELIANE ELIAS
Released 26 June 2024
Candid Records
*****
Eliane Elias once again demonstrates her artistic ingenuity and ability to surprise listeners with her creative prowess. Her alluring vocals, masterful musicianship, and songwriting skills cement her status as the reigning queen of Brazilian jazz, delivering a landmark recording that affirms the beauty of life and invites listeners to experience her brilliant musical journey time and again.
Eliane Elias, the internationally renowned Brazilian jazz pianist, singer, composer and arranger Eliane