With the release of Columbia Deluxe fast approaching, Fuubutsushi are back with ‘Light In The Annex’, a song with something of an unorthodox origin story for the outfit. “This was a really fun and rare opportunity for us to play a song live before releasing a recording of said song,” the band explain. “We were just starting to put together ideas for some of the songs that would become [2024 full-length] Meridians and ‘Light in the Annex’ was an early contender.” Not that the live version lines up with what would eventually be recorded, with the nature of the live performance and moreover the spirit of Fuubutsushi project meaning that nothing is ever static or set in stone. “This version feels a little more wily compared to the studio/album version,” as they continue. “We find some pockets to push moments of disorder or tension/release pretty far, which was certainly part of the experience for everyone… anticipation and tension and wonder and relief and joy all mixed up together.”

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This May, Joy Guidry returns with AMEN, a brand new full-length album which represents both a continuation of these prior themes and an evolution of their sound. Again released via Whited Sepulchre, the record boasts the newly prominent influence of gospel and spiritual jazz, though the affirming release of such styles is balanced the ambient calm introduced on ‘Almost There’. Described as “a hug to their younger self,” first single ‘Day By Day’ tends towards the latter end of the spectrum, with Guidry conjuring a fluid soundscape with their bassoon, while Scott Li’s keys trace curious routes upon its currents.

If ‘Day By Day’ is a reflective segue, then latest single ‘Members Don’t Get Weary’ offers the full dynamic picture of the record’s visionary sound. It’s a tribute to Max Roach which collides jazz and church music into something devotional. Jillian Grace and Ekep Nkwelle lend their vocals and the talents of Morgan Guerin, Tyrone Allen, Kalia Vandever, Jon Thomas and Jessie Cox all support Guidry’s bassoon, though there is the persistent sense that the true number of collaborators is far greater. The song lifted upon the energies of those who came before. “In AMEN there is a lot experimentation with different forms of Black American music,” Guidry explains. “I wanted to lean heavily on my Texas, Louisiana and Creole roots in this project. There were many days spent with my ancestors during the writing of this album and I’m eternally grateful for the music they sang to me during our time together.”

The result is at once communal and singular. Joy Guidry as realised in their most complete form to date. “I hear other artists say, ‘I put my life and soul into this.’ And I could never relate because I have never been in an emotional place where I can just let go and not be afraid of vulnerability,” as Guidry continues. “But now, I’ve finally made a project that resonates with me so deeply from beginning to end. I’m so happy where I am in life, and “Amen” truly represents that there was no bullshit as I went into this.”

AMEN is out on the 10th May via Whited Sepulchre Records and you can pre-order it now.

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Ernst and Laurenzi are no strangers to collaboration. Aside from being partners, the pair have long worked together as part of jazz outfit Twin Talk, a project which wears its intimacy in its very name. But Edith Judith served as a vehicle for different sensibilities, the conditions under which it was formed fostering new methods and lines of inquiry. “This was a new frontier,” Ernst says. “We gave ourselves time, we weren’t in a rush, because there was nothing to rush for. So we both had our own time to do our own thing without any compromises or restraints. I trusted that he wasn’t going to add 400 clarinets just for kicks. Everything we added felt important. There was a certain discipline to it.”

This discipline presents itself within the very sound of the songs. A departure from the sprawling improvisation of Twin Talk, Bones and Structure offers an altogether more concise, pop-orientated style, even if its origins started in freewheeling experimentation. Laurenzi would play with various instruments, creating soundscapes which Ernst could study, mould and curate. “We had a very specific routine,” he explains. “I would record something, then I’d pass it along to Katie and she’d make a melody and write lyrics. Then we’d build from that. It was very structured, which makes sense in all that chaos.”

The pair sent some of the resulting tracks to drummer and producer Ben Lumsdaine (Snaarj), and the percussion he added pushed the songs in yet another direction. “What Ben sent back to us was very different from what we expected,” Ernst says. “The songs had more bite, a little more edginess alongside the softness of the original recordings. You could tell he put the same kind of neurotic care into them that we did.” What resulted was a method at once exploratory and mechanical. A process through which the songs passed, changed at each stage as they were gradually hammered into their final form, unbeholden to preconception or expectation as to what that form might be. “We didn’t go into this looking for answers or trying to be sure about anything,” Edith Judith say. “These are love songs and question songs, hopeful songs and sad songs. They’re poems of uncertainty.”

What began as an outlet during the uncertain present of the pandemic became something precious. A way to work through ambiguity without any of the friction or tension that comes with a desired resolution. That Edith Judith takes its name from the couple’s three-legged dog (“a character of great resilience in our lives,” as Ernst says), is telling. Speaking not only to a sense of perseverance in the face of suffering, and making the best of whatever circumstances are dealt, but also the small intimacies that make such survival possible, even beautiful. For the collaboration of the record is built upon intimacy and trust, and through its practise serves to reinforce such virtues. An act of self-perpetuating closeness. Bones and Structure is therefore not so much a record of uncertain times but a lesson in mutuality. A well both to fill and draw from as any one moment dictates. “Bones and structure, two are one,” Ernst sings in opener ‘Carry’, a song about inheritance that could be applied to the songs themselves:

They carry me, I carry them with me
I carry them on
To carry me on, they carry me,
I carry things that will outlast me

We have the honour of sharing Bones and Structure a few days early, so grab you headphones and stream the album in its entirety below:

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Résonances manifestes, the latest Devenir-ensemble release on Cuchabata Records, highlights just how evocative and ambitious this style can be. A ‘comprovised’ piece, it is based around field recordings from a variety of protests and demonstrations on the streets on Montreal across recent years, the crowd sounds followed and elevated by jazz and ambient styles. Gendron-Blais (baritone electric guitar) is joined by Andrea Prochazka Mercier (saxophone), David Dugas Dion (drums), Elyze Venne-Deshaies (clarinet), Joel Gorrie (cello), Joel E. Mason (bass guitar), Marilène Provencher-Leduc (transverse flute), Mélanie Cullin (accordion), Paul Zakarivan (electric guitar) and Philippe Blouin (electric guitar), a group varied and plastic enough to express the gamut of emotions and energies recorded on the ground.

Take the difference between the urgent opening of ‘Mouvement 2 – Effet de masse’ with the sense of latent movement captured on ‘Mouvement 4 – Imminence de l’affrontement’. Different events have different tonalities, and even within a gathering the tone changes as it swells and recedes. The disorientating chaos of ‘Mouvement 5 – Heurts’ can not last for ever, even the most fervent scenes unwinding into the sweeping quiet of ‘Mouvement 9 – Retour à la normale’. And likewise the bubbling anticipation seen on ‘Mouvement 3 – Échos des clameurs’ is inherently transient, like the strange moments at a show before the band have taken to the stage, where individual voices can still be heard above the general murmur. Before each person is subsumed into the crowd.

Artwork by Marjolaine Lord

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Following 2020’s Music For 18 Vacuumers, Sheridan Riley has returned with Participant, a brand new EP out via Ruination Record Co. which continues to test the limits of their inventive style. A work solo in name but not in nature, with a wide array of musicians and artists lending their talents to provide Riley a rich source of material to draw from and arrange. Opener ‘Embody’ uses Wayne Horvitz’s piano, Neil Welch’s tenor sax and cello from Lori Goldston to build a detailed, nimble soundscape. An elaborate arrangement both anxious and hyperactive, like a sonic representation of a city’s perpetual movement, where a thousand mundane elements coalesce into something far beyond the sum of its parts. This is reinforced by the spoken word segments from Kam Wolf, Natasha El-Sergany, Sarah McCrorey, Ronan Delisle and Riley themselves, and captured in a video, directed, shot, and edited by media artist and experimental filmmaker Colby Richardson.

A sprawling contemplation of life and loss and time, ‘Glow’ sees piano and trombone spiral off from Riley’s percussive baseline, spoken word by Cassandra Jenkins, Ysa Díaz and Wyatt Thomas drifting in and out like some conversation at once wholly open and entirely mysterious. The song is again supported and furthered by a suitably evocative video, this time by V Haddad.

The portentous rumble hanging over ‘Try It’ offers an ominous air, the spoken word samples repeating haphazardly as though reality has come apart in some manner and things have turned strange. The mood points toward some chaotic climatic collapse, something which never arrives. The air clears for a while, a brighter violin section heralding a newfound clarity, even if the mood never quite straightens out. And it turns out the chaotic crescendo isn’t so much absent but delayed, with closer ‘It Did the Trick’ providing the harshest, most tumultuous arrangement on the record. The spoken samples retain their everyday quality, but the drums accelerate with a sense of building pressure, the entire EP channelled into a sharp point.

Participant is out now via Ruination Record Co. and you can get it from Bandcamp.

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With their roots in the spoken word, the projects revealed Cal Folger Day’s deep interest in language and its attached rhythms. Music not merely inspired by the nuance and elasticity of speech but born of them, the energy latent within the patterns and cadences manifest as sound. “I definitely have an obsessive capacity for verbal detail,” Day explains. “Ums, you knows, hahas, and all the fragments they weave around, which is simply like a dog I have to take on a walk.” Latest album Piece-dye centres on this fascination, with Day interviewing distant aunt Irene Nally about her life as an immigrant from Sligo living in post-war New York, then using Nally’s verbatim answers as the lyrics for the songs. “I just knew that I liked spending time with Irene and that it was compelling for me to turn her words over and over like a pebble,” Day continues. “At the end of the project I didn’t know anything more than that.”

This exploratory attitude informs the music itself too. With help from Phil Christie (keys, guitar, vocals), Daniel Fox (bass), Solamh Kelly (percussion) and Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh (viola), Cal Folger Day weaves what the album notes describe as a “musically omnivorous” sound, encompassing punk and country styles within the experimental and jazz-inflected whole. A sound which fluctuates from bombastic to contemplative and back again with each of the ‘Acts’, all according to whatever vibe or energy is seeded within Nally’s words at any given moment.

What emerges is a fascinating and often contradictory medium with which to explore an equally intricate subject. One capable of communicating a candid story of one woman’s life which nevertheless carries an abstract weight by the very nature of its form. A style of music, that is, able to drill through the layers of history, evoking narratives both personal and social as well as more theoretical or conceptual ideas around language and memory. Piece-dye is the story of Irene Nally, born in Ireland and living in New York, but also a story of women more generally. A story of corporate America, of immigrants, of any human who has ever spoken to another in the hope of preserving something about who they are and where they’ve been.

Lead single ‘Act 2’ serves as the perfect introduction to the project. A journey straddling pop and avant garde which negotiates the pitfalls of the time, guided by Day’s rendition of Nally’s frank and often genuinely funny narration. “I wasn’t even looking for a career,” she explains in the opening:

The career happened
And then I obviously found myself dealing with some of the
I mean it was Mad Men time
Eh so you eh you were dealing with a huge amount of sexism and whatnot
Ehm on this but because of my background
I was able to deal with it in my way
Now it wasn’t necessarily the right way
But I would say my line was I was brought up in a convent
You know I’d stonewall
You know I played the convent card til it was threadbare ha
And then I played the I am married card until it was threadbare

The track also comes with a video by the ‘mysterious Blob Galahad’, which you can check out below:

Piece-dye is out on the 3rd June and you can pre-order it now from the Cal Folger Day Bandcamp page.

Photo by Cameron Kelly

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kiddxdeep combines influences effortlessly, skittering beats and repeated piano lines and slow grooving guitar work. ‘Pt. 1’ opens like a beaten-up old jazz tape, all stumbling beats and periods of negative space, before hitting its stride and becoming full and all-enveloping. The middle track, titled ‘[ntrmish]_riding_switch’, is chill and laidback, which heralds the vibes on ‘Pt. 2’, which is almost hypnotic in its recurring beats and effortless rhythm.

While the demo works as easy-listening chillout material, don’t make the mistaking of thinking this is the pastel-hued paper-thin background music that clogs up your Youtube feed.  kiddxdeep also embeds the odd vocal sample, from the likes of Malcolm X, which serve as reminders that while its okay to use music to help you dissociate yourself from our social and political hellscape, it’s equally important to educate yourself too.

The release comes complete with a visual accompaniment by _GUD. Check it out below:

Stream Imperfections Suite over at the kiddxdeep Soundcloud page.

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The perfect title then for a new project Dawson was working on. The singer-songwriter of country rock band Dolly Varden, his background is very much based in Americana and soul, so his decision to turn to the Chicago jazz scene for new music appeared to be a left turn. Yet the collaboration, which came to be known as Funeral Bonsai Wedding, had the same inexplicable sense as the words in the florist’s window—seemingly random elements cohering into a natural whole.

After a self-titled debut in 2014, Steve Dawson and Funeral Bonsai Wedding are back with a brand new record, Last Flight Out. Again joined by Jason Adasiewicz (vibraphone), Charles Rumback (drums) and Jason Roebke (bass), as well as a cast of other musicians, Dawson flips conventions to hone his idiosyncratic vision. For if there is transcendence to be found in music, then it is not to be found in following the rules of rock music.

Adasiewicz converts the vibraphone into the lead instrument. Dawson’s vocals become chants and mantras. Roebke’s string arrangements lift the lyrics and breathe new significance into their flow. “Jason added to the meaning of the songs,” Dawson says. “I had been playing with him for many years, but it shows me he’s paying attention to the full songs—not just his part, but the whole picture.”

The idea of paying attention to full songs is key to Last Flight Out. Every element feels meticulously crafted yet ephemeral too, working in tandem as part of larger system that is itself has a fleeting quality. And this looseness lends a new freedom. “The songs go unexpected places,” Dawson says. “I let my imagination go where it will. I didn’t try to conform it to a traditional narrative.” The result is a sense that each song is no more or less than some wonderful happenstance, a gathering of small things that fit together perfectly, if only for a moment.

Last Flight Out is out now and you can get it from the Steve Dawson Bandcamp page.

Photo by Matthew Gilson

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In the spirit of trying everything, Adulthood is a record unafraid of experiment. The project of multi-instrumentalist Sean Cronin, Very Good does not sit within a genre but nearly all of them, borrowing from the entire gamut of American styles to craft something challenging and singular. The result ranges from the idiosyncratic to the downright bizarre, and Adulthood leans into this, embracing the chaotic collision of styles and shaping it into something intricate, funny and, most impressively, seamless.

The diversity the Very Good sound runs parallel to that of Cronin’s musical life. A formally-trained double bassist who can be said to be both a traditional composer and popular songwriter, Cronin has spent much time immersed with the varying shades of jazz (bebop, swing, New Orleans, modern, etc.). But in addition to that, he has spent time within other scenes, from classical piano as a young child to dive bar country music with his father at twelve. And then the punk bands, the orchestra pit for musicals, the bluegrass tours, not to mention the theatrical scoring work, the indie rock, the modern dance collaborations and so on.

Written several years after Cronin’s own post-adolescent turmoil, Adulthood therefore feels like the most authentic and profound answer to questions asked by many a songwriter. What am I doing? How does this work? Well, unlike the sentimentality and self-help affirmation of most attempts to take on issue, Very Good responds with the messy truth. There is no secret, no shortcut to mature life. Indeed, there may not be such a thing as maturity at all, just degrees of confusion and fear and attempts of varying success to hide them. The absurdity of the record is not a deviation from true experience but a deeper dive into it.

Today sees the release of the title track, a song that provides the perfect encapsulation of Very Good’s odd and playful tone. Jerking into life from a reluctant discordance, the track settles into a loose and languid flow that’s brimming with a peculiar confidence—the weird, past-the-point-of-caring attitude of someone who has long made peace with the absurdity of life. Something of the buoyant and blackly funny style is reminiscent of CHUCK, a tone that might not be happy or glad but has nonetheless come to find things amusing if nothing else. “Welcome to adulthood,” Cronin sings, and if there’s a wry humour to his tone it one matched by that of life itself. “You picked a special time to be alive.”

Photo by Sergio Carrasco, album artwork painting by Betsy Levine (original photograph by Katie Lee), design by Martin Reisle

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Which makes the title for his forthcoming EP, Acrobats, all the more apt. Set for release early next month on Baby Blue, the release uses every weapon in the monkeybars armoury to delve into the complexity behind the everyday life. Here, the mundane is not the sum of things but the surface, and Aleinikoff takes us by the hand and leads us into the underlying depths. With layers of instrumentation, of which the vocals are just but another, the EP does not merely introduce us to this novel dimension but makes it Aleinikoff’s own, carving out a liminal space between reality and fantasy in which his narratives can thrive.

Today we’re excited to share ‘Three Down’, the lead single from the release and a perfect encapsulation of the monkeybars style. Shambling into life with peppered percussion and sauntering guitars, the track hits its widescreen saturation around the minute mark, synths sparking across the gelatinous layers of reverb. Aleinikoff’s vocals refract around the scene, maintaining their hushed style before the track veers off into a frenetic jazzy breakdown in the closing minutes. At once disorientating and beautiful, this climax shows the capabilities of monkeybars, pushing into areas of instrumental proficiency that might be beyond the average dream pop band, and firmly cements the project as an act to watch closely.

Tracklisting

1.) Three Down
2.) Acrobats
3.) New Face

Album artwork by Miles Wintner

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