2017 redux
This blog was lovingly tended for years. I wrote plentifully, probably too much, and had oddball opinions. I liked to tell stories and I still do. I may revert to doing just that once I have a little more time to play with this blog – three posts in 2017 are not really much of anything. (I always start a post these days by apologising).
But, I will post a 2017 listening list: not best of 2017 but possibly my most played records, almost all on vinyl (except the Bill Evans and Beach Boys I think, although I have the core album of that – Wild Honey – in the 2017 remaster on vinyl) and all with substantial needle time in the swamp.
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- Ghost Town – Ghost Town: I’m guilty of playing very limited amounts of New Zealand music last year and when I do, it’s often by old friends. For me, this album was all about the two key Jed Town tracks, the aching ‘Is It You?’ and ‘Make It To The Other Side’, plus the magnificent cover of David Wiffen’s ‘Driving Wheel’ (written for Tom Rush). What an inspired choice.
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- SZA – Ctrl
- Tyer, The Creator – Scum Fuck Flower Boy
- Kendrick Lamar – DAMN
- Open Mike Eagle – Brick Body Kids Still Daydream
- Chance The Rapper – Coloring Book: With which I relinked with hip-hop and the appearance of this quartet is the result. My disconnect with hip-hop in the 1990s was in part because I was uncomfortable with so-called gangster rap, with the implied and oft-boasted violence and the clear misogyny of the lyrical content. I still have problems with the latter (I’m trying hard to convince myself that Chance’s “Start dancing, ho” on the otherwise joyous ‘All Night’ is a general call to the floor rather than an order to a woman), but, even though I’m as far from the target audience as possible, I find the music/beats/inventiveness/freshness/delivery on all these LPs irresistible.
- Sampha – Process: Oddly, I played side one over and over. And never really turned it over. That can be for 2018 perhaps.
- King Krule – The Ooz: Lyrically obtuse and a little unsettling at times. Fractured sounds and an artist who meanders through his own record, dropping in and out seemingly randomly. Sometimes, it’s ‘oh, you are still here?’.
- Tony Allen – The Source: An extraordinary Parisian swirl of a record that mashes Allen’s roots with Fela and his passions for Max Roach and Art Blakey.
- Jimster – Silent Stars
- Kamasi Washington – Harmony Of Difference
- Thundercat – Drunk: That time when I put on a record with Kenny Loggins and that guy from The Doobie Brothers and admitted (under my breath of course) that I liked it (to be fair to myself I long ago rabidly loved the Jellybean Benitz 12″ remix of ‘Ya Mo Be There’ with James Ingram)
- Various – Innerpeace (Rare Spiritual Funk And Jazz Gems. The Supreme Sound Of Producer Bob Shad): The title says it.
- David Bowie – A New Career In A New Town / Cracked Actor: The Berlin and post-Berlin era box set, flawed as the mix of ‘Heroes’ may have been (I’m on the fence) and the live, pre: David Live Philly era RSD five-sider.
- Carl Craig – Versus: I think reviewers liked the word Cinematic when trying to wrestle with Craig’s, ahh, cinematic, orchestrated-with-a-groove reworkings of parts of his deep techno-soul catalogue. It confused many, I loved it.
- Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswald – Recomposed: Versus took me back this earlier release (2008) wherein Craig and Von Oswald very successful attacked Ravel and Mussorgsky. It was, I was told earlier this year, never issued on vinyl. It was as I discovered in Japan.
- Solange – A Seat At The Table: a 2016 leftover that occupied early 2017.
- Radio Birdman – Radios Appear: It’s been a long time. I found a new (second pressing, albeit 1977) copy in Sydney in June.
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- Patrice Rushen – Prelusion: Until I saw this in a second-hand store in Silom I had no idea the soul chanteuse had an earlier life as a jazzer, albeit a funky-fusion one. From 1974 and on the Prestige label of course.
- Myele Manzanza — OnePointOne: the Electric Wire Hustle percussionist live at LA’s Blue Whale.
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- Various – Heed The Call: Alan Perrott’s rather fabulous gathering of lost 70s and 80s Enzed Pacific funk and disco. But you knew that.
- Alice Coltrane: Early in 2017 I made some snide remark about Alice Coltrane on social media, along the lines of ‘who would ever turn an Alice Coltrane record over?”. I was quickly corrected by more musically sophisticated friends, and thus I delved. And I’m ashamed now of my earlier oafishness. If any artist dominated my 2017 it was Ms. Coltrane. These are all 2017 purchases and turntable obsessives.
- Cymande: I knew the funky singles before this, but never the album. It’s fabulous.
- Ramones – Rocket To Russia
- Richard Hell & The Voidoids – Blank Generation: Both this and the Ramones above being symbolic of the day to day punk rock I play. Also in 2017, Wire, The Adverts, Cabaret Voltaire and The Saints. I went to the original Cabaret Voltaire club in Zurich this year!
- The Beach Boys – 1967 (Sunshine Tomorrow): The year remastered, remixed with a second disc of outtakes and uneven live songs.
- The 3 Pieces — Vibes Of Truth: Donald Byrd produced band perhaps best known for the ’75 sweet club classic ‘I Need You Girl’. The 2017 reissue of the LP shows that it’s the equal of that track.
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- Binker & Moses – Journey To The Mountain Of Forever: London jazz adventurism
- Joe Henderson featuring Alice Coltrane – The Elements: Somewhat dismissed by the purists on release in 1973, The Elements has, 45 years on, correctly been lauded as a pan-cultural classic. Wonderful pressing from Concord Jazz.
- Eno – Another Green World / Taking Tiger Mountain / Before & After Science / Here Come The Warm Jets: 45rpm remastered quirky loveliness. Four of the finest records ever made.
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- Junior Byron – Sunshine: This disco/roots double LP I know nothing about except it plays at 45rpm and I think he may be from Canada. Funky and fun.
- The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band: The big box. It sounds like it had never sounded before but almost worth it alone for take 4 of ‘Strawberry Fields’.
- Thelonious Monk — Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960: The lost soundtrack, with a stunning booklet of studio imagery.
- Bill Evans – Another Time (The Hilversum Concert): Another recently unearthed concert, following 2016’s Lost Session From The Black Forest.
- Paul McCartney – Flowers In The Dirt: Mostly disc two, the Costello collaborations, but not just. A record that proves that the 80s were not completely a lost decade for McCartney.
- Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach – Painted By Memory: On vinyl for the first time via MFSL. Okay, it’s at times Burt twee, but the songs are fabulous and Declan was, as a lounge voice, peerless. There was a reason he was managed by Tony Bennett’s son.
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- Yasuaki Shimizu — Kakashi: I find Yasuaki’s earlier jazz-fusions heavy going – they’re either cheesy or too overtly intense and are everything I dislike about the genre in the 70s. Once he discovered punk and veered towards no-wave, here, it was magical.
- Matthew Halsall – On The Go: Transcendental Mancunian jazz from 2016, as wisely recommended by Dubber.
- Dan Penn — Nobody’s Fool: Reissued on vinyl, from 1973.
- Tubby Hayes — Mexican Green: A limited Japanese pressing of this ’67 masterpiece. This is why it matters.
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- Duke Ellington — Black, Brown & Beige / Far East Suite: Two Ellington albums I played a great deal this year, the 1940s suite (recorded here in the mid-1950s), and his musical trek through the Far East from 1967. Both essential releases.
- Leon Russell – Carney / Leon Russell: His third and first solo albums, with ‘This Masquerade’ and ‘A Song For You’ in their original forms.
- Black Disco – Night Express: Apartheid-era Philly jazz meets the Cape, from South Africa.