Jackie-O Motherfucker – Manual of the Bayonet (Feeding Tube, Feb 24)
Of all the artists and acts either directly or tangentially related to the “New Weird America” movement, Jackie-O Motherfucker has always seemed the most “American” to me (less in the sense of some nationalistic allegiance to the empty signifier of the country itself and more relating to the wealth of culture and tradition that happens to have occurred here). Listening to JOMF’s music is like taking a delirious stumble through history while at the same time hearing something distinctly new. Manual of the Bayonet, an unreleased album from the band’s golden age of 1999–2001, is no different; here are the same currents of forgotten folk and mystic spirituals filtered through a ramshackle improvised framework, generating such magic as the hallucinatory plod of “Breakdown” and the electric revel of “Red Slipper Ritual.” Original review
Various Artists – The NID Tapes: Electronic Music from India 1969–1972 (The state51 Conspiracy, Oct 6)
In some cases, documents like these are mere historical curiosities rather than engaging collections of music in their own right. This is not one of those cases. Featuring newly unearthed work by S. C. Sharma, Atul Desai, Gita Sarabhai, Jinraj Joshipura, and I. S. Mathur along with a piece by renowned composer David Tudor (who also facilitated the formation of the electronic music studio itself), The NID Tapes immortalizes a brief but fertile period of creativity and experimentation, the enthusiasm behind it bubbling out in every short track. Most of the individuals involved produced both full-fledged compositions and exploratory sketches (e.g., Sharma’s “After the War” and “Electronic Sounds Created on Moog,” respectively).
Blackout – Lost in the Underground Pt. 1 (Trill Hill / Snubnoze, Aug 19)
Memphis hip-hop, in the classic sense, is timeless. Not only do countless heads across the world still listen to tapes that are more than thirty years old now, but the scene and coextensive genre continues to assert its influence in modern trap, lending practices and aesthetics even beyond the now-ubiquitous triplet flows it pioneered. Blackout is a figure standing with one foot in the past and one in the present, exemplified by his frequent archival projects (don’t forget about the fantastic Dreamworld sequel released last year) and his still-frequent production credits. Lost in the Underground Pt. 1 collects some of his most compelling beats paired with bars by usual suspects Lil Slim, Lil E, and Terror, documenting how high of a level Blackout was operating at as early as ’93. Though there has been no explicit promise of more material in this vein, the inclusion of “Pt. 1” gives me hope. Original review
Joel Stern – Glasgow 2001 (scatterArchive, Mar 20)
It’s only through retrospection that certain individuals stand out amidst the bustling improvised music renaissance that was the early 2000s, and by now there’s no doubt that Joel Stern is one of these. From his sublime duo collaborations with Anthony Guerra to the eternal impact of Sunshine Has Blown, few artists juggled technical innovation and emotional resonance with the same ease or intensity. Glasgow 2001 captures a rare solo performance with an approach drawn from Stern’s interest in both field recordings as a compositional ingredient and gestural tabletop improvisation, humbly facilitated using minidiscs and binaural microphones.
David Gilden – Texas Pillbox (Fusty, Jul 18)
First released in a limited edition as a set of sixteen cassettes housed in a steel ammunition box, more copies of this sprawling discography treatment of one of US noise’s most significant voices will reach eager ears next year in 18xCD form. Spanning the years between Gilden’s first solo recordings and those with Richard Ramirez as The Siamese Model to his final opus Depress / Regress, Texas Pillbox comprises the most complete and definitive collection of the Texas Chainsaw Dopefiend’s influential body of work thus far—and likely ever.
Yellow Swans – Left Behind (self-released, Nov 17)
What’s more surprising news in 2023, the release of previously-unheard Yellow Swans material or a semi-coherent promise of upcoming brand-new Yellow Swans material? I’d have to say the latter, but the former is still something special. The aptly titled Left Behind presents roughly half an hour’s worth of the classic late-period palette of euphoric harmonies and resolutions buried beneath suffocating layers of hulking, distorted psychedelia, with some pensive guitar noodling woven in for good measure. “For JR” is a new favorite track of mine and proof that even the castoffs of the band’s discography are still a head and shoulders above other projects’ best work.
Milford Graves – Children of the Forest (Black Editions, May 19)
Seeing Fundamental Frequency, a posthumous exhibition of the work of Milford Graves at Artists Space in downtown New York, is one of my most treasured experiences of the past few years of my life. An artist in every sense of the word, Graves was and is a fixture of the very soul of contemporary jazz and improvised music, a fact exemplified by these incendiary 1976 sessions with Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover. Comprising recordings from three dates (the first with both Doyle and Glover, the second with only Glover, and the third solo), Children of the Forest and its revelatory percussive lifeblood could never be mistaken as having been produced by any other hands than Graves’.
Ali Farka Touré – Voyageur (World Circuit, Mar 10)
Even close to two decades after his death, the music of Ali Farka Touré remains distinct and eternal. Infused with both Songhai tradition and the soulful grit of Western blues, the Malian legend’s virtuosic yet understated guitarwork is rendered in enthralling clarity on Voyageur, a compilation of both full-fledged songs and impromptu jams recorded between 1991 and 2004. The tracks featuring Wassoulou phenom Oumou Sangaré are especially mesmerizing, from the hypnotic pentatonic vamp of “Bandolobourou” to the horn-led “Sadjona.”
Noise Not Music 