Picks and Misc.

This has nothing to do with the US election, I promise. Take a break from your news feeds and fill your ears with some new sounds.

Picks

• Audrey Lauro - Prose Métallique (Relative Pitch) A few of us in and around the music internet have been taken with this album. Lauro is superb, and this album showcases prepared alto exclusively. From a lineage perspective, Prose Métallique feels of a piece with albums by Roscoe Mitchell, John Zorn, and John Butcher. Yes, Lauro rates that high.

• Dominic Lash, Josh Sinton, and Alex Ward - LASH/SINTON/WARD (scatterArchive) I’ve been a fairly consistent, loud supporter of all three of these players for many, many years. Lash and Ward have recorded several albums together, in duo and trio, and they’re clearly simpatico with Sinton. Recorded live at Hundred Years Gallery, this is a really exciting, fantastic demonstration of how fully committed to the moment each one of them is; highly, highly recommended.

• The Attic (Rodrigo Amado, Goncalo Almeida, and Onno Govaert) with Eve Risser - La Grande Crue (NoBusiness) The Attic is truly one of the finest improvising trios, each player is among the best of the best on their instrument. And over at my regular haunt Free Jazz Blog, we’re all super fans of pianist Eve Risser, who has seemingly no bounds to her creativity and artistic imagination. Mix all four together, and La Grande Crue (i.e., the great flood) indeed.

Misc.

• Steve McQueen - Blitz (Apple TV+) This is newly released, so I haven’t yet caught up with it. But, I loved Widows, which I’ve seen a handful of times, and as Alissa Wilkinson wrote for The New York Times, McQueen is a master at layering meaning in his films.

• Anna Seghers - The Seventh Cross (NYRB Classics) The 2018 translation by Margot Bettauer Dembo brought the complete text to English readers. Tense and thrilling, there’s also biting commentary on the population that succumbed to the Nazis and the ways citizens fell in line, or slipped outside the lines. I hadn’t read this book until earlier this year, but it’s been crucial for getting a grip on these our times.

• Year-end lists! We are rapidly approaching that time, and I can’t wait to share my list. Anyone who has followed my writing here and elsewhere closely might be able to guess some of my top albums, but I swear there will be some surprises in there. I love so many albums from this year’s crop. As always, music is good, hooray music!