"A Thought Is Just a Passing Train" > 077 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 15-03-2020

ALTER.NATION #77

John Moreland, Early James, Bullion, Circles Around the Sun, Kassa Overall, Yumi Zouma, Jeremy Cunningham, Monophonics, Dungen, Machine Girl, Horse Lords, Sam Gendel

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"A Thought Is Just a Passing Train"

Oklahoma's John Moreland is a rootsy, heartfelt singer/songwriter who grew out of punk in his teens to become a lauded Americana and alt-country artist.
John Moreland - LP5 / A Thought Is Just a Passing Train
The Oklahoma roots songwriter expands his increasingly experimental and genre-resistant songbook without sacrificing his empathetic, poetic core... John Moreland’s enormous voice never overshadows the small moments documented in his songs. In the past, his lyrical terrain—busted faith, regret, the losers in every fight—read as textbook “country,” earning him an opening spot for Jason Isbell and praise from Miranda Lambert. But the y’alternative marketing sometimes overpowered his increasingly experimental and genre-resistant songbook. On LP5, there’s no mistaking it, with its resulting mix of swamp-dunked soul, elevated AOR chords, thick grooves, multi-tracked vocals, drum machine clicks, and hovering ambient synths. Moreland’s heartland visions of devils, heretics, and existential discomfort were already kaleidoscopic; LP5 mutates his sound to match... (Jason P. Woodbury)

The stage name of wry and soulful Alabama singer/songwriter James Mullis, Early James draws from a deep well of American roots music.
Early James - Singing for My Supper / It Doesn't Matter Now
Early James’s songs have a foundation of vintage instruments and arrangements that hark back to the Nashville and California of yesteryear.Credit... (Alysse Gafkjen)
Early James — the Alabama-born singer and songwriter Frederick James Mullis Jr. — just sidles his way into the first song on “Singing for My Supper,” his debut album... He maintains that uneasy, oblique approach throughout the album, presenting himself as both a throwback and a character living in a fraught, uncertain present. Early James is 26, but his music has much older underpinnings, glancing back to the 1970s, the 1960s and before... (Jon Pareles)

The Lisbon-based producer of off-center pop whose recordings have found a home on labels like One-Handed, R&S, Honest Jon's, and his own Deek Recordings.
Bullion - We Had a Good Time / O Vermona
...We Had a Good Time, his newest collection of songs, explores repetition’s ability to find the novel in the ordinary. On We Had a Good Time, Bullion uses guitar, synth pads, and reverb for a mellow set of songs that center around memories of the mundane, finding the sublime in the banal. Opener “O Vermona” is made up of an Emeralds-like drone and Bullion’s lightly doubled vocals: “I’ll never go quiet on you.” He cuts the phrase into fragments and layers the pieces, turning a simple declaration into an arresting hook. When he allows the line to play out again before the song goes silent, it has obtained a peculiar power... (Hubert Adjei-Kontoh)

An all-star band assembled for the express purpose of recording intermission music for the Grateful Dead's Fare Thee Well concerts.
Circles Around the Sun - Circles Around the Sun / Leaving (Rogue Lemon)
Circles Around the Sun's seven-cut, self-titled album was tracked at recording engineer Jim Scott's Southern California studio only a week before bandleader and guitarist Neal Casal took his own life. In a note he left behind, Casal requested this album be completed and for the band to continue. Circles Around the Sun (CATS) honored those wishes. For the foreseeable future, keyboardist Adam MacDougall, bassist Dan Horne, and drummer Mark Levy will move forward without a permanent guitarist and will instead rotate different ones. Guitarists Eric Krasno, Jared Mattson, and Scott Metzger have all made tour appearances...  "Leaving (Rogue Lemon)" is spacy jazz-rock fusion with a moody organ line reminiscent of Alan Parsons' "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You," before finding and opening the door to the spiraling unknown with warmth and verve... (Thom Jurek)

New York-based drummer, producer, and rapper whose work straddles the line between jazz and hip-hop.
Kassa Overall - I Think I’m Good / Please don’t kill me in your sleep
The drummer/producer blends personal mental-health struggles with the subjugation of black America in a many-voiced, trap-jazz singer-songwriter opus... The childlike delivery of his opening plea in the follow-up (“Please don’t kill me in your sleep”) lands into the same unnerving atmosphere; Joel Ross’ vibraphone adds both melodic beauty and further textural destabilization, compounding Kassa’s chilling words that conflate the real and surreal (“Please don’t mind those chalk lines/They don’t know what’s inside of you and I”). Yet the songs also have musical escape hatches arranged into the claustrophobia. When Brandee Younger and Ross play short lead solo lines—the latter in a quick conversation with Theo Croker’s flugelhorn—the spaces unlock in ways that one can imagine growing expansive on stage, supporting evidence that, like the hesitant blues of the album title, Kassa doesn’t mean for it to be a completely dark ride. (Piotr Orlov)

Electro-pop group Yumi Zouma began in 2013 as a home-recording venture by three friends Christchurch, New Zealand, but quickly outgrew their humble beginnings to spread their relaxed, sweetly melodic sound throughout the world.
Yumi Zouma - Truth or Consequences / Sage
As on their first two albums, with 2020's Truth or Consequences Yumi Zouma prove once again that they are the very picture of restraint and calm. Their smoothly crafted, precisely played and sung electro-pop isn't designed to raise pulses or get the party started; it's made for quiet moments of reflections, tender feelings brought on by heartbreak, and the soft spaces in between the big emotions. As before, they do a lovely job of fulfilling that very specific role. There are few bands as committed to creating and sustaining a mood, and they are in fine form here. As steady as the group comes across, though, they have grown in some ways. Christie Simpson's vocals grow more expressive with each release, the arrangements are a little fuller overall, and they flirt a little bit more with late-night disco than before... (Tim Sendra)

Jeremy Cunningham is a drummer, composer, and improviser. Originally from Cincinnati, he moved to Chicago in 2009, where he currently performs and composes as an integral part of the city’s vibrant music scene.
Jeremy Cunningham - The Weather Up There / 1985
Assisted by Jeff Parker, Tomeka Reid, and Makaya McCraven, the Chicago drummer pays tribute to his late brother with an innovative fusion of jazz composition and spoken-word memorial... The exuberant half-note pulses that begin “1985” evoke the pop of “Bennie and the Jets” or “Super Rich Kids,” and then Cunningham and his collaborators loosen their playing styles to match Parker’s guitar heroics: a light skein of feedback and a couple solos. (Daniel Felsenthal)

Monophonics were formed in 2005; originally a instrumental ensemble comprised of guitarist Ian McDonald, bassist Myles O’Mahony, saxophonist Alex Baky, trumpeter Ryan Scott, and drummer Austin Bohlman, the band has recently added the dynamic soul vocals of keyboardist Kelly Finnigan. The result is a psychedelic soul & heavy funk sound, which harks back to the stylings of the late 60’s and early 70’s, all while keeping its feet planted in the present.
Monophonics - It's Only Us / Run for your Life
loppppppppppÍQWell into their second decade with four albums in the rearview, Monophonics tighten their alliance with Ohio's Colemine Records, the dusty soul specialists who have issued some of their singles, for It's Only Us. Recorded at their Transistor Sound Studio home base, this is a little trippier and looser than the preceding Sound of Sinning. Maybe it's merely coincidental, but it's certainly appropriate that the Bay Area band, recording for a Midwest label, move a little closer here toward the early-'70s output of Chicago and Detroit labels like Curtom, Cadet Concept, and Westbound...(Andy Kellman)

Long-running Swedish band whose nostalgic sound incorporates free jazz, their native folk and instrumental ambience into their expansive psychedelic rock.
Dungen - Live / A4
Recorded during the end of 2015 at a couple different Swedish concerts, Dungen's first live album is a ripping example of their prowess both as individual musicians and as a cohesive unit. The album is totally instrumental and it flows from short song fragments to extended expansive pieces in dynamic waves of psychedelic sound. The guitars as played mainly by Reine Fiske (mainly) and band leader Gustav Ejstes are massive when they are cranked up, riffing and soloing like large birds in flight. The other instrument to take the lead is saxophone, with Jonas Kullhamer doing his best Pharoah Sanders at crucial points throughout. Ejstes and he also add some flute to the mix, and the former does very nifty things with keyboards (piano, organ and mellotron) throughout... (Tim Sendra)

Brooklyn's Machine Girl produces an explosive, cathartic blend of footwork, jungle, digital hardcore, and rave.
Machine Girl - U-Void Synthesizer / The Fortress [The Blood Inside]
Relentlessly smashing together bits of punk, grindcore, rave, industrial, and more, the Pittsburgh duo’s maximalist music echoes the cruel momentum of the modern world... Even with volatility as one of the band’s core values, however, they’ve rarely felt as wonderfully feral as on U-Void Synthesizer. The music that Stephenson and Kelly make together has always been chaotic, but they try out more sounds and styles across these 11 tracks than seems possible. Take the immense first track, “The Fortress [The Blood Inside]”: In just under four minutes, Stephenson and Kelly squeeze in ecstatic trance synths, grinding noise-punk passages, open-hearted sacred-music harmonies, gargly grindcore vocals, half-stuttered rapping, and, yes, the sound of a barking dog... (Colin Joyce)

Baltimore-based experimental rock quartet who play in just intonation, microtonal harmonies, and using algorithmic composition techniques.
Horse Lords - The Common Task / Against Gravity
Baltimore quartet Horse Lords play a complex, polyrhythmic form of music that incorporates just intonation, algorithmic composition, and microtonal harmonies. Instead of being a purely academic exercise, however, the group apply these techniques to sprawling, groove-heavy instrumental rock songs, equally influenced by Krautrock and Saharan desert blues as well as composers like Terry Riley and James Tenney. The Common Task is their fourth studio album, and it's easily their most vibrant, dazzling recorded effort to date... "Against Gravity" showcases Andrew Bernstein's saxophone playing, beginning with a drone before playing hopscotch with the rhythm. The saxophone gradually lifts off, multiplies, and becomes scattered around the beat, while the music becomes more ecstatic, eventually beaming up into space courtesy of Max Eilbacher's synthesizer... (Paul Simpson)

Avant-garde saxophonist, guitarist, and vocalist with a knack for pairing psychedelic jazz with experimental pop.
Sam Gendel - Satin Doll / Freddie Freeloader
Saxophonist Sam Gendel's 2020 release Satin Doll is a truly unique standards album. Actually, even calling it a standards collection is a little misleading... Filtering his alto saxophone (or "saxofone" as he wryly lists it in the credits) through a spacy skrim of digital effects, Gendel sounds less like a jazz saxophonist and more like an alien singing in a wordless language whose voice has been picked up via satellite. It's a dichotomous sound, one that's at turns both digital and organic, yet flowing with the breath and intimacy of a live performance... (Matt Collar)

John Moreland, Early James, Bullion, Circles Around the Sun, Kassa Overall, Yumi Zouma, Jeremy Cunningham, Monophonics, Dungen, Machine Girl, Horse Lords, Sam Gendel