:Episode Two Hundred Two: 9.25.2020

* Not on Spotify:
Campbell James Kneale & Dialing In - Banshee Skull Threnodies I

Description

Among this week's highlights:

In mid-00s Seattle, just before Amazon rid the city of what little culture remained, there was an enigmatic sound artist named Dialing In, who released a few rather intriguing albums (including one I've played on the show) and then promptly vanished. Her music was reminiscent of Muslimgauze, but even gauzier, with looped samples - often of Middle Eastern origin - buried under mountains of fuzz. Now, roughly a decade later, she's re-emerged with a new album on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, recorded in collaboration with label head Campbell Kneale. Her sound remains the same, here stretched into two noisy, repetitive side-long drones. And this being C.P.P., known for its fanciful packaging (I have a few of their CD-R releases, issued in wallpaper-patterned, printed cardboard sleeves), the album comes on a hot-pink cassette featuring a paisley print. Were I not averse to tapes (they degrade to the point of being unlistenable with alarming speed... trust me, I came of age with them in the 80s and 90s) I might consider ponying up to have one mailed to me from The Hobbit Isles.

I've never understood musical purists, perhaps least of all those preoccupied with deciding what is - or, far more often, to their thinking, isn't - jazz. Leaving aside the fact that jazz itself is an amalgam of several other genres (which you'd think would render any discussion of its purity moot), it's so inherently anarchic that I fail to see how it's tainted by the inclusion of - for instance - elements of rock or electronic music. British jazz label On The Corner (named for perhaps the most radical of Miles Davis's fusion-period albums) shares my attitude, demonstrated by a new two-disc compilation featuring a host of their most out-there artists. Appropriately, I've selected what I consider the most spaced-out of the lot: the (actually pretty traditional) bleepy-bloopy fusion jazz of Edrix Puzzle, the hypnotic minimalism of Petwo Evans, and the Andean folk-fusion of Peru's Dengue Dengue Dengue.

It's become somewhat trite at this point for American non-believers to aver, after touring a European cathedral or two, that were our houses of worship as impressive, they might be inspired to attend services. While I do concur somewhat with this sentiment, what would move me to show up for mass, more so than a flying buttress or towering pane of stained glass, is a bone-rattling organ of the sort played by Anna Von Hauswolff on her stunning new record All Thoughts Fly. Sitting at a Swedish replica of the Arp Schnitzer, the world's largest organ tuned in Quarter-comma Meantone temperament (whatever that means... I'm just quoting from the press material here) she unleashes moody, Philip Glass-ian arpeggios reminiscent of the score to Koyaanisqatsi. And while you'd think a collection of songs performed with a single instrument would blur together into an undifferentiated whole, the creativity of her songwriting averts this. A strong candidate for one of my albums of the year, for sure.

Plus, the electro-shoegaze of MJ Guilder, a noisy freakout by the aptly named Sly and the Family Drone, the otherworldly ocarinas of Oliver Leith, and the retro-synth ambience of Jonathan Fitoussi (from another album of the year candidate).