One of the most well-known rock groups from Continental Europe, Denmark's Savage Rose recorded a wealth of intriguing and eclectic progressive rock in the late '60s and '70s. In their early work, one hears faint echoes of the Airplane, Doors, Pink Floyd, and other psychedelic heavyweights combined with classical jazz and Danish-Euro folk elements. Their arrangements rely heavily on an incandescent, watery organ that sounds like nothing so much as psychedelic aquarium music. The most striking aspect of the band's sound, however, was the vocals of lead singer Annisette. Her childish wispy and sensual phrasing can suddenly break into jarring, almost histrionic wailing, like a Janis Joplin with Yoko Ono-isms, and eerily foreshadows Kate Bush's style.

Stars in their native land, Savage Rose also achieved a bit of underground success abroad, and several of their albums were released in North America. Between 1968 and 1978, the group released nine albums, moving from vaguely psychedelic rock and the heavily gospel-influenced Refugee to the nearly classical ballet score Dodens Triumf and the folky, nearly all-Danish Solen Var Ogsa Din (their first eight albums were sung entirely in English).

Always a radical band — the Black Panthers even invited the group to play at a benefit for Bobby Seale after hearing one of Savage Rose's records — they took the extremely radical step of withdrawing from the studio entirely by the end of 1970s to focus on using their music to support leftist political causes. Although they continued to make music and perform, they were often heard at benefits and free concerts, actually playing in Lebanese hospitals, schools, and refugee camps at the P.L.O.'s invitation. They eased back into recording in the early '80s with Danish-language efforts on small labels, eventually getting back into the mainstream music business with established distribution. Their mid-'90s album, Black Angel, was their first English-language recording in many years, and a substantial Danish hit. By this time the only remaining members from the original band were Thomas Koppel and Annisette (now his wife); Koppel also records and composes symphonic music as a solo artist.

Matana Roberts returns with the fourth chapter of her extraordinary Coin Coin series — a project that has deservedly garnered the highest praise and widespread critical acclaim for its fierce aesthetic originality and unflinching narrative power. The first three Coin Coin albums, issued from 2011-2015, charted diverse pathways of modern/avant composition — Roberts calls it “panoramic sound quilting”—and ranged sequentially from large band to sextet to solo, unified by Roberts’ archival and often deeply personal research into legacies of the American slave trade and ancestries of American identity/experience. Roberts also emphasizes non-male subjects and thematizes these other-gendered stories with a range of vocal and verbal techniques: singspeak, submerged glossolalic recitation, guttural cathartic howl, operatic voice, gentle lullaby, group chant, and the recuperation of various American folk traditionals and spirituals, whether surfacing in fragmentary fashion or as unabridged set-pieces. The root of this vocality comes from her dedication to the legacy of her main chosen instrument, the alto saxophone.

On Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis, Roberts convened a new band, with New Yorkers Hannah Marcus (guitars, fiddle, accordion) and percussionist Ryan Sawyer (Thurston Moore, Nate Wooley, Cass McCombs) joined by Montréal bassist Nicolas Caloia (Ratchet Orchestra) and Montréal-Cairo composer/improviser Sam Shalabi (Land Of Kush, Dwarfs Of East Agouza) on guitar and oud, along with prolific trombonist Steve Swell and vibraphonist Ryan White as special guests. Memphis unspools as a continuous work of 21st century liberation music, oscillating between meditative incantatory explorations, raucous melodic themes, and unbridled free-improv suites, quoting archly and ecstatically from various folk traditions along the way. Led by Roberts’ conduction and unique graphic score practice, her consummate saxophone and clarinet playing, and punctuated by her singing and speaking various texts generated from her own historical research and diaristic writings, Coin Coin Chapter Four is a glorious and spellbinding new instalment in this projected twelve-part Gesamtkunstwerk.

Says Roberts: “As an arts adventurer dealing w/ the medium of sound and its many contradictions I am most interested in endurance, perseverance, migration, liberation, libation, improvisation and the many layers of cognitive dissonance therein as it relates to my birth country’s history. I speak memory, I sing an american survival through horn, song, sadness, a sometimes gladness. I stand on the backs of many people, from so many different walks of life and difference, that never had a chance to express themselves as expressively as I have been given the privilege. In these sonic renderings, I celebrate the me, I celebrate the we, in all that it is now, and all that is yet to come or will be... Thanks for listening.”

Auf ihrem Solo-Debut entwirft St. Schrank, Bassistin der Kölner Band Locas In Love, ihren von 70er Jahre-Synthesizern getragenen Neo-Kraut-Pop mit dem Düsseldorfer Elektromusiker Lucas Croon (Stabil Elite, Bar). Super-konkret und dabei ebenso dreamy und rauschhaft, assoziativ und automatisch, voller surrealer und surrealistischer Momente - eine abstrakte Dichtung, Bilder zum Hören, die einen mikroskopischen Blick darauf richten, wie Dinge funktionieren: Liebe, Ängste, Macht, Zusammenleben, Sprache, Geschlecht, Gespenster. Zu Discobeats, Analog-Synthies und Sub-Bässen.

»Return To Us« ist das neue Album von The Lilac Time, der britischen Country Folk Band unter der Leitung von Stephen Duffy. Die Kollektion ist ihre zehnte bisher und Stephens zwanzigster Longplayer in einer Karriere, die sich über vier Jahrzehnte erstreckt. Return To Us wurde von Nick Duffy, Claire Duffy und Stephen aufgenommen, die seit 1999 der Kern von The Lilac Time sind. Das Album wurde in Stephen und Claires Haus aufgenommen.

Betrachtet man die Arrangements, Poesie und Strahlkraft seiner [Stephen Duffys] Akustik-Folkrock-Miniaturen wie ›The Hills Of Cinnamon‹, wird klar, warum Robbie Williams den Geheimtipp aus Birmingham als Songwriter verpflichtete.

(Audio, Dezember 2019)

There are some albums that beg to be listened to from beginning to end in one sitting; Brian Eno's Music for Airports, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians come to mind. The fourth album (and Luaka Bop debut) from Danish instrumentalists Bremer/McCoy, 2019's Utopia, is also one of those albums. Featuring the talents of bassist Jonathan Bremer and keyboardist/tape delay artist Morten McCoy, Utopia showcases the duo's expansive, often hypnotic jazz-, dub-, and classical-influenced sound. Aesthetically, their intimate sound falls somewhere in between Keith Jarrett, Paul Winter, and Mike Oldfield without ever borrowing too heavily from any one source. Together, they create a soft tonal palette that relaxes you as much as it draws you deeper into its harmonic colorscape. They also add strings on several cuts here, which further lends a rich, vinyl-era texture to their sound. While each of the 12 tracks on Utopia displays the duo's talent for crafting intensely melodic songs, there's a flowing, interconnected quality to the album, as if each track lead to the next one, pulling you along its spectral journey. The opening "Åben Bog" is a sad classical piano piece that brings to mind an overcast fall day. Conversely, "Højder," with its crystalline piano figure and Latin-esque pulse, conjures images of arid moonscapes. With Utopia, Bremer/McCoy have crafted an absolutely intoxicating instrumental experience that commands your attention from the moment it starts and entices you to linger in its womb-like atmosphere long after it ends.

(by Matt Collar, All Music Guide)

Circles Around the Sun (CATS) announced their completed collaboration with drummer Joe Russo in July of 2019. Guitarist Neal Casal spoke of the band's excitement about the completely improvised session recorded at the drummer's Brooklyn studio. The band's and Russo's paths had been entwined for a decade via their work with various Grateful Dead side projects (Phil 'n' Friends, Further, etc.) and Cass McCombs. On August 26, three weeks after CATS had completed sessions for a third album, Casal took his own life.

Meets Joe Russo is an informal jam that is startling for its sheer musicality. Cut live from the floor in a single day, it showcases just how intuitive the interplay was between Casal, keyboardist Adam MacDougall, bassist Dan Horne, and drummer Mark Levy. The addition of Russo'a drumming only adds to that depth of field. Everything here is built on interlocking grooves. "When I Was at Peace," commences with jazzy, funky, clavinet and double snares. Casal's bluesy, psychedelic guitar playing engages the exploratory thrum of Horne's fleet-fingered bassline. "Get It Right the First Time," is led by the rhythm section: The drummers converse with call-and-response snares and kick drums to a rocksteady reggae groove provided by MacDougall's punchy Wurlitzer fills, Horne's strolling bassline, and Casal's spacy slide playing. "Added Addition" is the outlier. Commencing with fast-pulsing synth lines and chords, double-timed snare and tom-toms roil just under a driving bassline. His bandmates allow Casal to hover above them and pierce the proceedings at will. It's a trippy fusion track that intersects Tangram-era Tangerine Dream and Jeff Beck's Wired. Closer "Peace Reprise" combines everything that came before it. The drums continue their alternating polyrhythmic discussion while Casal and Horne challenge one another and MacDougall investigates all the players with various keyboards. He finds a spooky margin, opening the gate for psychedelic dub exploration. For 26 minutes this record travels the inner spaceways. Its mercurial grooves create a way forward for labyrinthian harmonic journeys. Russo's playing makes CATS all the more adventurous and simultaneously communicative. Although the band have decided to continue with Casal's friend Eric Krasno in the guitar chair, Meets Joe Russo is a coda, a record the late musician was excited about and proud of; it's also an album that reminds us of just who we lost with his passing.

(by Thom Jurek, All Music Guide)

It seems like it wasn’t that long ago when I first heard singer-songwriter Sunny War and her unique blend of music, something that’s often referred to as punk-folk or folk-punk. I reviewed her album With the Sun just a little less than a year ago for Positive Feedback, and it wound up cracking my Top Five albums for 2018. Sunny War has it all–intelligent lyrics, a truly distinctive voice and an innovative approach to her acoustic guitar. With her new album, Shell of a Girl, she may also prove to be a prolific artist, the kind who keeps releasing quality albums because there’s so much she needs to say.

Parallels have been drawn between Sunny War and Tracy Chapman thanks to this acoustic approach, but I’ve never warmed up to Chapman’s voice despite the fact that so many audiophiles are drawn to her songwriting skills. I think that Sunny takes it a bit further with vocals that are more serene yet equally distinctive and consistent from song to song. Sunny War sings like a folk singer, and her songs often have an element of protest within them. She’s talking about things that matter in 2019, and she has a wonderfully lyrical way of stating those tough emotions with conviction.

Sunny War writes lyrics that read as poetry, something you can’t say about most songwriters who arrange words in a way that stresses the sound of those words and the manner in which they blend with the music. She sings as if she’s talking to you, deep from her heart. On “Soul Tramp,” she keeps it short and simple:

Well I’ll be damned if I ain’t gone before the sun rises

Damned if I’m not strong enough for what you call call crisis

Damn I can’t stay long enough to set up camp

God damn farewell so long, behold the soul tramp.

Sunny War, in other words, has trouble living in this world, of making her way without damaging everything that makes her whole. On “Rock and Roll Heaven,” she warns that “If you must off me/Please do it softly/Don’t wake my demons/Cos they’re dreaming.” She doesn’t make everything as soft and mesmerizing as her music, because that wouldn’t be true. If Sunny War is one thing, she’s honest–and that always comes at a price. On Shell of a Girl, I noticed something I didn’t quite catch on With the Sun–the beautiful work on bass guitar. It’s supremely musical in the same way as Paul McCartney’s bass is, each note carefully chosen, with the performer never taking the easy way out. I was genuinely surprised to discover that she plays this bass as well, a bass which is also rich and deep and yet soft. There’s so much here that deserves repeated listens. Since this LP was pressed by ORG Music, it’s quiet and balanced and clear. If you haven’t explored Sunny War and her wounded yet beautiful world, now’s the time. Highly recommended, and sure to make my list of top recordings at the end of the year again.

(www.parttimeaudiophile.com)