First time on the air since August. A two-hour show, lots of fun as usual, and piled with albums recently reviewed on here.
Among the discoveries in KZSU rotation this time:
- I hadn’t yet heard William Parker’s Essense of Ellington. Wow. It’s an Ellington tribute, obviously, played live by a big band that packs a serious punch, swings like hell, and of course adds some out-there soloing and some crazed moments (free-improv duet phases, for instance). “Take the A Train” evolves out of a seemingly unrelated, hard-digging riff; just as you’re settling into the riff’s swing, up comes the “A-Train” melody. Serious fun.
- I liked what I heard from the new Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson, and Peter Evans collaboration, Broken Toy. Offbeat composing made even more prickly by the trio. They’ve got a good sound going.
- Chris Forsythe is in there as my way of promoting his in-studio appearance at KZSU: Sunday, Jan. 13, 6:00-7:00 p.m. Pacific time. Did I mention that before? No? Well, it’s happening, the day after his appearance at Berkeley Arts. He’ll bring his solo guitar act, his gorgeous shimmering images of blues/psych waves pulsing outward in slow motion, to our inner sanctum. Tune in at kzsulive.stanford.edu.
The full playlist is on Zookeeper (KZSU’s music database), or, what the heck, here it is in full. Album titles link to Zookeeper entries (indicated by the little “i” boxes) or to entries on this blog.
| Artist | Track | Album/Label | |
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| Yao, John Quintet | In The Now |  |
In The Now Innova Recordings |
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| Goldberg, Ben | Habituary | Speech Communication Tzadik |
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| Klare, Jan | Vamp | |
Shoe Red Toucan |
| Johnston, Darren | Broken | Edge of the Forest Clean Feed |
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| Coleman, Ornette | School Days | Broken Shadows Sony |
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| Shuffle Demons, The | Shanghai Shuffle | |
Cluster Funk Linus |
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| New Monsters | Mirror Earth | New Monsters Posi-Tone |
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| Walter / Halvorson / Evans | Broken Toy | |
Mechanical Malfunction Thirsty Ear Communication |
| Formanek, Michael | Pong | Small Places ECM |
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| Romus, Rent / Lords Of Outland | If Ornette Grew Cacti | |
Thee Unhip 9 Winds Records |
| — (11:00 a.m.) — | |||
| Abbasi, Rez Trio | Divided Attention | |
Continuous Beat Enja Records |
| Evangelista, Karl/Grex | Hymn | Taglish self-released |
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| Philips, Dave & Freedance | Pyramids | |
Confluence Innova Recordings |
| Emily Hay, Brad Dutz, Motoko Honda | Biting Ants | Polarity Taskmasters self-released |
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| Parker, William Orchestra | Essence Of A Train / Take The A Train / Ebony Interlude | |
Essence Of Ellington: Live In Milano Aum Fidelity |
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| Forsyth, Chris | East Kensington Run Down | |
Kenzo Deluxe Northern Spy |
| Rudd, Xavier | Butterfly | Spirit Bird Side One Dummy Records |
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| Green Mitchell Trio, The | Coom De Craw | |
Green Mitchell Trio, The Edgetone Records |
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| Rivers / Holland / Altschul | First Set: Part 4 | |
Reunion: Live In New York Pi Recordings |
(I’d stopped posting complete playlists because they screw up the search results. Not Google’s results, but the searches within this site itself — a function you probably don’t use, but I sure as hell do! and it wasn’t useful to me to search for “Tim Berne” and get one or two entries buried among a dozen playlists. It was too much like a Highlights find-the-pictures puzzle. Now that my on-air appearances have become so infrequent, I figure I can give it another shot.)
