Mid-year picks: 25 favorites from January through June, 2023
A handful of sax, bass and drums trios, and other combos both small and large
In place of the regular Midweek Pick, and to atone for the lack of such a post last week, today I offer my Mid-year picks: a list of 25 favorite albums of new music released between January through June this year. A tad late, some might say, but if publications can post their mid-year faves in early June, as some did, I feel fine posting mine a few weeks after the midway point.
Prominent among these picks are a handful of albums by sax, (double) bass and drums trios. It’s a format I’ve long had a special relationship to, a set-up that seems to speak to my affinity for egalitarian ways of making music more than most. This particular combination of woodwinds, strings and percussion makes for a sonic palette where the individual parts are so distinct yet simultaneously complement and balance each other exceptionally well. It’s a combination that can be both nimble and forceful, and has the capacity to be gauzy and airy as well as full bodied and rich.
My latest column for Jazznytt was dedicated to a selection of recent sax, bass and drums releases,. Three of those are among my 25 picks below: the springy rhythmic trickery and playfulness and affecting gossamer textures of Swiss bassist Lukas Traxel’s One-Eyed Daruma; the searching, dancing, at times freewheeling and always soulful live recording Tapestry by Mark Lomax Trio (one of the most underappreciated groups in modern jazz); and the idiosyncratic grooves of Peter Brötzmann, Majid Bekkas and Hamid Drake on Catching Ghosts, an album that was also recorded live and, sadly, turned out to be the last recording to be released during Brötzmann’s life time (The guimbri is a more than able bodied substitute for the bass in the latter example).
In Aila Trio’s swaying and shuffling Shaped By Waves and Sam Weinberg Trio’s rough and tumble explorations on Implicatures I hear further proof of how the sax, bass and drums trio continues to be such an exciting vehicle in jazz and improvised music. A different kind of trio captivated me, too. The Necks and Joakim Rainer Trio, one a veteran group the other a debutant, each represent novel ways to utilize the perhaps most famous of jazz trios, the piano trio.
Moving away from the magic of three, there is the Natural Information Society, who constitutes to get their ecstatic minimalism to reverberate in new ways, Jason Moran, who we find drawing lines between James Reece Europe, Albert Ayler and contemporary jazz, and Ricardo Dias Gomes’ eerie yet alluring post-Tropicália on Muito Sol. Great as all of these are, as well as the others picks below, including a handful of non-jazz faves, no album excited and grabbed me as much as Norwegian Pianist Isach Skeidsvoll’s Dance to Summon. A rollicking, roaring, dancing and jubilant juxtaposition and interweaving of jazz both old and modern from all manner of sources, summoning something truly unique and magnificent in the process.
Isach Skeidsvoll: Dance to Summon (Ultraääni Records)
Lukas Traxel: One-Eyed Daruma (We Jazz Records)
Mark Lomax Trio: Tapestry (self-released/marklomaxII.com)
Brötzmann – Bekkas – Drake: Catching Ghosts (ACT)
Jason Moran: From the Dancehall To the Battlefield (Yes Records)
Natural Information Society: Since Time Is Gravity (Eremite)
The Necks: Travel (2LP, Northern Spy)
Aila Trio: Shaped By Waves (Edgetone Records)
Sam Weinberg Trio with Chris Lightcap & Tom Rainey: Implicatures (Astral Spirits)
Ingebrigt Håker Flaten & Paal Nilssen-Love: Guts and Skins (Sonic Transmissions/PNL)
Ingrid Laubrock: The Last Quiet Place (Pyroclastic)
Ricardo Dias Gomes: Muito Sol (Hive Mind Records)
Joakim Rainer Trio: Light.Sentence (Sonic Transmissions)
Robert Forster: The Candle And the Flame (Tapete Records)
James Brandon Lewis Trio: Eye of I (-Anti)
GEORGE: Letters to George (OOYH)
Akmee: Sacrum Profanum (Nakama)
Christian McBride’s New Jawn: Prime (Brother Mister Productions)
Withered Hand: How to Love (Reveal Records)
Johan Lindström & Norrbotten Big Band: Johan Lindström & Norrbotten Big Band (Moserobie Records)
JPEGMAfia & Danny Brown: Scaring the Hoes (Peggy/AWAL)
Allen Lowe: America: The Rough Cut (ESP)
Luís Vicente 4tet: House In the Valley (Clean Feed)
Billy Woods: Maps (Backwoodz Studioz)
Lakecia Benjamin: Phoenix (Whirlwind Recordings)