Bullion – Nearly
Wonky pop from Arthur Russell acolyte and indie super producer Nathan Jenkins, who has worked with the likes of Carly Rae Jepson, Avalon Emerson, Nilufer Yanya and more. As you might expect, it is exquisitely produced. Four albums and a decade into his solo career, Bullion has created a delightful record, perfectly in tune with the post ‘Stranger Things’ 80s zeitgeist. All of which might make it sound a little contrived but it’s not. It’s weirder and poppier and more fun than that description suggests. Music for cruising through LA at night with the hood down.
Resavoir – Above The Clouds
Resavoir is on a roll. This is the second album this year that the Chill Out Tent has selected as an album of the month, following March’s blissful ‘Themes for Dreams’.
‘Above the Clouds’ brings a subtle influence of cloud rap to the band’s pastoral jazz stylings, which led band leader Will Miller to describe the sound as “cloud jazz”, which will do for us.
Only three of the 13 tracks clock in above three minutes (and those don’t stretch to four) giving the whole album a fleeting wispiness in tune with the cloudy theme. This feeling of impermanence only adds to the slightly disorienting psychedelic feel that Resavoir does so well. The core trio of Miller and longtime collaborators, bassist Lane Beckstrom and drummer Jeremy Cunningham are absolute masters of this stuff – dream jazz for people who don’t like jazz. Masterful.
HUG – HUG
We should have featured this one last month but it got lost in the flood of Autumn releases, which is almost a crime because you want to live and luxuriate in this album as long as humanly possible. HUG are a new trio comprising Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective’s Noah Georgeson
and Gyan Riley, who is the son of avant-garde master Terry Riley and a renowned classical/jazz/rock guitarist who has collaborated with the likes of John Zorn, Lou Reed, Lee Ranaldo, Paul Simon, Zakir Hussein and many more.
The music contained within HUG is like a big, warm, er, hug. It’s kinda what you imagine the music these guys might make if they holed up in a studio in the woods in Northern California for a week. Starlit extended guitar grooves or, as the bumf says “frogs, condensed milk, the patter of rain”. Quite.
Jakob Bro & Midori Tanaka – From Such A Blue Sky / かくも青き空から
This is the second album from Danish composer and guitarist Jakob Bro (who produced Palle Mikkelborg’s ambient jazz album of the year ‘Light’) and Japanese percussionist Midori Takada. It keeps to the tuneful side of the weird plinky plonky ambient fourth worldism that Takada made her name with in the 1980s. Indeed some of its melodies and gentle guitar grooves would not be out of place on the HUG album. This is the second album in a trilogy with a tour expected in 2027 – a musical adventure to follow.
Leave a Reply