As the PostGenre Team is working on their list(s) of Favorites from 2020, here is a flashback to Rob Shepherd’s 2019 list. This list originally appeared at Nextbop. ————————————————————————————————————-Perhaps the most interesting takeaway from 2019 is the number of artists adapting music from the past into something new. Many of the past year’s releases have […]
In both his striking visual art and his eclectic music, Ted Feighan engages in a collage making process. In the former, he does this by surrounding the natural beauty of exotic birds and flowers with vibrant colors and, occasionally, man-made objects like couches, cars, or buildings. In addition to their own artistic merit, they also […]
Geography isn’t destiny, but it might explain some things about pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn and her new release, Pedernal (Relative Pitch Records, 2020). Alcorn is based in Baltimore, a place where the strange, unexpected and contradictory thrive. It is the birthplace of Edgar Allan Poe, Frank Zappa and John Waters, who wrote, “You can […]
On January 24, 1975, Keith Jarrett sat, in pain, at the keys of a decrepit and horribly out-of-tune piano. The instrument’s pedals did not function properly, giving both a dampened lower register and a harsh upper one. Even after several hours of adjustments, it was still defective. Anyone rationally analyzing this situation would see these […]
American musicians have been experimenting with Balkan-esque rhythms since at least 1959 when Dave Brubeck brought the 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 pulse back from a folk song he heard in Istanbul and composed Blue Rondo à La Turk. Since then, unusual note groupings have become standard fare in jazz, fusion, and art […]
The title cut of Emi Makabe’s debut full-length release, Anniversary (Greenleaf Music, 2020), is a graceful, bittersweet waltz about the kind of partings and reunions that form the bar lines in the lives of touring musicians. It’s a spare duet for voice and bass made all the more poignant by the empathetic accompaniment of the […]
Ten tracks into E L U C I D’s Valley of Grace (Backwoodz Studioz, 2017), the rapper declared that “nothing’s broken, this is how it’s supposed to run” on “Talk Disruptive For Me”. At that point in the EP, if the listener did not know that he was talking about systemic racism, they had not […]
There are no words to soothe this grief-stricken year. As the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs on, artists everywhere are faced with a responsibility to innovate and inspire with renewed vigor as well as to celebrate and memorialize the legacies of those we have lost. Among those losses was an unsung titan of modern music: producer Hal […]
Free Jazz/Avant-Garde is at its most expressive when it presents itself as a collective experience. A singular unit that exists by excavating the thoughts, experiences, emotion, and creativity of all members in equal measure. On the recording of The Luke Stewart Exposure Quintet’s self-titled album, the bassist-bandleader states: “I want to convey again the collectivity […]
Sun Ra was born on the planet Saturn sometime presumably in the early 20th Century. Some historians mistake him for a gifted pianist named Herman Poole “Sonny” Blount, who was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914. In reality, he was the first great composer born on another planet to came to earth with the mission […]
