Time again to be grateful for the musical bounty of our state.
Steuart Liebig, "Monodrama" There is nothing like a completely dark room. There you can see, and it took composer Steuart Liebig to create music that complements the experience. Synthesizers mass like ideas, then rumble, twinkle and dissipate, leaving behind a safer emptiness in which a soul can breathe. This essential void, maybe, you can take back into the crowded light for a while. Listen/buy here. Also recommended: the harrowing quake and tunnel of "anamnesis_03"; listen here.
Scot Ray, "Alap" Ray presents a greatest hits of sorts: nine long electronified improvisations on steel guitar that pull fine silk threads through your welcoming earholes to gently scrub the sullied gray within. It will be enough to ride one or two tingling currents at a time, but try the desert alien encounter "Gold and Silver' and the more busily blooming "Anneal." Bargain of the year at two hours. Listen/buy here. Also recommended: Ray's rootsier long-running project with chromatic harmonica player Bill Barrett, Gutpuppet; listen here.
Wayne Peet, "True Truth" (Killzone). Keyboardist Peet gathered the perfect band to expand his gently wandering melodies -- Roberto Miranda to apply sticky fingerations and suggestive alternative paths to his grooves on upright bass, Andrew Pask to open many subtle woodwind worlds, and drummin' son Ellington Peet to push it all along with a grin. Here's the sense of fun you don't always find in today's jazz. First half rules, but also cruise the dynamic "Surface of the Desert." Listen/buy here.
Phillip Greenlief & Trevor Dunn, "Twenty-Seven" (Riverworm). Explosive sax blurts and contrabass interluptions blast off this commemoration of a 27-year musical tennis match, and the high-speed conversation keeps ripping as if the two have a lot to catch up on. No intellectual exercise, "Twenty-Seven" is the work of seasoned musicians whose language blows far past the limits of grammar, syntax, notes and bars -- it's the most sophisticated form of yelling you'll ever hear. What a privilege to eavesdrop. Listen/buy here.
Jennifer Terran, "California National Anthem" Her songs emerge like children, unpredictable and each with a distinctive beauty that connects via her ethereal yet ever so present voice. Terran has earned a touch of blues, and her lyric eye has acquired a wry patience. The water rippling in the record's best songs, "Down by the Creek" and "Hamilton Lake," is echoed by the slow drip of Chris Hinman's steel guitar, and Todd Sickafoose's arrangements allow Terran's meditative piano and Andrew Borger's earthy drums space to stretch. Don't know whether we can afford to be this direct anymore, or afford not to. Listen/buy here.