New music

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/11/2022 (1400 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

POP/ROCK

SAULT

Untitled (God); 11; Aiir; Earth; Today & Tomorrow

(Forever Living Originals)

On Nov. 1, a message appeared on the website of the enigmatic U.K. R&B project known as Sault: “Here are 5 albums released as an offering to God. Available for free download for five days. The password to unlock all 5 albums is in the message. Love SAULT.”

The password was shared around the world almost immediately, enabling fans to access albums called Untitled (God), 11, Aiir, Earth and Today & Tomorrow.

Surprise releases are no big deal in the internet age, but simultaneous surprise releases of five separate albums, each carefully curated, fully realized and thematically linked, is certainly worth a raised eyebrow or two. The sum of this output is a staggering three hours and 40 minutes of music.

Inflo, the English producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist behind Sault, is clearly as prolific as, say, Frank Zappa, Prince, Guided by Voices or, most recently, Daniel Romano (who released nine albums and an EP in 2021). Unlike the hip hop, club and techno MCs, DJs and beatmakers who regularly drop mixtapes and/or club mixes, Sault works in distinct idioms, and each of these recordings branches off in a different direction.

Aiir, for example, is a 25-minute, five-song continuation of Air, Sault’s excursion into contemporary classical and choral composition released earlier this year, on which Inflo works with a Music Confectionery choir and an orchestra arranged by cellist Rosie Danvers to create pastoral and percussive movements of praise and devotion.

Earth brings tribal beats, chanting and percussion to the party, creating veritable mantras of piety, while 11 follows in the odd-numbered sequence of albums called 5, 7 and 9, blending elements of soul, jazz, R&B, hip hop, reggae and dub into an expression of the strength and power of Black faith. Today & Tomorrow, meanwhile, is the outlier of the five, turning up the guitars and bass and moving into the inner-city to explore a fuzzy and funky jazz-punk song cycle.

The thematic core of all these releases is obviously Christian faith and its attendant principles of salvation and redemption. While the songs are devotional, their message and hope is that listeners — indeed, all people — will rise above themselves and their difficulties and, as Little Simz raps on Free, from Untitled (God), “abandon our egos… remain empathetic… and cut off all of our toxic ties.”

Even if you’re not a believer, that’s a gospel you can get behind. ★★★★ out of five

STREAM THESE: Although the free download window has closed, all five albums are now available on streaming services.

— John Kendle

POP/ROCK

Tove Lo

Dirt Femme (Pretty Swede Records)

Femininity is all-encompassing, it’s malleable and flesh deep.

In Tove Lo’s fifth studio album, Dirt Femme — the first on her own independent label — the Swedish singer-songwriter and producer profoundly understands the female experience can be painful, messy and iridescent. Tove Lo rejects the confined cage of femininity and gets dirty.

In Dirt Femme, Tove Lo is able to analyze her marriage and rejects the traditional nuclear family in Suburbia, singing “I can’t be no Stepford wife.” She explores an eating disorder that plagued her teenage years in Grapefruit — the purposefully sweltering beats makes this song a undeniable club banger — and self-hatred and self-sabotage in I’m to Blame, her most candid song yet.

Lead single No One Dies from Love documents how Tove Lo’s interpretation of femininity means showing the vulnerability of heartbreak as she sings against heavy ’80s-inspired synth, “No one dies from love/Guess I’ll be the first. Will you remember us?/Or are the memories too stained with blood now?” Her second single, 2 Die 4 samples Popcorn by Gershon Kingsley in a shimmering, fatal love song that screams camp.

Other album standouts include Call on Me and Pineapple Slice, produced by British EDM artist SG Lewis. The songs take the listener into a disco rave curated by two juggernauts of the now mainstream genre.

Tove Lo ponders the question, “After the pain is there more?” She confidently answers it through a sharply written and a sonically creative career-defining album. She shatters the pristine image of femininity shoved down her throat as woman. She is an artist — and now a independent label owner — while simultaneously dancing on a club dancefloor.

— Nardos Haile, The Associated Press

JAZZ

Michael Sarian

Living at the End of the World (ears&eyes Records)

Trumpeter and composer Michael Sarian’s new album offers a wide range of emotions from this inventive, Canadian-born, Argentina-raised musician. His quartet features Santiago Leibson on piano, Rhodes and minimoog, Marty Kenney on bass and Nathan Ellman-Bell on drums. Chilean performer Camila Meza sits in on guitar and vocal on one track.

The compositions reference a number of personal influences in Sarian’s life. His trumpet pays tribute to trumpeters such as Tomasz Stanko and Enrico Rava, and legendary drummer Paul Motian. The title of the album references Japanese author Haruki Murakami, whose book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World impacted Sarian during the pandemic.

Several of the tracks play like laid-back blues, while others have tricky time signatures and rhythmic diversity. The opening track, Yis Ghimetn Chim Gidi (I Don’t Know Your True Value), is an arrangement of a tune by an 18th-century Armenian poet and troubadour named Sayat Nove, while The Pilgrim is dedicated to trumpeter Rava from one of his early albums.

While every member of the quartet is top-notch, this is Sarian’s gig. His trumpet is personal, whether growling or smoothly moving through a solo. He is a storyteller with his horn, expressing clearly expressed and personal emotions throughout. This is potentially a risk, but not with Sarian. His trumpet makes the listener actively involved in the meaning of the notes.

Several tracks drive through wonderful time changes or offer intense and slower evolution. Oysters, a tune by bassist and composer Meshell Ndegeocello, is truly beautiful. Picklepuss Romp, on the other hand, is a playful tribute to his brother’s dog, Pickle.

Having been moved by basketball great Kobe Bryant’s sudden death, Sarian’s tribute Regarding Kobe offers comfort with the music. The vocal track by Meza is fine but frankly seems a bit out of place in the general playlist.

The depth in the contemporary jazz world means that often a terrific talent like Sarian’s is less known than it should be. Hopefully this album will move the needle. ★★★★1/2 out of five

STREAM THESE: The Pilgrim, Oysters

— Keith Black

CLASSICAL

A Christmas Night: Classical & Traditional Favourites (Harmonia Mundi)

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and this sampler (LP only) by Harmonia Mundi brings together 10 festive favourites from its catalogue of recordings.

It also represents a good cross-section of some of the world’s finest classical music ensembles performing music from Praetorius to Benjamin Britten, as well as beloved choral works by J. S. Bach and Handel. As a curated collection, one can be fairly certain of a uniform quality of offerings with something for every taste.

Several highlights include two a cappella offerings: Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, with the RIAS Kammerchor led by Hans-Christoph Rademann bringing to life its plaintive melody, and Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht! with the same group’s choristers’ voices rising and falling in hushed reverence.

However, the ensemble also proves its versatility, bursting out of the gate with Chor Jauchzet from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 with crisply delivered, polyphonic lines, in turn punctuated by triumphant trumpet fanfares courtesy of the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin (Rene Jacobs).

Other gems include a sprightly rendition of Handel’s iconic Hallelujah! chorus from Messiah, performed on period instruments by Les Arts Florissants (William Christie), as well as a relatively brisk interpretation of Holst’s In the Bleak Midwinter, featuring the Theatre of Voices (Paul Hillier). The Choir of Clare College, Cambridge (Tanya Hough Houghton, Graham Ross), is showcased in one of the collection’s shorter, but very sweet There is no rose from Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28.

The album’s lone instrumental work is the Largo: Pastorale movement from Corelli’s Concerto grosso, Op. 6, No. 8 in G minor, ‘fatto per la notte di Natale, performed by Ensemble 415 (Chiara Banchini, Jesper Christensen); truthfully, more of these contemplative, non-vocal selections would provide repose and a welcome contrast from the otherwise predominantly choral program.

But this is all humbug — any perceived lapse is quickly forgiven when Ars Nova Copenhagen (Paul Hillier) bids us greetings with an ebullient We Wish You a Merry Christmas, sending listeners into the festive season with a lilt in their step and song in their hearts. ★★★★ out of five

STREAM THIS: Praetorius’s Es ist ein Ros entsprungen performed by the RIAS Kammerchor led by Hans-Christoph Rademann

— Holly Harris