Music from the Concrete Bunker: May 2021

A roundup of short reviews from Concrete Islands HQ, with jaimie branch, Amanda Whiting, DJ Format, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Ziad Rahbani

Time is slippery underneath the review pile. A person could get lost in there, forever wandering through sonic streets, where an aged tannoy system blasts out the very latest sounds alongside the really quite recent. This month we go from late May drops to the almost-missed from early April, and whatever release dates lie in between, travelling along lines of jazz, beats and crate-digging.

jaimie branch – FLY or DIE LIVE (International Anthem)

Another righteous live set of ferocious, future-proofed jazz from Chicago’s ever-essential International Anthem label. Like labelmate Angel Bat Dawid’s killer LIVE album, trumpeter jaimie branch further animates brimming-with-life studio cuts (from Fly or Die and FLY or DIE II: bird dogs of paradise) that deserve to be preserved as listenable data and within the grooves of a playable artefact. branch interrogates our bleak and frightening world via different modes, from the resistance invoking shout from the rooftops that is “prayer for amerikkka pt. 1 & 2”, through the joyful free-form maneuvers of “twenty-three n me, jupiter redux”, to the astonishing primal depths black hole howl of “The Storm”. If FLY or DIE LIVE is in part an attempt to express what we the people are feeling right now, then it gets damn close to the heavy heart of it.

Amanda Whiting – After Dark (Jazzman)

Night-time music in the mode of Dorothy Ashby from Welsh harpist Amanda Whiting, the delicate nature of “After Dark” is but a cover for its depths of feeling. Alongside the soul jazz vibrations are high cinematic evocations: the deadly sensuality of Black Narcissus and the spiralling obsession of Vertigo. Light dances across the surface of these pieces, but the unwary listener is likely to slip and fall inside, which is absolutely a risk worth taking.

DJ Format – Devil’s Workshop (Project Blue Book)

Imagining myself unstuck in time, like Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5 or Desmond Hume in LOST, I relive parts of my life where I’m discovering certain albums. In this case it’s DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, which built on the Dust Brothers’ work with the Beastie Boys to craft an entire LP out of samples. Since I’m not experiencing any time-displacement, I’ve attempted to recreate this in the closest way possible via Devil’s Workshop by DJ Format. Miles away from the somnambulist tone of Shadow’s debut LP – although this remains a somewhat introspective block party, interspersed with moments of pure expressive abandon – and with a more cut and paste hip-hop aesthetic up front, the two share a beautifully realised everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to sampling. Devil’s Workshop boasts a surface immediacy that’ll have you hooked from the outset, yet also reveals additional moments from its past lives with every listen. The pleasure of discovery is strong with this one.

Georgia Anne Muldrow – VWETO III (FORESEEN / Epistrophik Peach Sound)

Listening to Georgia Anne Muldrow’s VWETO III is sitting in a room sipping beats-infused tea and experiencing dreams in the desert. Vast empty spaces under a sheltering sky; each track a new thought, like turning a corner where there are no corners and being presented with a previously unseen vista. A suite of abstract hip-hop soundscapes bubbling out of Muldrow’s subconscious and pouring into yours.

Ziad Rahbani – Bennesbeh, Labokra… Chou? (Wewantsounds)

Released on vinyl for the first time since 1978, Ziad Rahbani’s crate-diggers’ delight is reissued as part of Wewantsounds’ Arabic series and is a real breath of fresh air, despite the passage of time. For Bennesbeh, Labokra… Chou? is an outernational feast of avant-garde soundtrack and wayward orchestra, steeped in jazz and bossa nova. There’s a late period new wave flamboyance to proceedings and much that will appeal to both beat-head aficionados of Jean-Claude Vannier or Arthur Verocai and those who follow the outer reaches of Middle Eastern music. The composer’s sometimes-colleague Rogér Fakhr told me that Rahbani “integrated jazz and other styles to Arabic music, which exposed the Lebanese people to something non-traditional and I admire him for that.” On Bennesbeh, Labokra… Chou? Rahbani treats musical traditions as malleable forms to be shaped into his own art; that the process was a joyful one for him here is evident in the listening.

That’s it from the concrete bunker for now. Stay safe out there folks.