Needle Drops

Listening to new music shakes off cobwebs and helps us think about the future. That's because inspiring artists will never cease creating and building worlds that trickle into our own. New sounds and inventive artworks have the magic to relieve our minds of heavy burdens. Sure, the relief is temporary, but it's there for us when we need it—and some of us need it more than ever.

Needle Drops provides a balm by suggesting several albums that were released today and are ready for your careful consideration. You'll find tasty jazz interpretations of a classic songbook, mountain-born ambient music to tickle the mood, exploratory world-inspired dueling bass guitars with a King Crimson connection, high-paced Taiwanese jazz inspired by ancient poetry, and the compelling musical possibilities of domestic bliss. The time to dig in is now.

3Below - Live in Mérida

3Below's new album, Live in Mérida, documents a 2023 concert at Yucatan's Palacio del La Música de Mérida. The recording brings together Michael Manring, who built his reputation working with Jaco Pastorius and developing the Hyperbass technique; Trey Gunn, whose Warr Guitar innovations colored King Crimson's sound; and Mexican bassist and poet Alonso Arreola. Special guest Emmanuel Pina's oud playing adds subtle Middle Eastern accents throughout the performance.

The roots of 3Below grew from a 2012 trip to Mali by Gunn and Arreola, who spent time learning from the region's master musicians and played at local festivals, including a performance with the royal family of Begnemato. The album's twelve pieces reflect this African musical education alongside Latin American, Asian, and European influences. The recording follows the band's live format: acoustic arrangements with ukulele and bass open the set before giving way to electric compositions that spotlight each player's technical abilities. Mexican press has praised their work - Time Out Magazine noted their "enormous talent," while The Chronicle cited their Mexico City show as the standout of the Alterna Jazz Season. The recording offers a blend of traditional music forms reimagined through these three instrumentalists' distinct musical voices. (LP)

Day Dream - Duke & Strays Live

In a live recording at Bucknell University, three distinct voices in modern jazz—March 2024 Spotlight On podcast guest and drummer Phil Haynes, pianist Steve Rudolph, and bassist Drew Gress—come together as Day Dream and offer bold reinterpretations of the Ellington-Strayhorn songbook proving these classics remain vital in the twenty-first century.

The repertoire spans ten Ellington-Strayhorn classics across two discs, including "African Flower," "Perdido," and "Take the 'A' Train." The trio refuses to treat these compositions as museum pieces, revealing instead the experimental currents that ran through Ellington's music - currents evident in works like his avant-garde trio album Money Jungle (1963) with Mingus and Max Roach, and his Sacred Concerts, a series of three ambitious works composed between 1965-1973 that combined jazz, classical, choral music, and gospel in unprecedented combinations.

Day Dream's take on these classics reflects Haynes's musical philosophy. As he recently wrote in his memoir Chasing the Masters, he sees jazz musicians split between "traditionalists" and "modernists" who "share many of the very same heroes yet draw vastly different lessons from them." With Duke & Strays Live, Day Dream makes a strong case for embracing both views. (LP)

Juliet Palmer - Four Rooms

Juliet Palmer's Four Rooms documents daily home life in audio collages, field recordings, and songs. The album, out on Orchard of Pomegranates, features Montreal vocalist Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, known for her work in jazz and Middle Eastern music.

The eight-track album blends household sounds—coffee grinding, running water, steam bursts—with composed melodies and environmental recordings. Palmer moved from Aotearoa/New Zealand, to Toronto and has created site-specific works under highway ramps and swimming pools. The project began after Gottlieb performed Palmer's "Inside Us" at Vancouver's Western Front in 2018. Four interludes titled "stairs" record walks among Toronto landmarks like Grenadier Pond and the Baldwin Steps, linking home spaces to city sites. On "a fish transformed," Gottlieb sings about water moving from rain to rivers to household taps. (LP)

ZY THE WAY - Then and Now

On Then and Now, Taipei jazz group ZY THE WAY 中庸 draw from the Shijing 詩經 (Book of Songs), a collection of Chinese poetry compiled by Confucius dating back 3,000 years. Translator, Dr. Annie Luman Ren provided English versions of these ancient verses.

The ten tracks include two readings in original Chinese alongside their musical versions. "Wild Winds 終風" features words by China's first recorded female poet, Zhuang Jiang. Mark de Clive-Lowe and DJ Spinna contributed remixes of singles from the album, including "Ten Acres 十畝之間," which describes rural life and leisure. At concerts, the band plays with synchronized visual art. Dr. Ren's translations accompany the release, detailing the poems' origins and meanings. (LP)

Broken Chip - A Distant Blur

The Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia, seem idyllic. Situated outside of the grainy hustle of Sydney, the mountains exhibit a scenic beauty that might as well accompany the music of Broken Chip. Martyn Palmer lives a stone's throw from that gorgeous environment and records bright, ambient tones under the Broken Chip name, self-releasing albums like last July's appropriately titled Landscapes. He's now aligned with the likewise calmly-minded Home Normal imprint for A Distant Blur, which is out today.

The album brings a soothing sequence of Palmer's processed guitar drones, hidden piano, and warm synth passages (a trusty Prophet 6 is mentioned elsewhere) throughout its nine bliss-out-inducing tracks. The tape hiss here is reassuring and nostalgic, as are the moonlit street sounds that sneak into your ears on the lovely "Superposition." It's tough to know where all this fits—drone, electronic, ambient, maybe even a touch of 'bootgaze'—but A Distant Blur is distinctive and satisfying in a crowded field of oh-so-pleasant music. It sounds like the antidote to distress, willing and able to summon the album's listeners up into those regal Blue Mountains. (MD)

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