Singleversity #42

Audiversity’s weekly column, slightly modified, on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 132

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With the first gaggle of 2008 releases from Chicago’s Thrill Jockey Records comes the follow-up to the excellent debut from the Rob Mazurek-helmed Exploding Star Orchestra, We are all from somewhere else. (which is also now available in a limited, beautiful looking and sounding double gatefold 180g LP). Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra finds Mazurek teaming up with the similar-minded free jazz trumpeter Bill Dixon (duh). A bit more sprawling than the previous release, Dixon utilizes the darkly glowing backdrops to propel his intensely poetic and spacey solos. Think a combination of Don Cherry, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, Modern Jazz Quartet and the Chicago Underground concoctions. Each of the three tracks is in the 20-minute range, but here is an edited excerpt of the first track, “Entrances/One”.

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Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy cropped up this week and inspired me to go back through some of his works at random to see what I could find. As ever, the fastest route was through YouTube; the esteemed talents of Jacqueline du Pré and her equally talented mother Iris are on display here for the German composer’s Lieder ohne Worte, part of an eight-cycle composition of six songs each that was only finished two years before the Hamburg-born composer passed away in 1847. A life’s work that morphed as Mendelssohn’s ear did (though he has been regarded as one of the more conservative/subtle composers of the era), Songs without Words only needed to be played, ahem, once to catch my ear. As you can see, I am not quite so subtle.