The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week’s theme is something slightly more abstract. Music with an aqueous or liquid quality that—in the mind of the listener—can appear to flow, swell, or shimmer like water. The sense could come from sonic layering, bubbling arpeggios, drones, long delays or reverb, even synth patches...something unique to each listener. Some of the following projects have a deliberate relation to water: Olec Mün and Michael Sarian’s EP being inspired by mythological creatures from the unexplored depths of the ocean, for instance, but others have just crafted a unique sound world through their writing and arranging. We hope that theme resonates with you, but if not, these five records are simply immersive and gratifying listens!
Olec Mün and Michael Sarian – MAKARA
Zoran Kazakov, Vasko Serafimov – Bird
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz album of the week is the latest in Jazz is Dead’s fantastic series, this time featuring the legendary Gary Bartz. “Working with Gary Bartz epitomizes the ethos behind Jazz Is Dead,” says Adrian Younge. “He’s a luminary that has contributed so much to music culture, for decades. His musical ability is expanding with age and we’re honored to be a part of his world.” Support the project and label on Bandcamp!
Classic Album
This week’s NQ Jazz classic album is a beauty from one of the giants of jazz music in South Africa. Hugh Masekela’s Home Is Where The Music Is is a sprawling double album, opened with Caiphus Semenya’s Part of a Whole, which serves as the ideal vessel for solos from Masekela, Dudu Pukwana, and Larry Willis on piano. Then follows mellifluous tune after mellifluous tune — some pensive and others grooving. Find the album on streaming services.