Brandon Ross & Coco Em
Announcing the next podcast and another upcoming CD...
The latest episode of the Burning Ambulance podcast will be out on Friday; it features an interview with guitarist Brandon Ross of Harriet Tubman, For Living Lovers (a duo project with bassist Stomu Takeishi), and now Breath Of Air, whose self-titled debut album will be released on Burning Ambulance Music soon.
Breath Of Air is a trio featuring violinist Charles Burnham and drummer Warren Benbow, both of whom originally came together in guitarist James “Blood” Ulmer’s Odyssey band. But despite sharing instrumentation, this group sounds nothing like that one. Breath Of Air, the album, which was recorded at the Sound It Out concert series in New York in February 2020 and mixed by legendary engineer Scotty Hard, blends blues, the Black string band tradition (Carolina Chocolate Drops, Ebony Hillbillies), rock ’n’ roll and power drone into something wholly unique in the world of improvised music. Here’s a sample track, “Pucker Up”:
We talk about that group, about Harriet Tubman, about Brandon’s work with Henry Threadgill and Cassandra Wilson, and much, much more on the podcast, so check that out when it hits on Friday — it’ll be on BurningAmbulance.com, on Apple, on Spotify, and everywhere else podcasts are distributed.
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• Tom Waits’ albums Alice and Blood Money turned 20 last week; they were released simultaneously on May 7, 2002. I interviewed him when they were new. The story was supposed to run as an inside feature in Jazziz, but they killed it, so I offered it to The Wire, and they put him on the cover. I’ve been writing for The Wire ever since. Anyway, I discussed the albums, and the uniquely awkward experience of interviewing Tom Waits, a man who never breaks character in front of a journalist or a camera, for Stereogum. Go read that, if you like.
• Several years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Klaus Schulze (via email), also for The Wire. I’ve been fascinated by/obsessed with his Seventies albums, and the epic La Vie Électronique series (50 CDs, divided into 16 volumes), for more than a decade. In the wake of Schulze’s passing, I wrote a short introduction to his work, and reviews of 10 key albums, for the music recommendation website Shfl. Here’s a link.
• I got an email from my publisher announcing that due to the rising costs of energy, shipping rates, etc., they’re going to be raising the prices on their books soon. So if you’ve had your eye on a copy of Ugly Beauty: Jazz in the 21st Century, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet, now would be a good time to do so. You can get it from Amazon, from Barnes & Noble, or from Bookshop. I thank you.
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I bought several records last week on Bandcamp Friday, including some Don Cherry reissues (can someone tell me what the deal is with Hat Hut’s new ezz-thetics sub-label? They keep “reissuing” albums I know are owned by labels like Impulse!, Blue Note, ESP-Disk’, and even Sony, and I am really curious about the rights situation), a compilation of Hawaiian music sourced from old 78s, and a truly stonking live release by Japanese psych legends Les Rallizes Dénudés, but the thing that impressed me most was a seven-track, 25-minute EP, Kilumi, by Coco Em, a DJ from Nairobi, Kenya.
The EP is her debut release, and it’s startlingly powerful music. The tracks are mostly short, but they pack a number of ideas into concise forms. The intricate rhythm loops feature a mix of deep bass booms and delicate hand percussion; in the final seconds of “Yi Ingi,” the slap of the congas drifts away on subtle echo.
“Winyo Nungo,” a high-energy male-female cutting contest between MC Sharon and Wuod Baba, captures both rhymers switching seamlessly back and forth between English and Dhaluo, the language of the Luo people. The beat is both aggressive and complex, shifting to add sudden jackhammer fills behind key lines, and the hi-hats and pulsing synths (one of which sounds like a wooden flute pushed through a wah-wah pedal, while another recalls an acid house bass line) could have come off a Nitzer Ebb track.
The title track chops up a sample of a woman from the Kamba tribe of Eastern Kenya, where Coco Em (birth name Emma Nzioka) is from, and lays it over a fast rhythm that’s all kick-in-the-chest bass and ticking hi-hat; if it reminds you of the abstract, cerebral footwork music of Jlin, then you’re hearing the same things I’m hearing. The entire EP has an indefinable darkness to it; even the closing track, “Pesa,” which features a quite beautiful R&B-style vocal from Labdi, throws stuttering, eerie vocal samples at the listener, everything from half-whispers to sudden ululations, creating an unsettling atmosphere. Kilumi is one of the most striking electronic music releases I’ve heard this year, and I want to hear more music from Coco Em as soon as possible. (She’s got a number of DJ mixes posted on Soundcloud; the one below is great, and includes music from Kilumi.)
That’s it for now. See you next week!