Got one of those little Xteink X4 epub ereaders. Fits in a shirt pocket. Flashed it, upon arrival, with the alternative firmware called CrossPoint Reader, which has a tidier interface and some useful features. (MIT Data Science book, by John D. Kelleher and Brendan Tierney, from Humble Bundle.) The X4 has no light or touchscreen or highlighting capability (though it does allow for screenshots), and that’s OK, and should a future version come with such things, I can turn this one into a TRMNL.
The past’s future, courtesy of Time-Life Books, 1986. They’re permanently on display on the shelf of a sandwich shop and cafe I frequent.
It’s sort of amazing to think that Bill Frisell, despite being as prolific as he is, also has so much unrecorded music sitting around that he can hand enough to constitute a concert-length program to another ensemble, here the Westerlies, and on top of it, that program introduces a new album that is apparently, per its title, the first in a planned series: Have You Heard? The Music of Bill Frisell, Vol. 1. The unusual format of the Westerlies, a quartet, is two trumpets (Riley Mulherkar, Chloe Rowlands) and two trombones (Andy Clausen, Addison Maye-Saxon), and despite the fact that essentially between them at any time there are two fewer notes than Frisell can, on his own (not even counting his various electronic processing devices), ring out of his electric guitar, they masterfully summon up his earthy mix of jazz and Americana, of tradition and experimentation, and bring an enticing attentiveness to their brainy arrangements, which also serve as a testament to Frisell’s substantial legacy. The video was recorded live in concert at Roulette on March 26, and it sounds like it’s from some alternate universe where the OG Knitting Factory and Preservation Hall are/were one and the same place. More on the group at westerliesmusic.com. And check out the album’s Bandcamp page for the informative liner notes, which include a message from Frisell himself.
On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.
▰ Part of the fun of the new Jeff Parker ETA IVtet track, “Like Swimwear (part one),” off the forthcoming Happy Today album, is it kinda sounds even more like a Battles track than like one by Tortoise, of which Parker is a member.
▰ I’ve been following trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire for quite a while now, and it’s a slow-burn thrill to hear him in a quintet led by the legendary Herbie Hancock on piano, also featuring Walter Smith III (saxophone, and whom I saw at Smoke in Manhattan a couple years back), Ben Williams (bass), and Mark Merella (percussion). The song, “Footprints,” by Wayne Shorter, is associated with trumpeter Miles Davis, as it appeared on, with Hancock as part of a very different quintet, the 1967 album Miles Smiles. Hancock turns 86 a week from today, on April 12.
▰ João Ricardo, aka OCP, has a new album out, titled POC. It’s lowercase noise, rattly systems ambience and utterly fractured dub techno, spare elements dangling in the digital wind. The embed isn’t working, so check it out on Bandcamp.
At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.
▰ It’s not that I don’t enjoy period dramas. I just prefer when the period is in the future or the present.
▰ … and that’s it. Aside from some photos, also reproduced earlier here, I didn’t post anything else to social media. Just that one comment. It was, apparently, a busy week.
▰ I didn’t finish reading any novels, though I’m close to the end of several. I did finish reading four graphic novels: the second Absolute Batman (which I enjoyed a lot more than the first volume, as the characters are coming together), the first Absolute Flash, the first Absolute Martian Manhunter (which felt — and I mean this as a compliment — like Dash Shaw and Jason Little had a baby that Chris Bachalo helped raise), and an Image release titled Assorted Crisis Events, an anthology about temporal disruption that I dug a lot of. The ghost work of Paul Pope and Tom King hover over several of these.
