Stoked to be part of this latest series of Hilobrow essays, all about “analyzing and celebrating our favorite… Seventies (1974–83) sci-fi novels and comics.” I wrote about Rudy Rucker’s foundational cyberpunk classic Software (1982), the first of his four-novel (“tetralogy”) Ware series. These Hilobrow essays are being posted one at a time. Mine will be up down the road. What great company to be in. Deb Chachra, Douglas Wolk, Seth, and so many more. Details and the first few at hilobrow.com.
A tableau on my walk
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.
▰ New collaboration between trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and guitarist Mary Halvorson, Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings, gets a preview with the forthcoming (June 12, 2026) album’s fourth track (of nine), appropriately title “Soundcheck.” It’s especially exciting because it appears (check around 25 seconds in) to evidence Akinmusire employing electronics to layer his instrument and, soon after, to develop foundational pads.
An advance note from the releasing label, Nonesuch, confirms this:
Though Halvorson regularly uses effects pedals on her guitar, Akinmusire’s use of one on Slo-Mo Neon Luminate Hoverings is new. Having recently gotten an updated model of the Line 6, Halvorson was passing her old ones along to friends. “Ambrose was interested in trying a Line Six. I gave him one five minutes before the rehearsal and was amazed how quickly he was able to do incredible shit on it … in literally five minutes,” she says.
“But I’ve been watching you, I’ve been watching Bill [Frisell] and other people use it for a long time,” Akinmusire says. “I approached it as if it were its own musician. I played and it would process the sound and then I would choose to react to that or not.
▰ Super dessicated minimal dub techno from Paperclip Minimiser, aka John Howes. The embed isn’t working so get the set, titled II, at Bandcamp.
▰ The YouTube account Ambient Modular has been uploading solid 15-minute sessions, largely with the same set-up, by appearances, providing a glimpse into the variety a single system is capable of. The streams happen daily starting, per the channel’s information, at “00:00 AM UTC (9:00 PM JST).”
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 a good sign when you arrive at a jazz club for a concert and the pre-show music playing on the house stereo is un-Shazam-able.
▰ I think there was a break of about two years between when I stopped capitalizing the internet and started occasionally capitalizing the Algorithm.
▰ Not a single “Avril 14th” video was uploaded to Vimeo in the seven days leading up to and including (as of 5:45pm Pacific) April 14th?
▰ Read a bunch, finished nothing, but wrote a lot, and so that’s OK.
LJ Holoman (organ), Joe Warner (piano), Michael “Tiny” Lindsey (bass), and Dante Robertson (drums) killed it on April 15th at the Black Cat basement club in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. It was a packed house for a jazz/r&b session on a Wednesday at 7pm, a two-hour set. Holoman, who was sitting in as part of a residency called the Soul Sessions (presented by the JaZzLine Institute), is a marvel, and the band was tight as heck.
