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 Repeat: Parker, Akinmusire, OCP
Home/office playlist
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.
Scratch Pad: Light Duty
From the past week
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.
Fire Spider
And an opaque self-portrait
Two types of alarm
Disquiet Junto Project 0744: Cold Chocolate
The Assignment: Turn a shared sample into something refreshing.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.
Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the llllllll.co discussion thread.
Disquiet Junto Project 0744: Cold Chocolate
The Assignment: Turn a shared sample into something refreshing.
Step 1: Download the recording at the following link. It is the sound of cocoa powder being mixed in a ceramic cup of oat milk using a metal spoon.
This URL should work fine:
This URL should eventually work:
https://freesound.org/people/disquiet/sounds/849399
Step 2: Sampling the above audio, record an original piece of music that you feel sounds refreshing.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0744” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.
Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0744-cold-chocolate/
Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: Monday, April 6, 2026, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.
About: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/
License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).
Please Include When Posting Your Track:
More on the 744th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Cold Chocolate — The Assignment: Turn a shared sample into something refreshing — disquiet.com/0744.