The 35th Uncut Playlist Of 2014

Weird serendipities aplenty this week: versions of “O, Death” on two albums I downloaded one after another, by Mike & Cara Gangloff and Bessie Jones; dovetailing into Sea Island overlap between Jones and Loscil. It makes for a nice blurring between time and genre with, say, the Gangloffs using esoteric strategies to achieve a similar kind of transcendence that Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers reach through more orthodox, albeit uncommonly raw, Gospel routes in these Lomax recordings from the early ’60s.

Loscil’s thoughtful, atmospheric music fits in with a bunch of other things here, too: the Hassell/Eno; the immersive new Oren Ambarchi set (featuring Eyvind Kang, Jim O’Rourke and John Tilbury, among other empathetic freestylers); maybe even the couple of Harald Grosskopf reissues. Grosskopf, if he’s a new name to you, is a Krautrock vet (stints with Ashra and Klaus Schulze, among others) whose first two solo albums from the early ’80s are maybe the closest things I’ve found to his old bandmate Manuel Göttsching’s “E2-E4”. Grosskopf is playing a rare UK show with the excellent Pye Corner Audio at Café Oto, Dalston, on November 2, if you’re interested.

Other good things to flag up. Crying Lion are a Watersons-style vocal group spun out of Trembling Bells, and there are new videos from Holly Herndon and Hiss Golden Messenger to watch. My ongoing and perhaps sometimes wearying obsession with the latter, incidentally, has culminated in a feature in the next issue of Uncut, which is out next week in the UK. More about that very soon, as you’d imagine…

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1 Harald Grosskopf – Synthesist (Bureau B)

2 Various Artists – Cracking The Cosimo Code: ’60s New Orleans R&B And Soul (Ace)

I wrote about this here

3 Crying Lion – The Golden Boat (Honest Jon’s)

4 Kassé Mady Diabaté – Kiriké (No Format!)

5 Helado Negro – Double Youth (Asthmatic Kitty)

6 Hiss Golden Messenger – Lateness Of Dancers (Merge)

Hiss Golden Messenger “Mahogany Dread” from Merge Records on Vimeo.

7 The Court & Spark – Lucia (Absolutely Kosher)

8 Leonard Cohen – Popular Problems (Columbia)

9 Harald Grosskopf – Oceanheart (Bureau B)

10 Robert Wyatt – Different Every Time (Domino)

11 Mike & Cara Gangloff – Black Ribbon Of Death, Silver Thread Of Life (MIE Music)

12 Oren Ambarchi – Quixotism (Editions Mego)

13 Love – Love Songs: An Anthology Of Arthur Lee’s Love 1966-1969 (Salvo)

14 Holly Herndon – Home (RVNG INTL)

15 Jon Hassell/Brian Eno – Fourth World Volume 1: Possible Musics (Glitterbeat)

16 TV On The Radio – Seeds (Harvest)

17 Daniel Lanois – Flesh And Machine (Anti-)

18 Bessie Jones With The Georgia Sea Island Singers And Others – Get In Union (Tompkins Square)

18 Loscil – Sea Island (Kranky)

19 Liam Hayes & Plush – Korp Sole Roller (Bandcamp)

Read my review here

20 Cool Ghouls – A Swirling Fire Burning Through The Rye (Empty Cellar)

21 Mirage – Blood For The Return (Olde English Spelling Bee/Weird World)