Thrill Jockey Rock & Indie 160 Items

On The Healer, the new full length from the Northwest-based trio of guitarist and vocalist Aaron Turner (ISIS, Old Man Gloom) bassist Brian Cook (Russian Circles, Botch) and drummer Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists) the group deepens its multi-faceted exploration into the parallel experiences of creation and destruction. Over the course of 4 tracks in 76 minutes, SUMAC present a sequence of shifting movements which undergo a constant process of expansion, contraction, corruption and regrowth.This musical methodology reflects the thematic nature of the record - narratives of experiential wounding as gateways to empowerment and evolution, both individual and collective. The group"s interpolation of melody, drone, improvisation, and complex riffing becomes a transmogrifying act embodying the depth of human experience. In its highest aspiration it mirrors our ability to endure mortal and spiritual challenges, through which we may emerge with an increased capacity for understanding, empathy, love of self and others. Dismal though the subterranean pits of The Healer may at first appear, from them can be felt the unwavering determination to embrace life, acknowledge interdependence, and honor the gift of existence.

Aseethe, the trio of guitarist Brian Barr, drummer Eric Diercks, and bassist Noah Koester, carve their own path in the world of heavy music. A singular blend of seismic weight, mesmeric drone, and gripping tension is the Midwestern band"s musical signature. Driven by an exploratory ethos, Aseethe warp sounds into emotionally potent songs that are as detailed as they are immense. The Cost is an album shadowed by devastating losses, a visceral study in aftermaths, centered around how life moves forward after personal and universal traumas. Recorded by acclaimed producer/engineer Sanford Parker (Pelican, Eyehategod, Yob, Voivod) at Electrical Audio in Chicago, The Cost is more focused and elaborate than anything the band have crafted before, expanding Aseethe"s dynamic palette with more nuance and transforming their battering sound into cathartic arcs.

Aseethe, the trio of guitarist Brian Barr, drummer Eric Diercks, and bassist Noah Koester, carve their own path in the world of heavy music. A singular blend of seismic weight, mesmeric drone, and gripping tension is the Midwestern band"s musical signature. Driven by an exploratory ethos, Aseethe warp sounds into emotionally potent songs that are as detailed as they are immense. The Cost is an album shadowed by devastating losses, a visceral study in aftermaths, centered around how life moves forward after personal and universal traumas. Recorded by acclaimed producer/engineer Sanford Parker (Pelican, Eyehategod, Yob, Voivod) at Electrical Audio in Chicago, The Cost is more focused and elaborate than anything the band have crafted before, expanding Aseethe"s dynamic palette with more nuance and transforming their battering sound into cathartic arcs.

On The Healer, the new full length from the Northwest-based trio of guitarist and vocalist Aaron Turner (ISIS, Old Man Gloom) bassist Brian Cook (Russian Circles, Botch) and drummer Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists) the group deepens its multi-faceted exploration into the parallel experiences of creation and destruction. Over the course of 4 tracks in 76 minutes, SUMAC present a sequence of shifting movements which undergo a constant process of expansion, contraction, corruption and regrowth.This musical methodology reflects the thematic nature of the record - narratives of experiential wounding as gateways to empowerment and evolution, both individual and collective. The group"s interpolation of melody, drone, improvisation, and complex riffing becomes a transmogrifying act embodying the depth of human experience. In its highest aspiration it mirrors our ability to endure mortal and spiritual challenges, through which we may emerge with an increased capacity for understanding, empathy, love of self and others. Dismal though the subterranean pits of The Healer may at first appear, from them can be felt the unwavering determination to embrace life, acknowledge interdependence, and honor the gift of existence.

Vinyl is close to NM.

The Body and Big|brave are bands possessed of an unequaled ability to convey overwhelming weight with simplicity, repetition, and detailed sonic atmospheres; artists who continue to alter the definition of what it means to be a heavy band. The Body are consistently prolific while increasingly ambitious as untethered producers and collaborators. Big|brave shape sound with dense waves of guitar and feedback, minimalist and hypnotic crashes, and emotionally exacting vocal melodies. In collaboration, The Body and Big|brave shift the gravity of their compositions to woven layers of percussion and unspooling guitars that sprawl through stark frameworks of earthy folk. Their debut collaborative album Leaving None But Small Birds distills the two ensembles’ pioneering approach to heavy music into psalms for the forgotten, threnodies of lost love, and odes to vengeance.

Typical to The Body’s creative process, Leaving None But Small Birds was composed almost entirely in the studio at Machine With Magnets with engineer/producer Seth Manchester. The Body and Big|brave aimed to challenge themselves to craft a fully realized and cohesive work that strayed outside the boundaries of the music they make individually. The Body’s Lee Buford set up the initial challenge: collaborating to make an album that evoked the country and folk roots of The Band. Big|brave’s Robin Wattie compiled lyrics and melodic lines from across Appalachian, Canadian, and English hymns and folk songs. Select phrases were then reworked and precisely arranged to center the experiences of marginalized characters, victims of hardship, and those yearning for love within each story. The despair and empowerment of these traditional tunes draw remarkable parallels with each group’s focus on championing people often cast aside in history. Leaving None But Small Birds takes its name from the “Polly Gosford” lyric “He covered her grave / and hastened home / Leaving none but small birds / her fate to bemoan,” an image in traditional songs evoking the alienation and isolation of the persecuted. The Body and Big|brave, following a folk tradition, make each song their own through shifts in perspective and a synthesis of passages from kindred tales.

Leaving None But Small Birds transfigures The Body and Big|brave’s heft into a daring diversity of sounds unbridled and austere. The loping opener “Blackest Crow” implements gusts of violin and harmony against the bedrock of a droning riff and shruti box that subtly shifts timbre. “Hard Times” threads stories of indentured and child factory laborers through cascading trellises of rubato guitar as Wattie’s petitions are swallowed by the swell. The Body and Big|brave’s maximalist rumble looms at the fringes of each song as guitarist Chip King’s (The Body) staggering drones seep into their fabric with resolute percussion from Buford and Big|brave drummer Tasy Hudson punctuating with their steady current. Wattie and fellow Big|brave guitarist Mathieu Ball twirl repeating phrases around one another into restrained meditations that bend and shift incrementally. Hudson joins Wattie in harmonized duets and hockets across the album, enhancing the loneliness of “Once I Had A Sweetheart” and laying bare the raw brilliance of “Black is the Colour.” “Polly Gosford” froths with persistently rising walls of violin, guitar, piano and trudging toms that only capitulate after Wattie spins the tragic song of femicide into ghostly revenge with “She broke him, she tore him / she ripped him in three / because he murdered / her baby and she.”

Big|brave’s roots as a minimalist folk band and The Body’s love of old-time, country blues, and folk music enable the quintet to strike a formidable balance between sorrowful lamentation and uplifting resolve to weighty effect. Leaving None But Small Birds thatches together two monumental innovative forces that render the emotionally profound with lucid, devastating vitality.

No. 245/1000

Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements are two of contemporary music"s most renowned innovators. Each has managed to expand the perception of their instrument"s capabilities. Lattimore inventive harp processing and looping has brought the instrument to a new audience. Her prolific run of celestial solo albums and evocative film scores have redefined the instrument in the modern consciousness. Her genre-agnostic collaborations include work with Kurt Vile, Steve Gunn, Jeff Zeigler, Meg Baird, and Thurston Moore. McClements, who tours as a member of Weyes Blood, is an acclaimed composer in his own right, sculpting glacial atmospherics from the accordion. The Los Angeles based duo became quick friends on overlapping tours, sharing both a drive to push the sonic possibilities of their instruments and roots in North Carolina. Mary Lattimore and Walt McClements debut collaboration Rain on the Road blossomed out of that time spent on the road together, capturing the liminal existence of touring life in deeply cinematic compositions. Recorded in the cozy setting of McClements" apartment during a rainy December in LA, Rain on the Road unfurls as a series of sonic vignettes, rolling landscapes hewn from longform improvisations for harp and accordion. Embellished with additional instrumentation such as the shimmering constellations of hand bells on "Stolen Bells" that glisten like lights on wet pavement, or the stately piano figures on "The Top of Thomas Street"; their pastoral pieces manage to paint vivid images.

The collaboration between renowned drummer Jim White and acclaimed guitarist Marisa Anderson is a natural union of two of the most intuitive players and listeners working in music. Jim White is known for his groundbreaking trio, Dirty Three, as well as duo, Xylouris White. His list of collaborations is vast and include artists such as Nick Cave, Bill Callahan, Cat Power, Marnie Stern and Warren Ellis. Jim just released his debut solo album, All Hits: Memories. Marisa Anderson, known primarily for her solo work, in demand collaborator who has worked with Tashi Dorji, Sharon Van Etten, Yasmine Williams and Michael Hurley. She has released records with William Tyler and Tara Jane O"neal. White and Anderson are each highly sought after collaborators in no small part because of their mastery, versatility and highly expressive playing. Their sophomore album, Swallowtail, finds the duo completely attuned to each other, fluidly moving as wind and water. They avoid preconceived movements, instead focusing on their musical conversation. As Anderson puts it: "The ideas aren"t the music, they are the pathway into the musical possibilities." Their skillful interplay creates an effervescence throughout the album. The ebb and flow to the duo"s motions bring a sense of serenity and ease to spontaneous transitions, each swell and retraction sounding as free as it does inevitable. White and Anderson"s preternatural alchemy as a duo allows each fleeting gesture to feel featherlight and stirring while maintaining an inquisitive spirit. Their music is an enchanting and illuminating.

The collaboration between renowned drummer Jim White and acclaimed guitarist Marisa Anderson is a natural union of two of the most intuitive players and listeners working in music. Jim White is known for his groundbreaking trio, Dirty Three, as well as duo, Xylouris White. His list of collaborations is vast and include artists such as Nick Cave, Bill Callahan, Cat Power, Marnie Stern and Warren Ellis. Jim just released his debut solo album, All Hits: Memories. Marisa Anderson, known primarily for her solo work, in demand collaborator who has worked with Tashi Dorji, Sharon Van Etten, Yasmine Williams and Michael Hurley. She has released records with William Tyler and Tara Jane O"neal. White and Anderson are each highly sought after collaborators in no small part because of their mastery, versatility and highly expressive playing. Their sophomore album, Swallowtail, finds the duo completely attuned to each other, fluidly moving as wind and water. They avoid preconceived movements, instead focusing on their musical conversation. As Anderson puts it: "The ideas aren"t the music, they are the pathway into the musical possibilities." Their skillful interplay creates an effervescence throughout the album. The ebb and flow to the duo"s motions bring a sense of serenity and ease to spontaneous transitions, each swell and retraction sounding as free as it does inevitable. White and Anderson"s preternatural alchemy as a duo allows each fleeting gesture to feel featherlight and stirring while maintaining an inquisitive spirit. Their music is an enchanting and illuminating.

Colleen thrives on reinvention. For over two decades under the name, French artist Cécile Schott has continuously pushed her compositional practice into new directions. Her creative approaches have included complex samples and loops, instrumental processing and even dub production techniques applied to the baroque viola da gamba. Each album immerses the listener in a wholly unique world while remaining unmistakably a work by Colleen. Schott"s compositions glow with carefully considered textures that move in captivating revolutions while subtly evolving. A connective thread of Schott"s work is the exploration of the intricacies of emotion while reveling in the act of contorting pop and classical forms into new shapes. Colleen"s Le jour et la nuit du réel is a voyage deep into the world of synthesis, a dense thicket populated by drifting echoes and pulsating arpeggios. More than just a creative approach, sound synthesis here becomes a means to interrogate complex concepts, from the self and perception to shifting notions of what is "reality".

The title, nature morte, is the French term for still life paintings whose literal translation is "dead nature." Big|brave color the songs of nature morte with unease, creating an air of beauty in decay, chords suspended in contemplative stillness. Robin Wattie"s experiences structuring lyrics and song forms on The Body & Big|brave"s Leaving None But Small Birds informed her work on nature morte, creating stories that, like many folk tales, are at once specific and universal. Wattie"s voice manages to be commanding and vulnerable with impressive range and intimacy. Even her gasps carve their way through the tidal crash of Mathieu Ball"s distortion wail and the pummel of Tasy Hudson"s drums. The momentum of nature morte conjures the image of a beast collapsing beneath its own weight before resiliently staggering upright to thunder onward. Big|brave convey heft from silence as deftly as they do from swaths of feedback and distortion to cathartic ends. "Distortion is key," notes Ball The three members recorded primarily live over the course of a week at Machines with Magnets with Seth Manchester, pushing the potential of their instruments beyond expectations. For each song, the trio"s songwriting and attention to detail deliver its simple but devastating emotional power. Across the album"s six pieces Big|brave create a tension between immediacy and patience, invoking the essence of disquiet, while conveying anguish through inventive arrangements and nuanced performances. nature morte captures Big|brave at their heaviest and their mournful fury is at its zenith, an album where each moment is so immense and consuming that it possesses its own gravitational pull.

Tortoise has spent nearly 30 years making music that defies description. While the Chicago-based instrumental quintet has nodded to dub, rock, jazz, electronica, and minimalism throughout its revered and influential discography, the resulting sounds have always been distinctly, even stubbornly, their own. There is a always the pervasive element of group play, or ensemble?mindedness, as opposed to emphasis on a virtuoso soloist or frontman, despite the fact Tortoise is composed of members who could each easily have taken center stage in another group. In their debut, Tortoise is composed of Douglas McCombs, John Herndon, Dan Bitney, John McEntire, and Bundy K. Brown. This self-titled, incorporates many musical styles and influences, but no one style alone is sufficient to fully describe the distinct sound they craft. This unique blending of styles caused them to be recognized as the leaders of a new musical movement. Tortoise utilize the recording studio, not only to put their music to wax, but in a way that their recording process becomes a compostional tool described at times as the "sixth member", thus creating a boundless parameter in which to create and manipulate music. Tortoise's self-titled debut was originally released in 1994. This re-issue is re-mastered by Roger Seibel at SAE Mastering, in jacket with art insert, both designed by Sam Prekop as well as a free download card. 2022 version is available on limited edition white with hi-melt black vinyl

Colleen is an aboundingly inventive composer and artist. For two decades Cécile Schott, as Colleen, has crafted welcoming, enchanting, and bewildering music. The multi-instrumentalist and vocalist's timeless compositions make use of carefully selected tools to mold memories into transcendent splendor. The Tunnel and the Clearing finds Schott at her most vulnerable and confident, invoking contemplative and swirling organ processed through analog electronics, steady drum machine syncopations and her distinctive voice. On an album centered on processing the complicated washes of emotion through tribulations and revelations Colleen presents a vision of breathless clarity.

Sightless Pit is the project of duo Lee Buford (The Body) and Dylan Walker (Full of Hell). Buford and Walker are born collaborators, known for their ability to subvert musical expectations, transcend genre and plunge headlong into the unknown. Across the album, the two highly inventive musical omnivores are buoyed by an astounding menagerie of eclectic and celebrated collaborators including: Gangsta Boo (Three 6 Mafia), YoshimiO (Boredoms), Frukwan (Gravediggaz), Claire Rousay, Midwife, Lane Shii Otayonii (Elizabeth Colour Wheel), Foie Gras, and more. Their work with the likes of Thou, Uniform, Merzbow, and Nothing, taken together with their The Body & Full of Hell albums, have established each as singular voices and masterful alchemists of heavy music. The duo shares an affection for rhythm-based beat music, disparate electronic genres, dub, as well as darkly-hued atmospheric ambience. Lockstep Bloodwar exceeds expectations by stunningly combining the noise and confrontational posturing they are both well known for with pulsing and kaleidoscopic electronic samples, drum machines, and grizzled synths.Following the release of their first record, Grave of a Dog- which features Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota), Buford and Walker continue to push the boundaries of heavy music. An aura of brusque confrontation and grime is sheathed around Lockstep Bloodwar and its multiplicity of noises and raw energy. Lee Buford"s signature rhythmic voice stretches into new complex patterns while retaining an unearthly punch, with gargantuan bass thuds and deft syncopations capable of transforming a song"s landscape in an instant. A spirit of malcontent and caged frustrations oozes from within each piece manifested in spiraling low end throbs and Dylan Walker"s pained wails. Walker describes the underlying worldview of the album: "Lockstep Bloodwar is the struggle to comprehend and come to terms with the fact that our lives are on a locked track, and the track is violent and painful. We have zero control over our lives on a...

Japan’s fearless multi-instrumentalist and cultural provocateur Keiji Haino
has made a career out of his free-form musical improvisations and diverse
collaborations. Whether deconstructing American blues to a few rogue
notes hanging across chasms of empty space in his solo endeavors, sparring
with the nebulous fringes of psychedelia in Fushitsusha, or teaming up with
musicians like Faust, Boris, Jim O’Rourke, Stephen O’Malley, John Zorn,
and Peter Brötzmann for ?eeting aural experiments. Haino’s work is never
pre-planned or structured, but rather a completely spontaneous exploration
of chemistry, texture, and dynamics.
SUMAC’s tenure is much younger than Haino’s, though guitarist/vocalist
Aaron Turner has covered a similarly large swath of musical territory across
numerous projects and collaborations, from the sedated drones of recent
projects with Daniel Menche and William Fowler Collins to the modern
compositions of Mamiffer and all the way back to the restless evolutions of
post-metal stalwarts ISIS. With his cohorts Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists, Erosion)
on drums and Brian Cook (Russian Circles) on bass, Turner has dissolved
the rigid forms of heavy music, searching for a balance between disciplined
precision and unhinged musical barbarism, crafting music that vacillates
between meticulously detailed instrumentation and uninhibited forays into
oblique abstraction.
For American Dollar Bill - Keep Facing Sideways, You’re Too Hideous To Look
At Face On, Keiji Haino and SUMAC met up in Tokyo’s Goksound recording
studio to track a series of unrehearsed, completely non-premeditated
sessions. Captured across several reels of tape, the collaboration harnessed
Haino’s tension-inducing use of empty space on songs like “I’m over 137%
a love junkie, and it’s still not enough” while pushing SUMAC’s dissident
metal vocabulary on “What have I done (I was reeling in something white...)”.
Throughout the course of its hour-plus length, American Dollar Bill pushes
and pulls at the strictures of metal and bends the stylistic formalities of
improvised music to create a sonic purge unencumbered by convention.

Black Duck captures a band already deeply in tune with one another. The three-piece super-group consists of Douglas McCombs, Charles Rumback, and Bill MacKay each has a distinct musical voice that is instantly recognizable, yet blends seamlessly with one another-their time performing together, playing to the moment and reading each other and the spaces they"re in formed a fluency between the trio which allows them to follow each other down winding paths and short tangents alike. McCombs is a founding member of Tortoise, Pullman, and Brokeback and the long-standing bassist for Eleventh Dream Day, an artist whose contribution to the music world can not be overstated. MacKay began releasing records in the early 2000s. He has released several acclaimed solo albums with Drag City as well as a duo album each with Nathan Bowles (Banjo, Black Twig Pickers), and Katinka Kleijn (Cello, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO)), and two beloved records with Ryley Walker. Rumback burst onto the fertile Chicago improvised music scene in the early 2000"s. His fluid technique and expressive playing garnered him much attention. In addition to his solo releases, Rumback has recorded with Ryley Walker, jazz greats such as Jim Baker, James Singleton, and Greg Ward. Black Duck"s debut is a testament to that fluency, an expedition led by three veterans into alluring worlds bathed in myriad splendors. Black Duck is a gallery of sonic tapestries, unbound by any genre constraints. Black Duck redefines what two guitarists and a drummer can do, pieces move from breezy shuffles to stormy blues rumbles to gorgeous textural drones. Playing entirely improvised live sets for years helped develop the trio"s acute senses for one another, knowing precisely how to listen to the others and bolster whatever direction they move in. In the short time the trio have played together, they have performed at Big Ears Festival and alongside acts like Yo La Tengo.

Liturgy transcends the traditional parameters of what constitutes a rock band. Founded by Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, Liturgy is a part of a shared discipline of composition, art, and philosophy that thrives on exploring the spaces between. Liturgy"s signature use of rhythmic complexity and repetition are exponentially amplified to maximalist proportions on 93696. Along with guitarist Mario Miron, bassist Tia Vincent-Clark, and drummer Leo Didkovsky, Hunt-Hendrix utilizes Liturgy"s past ruminations on burst beats and circuitous phrases as colors to paint rich murals that overwhelm and invigorate the senses. 93696 is the purest synthesis of the diversity of Liturgy, a sprawling and monumental double album exploring religion, cosmic love, the feminine, and metamorphosis while manifesting the ecstatic with breathtaking grandeur. Liturgy is the project of Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix, whose yearning, energetic "transcendental black metal" exists in the space between metal, art music and sacred ritual. Its current lineup features Mario Miron (guitar), Tia Vincent-Clark (bass) and Leo Didkovsky (drums).

Over the course of two decades The Body, Lee Buford and Chip King, have consistently challenged assumptions and defied categorization, redefining what it means to be a heavy band. On I've Seen All I Need To See, they test the boundaries of the studio to explore the extremes and microtonality of distortion to find its maximal impact. Their most incisively bleak, a towering monolith of noise, album to date Buford's booming, resolute drums paired with King's obliterated guitar and howl. Course, bristling distortion contorts every instrument, with samples of spoken word, cymbals, toms and King's already noxious tone emerging from layers of feedback. The recording studio remains indelible to The Body's creative process. Together with engineer Seth Manchester of Machines With Magnets, they capture the complexities of distorted sound in stunning detail. The clarity and the cacophony exceed anything they've created before, morphing desolate, festering soundscapes into an exhilarating sonic universe. Buford often lays the framework for songs from the drums up, mirroring hip hop production. I've Seen All I Need To See trades out 808s and The Body's self- sampling for live instruments with a focus on expanding mutations of sound from more limited sources. The results are remarkably rich textural bombardments. Throughout, The Body deliver oppressive noise with potent lucidity, replicating the overwhelming sound of their live performances in revelatory detail. I've Seen All I Need To See demonstrates not only The Body's fearless spirit and vicious edge, but their intellectual musical heft through its explorations of distorted sound and the power of distorted sounds' interplay. Composer Roger Johnson said "Noise is power, but is generally represented as negative, chaotic, dangerous, violent, when it comes... from those marginalized from power. Noise is also an expression of freedom, a 'liberation of sound.'" The Body are sound liberators capable of mining and extracting remarkable details from the most manipulated and distorted sound sources. I've Seen All I Need To See is a groundbreaking work and an ecstatic listen, whether seen as a testament to catharsis in oblivion, an opus of inexorable dread or a wholly liberating adventure.

The Quickening is an improvised work guided by emotional intuition and an ability to spin collective experience into music of potent and boundless beauty. Jim White and Marisa Anderson instrumental voices' are unmistakable and spellbindingly lyrical. Anderson unravels global guitar traditions into atmospheres all their own through improvisations and transforming melodic lines. While White implements an array of sticks, brushes, and techniques that imbue each rhythmic percussion passage with its own distinct personality. Together their melodic flourishes cascade and twist upon one another, at times trading conversational exchanges, and at others drifting in unison as if lost in the same train of thought. White and Anderson share an abounding appetite for musical exploration. White, as a member of Venom P Stinger, Dirty Three, and Xylouris White, is well known for his creative and idiosyncratic drumming. His singular abilities have also led to collaborations with Cat Power, PJ Harvey, and Bill Callahan among others. Anderson's prolific output as a solo performer, her mastery of traditional folk and blues forms and her abilities to make them entirely her own has established her as one of the most exciting and forward-thinking guitarists of the last decade. White and Anderson's considerable technical skills are used in the most inventive and unconventional manner on their debut duo recording, The Quickening. The duo' friendship and shared explorative nature inform these warm and daring improvisations. Their remarkable performances take the listener on a journey of exuberant discovery. The idea of a collaboration developed while on the road together in 2015, Anderson playing solo and White playing with Xylouris white. The Quickening began at the Portland studio Type Foundry in late 2018, where the duo initially agreed to meet and improvise and record. Happy with the recordings, the duo headed to Mexico City and into Estudios Noviembres, a time capsule of a studio from the 70's that had been largely closed before some young engineers took it over. The "slight disorientation" of working in less familiar environments mirrored their willingness to plunge headfirst into exploring new sonic territory together. Anderson purchased a new nylon string Ramos-Castillo guitar from a Mexican luthier just ahead of recording which leant to the spontaneity of "The Lucky" and "The Quickening". The duo did not rehearse or perform together prior to the recording sessions; as White puts it, "it's good to suspend disbelief at this stage of playing."

Mayday is the third LP by Montreal-based artist, Myriam Gendron. It follows her earlier, critically acclaimed albums, Not So Deep As A Well (2014) and Ma délire - Songs of love, lost & found (2021). Myriam began exploring the complex folk traditions of Quebec (and beyond), with Ma délire, which combines traditional and original songs with arrangements that make space for avant-garde musical interludes by such folks as guitarist Bill Nace (Body/Head) and renowned jazz percussionist Chris Corsano.Mayday presents an even more syncretic fusion of the elements Myriam uses to create her sound. Most of the songs are original, sung in both English and French, and they blend traditional and avant elements with abandon. She is often accompanied on this album by the guitarist Marisa Anderson and drummer Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White), whose work provides a quietly aggressive sort of free-rock base. Additional players include Montreal bassist Cédric Dind-Lavoie, Bill Nace and saxophonist Zoh Amba. Mayday is a thoroughly thrilling effort that manages to create new vistas of sound while maintaining a feel that is both intimate and familiar. The music here certainly possesses a richly serious tone, but Myriam Gendron (like Leonard Cohen) is able to infuse her darkness with a subtle, powerful light that reminds us that even the most pitch-black night is but a transitional state. Beautiful work.

Black and red vinyl.