Night After Night

Songs without words.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall
The New York Times, April 30, 2007

Keys to the future.

CD review: Andrew Russo - "Dirty Little Secret"
Andrew Russo, pianist
Endeavor Classics END 1019; CD
The New York Times, April 29, 2007
(ArkivMusic, Barnes & Noble)

The performance by Russo and his trio Real Quiet on Monday, April 30 that's mentioned in the second paragraph of this review is the latest installment of Ronen Givony's invaluable Wordless Music series, which pairs the trio with the Books, a engrossing duo that wields cello, guitar and electronics. Real Quiet opens with music by Annie Gosfield (Wild Pitch), Phil Kline (The Last Buffalo) and Marc Mellits (Tight Sweater). The Books follow with a set of their original music, then the two groups combine for expanded versions of items from Real Tight's repertoire.

The week ahead is huge for Annie Gosfield. In addition to the Real Quiet performance, she has a piece on Wednesday night's appearance by exciting Swedish new-music quartet The Peärls Before Swïne Experience at Lower East Side venue The Stone, part of a wide-ranging month programmed by Fred Frith. The group will also play pieces by David Lang, Tristan Murail, Maja Ratkje and Anders Hillborg. On Thursday night (May 3) at Merkin Concert Hall, the Swïne will participate in a Zoom: Composers Close Up program devoted to Gosfield's music; that same show also includes a new chamber concerto featuring Real Quiet cellist Felix Fan and a performance by Gosfield's own trio. On Friday (May 4), Gosfield has a piece on the second concert of this year's Look & Listen Festival, at Robert Miller Gallery on West 26th Street. (On that same bill, saxophonist Brian Sacawa reprises Alexandra Gardner's Tourmaline, which was mesmerizing when heard at the recent MATA Festival.)

Another inventive new-music composer having a big week is Jacob ter Veldhuis, whose uproarious The Body of Your Dreams is on Russo's CD. Ter Veldhuis, also known as JacobTV, is the subject of a three-concert series presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art this Wednesday through Friday (May 2-4). The explosive Kathleen Supové plays The Body of Your Dreams on the last concert, which also includes the world premiere of The White Flag, a scorching piece composed in response to the current Iraq war and performed by Kevin Gallagher's quartet Electric Kompany. My TONY feature on JacobTV is here, but please be sure to take note of something I failed to mention: the series is being presented not at the Whitney space on the Upper East Side, but at its Altria site on 42nd Street, near Grand Central. All three JacobTV programs are being presented free of charge.

Paint it black.

The Norwegian black-metal band Dimmu Borgir released its first new studio album in four years, In Sorte Diaboli, on Tuesday, but you might not have guessed as much from the first hour of the set the band played at the Nokia Theatre Times Square on Thursday night. The new disc, a very strong one, is -- of all unfashionable things -- a concept album, a song cycle that loosely tells the tale of a priest who breaks with the church and pursues a darker path.

Given that this performance took place in the very heart of New York City's theater district, I honestly expected the band to come out and play it complete, perhaps with selected hits from previous releases before and after. Instead, what we got was a fast-paced set of the band's greatest hits, starting with its best song so far, "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse" (from its 2003 disc, Death Cult Armageddon), and touching on most of its previous releases.

The kind of black metal that's currently in vogue among trucker-cap hipsters is the ultra lo-fi isolationist strain currently offered by the likes of Xasthur and Nachtmystium: groups and one-man projects that deliberately set out to emulate the weedy sound of black-metal pioneers like Bathory, early Mayhem and Burzum, who literally couldn't muster enough technique or cash to sound any better. Dimmu Borgir, inspired by the latter-day efforts of Norwegian forebear Emperor, goes for the opposite extreme. It revels in bombast, both lyrical and musical: "Progenies of the Great Apocalypse" is as bombastic as it gets, all thundering power chords accompanied by a full orchestra with French horn swoops worthy of Richard Strauss. The first single from the new album, "The Serpentine Offering," sticks rather close to that formula; it's somehow fitting that the video is shot in widescreen format:

Dimmu Borgir's members can all play their instruments extremely well; the group's aesthetic aims for Wagner, and manages something like Danny Elfman. Mixing elements of darkwave electronica and industrial music into the mix alongside red-blooded thrash, this band paints its diabolical tapestries on massive canvases. Onanistic extended guitar solos are kept to a minimum; majesty and brutality are paramount.

What had ultimately made Death Cult Armageddon start to finish Dimmu Borgir's best album was the chemistry that had developed between the founding members and their recently acquired collaborators. Dimmu Borgir was originally the product of two young men, vocalist Shagrath (whose grotesque croak sometimes suggests a demented Popeye) and guitarist-composer Silenoz. As the initial lineup dispersed, the founders subsequently surrounded themselves -- à la the New York Yankees -- with top free agents and carefully selected draft picks. Guitarist Galder, architect of the ornate one-man band Old Man's Child, and keyboardist Mustis considerably broadened the band's sonic signature, while bassist-singer I.C.S. Vortex, drafted from the proggy Borknagar, offered heroic "clean" vocals as a counterpoint to Shagrath's demented screech. Completing the band was drummer Nick Barker, an imposing powerhouse drafted from another second-generation black-metal band, Cradle of Filth.

Barker was eventually ejected, à la Yankees pitcher David Wells. His replacement on In Sorte Diaboli was Mayhem drummer Hellhammer, an unquestionably phenomenal player whose obvious prowess could at times be obscured by his reliance on triggering: achieving inhuman feats through the electronic equivalent of steroid doping. That old urge to drive things over the top...

But when you're watching someone like Mark McGuire or Barry Bonds belt balls over the fence all night long, you tend to forget about artificial enhancements and just go with the ride. That's the way it felt Thursday night, as Hellhammer provided ridiculously thrilling blasts throughout Dimmu Borgir's show. His succinct solo, between two In Sorte Diaboli tracks ("The Serpentine Offering" and "The Chosen Legacy"), was like a tornado caught in a bottle. And his cymbal work, untouched by triggers, is something special.

Among black-metal purists, Dimmu Borgir inspires some of the most colorful scorn to be found on the Internet. ("Dummy Burger" and "Drama Burger" are commonly found epithets.) But the truth of the matter is that on a good night, this is one of the best metal bands in the business. And of the five Dimmu Borgir shows I've caught since 2001, this one rated near the top.

Setlist: Intro / Progenies of the Great Apocalypse / Vredesbyrd / Cataclysm Children / Kings of the Carnival Creation / Sorgens Kammer del II / Indoctrination / A Succubus in Rapture / The Serpentine Offering / drum solo / The Chosen Legacy / The Insight and the Catharsis / Spellbound (by the Devil) / Mourning Palace / Outro: The Fallen Arises

Playlist:

The Conet Project (Irdial)

Neurosis - Given to the Rising (Neurot, due May 22)

Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (Century Black); Grand Declaration of War (Necropolis); Chimera and Ordo ad Chaos (Season of Mist)

Adult education.

Midori and Robert McDonald at Avery Fisher Hall
The New York Times, April 26, 2007

=====

I seldom add remarks and enable comments when I post my Times reviews, but just this once I'll make an exception. Before a last-minute swerve found me at Avery Fisher Hall for the Midori recital -- which I didn't regret a bit, mind you -- I'd intended to catch the Metropolitan Opera's Giulio Cesare on Tuesday night with its new cast members: Lawrence Zazzo in the title role, Jill Grove as Cornelia and most especially Danielle de Niese as Cleopatra. (I'd also originally hoped to catch a performance by the first cast with David Daniels, Patricia Bardon and Ruth Ann Swenson in those roles, but settled for listening to last Saturday's Met broadcast through ear-buds while I traipsed around the Philadelphia Zoo.)

My interest in Tuesday night's performance mostly had to do with De Niese, whose gorgeous singing and sinuous, Bollywood-inspired dance moves in the recent Glyndebourne Guilio Cesare had so won me over on DVD. That production arrives at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in November (details here), and I'm very much hoping to make a trip to see it. So after the Midori concert, I headed over to the Met lobby, arriving just in time to watch De Niese deliver what appeared to be a show-stopping rendition of the Act II lament "Se pietà di me non senti" on one of those now-omnipresent flat-screen monitors.

What I heard might not have been quite so crushingly detailed as Magdalena Kožená's account in the Minkowski recording included in the playlist of the post that preceded this one. But even via a single-camera broadcast on a monitor in a lobby, this very nearly reduced me to tears. (Granted, Handel deserves at least some of the credit.)

So, to anyone who might have been in the house on Tuesday night: Was De Niese's performance as strong in person as it seemed on video?

Boat people.

Back in 1976, violinist Olga Bloom had the offbeat notion of mooring an inactive coffee barge at Fulton Ferry Landing, near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, and converting it into a floating chamber-music space. (The story can be read here.) Thirty-plus years later, Bargemusic remains one of New York's busiest, liveliest concert halls: for years, it has presented a steady stream of concerts on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons. The experience of gently rocking while you listen can be slightly disconcerting at first, but the setting is intimate and the sound is remarkable.

Music directors have come and gone over the years; the man providing the crazy energy lately is another violinist, Mark Peskanov. Young players are seen more frequently, such as chamber ensemble the Knights, filled with adventurous musicians like Yo-Yo Ma cohorts Johnny Gandelsmann and Colin and Eric Jacobsen, as well as renegade pop star Christina Courtin. Seasoned performers such as pianist Randall Hodgkinson, New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and the Fine Arts Quartet drop by regularly.

This weekend's offerings are especially intriguing. Performing Saturday, April 28 and Sunday, April 29 is a group called the Kremeratini Quartet. The program on Saturday features violinist Dzeraldas Bidva, violist Ula Ulijona, cellist Giedre Dirvanauskaite and pianist Andrius Zlabys, playing Gubaidulina's Reflexions on Bach for String Quartet, Schnittke's Piano Quintet and Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15. On Sunday afternoon, vibraphonist Andrei Pushkarev replaces Zlabys; the Gubaidulina and Beethoven items are repeated on a program that also includes Astor Piazzolla's Tango Sensation for vibraphone and quartet, as well as Pushkarev's solo improvisations on two-voice inventions by Bach.

Sharp eyes will notice that despite the presence of string quartets on both programs, the Kremeratini Quartet features only one violinist. Filling the other chair is a "very special surprise violinist." And if the group's name and repertoire don't make that player's identity perfectly obvious, note that those other three string players are also members of this group, which Allan Kozinn reviewed in today's New York Times. The last time Zlabys and Pushkarev performed here in the company of a prominent violinist was also reviewed by Kozinn, here. Tickets are priced at $50 (students $25), but you could pay considerably more to see these artists play elsewhere and not be half as close to the music.

There's also something worth noting about tomorrow night's appearance by the East Coast Chamber Orchestra: it's the last Thursday-night chamber music concert to be presented by Bargemusic. From May onward, programming starts on Wednesday nights. Initially, Thursdays will be quiet, but what I just learned today is that Bargemusic will launch a new jazz series in June. This is a great idea, a means by which to get new people on the boat without sacrificing any of its staple offerings.

The series begins on June 7 with a performance by the great swing-jazz pianist and composer Dick Hyman, who celebrates his 80th birthday with a concert this Saturday night at the 92nd Street Y. The handful of bookings announced so far, posted by Jim Eigo at All About Jazz, suggests that the series may lean toward mainstream modes of jazz. Which is not to say "conservative," since one of those bookings is genius trumpeter-composer Randy Sandke, who brings an intimate trio with guitarist Howard Alden and bassist Nicki Parrott aboard on June 28.

Playlist:

Hüsker Dü - Zen Arcade (SST)

Maria McKee - You Gotta Sin to Get Saved (Geffen), High Dive (Viewfinder) and Late December (Cooking Vinyl)

George Frideric Handel - Giulio Cesare - Marijana Mijanovič, Magdelena Kožená, Anne Sofie von Otter, Charlotte Hellekant, Bejun Mehta, Les Musiciens du Louvre/Marc Minkowski (Archiv)

Paul Hindemith - Violin Sonata in E-flat, Op. 11, No. 1 - Ulf Wallin, Roland Pöntinen (Bis)

Richard Strauss - Violin Sonata in E-flat, Op. 18 - Ruggiero Ricci, Ferenc Rados (Hungaroton)

Ludwig van Beethoven - Violin Sonata No. 5, "Spring" - Joseph Szigeti, Claudio Arrau (Vanguard)

Einojuhani Rautavaara - Symphony No. 1; Adagio Celeste; Book of Visions - National Orchestra of Belgium/Mikko Franck (Ondine)

Benjamin Britten - Piano Concerto; Violin Concerto; Cello Symphony; Sinfonia da Requiem; Cantata Misericordium; Prelude and Fugue for Strings; Simple Symphony; Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge; The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra; The Prince of the Pagodas; Diversions for Piano (Left Hand) and Orchestra; Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo; The Holy Sonnets of John Donne; Songs and Proverbs of William Blake; Winter Words; Tit for Tat; Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings; Les Illuminations; Nocturne - Sviatoslav Richter; Julius Katchen; Mark Lubotsky; Mstislav Rostropovich; Peter Pears; John Shirley-Quirk; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; London Symphony Chorus; English Chamber Orchestra; New Philharmonia Orchestra; London Symphony Orchestra; Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden/Benjamin Britten (Decca)

Bass desires.

Edgar Meyer and Emanuel Ax at Zankel Hall
The New York Times, April 24, 2007

Do the math-rock.

Twenty years after his last performances in New York, former Hüsker Dü bassist-turned-restauranteur Greg Norton hit town this weekend for a pair of performances with his new combo, The Gang Font feat. Interloper. I caught the second, presented on Sunday night at the Knitting Factory's Tap Bar. It's an impressive band, featuring guitarist Erik Fratzke (of Minneapolis jazz-rock trio Happy Apple and the excellent instru-metal band Zebulon Pike), drummer Dave King (also of Happy Apple, as well as this other trio you may have heard of) and the always amazing keyboardist Craig Taborn.

I wasn't entirely sure what to call the music the Gang Font makes on its eponymous debut CD, recently issued by Thirsty Ear. But leave it to my most excellent TONY colleague Hank Shteamer -- to whom I happily ceded dibs on previewing these gigs, in light of his immediate and powerful connection to the disc -- to find a suitable tag: this is indeed a wild and wooly intersection of math-rock and electric jazz.

I haven't spent enough time with the Gang Font's disc to provide a track-by-track rundown, but given that Norton announced the set's last number as "the last song we know," I'm guessing they basically played the whole record. We heard a stormy instrumental that suggested Larks' Tongues in Aspic-era King Crimson dosed by Captain Beefheart drummer John "Drumbo" French, and another that resembled a bloodier version of a later Crimson's "Industry": Norton throbbing on a note arguably too low to actually be played on his instrument, King pounding toms, Fratzke and Taborn wreaking mechanical meltdown in slow motion over the top. Elsewhere, the band twisted scary fractals from electric shards of what might have been Gang of Four's "Damaged Goods" -- maybe this is what Tom Johnson at blogcritics.org likened to Fugazi gone jazz?

Fratzke, the player whose previous work I knew least, played with intensity and abandon. Taborn, of course, is a genius who never fails to provide something surprising yet completely appropriate to whatever situation he finds himself in (see also: James Carter, Roscoe Mitchell, Tim Berne). King's precision-tooled chaos was as impressive as ever. And if at some point Norton was out of practice, it surely didn't show tonight. He played with genuine power and precision throughout the set.

In the encore, which Norton described as a work in progress, the bassist howled snatches of lyrics from Harry Nilsson's "Jump Into the Fire" and -- yes! -- Hüsker Dü's "What's Going On," and intoned the Sun Ra mantra, "There are other worlds they have not told you of." Introducing the song, Norton quipped that he'd been studying the vocal stylings of Ethan Iverson and almost had them down. That Iverson, pianist of The Bad Plus and chief blogger at Do the Math, was standing about ten feet away in the audience at the time just made Norton's joke that much funnier.

Prior to the Gang Font's set, local trio Skeletonbreath played a set of what could only be described as pogo-prog. Some of this suggested what might have happened if Danger Money-era U.K. (refer to this post) had borrowed a page from the Police. Impressively, given that prog rock is still considered a boys-only clubhouse, one lithe woman bounced to the music with giddy abandon.

Opening the show was the punky local composers' collective Anti-Social Music, which I'd long been hoping to catch live. That their set ultimately offered considerable cause for despair had nothing to do with the performers or the music, and everything to do with the venue. Alex Ross, characteristically receptive and perceptive, described the positive aspects of the current blurring of borders between contemporary chamber music and post-rock in his latest New Yorker column. Unfortunately, Anti-Social Music's set vividly demonstrated the potential pitfalls that also factor into this particular mix.

Clearly, there were significant and interesting things to be heard, especially in Andrea La Rose's Concerto for Anybody, which featured some remarkable playing by designated soloist Jeff Hudgins on clarinet and alto saxophone, and Pat Muchmore's Babel, a strong piece for amplified cello with pre-recorded accompaniment. But neither required the services of the bassist and drummer from in the punk band playing downstairs in the Knitting Factory's Old Office (a.k.a. that space where my desk was located ten years ago), who were clearly audible throughout the performance.

I walked out of a Tap Bar show by Matt Haimovitz, another valiant boundary breaker, under precisely the same conditions (recounted here, about halfway down), and had it not been for the Gang Font I most certainly would have done the same tonight. In situations like this, the Tap Bar might be the most depressing space in the entire city for performers who wish to actually reach a new audience. The prospect of hearing Anti-Social Music's next local show, on May 12 at the comparatively establishmentesque Renee Weiler Concert Hall at Greenwich House, is far more appealing.

Playlist:

Andrew Russo - Dirty Little Secret (Endeavor Classics)

Black Sabbath - Seventh Star (Castle)

The Bad Plus - Prog (Do the Math/Heads Up, due May 8)

brakesbrakesbrakes - The Beatific Visions (Rough Trade/World's Fair, due May 8)

Sonic Youth - EVOL (SST)

Tim Berne's Hard Cell - Feign (Screwgun)

Unqualified rave.

On Saturday morning, I headed to Philadelphia to do some work for an article I'll soon be writing. While there, I took the opportunity to belatedly hear the Philadelphia Orchestra play in Verizon Hall for the first time. (Truth be told, the two incidents are not unrelated.) The orchestra's short but satisfying concert opened with Max Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, featuring soloist Janine Jansen. I've written previously here about this excellent young Dutch violinist, and she didn't disappoint tonight, providing sometimes visceral, sometimes gentle and always thoroughly considered rendition of the well-trodden work.

But what's got me sitting here typing into the wee hours is the altogether extraordinary account of John Adams's Harmonielehre Donald Runnicles conducted tonight, in the work's Philadelphia Orchestra premiere. I've lived with the original Edo de Waart recording for what seems like ages now, and have also heard the Simon Rattle version. And I was utterly convinced that I'd heard it performed live once before the recent David Robertson/St. Louis Symphony Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall, which I blogged about here, but I can find no evidence of this via Google, the New York Times website or my own meager, incomplete personal archives. (Was it the last piece on the program when Leonard Slatkin conducted the New York Philharmonic premiere of Adams's Violin Concerto, I wonder?)

True, Runnicles's opening salvo wasn't as shattering as Robertson's had been. But far more details emerged from the mix in this performance. Bernard Holland nailed it in his review of the Robertson account at Carnegie: "The orchestra made all the wonderful big noises... but it was less successful at rhythms that must be sharp enough to cut."

That wasn't the case tonight. The hazy stretch between the opening explosions and the horn-led second subject proceeded with a greater sense of structural integrity and momentum here. And what a gloriously dreamy sound Runnicles elicited from the Philadelphia players when the solo horn played over tawny violas midway through the first movement! The bombastic conclusion suggested that if Robertson's account had been the more immediately overwhelming, it was only because Runnicles chose to hold more energy in reserve for that final push over the cliff, as it were.

Likewise, I've never heard a more precisely balanced, gorgeous version of the second movement than the one presented here. The sound world here runs from Debussy's impressionism toward Holst's outer Planets, with agonizing disturbances inspired by the Adagio of Mahler's Symphony No. 10. (More disturbing, in an unmusical sense, was the cell phone that interrupted the movement's waning chords.) The third movement opened with a crystalline shimmer, and built to an ebullient conclusion.

No question about it, this was a concert to cherish and remember. I was also very much impressed by the handsome hall, the clear acoustics of which surely had something to do with the exacting balances Runnicles elicited tonight. (David Patrick Stearns's Philadelphia Inquirer review of this program in an earlier performance is here, just past his dismissal of Terry Riley's reputedly dismissable Sun Rings as played by the Kronos Quartet and others.)

I don't mean to slight David Robertson here: he remains one of the boldest, most inventive programmers working in this country, and from what I can tell, he's a technically accomplished and inspiring conductor. But Donald Runnicles, who proved his Adams bona fides in the premiere run of Doctor Atomic at the San Francisco Opera, is apparently a musician whose breadth I'd previously underestimated. I won't make that mistake again.

Playlist:

Peter Il'yich Tchaikovsky - "Danse Russe" from Swan Lake; Aram Khachaturian - "Nocturne" from Masquerade Suite; Camille Saint-Saëns - Havanaise and Introduction et Rondo capriccioso; Dmitri Shostakovich - "Romance" from The Gadfly; John Williams - "Main Theme" from Schindler's List; Ralph Vaughan Williams - The Lark Ascending; Maurice Ravel - Tzigane - Janine Jansen, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Barry Wordsworth (Decca)

Felix Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto in E minor; Max Bruch - Romance in F major and Violin Concerto No. 1 - Janine Jansen, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Riccardo Chailly (Decca)

Andrew Russo - Dirty Little Secret (Endeavor Classics)

Johann Sebastian Bach - The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I - Wanda Landowska (RCA Red Seal)

They're playing my song.

The video quality here is kind of hideous, and I don't know what John Wetton was thinking with that facial foliage. But here, in all its glory, is this blog's theme song (and a bonus track besides).

Passing ships.

The great jazz pianist, composer and bandleader Andrew Hill succumbed to cancer this morning, according to a press announcement just circulated by publicist Jim Eigo:

I've been asked by composer and pianist Andrew Hill's family to announce to the press that he died at 4 a.m. today, April 20, 2007, several years after being diagnosed with lung cancer. He was 75 years old and lived in Jersey City, NJ.

Hill, born June 30, 1931 in Chicago, Illinois (contrary to some previously published places and dates dates), had a lengthy international career as performer and recording artist, and educator (at Portland State University; he also gave master classes at New York University, and elsewhere; he leaves a voluminous and highly varied recorded legacy, dating from the 1950s (So In Love) to his 2006  trio album Time Lines (Blue Note), named to many critics' top ten lists. Hill is survived by his wife Joanne Robinson Hill, and a niece, nephew and cousin, besides a devoted coterie of friends, typically creative artists and perceptive fans.

As announced on April 11, Andrew Hill will receive an honorary doctorate of music degree from Berklee College of Music at commencement May 12 [snip].

The passing of any great artist is cause for regret. But it's gratifying to know that Hill was able to enjoy such a striking career resurgence -- the release of 1999's Dusk, the rediscovery of the phenomenal "lost" 1969 session Passing Ships, critical praise, awards and honors, and a genuinely appreciative audience -- well prior to his passing. Rest in peace, Mr. Hill.

EDIT: Mwanji's customarily thoughtful post prompts me to clarify that while the press release above was circulated by Jim Eigo, it was actually penned by Jazz Journalists Association president Howard Mandel. Here's a bit more of Howard's message, which I missed before.

Andrew was voted Jazz Composer of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association four times, most recently in 2006; he received the 2003 JazzPar Award, and was one of the first to receive a Doris Duke Foundation Award for jazz composers. His recordings have been on Blue Note, Mosaic, Palmetto and Black Saint/Soul Note, among other labels.

Funeral and tribute information has not been determined. [snip] I first met Andrew in 1971, we kept in touch and became friendly, I regard him highly and am enriched to have known him.

Howard Mandel

Playlist:

Adolphus Hailstork - Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3 - Grand Rapids Symphony/David Lockington (Naxos)

Henri Dutilleux - Complete Piano Music - John Chen (Naxos)

Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 23: Baltimore, MD, Sept. 17, 1972 (Grateful Dead)

Björk - Volta (Elektra, due May 8)

Air - Air Song (India Navigation)

Bloody Panda - Pheromone (Level-Plane)

The National - Boxer (Beggars Banquet, due 5/22)

Taylor Ho Bynum - The Middle Picture (Firehouse 12)

Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet (Atlantic, due Apr 24)

Marillion - Somewhere Else (MVD Audio, due Apr 24)

Genesis - …and then there were three… and Abacab (Atlantic/Rhino remasters, due May 15)

Andrew Hill - Time Lines (Blue Note)

Charles Mingus - In Paris, October 1970: The Complete America Session (Sunnyside)