Signe Emmeluth - Hi Hello I’m Signe (Relative Pitch Records, 2021) ****

 

By Eyal Hareuveni

About a year and a half ago, the Free Jazz Blog crowned Danish, Oslo-based alto sax player Signe K. Emmeluth as The New Danish Thing. Since then, Emmeluth, leader of the free-jazz quartet Emmeluth's Amoeba, co-leader of the sound-oriented OWL duo with guitarist Karl Bjorå and the newest addition to Paal Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit, received in this year’s edition of the Norwegian Molde Jazz Festival the SpareBank1 SMN JazZtipendiat, the largest awarded to Norwegian improvising artists, to develop her project “Physicality in / emotion”.

Hi Hello I’m Signe, Emmeluth’s debut solo album and the first one to be released by a non-Nordic label and should introduce this creative phenomenon to new audiences, after making a strong impression on the European free music scene. This album is Emmeluth’s contribution to Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s online edition (due to the coronavirus restrictions) of the Sonic Transmissions Festival, recorded at Oslo’s at Kafé Hærverk in August 2020. The album was mixed and mastered by drummer-guitarist Weasel Walter and the cover artwork was created by Norwegian tuba player Heiða Karine Jóhannesdóttir.

Emmeluth has been working on her solo performances in recent years (see the video below). She says that playing solo is a “laboratory and a playground where impulses, curiosity and spontaneity are the cornerstones”. Obviously, such kind of solo efforts offers many insights into the alto sax sonic possibilities beyond common genre conventions, and an opportunity to explore its timbral range, as well as Emmeluth’s own physicality in relation to her instrument and the shape of the music. Furthermore, Emmeluth seeks to challenge the listener’s perception of what sensual music is and can be.

Judging by the 35-minutes of “Action Painting en Vogue”, Emmeluth does so beautifully. She structures the piece cleverly, beginning and ending it with quiet, restrained breaths. Patiently, her clear, captivating voice and her open but strong-minded approach become apparent, as she produces suggestive phrases that ricochet upwards towards the top register of the alto sax. Later on, she builds the emotional drama while alternating between, contemplative and light, almost transparent but sometimes also noisy and dissonant phrases, and powerful, fire-spitting attacks. And she does so with a mature voice, a great sense of control and detail and compelling elegance.

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Thumbscrew - The Anthony Braxton Project (Cuneiform, 2020) ***(*)

 

By Stephen Griffith

For as long as Anthony Braxton has been a vital force in this type of music, as well as being compositionally prolific, there aren't many recordings of other people doing his music. In 1994 a San Francisco group aligned across country with a Boston bunch to produce Jump or Die: Splatter Trio & Debris Play Anthony Braxton, a delightful disc on Music & Arts. Two of the participants, Gino Robair and Randy McKean, had studied or recorded with Anthony who was supportive of the project and provided scores. Fast forward to 2010 when John Zorn recruited Marilyn Crispell, Mark Dresser and Gerry Hemingway, members of the legendary mid 80s through mid 90s quartet, at Braxton’s 65th birthday concert, and hustled them to a studio to record Crispell-Dresser-Hemingway Play Braxton on Tzadik as reviewed here. Guitarist Noël Akchoté undertook the massive Complete Recordings (Plays Anthony Braxton) on his Bandcamp site. and, for individual pieces being recorded, the ROVA Saxophone Quartet included “Comp. 37” on their 1987 Beat Kennel on Black Saint, the Vandermark 5 played “69L" on 2001’s Free Jazz Classics Vols. 1 & 2 on Atavistic and “69-0” was on Angelika Niescier, Thomas Morgan and Tyshawn Sorey’s 2011 Enja recording Quite Simply.

For Braxton's 75th birthday, Thumbscrew was invited to the Tri-Centric Foundation’s Braxton archives over an afternoon to explore compositions, primarily early rarely played pieces, that would fit a guitar/bass/drums or newly added vibes (Tomas Fujiwara was late getting to the composition selection meeting and some had already been selected with three melody lines) lineup. All three members have played with Anthony previously, ranging from Mary Halvorson’s appearance on recordings spanning ten years to Fujiwara being on three recordings to Michael Formanek being second bassist on a Knitting Factory multimedia production. So all were familiar with Braxtonian notations and made insightful decisions on how each piece could adapt to the Thumbscrew imprimatur. Carl Testa, director of publishing for Tri-Centric, assisted the trio and further pointed out that Braxton gives interpreters free rein regarding tempos and dynamic ranges, and that instrumental parts are changeable. From there it was off to a four week Pittsburgh residency to arrange these as well as developing other compositions for further projects.

Although the focus was to be on lesser known works, the opening “Composition No. 52” first appeared on a 1982 Antilles Braxton release with Anthony Davis, Mark Helias and Ed Blackwell entitled Six Compositions: Quartet and on subsequent live recordings by the Crispell/Dresser/Hemingway quartet; so some listeners might be familiar with this. If so they'll find a more relaxed and swinging tempo here, with Halvorson playing more fluid lead lines than early Braxton’s alto supersaturated note explosions which, admittedly, for me was part of the charm. Also they use ritards on alternating measures in the B section. Two versions of “Composition No. 157” appeared on Duets, Hamburg 1991 on Music & Arts with bassist Peter N. Wilson, much of which is a repeated 8 note pattern on sopranino over which the bassist improvises before some structured interplay briefly interrupts the pattern over a seven to nine minute duration. Thumbscrew’s shorter version loosely hints at the eight note pattern while interjecting their own disjointed counterpoint in a refreshingly brief exploration with Fujiwara’s drumming being particularly energized by the basketball graphic title.

The Thumbscrew adaptation process is well illustrated on the final piece, “Composition No. 79”, originally scored for a piano, bass clarinet and trombone as a tribute to the Southwest territory bands of the 30s, specifically Count Basie in Kansas City. Formanek takes the piano’s walking bass line as a foundation, over which Halvorson's badass dissonant chords suggest taking it even further southwest to Bob Wills electric Texas Swing bands. Then Tomas enters the mix on vibes and plays unison lines with Mary while the bass maintains the rhythm. It's a joyful song throughout all subsequent twists and turns, including Fujiwara switching to drums and back, surely capturing the composer’s intentions. A more open ended composition such as “Composition No. 14” is based on a graphic score of geometric shapes from which each member has a solo performance whereby their interpretation is documented in three very different first takes. Slightly more structured was “Composition No. 35” which was made up of cardboard pieces with notes on them along with composition notes specifying an order without identifying which piece was which. The group spent a lot of time deciphering that and the end result sounds much more coherent than it would have in the custody of less accomplished musicians.

This album grew on me through successive listens. It's impossible for any listener of Braxton to approach something of this nature without preconceived expectations; in my case the early Aristas through Crispell/Dresser/Hemingway, particularly featuring Braxton's saxophone. So my initial reaction was it sounded bloodlessly analytic. But through subsequent listens it became more interesting as repetition revealed just how well the trio intricately adapted the compositions to their format while still maintaining a Braxtonian identity. It's too bad that public health concerns haven't allowed touring in support of this release because performing songs repetitively during a tight timeframe creates opportunities for further development. Lacking that for now, I'm sure the composer is pleased with these interpretations.

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King Übü Örchestrü - Concert at Town Hall/Binaurality Live - 1989 (FMP/Destination:OUT! Digital, 2020) ****(*)

 

By Nick Metzger

"The painter facing the white canvas

Or

Improvised music arises from silence

Or

Übü is the place where EARsome improvisers interact"

-Wolfgang Fuchs, 2004

This past June FMP founder Jost Gebers and our friends at Destination:OUT! issued a digital album of an unreleased 1989 live set from the King Übü Örchestrü, the excellent large collective organized by the late Wolfgang Fuchs. Named after Alfred Jarry's universally relevant and timeless play Ubu Roi (the link is to Geoff Dunbar's short 1978 animation; recordings of staged performances from a variety of countries and time periods abound on YouTube, be sure to check out Jean-Christophe Averty's 1965 version as well), the Örchestrü is a personal favorite, in particular their 1993 release Binaurality, a classic of the FMP catalogue. The cast of characters and contributors for this “big band” is long (I have a list going below, if I’ve missed anyone let us know in the comments and we’ll get them added) and transient, with Fuchs, Paul Lytton, Radu Malfatti, and Philip Wachsmann being the only “permanent” members in that they’ve appeared on all of the recordings.

The Örchestrü, or just Übü as it was referred to among the collective, coalesced in rural Germany sometime in the early 1980s from several different working groups. Their focus on sonic texture rather than intensity (my words not theirs) was something that evolved organically as a function of the members involved. Paul Lytton said that when a new musician played with the group it quickly became apparent whether they were going to work out in the overall chemistry or not, as the groups propensity for maintaining persistent and hypersensitive group interplay was off-putting for some looking for a vehicle with the possibility of more individual expression. Fuchs ultimately took up the responsibility of being the central organizer and artistic director of the group. When asked about the difficulty of organizing such a large multinational ensemble in the days before the internet, Lytton had a funny, simple answer, "You had to be a man of your word, and when you said you were going to be somewhere you had better show up."

The group's first album Music Is Music Is… was put out on the FMP sub-label Uhlklang back in 1984 and was followed by Binaurality in 1994 and Trigger Zone in 2001, both on FMP. The sleeves for all three of these releases feature the distinctive paintings of German artist Max Neumann. Their (previously) final album, The Concert Live at Total Music Meeting 2003 , was released on a/l/l in 2004 and documents a performance at the Total Music Meeting the year prior where the band was joined on stage by actor/speaker Boris Aljinovic and vocalists Phil Minton and Irene Barr-Greiner who were asked to work with Jarry's texts for their contributions, independently of each other. In addition to the album being reviewed, there are a couple of great recordings of the group at the Münchner Big Band Meeting in 1992 and at Nickelsdorf in 1995 floating around that help fill out the time period around Binaurality.

The Concert at Town Hall/Binaurality Live - 1989 release (which per Mr. Lytton isn't necessarily directly linked to the 1993 album it's named after) is divided into three segments whose combined duration is just a little over an hour and a half. The Örchestrü's sound on this release features fewer electronic parts than their later albums, but is no less textural or dynamic. The shifts in intensity are interesting to hear unfold, as there isn't any obvious evidence of anyone going off on their own and the rest following (though I will say on this release and others the group is very sensitive to Lytton’s percussion). Rather, the group slowly feeds off each other, reacting to what they hear and supplying complementary sounds and textures within the evolving, dynamic improvisations. The framework is always minimalist, nothing is ever added that isn't necessary. As noted elsewhere, this is in contrast to other large ensembles like their contemporaries in the Globe Unity and ICP Orchestras (the former sharing members with the Örchestrü) and American groups like Sun Ra, where the free sections are often overwhelmed with passionate group free play (I'm not by any means suggesting this is a bad thing, on the contrary, Übü's is simply a different approach). It's like sonic pointillism with each artist representing a different timbral color, the results being unquestionably archetypical of the group (and really to the specific configuration of musicians playing).

It's a welcome release and a great addition to the D:O!/FMP Bandcamp catalogue. The album provides an intriguing snapshot of the group relatively early in their sonic evolution and is the only available recording with this exact lineup. The King Übü Örchestrü features conspicuously in the FMP catalogue as a very unique group among very unique groups, and our sincere thanks go to D:O! for making this available.

King Übü Örchestrü

(All documented members | ✓- on this release):

Wolfgang Fuchs - reeds ✓
Paul Lytton - percussion, electronics ✓
Radu Malfatti - trombone ✓
Phil Wachsmann - violin, electronics ✓
Erhard Hirt - guitar
Guido Mazzon - trumpet
Norbert Möslang - reeds
Hans Schneider - double bass
Alfred Zimmerlin - violin, cello, pickups
Luc Houtkamp - reeds ✓
Peter van Bergen - reeds ✓
Günter Christmann - trombone ✓
Melvyn Poore - tuba ✓
Torsten Müller - double bass ✓
John Butcher - reeds
Dorothea Schürch - vocals
Peter Van Bergen - reeds
Axel Dörner - trumpet
Matthew Hutchinson - electronics
Jean-Marc Montera - guitar
Fernando Grillo - double bass
Georg Katzer - computer, electronics
Anne Lebanon - harp
Bertram Turetzky - double bass
Boris Aljinovic - actor/speaker
Phil Minton - vocals
Irena Bart-Greiner - vocals

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William Parker – Migration of Silence Into and Out Of the Tone World (Centering, 2021) ****

By Paul Acquaro, Tom Burris, and Nick Ostrum

Following Lee Rice Epstein's review of the new William Parker biography, we thought it would make a nice pairing with a review of Parker's new 10 CD set Migration of Silence Into and Out Of the Tone World out on Centering and AUM Fidelity. Needless to say, it was a daunting task and even as we spread it out among three of us to review, there was still a lot to figure out as both the music and the lyrics require attention, and there is what is said and what is intoned. Here it is, in no particular order. 

Nick Ostrum:

Blue Limelight
featuring Raina Sokolov-Gonzalez: voice/ Mara Rosenbloom: piano / Peter Dennis: bass / Scot Moore: violin / Reina Murooka: violin / Tina Burova: violin / Jim Ferraiuolo: oboe / Kevin Murray: drums / Jim Clouse: drums / Jason Kao Hwang: violin

Blue Limelight begins with a brief, beautiful piano-vocal duo, according to the liner notes, as a mantra for the rest of this wild exploration of funky 70’s soul, ethereal barroom dances, eerie sprightly interludes, and wistfully bucolic mediations. Some of these pieces (Cosmic Funk, A Great Day to Be Dead) have a heavy Curtis Mayfield spirit, which is not surprising given Parker’s Inside Songs project. At other times, one hears influences ranging from Stravinsky (yes, most every romantic oboe-forward piece I hear reminds me of Stravinksy) to pared-down show tune balladry to straight up acerbic jazz and poetry.

The album has a cumulative force to it that transcends the pieces taken in isolation, or the genre pigeon-holing I attempt above. It has a flow that make even the smoother sections fit into the wide and somewhat stilted stylistic mélange. Then again, maybe the unique instrumentation – three to four violins, oboe, bass, piano, understated drums – lends itself to such polish and balance. Either way, Blue Limelight as a whole is a strong statement of Parker’s adaptability and his consummate skills as a composer, who is able to capture the cinematic, the bluesy, and the blustery convincingly in the same album, and sometimes even in the same piece.

Child of Sound
featuring Eri Yamamoto: piano

“Dedicated to all of the almost two million indigenous people who live on Reservations in United States of America. Those who have been marginalized and lied to. Those who have been victims of Genocide,” Child of Sound is one of the most powerfully mellifluous and mournful discs in the release. This is not only because of its social justice inspiration, but also because these are solo compositions performed by the incomparable Eri Yamamoto.

Yamamoto balances a healthy dose of beer bar stride and gospel up-beats with winding classical passages. Many of the pieces evoke folksy countryside vistas, replete with those concerted and controlled frills and flourishes that Yamamoto have made her own over the years. Tracks like Malcolm’s Smile (an ode to Malcolm X), Mexico (reimagined as a large ensemble piece on disc 6, titled Mexico), and Trail of Tears I and II (an eponymous commemoration of the forced relocation of nearly 100,000 indigenous Americans in the mid-19^th century) offer a somber counterbalance to the whimsical lightness of compositions such as Rez Sunshine and the welling optimism of The Golden Light (Hymn) and Ascending Earth. Parker is clearly digging into a trove of church music memories on this disc, but it is the way he combines those with bluesy, romantic, show-tune, and neoclassical aesthetics that really make this music shimmer.

Mexico
featuring Jean Carla Rodea: voice/ Brahim Fribgane: oud / Jackson Krall: tenor drum / Ariel Bart: harmonica / Ohad Kapuya: bass / Illay Sabag: piano / Kevin Murray: drums & percussion / Rachel Housle: drums & percussion / special guests Jim Clouse: tenor sax / Matt Lavelle: trumpet / Matt Lambiase: trumpet / William Parker: Serbian flute & gralla on “Tilted Mirror”; kamele ngoni on “The Bleeding Tree”

An homage to its titular land, historical and present, Mexico is laced with Latin and urban jazz vibes, though it also displays some strong North African, Balkan, and Middle Eastern elements in instrumentation and personnel (minus the Balkan), if not also its melodies and structure. (As the liner notes make clear, this is an international effort, with musicians form Mexico [Rodea], Morocco [Fribgane], Israel [Bart, Kapuya, Sabag] and the US [Krall, Murray, Housle, Clouse, Lavelle, Lambiase, Parker]). The result is a work that reaches from the sweeping epic to doleful lullabies to straightforward but reflective protest music.

The latter strand is especially in the final piece, It Is For You, which repeats the mantra, “Never give up.” After several listens, I began to notice that the phrase is repeated in a cadence that seems to imperfectly reflect the vamping and vocal patterns that run through compositions such as Tilted Mirror and Mexico, both oddly funky romps through Latin-infused, avant-neo-folk forms with infectiously stilted and danceable undercurrents. This seems to be a theme of this album, and much of the collection more broadly: simple rhythms repeated and tweaked as a relatively consistent, cohesive base that grounds the elaborations and curious detours that comprise the rest of the composition. Mexico in particular evokes a range of colors and moods, even as it remains coherent in its exploration of intimate and, at times, hauntingly waifish (Mexico, The Bleeding Tree) meditations on past injustices and the continued struggle for social justice today.

All in all, this makes for a viscerally satisfying listen and, again, attests to William Parker’s continued journeys beyond the bounds of jazz and jazz-based improvisation into musical forms and with musicians from different countries and continents. And he succeeds with a comprehension, confidence and rootedness that has become Parker’s trademark.

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Tom Burris:

Manzanar
Parker describes this disc in the liner notes as “a dissection of string paintings, as if fingers were brushes and strings were paint.” It is performed by a string quartet with Parker augmenting the group on khaen (a Thai mouth organ) and flutes. It is also otherworldly, dark and mysterious, with nods to American jazz and political history. Other highly influential cultural landmarks are Africa, Asia, Europe, and the night sky. On “Charcoal Paragraphs,” which opens the disc, the foreboding atmosphere feels like the musicians are keeping Van Gogh's Starry Night hidden away from those who would do it – and us – harm.

A mournful feeling permeates much of the music here, nowhere more than on the title track which becomes an almost unbearable unified cry in the dark. Manzanar was the first U.S. Concentration camp used to incarcerate Japanese Americans during WWII. Simultaneously gorgeous and terrifying, the music here is repetitive but broken up into unique fragments by each player. A disturbing and powerful piece of music. Thankfully, relief appears in “On Being Native,” which serves as a coda to the four preceding pieces. It was based on a poem by David Budbill and features Daniel Carter on alto saxophone, who winds lines around the strings effortlessly. At 21:16, it still doesn't feel long enough & is easily my favorite track on a disc full of excellent ones.

The Fastest Train
The Fastest Train is a trio album featuring Klaas Herman on flutes & Coen Aaberts on percussion and wind instruments. Parker plays an assortment of flutes and pocket trumpet. Imagine a few members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago making outdoor improvised “little instruments” recordings after being inspired by Brotzmann & Bennink's Schwarzwaldfahrt album. (You know, the one B&B made on a weekend trip to the Black Forest.) With so many flutes, it threatens to sun-dance off into New Age land – but thankfully, nothing as dreadful as that happens.

Highlights include the birds and rusty tricycles of “Family Voice,” a Native American late-night campfire peyote jam called “Host for the Anointed,” and the mint tea Joujouka vibes that infiltrate “Blessed.” But the real standout here is “Sacred Prayers,” which features lovely melodies crossing the wide distance between the American Southwest and the Himalayas. The album closes with a deep forest outro called “The Elders at the Edge of the World Part 2,” which is dark, mysterious, and more than a little Herzogian.

Lights in the Rain (The Italian Directors Suite)
This album is performed by a septet that includes Parker on cornet and features vocalist Andrea Wolper. Italian movies made me a film fan & I'm happy to see that William Parker shares this interest. The Visconti piece is brash and subtle simultaneously, similar to the director's own sensibilities. Ariel Bart's harmonica takes on an appropriate accordion-like feel on many of the compositions here, beginning with “Fellini,” a carnival-esque musing based on a Fellini quote about dreams. “Leone” marks a return to real harmonica music, which also includes an obligatory nod to Morricone. I'm not surprised that there doesn't seem to be that same film composer's nod to Alessandro Cicognini on “De Sica,” as Cicognini is still under-appreciated – but Parker states that this track is “about the film that never made but only imagined.” So... that's a pretty good reason, I guess.

Rossellini gets a warm salute in the liner notes in the form of a poem that contains the lines “Life over war / Life over death / People over power.” This was not only the point of Rossellini's postwar work, but also of all of Italian Neorealism. And so it is also in the music of William Parker. 

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Paul Acquaro:

Cheops   

Cheops is a dynamic and sometimes frightening album. The music here features the wordless vocal styling of Kyoko Kitamura, warm vibes from Matt Moran, expressive tuba from Ben Stapp, precise soprano sax from Kayla Milmine-Abbott, sensitive drumming from Rachel Housle, and finally William Parker providing a solid bass. 

The recording’s title track is dedicated to the late trumpeter Roy Campbell who had a deep affinity for things Egypt. Parker writes in the liner notes how he misses Campbell's presence in music and life, as the pair had worked closely for many years. 'The Map is Precise' is a piece with a great deal of spoken word poetry that is evocative of history and feelings. The words are pointedly chosen, but the meaning is broad and there are a lot of ways to interpret them, which makes it engaging and thought provoking. “If We Play Soft Enough” is a tour de force … the central piece on the disc that incorporates all sorts of 'soft' instruments, building to a 'soft' musical climax over its 22 minute life-span. Finally, the track ‘Harriot” is dedicated to the Jamaican born, and later UK based, saxophonist Joe Harriot who is considered a pioneer of free-jazz in the late 50’s and early 1960s.

Harlem Speaks

This album is dedicated to the Harlem Renaissance and it mixes personal and historical events in a seamless mix of lyrics and tone. The voice and rhythm section combination is a skeletal approach, leaving a lot of space to fill, but Fay Victor's strong voice and 'classic' jazz approach is more than capable of doing so. The recording begins with her scatting/singing over just Hamid Drake's drum kit work. A deep rhythmic sense builds a web of unheard support, as they channel the music rife with history and expectation. Parker’s musical choices go beyond notes, for sure he delivers a groove that sits so well with Drake’s sense of rhythm that the two of them elevate beyond a standard rhythm section. Parker doesn’t have to play a lot, like on 2nd tune … just a couple notes provide the constellations to imagine your own pictures. This approach is taken to an extreme on the title track is much more along the “avant-garde” side of things, with Drake’s insistent, gripping pulse driving a eye-opening combination of guttural scat and Parker’s plucking on the Mbiri. Again, the sparse instrumentation is hardly a detriment as the trio explores a whole new sound scape. 

While some of the lyrics are a little heavy handed  - “all I got left is my soul / my soul is not for sale" - it is hardly a problem as the actual words speak to something much deeper than their literal meanings . A bold album, accessible and engaging, it is more a straight ahead jazz album that many of the other musical excursions on the discs in this set.

Majesty of Jah
What an interesting concept: hearing the words and voice of the author James Baldwin interspersed with piercing lines from the trumpet Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson and some gentle percussion by Parker. This construction of the juxtapositions and long, well selected comments from Baldwin on his life and experiences is powerful, and its power is heightened by its minimalist construction. Next, on the title track, the trumpet over Parker's deliberate and repetitive bass line is rather hypnotic, which support the impressionistic lyrics well. The track 'Freedom', according to the liner notes refer back to music that was written in protest to Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. Parker adds "things were bad but Reagan who was probably one of the worst presidents in history made it worse." Insane how this almost seems quaint when reading this in January 2021. 'Sun Song' is another hypnotic one in which Parker is playing a donso ngoni, which is a type guitar from Mali. The gentle, repetitive phrases provide a floating bed for Nelson's sumptuous melodic lines and Ellen Christi's wordless chants.

The album, which investigates notions of freedom, protest and origins, closes with an question about slavery. In 'Letter to a Resurrected Slave Owner', the narrator asks "If the world was brand new, what would you do? Would you do the same thing?" A haunting reprise to the depths that the album plumbs.

Afternoon Poem
Afternoon Poem is a solo vocal recording presented by Lisa Sokolov. The tracks are a collection of Parker's poetry and Sokolov delivers an emotive and engaging performance, however, I have not yet found my way into it, yet. I welcome your comments on thoughts to help complete this review. 

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Cisco Bradley - Universal Tonality (Duke University Press, 2021)

By Lee Rice Epstein

Like Graham Locke writing about Anthony Braxton in the 1990s, Cisco Bradley’s biography of William Parker arrives as the artist seems to be entering yet another unprecedented phase of his career. Yet, Universal Tonality: The Life and Music of William Parker is a timely and dynamic picture of the great artist’s travels, to date. Bradley’s book charts a past that also provides many clues and contextual narratives that tell us much about where Parker may be heading. As an unintended companion to the recently released set, which itself contains a combination of biographical and folkloric reflections, the two work together to illuminate and challenge much of our current accepted conceptions of creative music, Black music, and the artistic mission. Like many contributors (and, surely, readers), I’m a longtime fan of William Parker’s music, which, like sedimentary layers, continues to build upon itself in new shades, textures, and depths. Bradley’s book—which I recommend as highly as Locke’s seminal Forces in Motion: Anthony Braxton and the Meta-reality of Creative Music —is the kind of scholarship that invites a reader to engage with fundamental and complex ideas about art, its purpose, and the roles of an audience. Like Locke, Bradley pulls off the feat of bringing the artist and his music to life, a cliché, of course, but there’s no better phrase for it. While reading Universal Tonality, I was constantly dipping in and out of the text to play a recording or look online for photos or additional materials.

Instead of rehashing the book or presenting some version of my own findings, what I really wanted to do was talk with Bradley about some of the ideas that were rattling around after I finished the book. We didn’t come close to covering everything, but what I hope we may have accomplished is opening up the door for anybody who is interested in Parker and his music to jump in, as well as for other writers and researchers to move forward with their projects. All quoted portions that follow come from two conversations I had with Bradley in January of this year.

“There are numerous books to still be written. I don’t know if a definitive book has been written on the loft scene. It’s not a criticism, there’s just a lot left to be written… There’s a lot to be written on the downtown scene.” One topic we kept returning to was how many stories there are to be told. And for those deeply interested in the loft scene and creative music of free improvisation, the second section, “Early Work,” contains about 100 pages with chapters each on Parker’s playing on the loft scene, especially with Jemeel Moondoc’s Ensemble Muntu, the music he made with Centering Dance Music Ensemble and his wife Patricia Nicholson, and his time spent with Cecil Taylor.

Throughout the second section and into the third section (“Toward the Universal,” primarily focused on In Order To Survive, Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, William Parker Quartet, and Raining On the Moon, among his other groups), you get a sense of how Parker’s sense of self is reflected in his earliest interactions: “I always think of something Steve Swell said, ‘William never really had a careerist moment, he’s still very dedicated to making sure the community is functioning.’ He’s not one of those people with ego or attitude. First of all, there’s his monumental body of work, he tours all over the world, he’s played in 50 countries or something, and he’s gotten a huge amount of respect. But at the same time, let’s say from the jazz establishment in the United States, he’s barely on their radar.”

In many ways, for me, the crucial section of the book is what would most likely be considered the traditional biographical portion, section one, titled “Origins.” Truly, the section opens contra tradition, with the chapter “Enslavement and Resistance: From West Africa to the Carolinas to Harlem.” Beginning briefly with the Harlem Renaissance, Bradley traces Parker’s family to the seventh-century Kingdom of Nri, located east of the Niger River.

Bradley explained: “Part of it is, William spoke so much about his family and about his history. I don’t think I’ve spoken to someone who has a memory like him. And he talked about his earliest events in his life, his parents, his brother, and so forth. He has an impeccable memory. ‘I read this book when I was 12,’ and not only does he remember the book, he’ll say, ‘This is what I was thinking when I started reading it.’

“He’s aware of his own consciousness. He talked so much about the things he experienced, his connection to history, that I felt giving it a deep context was necessary… There were some surprises in there. The fact that he was descended from a free Black family in pre-Civil War North Carolina. I stumbled into that in the record. He talks about Native Americans a lot in his work, and what I find stunning is, in his own history, it’s right there. The fact that one of his ancestors escaped slavery and took refuge among the Lumbee Indians in central North Carolina. There’s this incredible parallel with his own artistic vision and some of the themes of his work. And I thought, 'We have to go all the way back.’ Given the limited resources I can turn to, ‘Let’s go back as far as we can.’”

These reflections of Parker’s artistic vision and the mission of his music, the communication of tradition, which often re-emerges through a refracted lens, like the radical settings on Parker’s Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield project. Given how much of Parker’s music is steeped in historical exploration—including some on his latest set, like the stirring Manzanar session—the book feels very much in tune with Parker, the researcher and storyteller.

“He had a very clear idea of the narrative he wanted for the book. I can’t overstate that, he really had a story that he wanted to tell. When we sat down, those stories came out pretty quickly, especially chapters 2 and 3. We didn’t get to talking about his music until after the first three or four interviews I did with him. He really wanted to talk about growing up and a lot of the early influences on him, just as a human being, as a poet, as a young person.

“He was talking about Amiri Baraka’s poetry, he was talking about Stan Brakhage’s films. William consider’s Brakhage to be his single greatest influence. The French New Wave, some of the films I outline in chapter 3, kind of blew his mind. He was thinking about not only the experimental visual things they were doing, sometimes with sound sometimes not, it threw open his mind to other ways of existence. Imagining what the greater world was to a child growing up in deep poverty in the projects in the South Bronx.”

Reading these chapters, then pressing play on, say, “Alphaville” from the “Live At Yoshi’s” quartet session of the Wood Flute Songs set, you begin to get a sense of how long Parker’s been working through the ideas he first encountered 60 years ago.

“In a way, William Parker’s a historian. He’s telling stories through his music. Until I sat down, I didn’t realize how many tributes he had done. He’s a proactive historical figure, he’s out there defining himself, defining his own narrative. His music is Black music, and it’s also other things. He says in the beginning of his career, he identified most closely with the Black music spiritual school. [Eventually he said,] I’m not going to be limited by any categories, but I’m also going to embrace these categories.”

It’s a traditional biography structure to lay down a person’s history and allow it to build towards the later sections. But, in Parker’s case, so much of his music reflects backwards that reading these early chapters felt revelatory. "Early key interviews I did were with Patricia Nicholson, and the other two crucial ones were with Matthew Shipp and Cooper-Moore. They were the first two people William suggested I reach out to. They helpd me understand William Parker, the evolution of the human being. I’m only seeing William Parker the bass legend, the established figure. They knew him when he was the new guy on the scene. And honestly, the interview with his daughter Miriam. She has an obviously special relationship, as his daughter, but she can also speak to the evolving person he is, from when she was little to today.”

Of course, hearing Bradley talk at length about his process, how he strived to be open to what he heard from Parker and others, to really listening. "This went through a peer review process with the publisher. There were three external reviewers. And I really tried to make sure that William’s voice was the strongest voice in the text. And it was to the point where, in an earlier draft, someone said that William’s voice was stronger than the author’s voice. And I pulled that back to where his voice carries the narrative.”

This ended up being, I think, one of the more important aspects of our conversations about the book. Because, and of course it already occurred to me, we would be two white people who write about jazz, a historically Black art form, discussing a work of biography about a prominent Black artist from the South Bronx, whose music extends a through line that binds Duke Ellington to Cecil Taylor. I’ve written about the knottiness of this before, so it felt necessary that we talk about it, and Bradley—who at one point simply said, “We need to have more conversations like this”—was keen to do so, as well. It was a sincere and open conversation, and in that respect, I’ll present what Bradley said to me as plainly as possible here:

“The question I asked repeatedly is, am I able to do this without causing damage to the way he is portrayed? How might I misconstrue him? I think a lot of white writers, it’s easy, subconsciously sometimes, it’s quite easy to warp the narrative a little bit. Whether that’s making the narrative about white people or not being aware of the assumptions one is making as a writer.

“Fill the narrative with as many Black voices as possible, that was something I tried to do. Because most bureaucratic documents and a lot of historical resources out there are written by white people, who are maybe misunderstanding what they’re seeing. It’s a judgement call, really. You try to do the best you can; you see racism in the documents, all over the place. And how do you pick through that? You do the best you can. [You let] Black voices define the concepts as much as possible. What is William Parker’s conception of what freedom is, for example, and not make assumptions about what that might be. I tried to make sure he is defining those terms and concepts and ideas. Because he thinks a lot about those things. His work has a lot to do with that.

“I’ve tried to be humble about my approach to it, and I look forward to my Black colleagues being critical about what I’ve said. As a white writer, I can’t make that judgement. I can make certain judgements as a trained historian, but there’s a large chunk of things I don’t think I can say. I thought of myself as a guide, the person who gathers all of this together and puts it forward.”

We agreed this is, we hope, the first of many books to be written about Parker, about the loft scene, and about the scene that’s emerged in New York with his support. To continue his work amplifying voices, Bradley is getting ready to launch the Free Jazz Oral History project. It’s a broad and ongoing project, begun in 2016 with the goal of “interviewing all the people involved in the scene up to 1980. I’ve been trying to document people’s stories in a very in-depth level.” If you haven’t looked into them, there are already a number of more traditional oral history projects, dedicated to jazz in general, to British jazz, and to other regional voices. But the focus on the loft scene and the creative explosion of free jazz in the 1970s is crucial: “I’ve been trying to be systematic about it. I should say a lot of the people I’m talking to right now are between 70 and 85, and we’re going to lose them in the future. And other people are doing projects too, to document those voices and their philosophies, their life stories. I’ve been gradually making my way through, I’ve done about 50 interviews. This is the kind of crucial stuff we need, to be documenting these histories, preferably in the words of the people who created that music.” And this is probably the most important aspect of Universal Tonality, how many voices are there, on the page, including Parker’s. It’s his story, most of all, but now it’s also ours, as the audience, as the experiencers, as the ones who’ll carry it forward.

Order from Duke University Press

Or from Aum Fidelity

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Nublu Orchestra, conducted by Butch Morris - Live in Paris (Nublu Records, 2020) *****

By Gary Chapin

The fact that this recording opens up with the sort of skribbly-BLAT-blat that has been a free jazz cri de coeur since the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s Nice Guys is very charming. This recording by the Nublu Orchestra conducted by Butch Morris, like that 1979 classic, begins in Skronk Town, but that’s the launch, not the destination. They get back there, occasionally, but only after traveling through other city and landscapes.

Live in Paris is one of six in a series (the others are Rome, Lisbon, Sao Paulo, Skopje, and Bergamo), and I’ve been listening to the lot for weeks, trying to figure out what the salient points are that I should report on. Rather than running through the whole series, piece by piece, I’ve decided to focus on one of the recordings as an exemplar of the set.I’ve picked Paris because it’s my favorite, but I want to be clear that part of the joy of the Nublu Orchestra and Morris’ conductions is feeling them unfold over the long periods of time that these concerts allow. You should listen to all of them, spend a week or two in their space.

For those not familiar with Butch Morris and his “conductions,” they are a form of musical creation in which Morris “plays” the orchestra as an improvising instrument. The players are all improvising, but they are doing so according to his gestures and instructions. Some gestures indicate tempo or attack or groupings of players and that sort of logistical thing. Other gestures might mean something along the line of, “Did you hear what she just played? Build on that!” It’s more complicated and subtle than I could ever convey, so here’s a video of Morris — who died in 2013 — talking about it himself.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with Tom Cora way back when. He was explaining why he chose the cello as his instrument over all the others, and he said, “More than any of the other instruments, with the cello you can completely shape the envelope of the sound.” It wasn’t just playing the music, but sculpting the sound. I get that sense with Nublu. Morris’ conduction is “shaping the envelope” of the orchestra in the moment, in a way that no composer or band chart could. In the video above he tells the story of asking his conducting teacher, “What if I want the orchestra to go back to the beginning?” Her response was, “If the composer wanted you to go back at that point, they would have written it that way.” This is as true for jazz scores as it is for orchestral scores. It doesn’t matter how many holes you leave for soloists, they may be responding to the band, but the band is not responding to them. Morris has found a way to make it work.

Live in Paris starts with the skribbly-BLAT-blat, as I said, and then moves on to other spaces. The first part of the evening, a 27 minute, in-the-moment arrangement, leans heavily on the two electric guitars (interestingly, the other instrument that Tom Cora said had a “shapeable” envelope). In the first minutes, the ambient hum of the amps can be heard, which creates a textured palette for the rest of the band — like high quality paper for a pen and ink artist. There are some quiet, swelling moments, like the musicians are having conversations with one another, sounding each other out. Then we move through an hour of story and drama. It’s an N act structure.

To individually cite improvisers seems besides the point. Every player here is made brilliant. There are declarations, arguments, and pleas, but no solos, as such. Voices rise to the top as they might at any gathering led by a brilliant facilitator. In any conversation or any landscape, nothing exists except in context, which Morris directs. There are bits of this that “sound like” reggae, or avant jazz, or Bitches Brew, or jam bands — but it all fits because it all emerges organic from the band, with Morris’ direction, in the moment, then the next moment, one after the next.

I saw Morris perform 30 (or so) years ago, and there was a bit of a spectacle to watching him do this. It seemed almost like an extended magic trick. I was young — how does it work out to be something unified and coherent? The sense of spectacle, for me, has long ago passed, but my sense of awe and gratitude at what Morris is able to bring together into all of these recordings is abiding.

The band:

Lawrence D. ‘Butch’ Morris (Conduction)
Graham Haynes (Cornet)
Ilhan Ersahin (Tenor Sax)
Jonathon Haffner (Alto Sax)
Denis Colin (Bass Clarinet)
Doug Wieselman (Guitar)
Rubin Steiner (Guitar)
Juini Booth (Acoustic Bass)
Alp Ersonmez (Electric Bass)
Aaron Johnston (Drums)
Turgut Alp Bekoglu (Drums)
Izzet Kizil (Eastern Percussion)

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Èch – Èch (Un Rêve Nu, 2020) ****

By Nick Ostrum

Heddy Boubaker has an interesting history in music. Originally, he was a sax demon, exploring both the lowercase deconstructivist and Borbetomagusian (yep, that is now a word) extremes until he suddenly stopped playing due to illness, if I remember correctly. After several years exploring the modular synth and bass, he moved back to the first instrument that caught his attention as a teenager, the electric guitar. Boubaker first came to my ears a decade ago through sotto voce releases on Insubordinations, Creative Sources, and an all-too short-lived netlabel Con-V. Then, I discovered his Rosa Luxemburg Quartet (Insub, Not Two) and wall of noise Zed Trio (Ayler) and I was convinced. Then, however, he seemed to disappear.

Èch is Heddy Boubaker on electric guitar, Julien Gineste on alto sax and electric organ, Erwan Lamer on percussion and bass clarinet, Andy Lévêque on alto sax, and Walkind Rodriguez on trumpet, percussion and voice. For those of you familiar with Boubaker, this release leans much further toward the melodicism of Rosa Luxembourg and clunky abstractions of Zed than the near-silence of much of his solo work. All tracks are composed by Boubaker.

The first track, Mange Tout, is straight-up fire music minus the melody with which the Nordic and American practitioners tend to imbue it. This, of course, does not mean this is just harsh noise. Tracks such as L'Entaille Du Rasoir d'Hanlon are demented marches. Fidèle A Vos Illusions is based on a dark and glitchy, Afro-Caribbean inspired beat and consists of one long, pulsing crescendo. Missing D, which begins a simple guitar riff soon met with explosive percussive and horn blasts seems more inspired by post-punk (Lamer’s steady bass drum pulse and Boubaker’s staticky guitar oscillations) and aggressive avant-rock (Gineste, Rodriguez, and Lévêque’s torqueing fanfares). Un Autre Hôte is a slow, meditative guitar-based piece reminiscent of David Grubbs at his more laggard moments. Martine A La Plage (a play on the far-right nationalist Marine la Pene) starts as a playful blend of Balkan-esque dance music scrambled with playful electronic and heavier doom-jazz elements for the first half. Then, it turns minimalist ritualistic Krautrock drone. (What had seemed a fringe joke just a decade ago, it seems, has lost its levity.) Lama Fâché returns to simple, repeated plodding guitar riffs punctuated by horns and, halfway through, galloping drums and shouts. As with Fidèle A Vos, this piece seems one long crescendo, or acceleration from collectedness into a manic outburst of energy. The final piece, Nous Ne Sommes Plus Des Poussières D'Étoiles, begins in a similar fashion, but develops into a glistening, dreamy soundscape rather than an ebullient release. A fine way to end an exciting and thoroughly compelling album. Clearly, abandoning the saxophone was not the end for Boubaker.

This album has been released in digital format and as a limited release CD.

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Soft Works - Abracadabra in Osaka (Moonjune, 2020) ****

By Paul Acquaro

I tumbled into the rabbit hole of Soft Machine with a download of Third. From here it took me a bit of time to understand how it all came together - from the group's late Sixties psychedelic days to the jazz-rock of the early of the early Seventies, then to the numerous mutant offshoots that began already in the late Seventies: Soft Head and Soft Heap, and later with Soft Mountain, Soft Bounds, Soft Works, Soft Machine Legacy, and finally Soft Machine.

I’ve enjoyed many, if not all, of the incarnations of the ‘Soft-' groups that Hugh Hopper and Elton Dean spearheaded, except one: Soft Works. Even though the 2003 release Abracadabra was the great reunion of Hopper and Dean with long-time Soft Machine drummer John Marshall and guitar legend Allan Holdsworth, from such a line-up, I had expected just a bit more of a ‘kick' from the album. So, my hope was that Abracadbra in Osaka, a double album documenting a concert by the group back in the early aughts, would fill in the pieces that I felt the studio album missed. I am happy to report it does. Elton Dean's unique saxello seems just a little more sour, in a painfully good way; Hopper and Marshall’s playing is just a bit edgier to my ears; and Holdsworth, especially, kicks it up a notch or two.

The opening track on both the studio album and the live recording, 'Seven Formerly', starts slowly and builds to low-boiling point in both cases, but the studio recording version is softened a bit to much by synth and lacks that extra crunch that the live version brings. The Hopper penned track ‘First Train' similarly fares just a little better on the live recording, and Holdsworth's solo around the four-and-a-half minute mark reaches a climatic intensity. Soft Machine staple 'Kings & Queens' gets an airing on the live album too, which provides Dean essentially with a showcase to play an extended, relaxed solo over a suspenseful, familiar background.

A real plus from this new release, for me, is that I've come to appreciate the studio album better as well. The subtleties come into better contrast and the parts where the fusion becomes a bit too fusiony are easier to let pass by. Overall, a nice addition to the reincarnated Soft Machine’s discography. Also, be sure to check out the latest version of Soft Machine with Live at the Baked Potato, a nice document of an ever adapting band.

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Solo Trumpet

 By Stef Gijssels

Confinement leads to isolation and personal creativity. We have heard many solo releases this year, including for solo trumpet, by Susana Santos Silva, Luis Vicente, Lina Allemano, Kris Tiner. 

The following albums are also noteworthy in the same category.

Kasper Tranberg - Suite Dilation (ILK, 2020) 

Danish trumpeter Kasper Tranberg's "Suite Dilation" is part of a trilogy of three CDs, the other two being Terzet, a trio, and Strawboss, a sextet performance. 

On "Suite Dilation", Tranberg brings us four composed/improvised pieces, all performed with the same clarity of tone, brightness of sound and in the higher tonal registers, with subtle changes, as on the shift to mute on "Shadow", actually giving a shadow of the first part of the piece. 

As he writes it himself: "My solo ambition forced me to, seriously, to reflect on my life with all its transformative events, and to go deeper in all my studies. I am still looking for the beautiful and surprising in the tensions I find in the music and in the moment.. no fucking overdubs! The compositions create the framework around what I am discovering, and I seldom leave the material when I improvise."

His music almost sound classical, possibly because of the purity of his tone, and if his music is a reflection of his life, I'm sure its beauty will also make listeners happy. A short album, but a real treat. 

Natsuki Tamura - Nihonkai Mukashitabi (Self, 2020) & Natsuki Tamura - Kobe 2020 (Self, 2020)

Natsuki Tamura needs no further introduction, as we've covered his music with Satoko Fujii and with his own band "Gato Libre" already extensively on this blog. 

Over the years, he has also sparingly produced his own solo albums, starting with "A Song For Jyaki" in 1998, at that time demonstrating his adventurous nature by exploring many possible approaches to trumpet technique and sound. On "Ko Ko Ko Ke" from 2004, his voice becomes more lyrical and his compositions start to integrate folk elements, also illustrated by his combination with singing. His warm tone is already present in his music then, as is his sense of humour. In 2013 he releases "Dragon Nat" (a reference to his first name), with even deeper exploration of folk melodies, and covering compositions from other albums, especially by Gato Libre. 

On "Nihonkai Mukashitabi" the timbral explorations and adventures are gone. His warm tone and performance are mainly in the middle register, without peaks and troughs, with a stronger focus on the lyricism of his tune and phrasings. In contrast to many modern trumpeters, Tamura's voice is one of musical purity, a kind of 'art pour l'art', art for the sake of art itself, beauty for the sake of beauty, without any reference to a need for personal expression or need for artistic recognition. This results in a mood of innocence and unassuming pretenseless joy in the music itself, a personal detachment which paradoxically leads to a deeply felt level of poetry. 

At the same time, Tamura also released three separate pieces, performed during the covid crisis, and to be bought digitally, called Kobe1, Kobe2, and Kobe3. These pieces are longer, improvised and a little more moody and even bluesy, with the exception of the voiceless Kobe3, which is a physical tour-de-force of man and instrument turning into a human pressure cooker. 

His penchant for beautiful lyricism is balanced by his exploratory curiosity. Both find an outlet here but on parallel tracks. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp and here. 

João Almeida - Solo Sessions (Self, 2020)

It's always good to hear new voices, especially when they're young, talented and adventurous. Portuguese trumpeter João Almeida fits in this category, releasing his first album this year, and then even a solo album. He started playing the trumpet at the age of eight, and after his formal music studies he took classes with Peter Evans, while at the same time having the opportunity to perform with almost everybody who matters in the thriving and vibrant music scene in Lisbon.  

His "Solo Sessions" are exactly what the title suggests: short solo trumpet pieces in which various approaches to music are explored. It's a little programmatic at times: from voiceless over pointillist and long tones to repetitive phrases. He's showing us what he and his instrument can deliver, with quality, with class, and he does so with enthusiasm and intensity. The next step will be to find his musical voice. Not only the technique, but the story and the sound. 

This album is only one of four he has released this year. 

Listen and download from Bandcamp. 

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Andrew Smiley - Looming As Light Torn (self-released, 2020) ****

 

By Keith Prosk

Guitarist and vocalist Andrew Smiley explores extended songform on the emotional noise of Looming As Light Torn. When we put together our favorite recordings of the ‘10s, I placed Smiley’s first solo recording, Dispersal, in my personal top three of the decade; while that list could look different on any given day, if my appreciation of Dispersal has changed since then it has only expanded. Looming As Light Torn, Smiley’s second solo recording, developed over four years, continues the musical language of the first, adding lyrical content and more dynamic arrangement.

The first two tracks, “Part I” and “Part II,” are a half-hour journey not dissimilar to Dispersal. Smiley’s expressionistic guitar strokes create a detuned jumble with collateral jangle that surficially sounds amateur and lo-fi, generating a sense of intimacy through alarming vulnerability in a way that Beat Happening or The Shaggs can when they feel most earnest. But there’s a prodigious consciousness for texture, melody and counterpoint in the mess. Percussive chimes, scratchy scrapes, chugging riffage, and a variety of other attacks with the pick and fingers extend the palette of the guitar while maintaining the rhythmic momentum that some extended techniques cannot. Smiley’s polyphonic colorfield sometimes sounds like firework peonies look, with addictively catchy melodies flanked with bursts of bass oms and piercing harmonics, attended by bright tremolos like daytime black metal or twinkling tender legato flurries. The voice also provides textural and structural counterpoint to the guitar, and reinforces the tone of fragility by singing out of tune, out of range, for durations it’s not trained for. The lyrical delivery recalls the weary falsetto of Mark Hollis, not exactly intelligible, not understood but certainly felt. Whereas the progression of Dispersal was relatively linear, Looming As Light Torn is a walk across a more natural topography, with dynamic peaks and valleys of high and low volume, density, and rhythmic motifs.

The third track is a cover of “But I Do” from Now, Now, a group whose vulnerability might get them labeled as emo. Smiley plays it relatively straight, keeping the Joy Division-esque melodies that transition to chords with high-pitched highlights to resonate with the emotional material of the lyrics, which are delivered with a simultaneous jaded detachment and naivety recalling The Vaselines. A relatively simple song capping an extended experimental suite might baffle some listeners, but I think this is a kind of distillation of the longer track, illuminating some of its musical roots, containing most of the building blocks it expanded and rearranged, with similar emotivity.

Between his two solo releases, Smiley has created a distinctive language for the guitar and voice that’s warm and cathartic. Seemingly amateurish but secretly virtuosic. Full of color with increasingly satisfying compositional expressivity. To briefly return to lists, this didn’t make my personal list for the blog’s favorite recordings of 2020, but I considered it, and I suspect I’ll spend some time with this special work in the years to come.

Looming As Light Torn is a digital-only release.

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