Doing some concentrated listening today and last night

In a Roomful of Teeth for part of it

I Somehow ran into the vocal group Roomful of Teeth while searching for someone else and happening upon a Bandcamp.com user-created playlist. They are impressive and creative singers, giving voice to sounds at times as confusing as they are beautiful.

I got this LP but it arrived warped. Not so badly it doesn’t play. The sounds of animals and the forces of nature at work are points for dialogue by Glen Whitehead and his trumpet. I know anything Whitehead is involved in will be engrossing and memorable. His jazz album, Living Daylights, is a smashing romp that I remember most for his use of the trumpet to play sounds that are beyond the palette of most brass music.

Striking cover.

This is an album I think I’ve already written a bit about, but since I was just listening to it I thought I’d mention that the vocals by Suzanne Ciani are poised and praiseworthy. The intertwining Moog and Buchla synths wielded by Ciani and Jonathan Fitoussi sound as one creative voice.

The simplicity of a duo is a virtue of guitarist Pat Martino and electric pianist Gil Goldstein’s album We’ll Be Together Again. At times one doubles the other, and at times they improvise in a kind of counterpoint (but don’t grill me on the meaning of that and other musical terms). Other times, the electric piano comps chords while the guitar meanders across open meadows, as it were, and then they swap roles, the piano taking the lead and the guitar comping chords.

Ever since listening to Return to Forever’s self-titled album when I was a child, the electric piano has been an instrument I enjoy listening to. Gil Goldstein is someone whose name is not familiar to me, but he earns his pay on this recording. Anyone who could keep up with Pat Martino in 1976 was a serious musician.

It’s been a couple of days of getting back to listening to LPs after spending a couple of months listening to digital media (CDs, streaming, and files). The sound stage of my vinyl setup beats most of the things I’ve listened to via streaming lately. I’m comparing very different parts of my stereo system, and I am by no means making the claim that one is inferior to the other. It’s apples and oranges. The turntable pulls a wonderful space filled with sound, from the vinyl into our living room. There is breadth and depth. There is space, subtle differences in nearness, to instruments and voices. The sound comes to me from a large area, larger than when playing most digital source material I’ve been listening to lately.

I am tired and am relaxing at the end of the evening, after spending time celebrating a friend’s birthday, with Nils Fram’s album Spaces. It is the first time I’m hearing him play with electronic keyboards in addition to acoustic piano. I’ll probably have more to say once I’ve listened to it. Good listening to you!