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It’s become a tradition here to post a playlist for Halloween so here’s the one for this year, a collection of favourite “voodoo” music. Most are these pieces have as much to do with real voodoo as Bewitched does with real witchcraft but I like the atmospheres of Voodoo Exotica they evoke.
Voodoo Drums in Hi-Fi [...]

The death this week of guitar pioneer Les Paul is already receiving considerable attention; less will be given to the passing of drummer Rashied Ali. The latter means more for me as a musician since I’m listening to his work all the time. Ali famously (and to some, controversially) replaced drummer Elvin Jones as John [...]

I was going to post something about jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard who died this week (yes, another one). But enough people have been doing that elsewhere and I wrote about the album of his that I know best, Sing Me a Song of Songmy, back in April. Better, then, to leave a gloomy year with [...]

Dawn of the jazz age: Sir Duke Ellington’s adventures in Britain

Shooting from the hip
| David Thomson on ‘jazz film’.

Dilettantes by You Am I (2008). Illustration and design by Ken Taylor.
Dilettantes is the eighth studio album from Australian band You Am I which is released this week sporting a very creditable Beardsley pastiche by illustrator Ken Taylor. Sleevage has more details about the creation of the CD package, including preliminary sketches. Those familiar with [...]

Nation Time still strikes a chord
| Alan McGee on free jazz and Joe McPhee.

One of the great electroacoustic compilations, Electronic Music III: Berio/Druckman/Mimaroglu, Turnabout Records (1967).
I’ve spent the past week or so immersed in the world of electroacoustic composition courtesy of torrents provided by the Avant Garde Project. Wikipedia attempts a definition of electroacoustic music and thus saves me the trouble:
While all electroacoustic music is made with [...]

Miles Davis & Teo Macero, 1969.
Teo Macero, composer and visionary producer of one of the greatest albums ever recorded, Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, died last week.
• NYT obituary
• Teo talks about working with Miles Davis
• Jon Hassell explains why Bitches Brew is the best

The most hated album in jazz
| Miles Davis’s On the Corner.

“I was trapped into being alive”
| The great Robert Wyatt.

Ornette Coleman: last of the jazz giants
Free radical.

Oh Yeah (1962). Sleeve design by Loring Eutemey.
“People say that I’m hollering. Man, I feel like hollering.” Charles Mingus.
Listening to this great album this week had me searching for the equally great sleeve design from the vinyl edition which vanished from the CD reissue. The cover that replaced it is a dour photo [...]

Not before time. Thanks to Jay for the tip.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
TIM BUCKLEY
My Fleeting House
Documentary featuring rare performance and interview footage spanning his entire career
My Fleeting House is first-ever DVD collection of performances of Tim Buckley. This essential DVD features rare live performances from various television shows and interview footage spanning his entire career.
The [...]

Latest book purchase is this large format volume from 1972, one of a number of interesting art books produced by Academy Editions in the early seventies. I also have their monographs on Odilon Redon, “insane” painter Richard Dadd, and their collection of Félicien Rops‘ pornographic and “Satanist” drawings which remains one of the few Rops [...]

‘There was a fire inside me’
His life was made a misery at school, but all that bullying just fuelled Patrick Wolf’s ambition to become a pop star. Looks like he will have the last laugh, says Maddy Costa.
The Guardian, Friday, February 9th, 2007
PATRICK WOLF was 11 when he saw his first dream shatter. [...]

John Ireland and Marsha Hunt in Raw Deal (1948).
Yes, there was another decade besides the ’70s when Hollywood made films with downbeat endings. The NYT manages to write about Raw Deal without mentioning its director, the great Anthony Mann. Never mind, at least they credited John Alton.
Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, Nights [...]

Semina, #1–9.
A Return Trip to a Faraway Place Called Underground
By HOLLAND COTTER
New York Times, January 26, 2007
Time is forever. Love is the goal. Art is what you are, not what you do. Many young artists and poets in California in the 1950s and ’60s felt and lived this way. And a traveling band of [...]

Fairy Queen (1962), ink and dyes on parchment.
A rare exhibition of work by occult artist Cameron, aka Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel, can be seen at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York.
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Cameron (1922–1995), curated by Michael Duncan, George Herms, and Nicole Klagsbrun. The [...]

First Robert Anton Wilson, now Alice Coltrane, widow of John Coltrane and one of my very favourite musicians. She died on Friday but it seems the news is only now circulating. A great musician (harp and keyboards) and a great composer, she managed to carve her own creative space away from the giant shadow of [...]