Tag: National Information Society

It Will Not End Here: My 25 Favorite Records of 2025 (if you don’t give me any more time to think about it)

Childers deserves to chill.
Thunder-nakas.
Love, Commitment, and Improv.

It’s New Year’s noonish, and I have to come to a conclusion about the records that got me through this growing mess. 2026 ain’t gonna be much better, I’m afraid—maybe in the music universe, but not on the ground, so to speak. I may have short-changed December; if you didn’t see my December 1st long-list, it’s here. A few December releases did make my Top 25 line-up.

If you have followed this blog for awhile, you’ve already noticed I am a bit restless about formatting. This year, I just alphabetized records most of the year and used an asterisk system to indicate my level of enthusiasm (I am not a critic; I am merely an enthusiast who measures records by the degree to which my short hairs stand up while playing an album). I also did not separate out archival digs or reissues. I vote in the Francis Davis Memorial Jazz Critics Poll, but below, I did not weed out jazz (however, I will share my poll ballot, which would change if I resubmitted it today). To paraphrase Duke Ellington, there’s only two kids of music: good and bad. Seldom this year did I write at much length about albums; if I mentioned them at the top of the post, that indicated that I really cared. Also, my perspective about ordering records is very subjective: my life experiences, prejudices, 42-year-career as an English teacher, my 63-plus years hanging out in the middle of the country, my commitment to being a married man but also to seeking new aesthetic territory to open my mind—those are the determiners, and I respect yours, as different as they may be. Finally, I’m a hardcore Heraclitian (?): you can never step in the same river twice, because you are mutating by the moment and the river just keeps on running. Apply that to a piece of music you’re listening to for, say, the 157th time; I have Professor Longhair’s Crawfish Fiesta on right now, two days after hearing the combo’s unique drummer Johnny Vidocovich play live 40-some years after that record got waxed, and damn right I’m different than I was at 19 and my ears are way better after that show. Anyway…the point is, I’m not asserting that these are rankings that you should mind, my friends.

Thoughts: I have been invulnerable to Americana / folk / alt-country whatever since, oh, 2016. To be honest, even though many artists categorized as such are en resistance, and even though I am a Midwestern white guy one generation removed from the family farm, I just have not wanted to hear what those white (mostly) guys have had to say. Childers (intense vocals conjuring Gary Stewart—read Jimmy McDonough’s new bio of that one), The Delines (really downbeat and sharp writing from off the grid or hanging by the fingernails from it), Tommy Womack (a lifelong struggler apparently indomitable despite not being in denial), and I’ll throw in octogenarian Irish folk legend Christy Moore (fighting his own fight at home but aware of the threats to the world at large) changed that. [ahmed], Los Thuthanaka, and a vintage Hüsker Dü live set were aural fists in the face to creeping (ok, faster than creeping) repression. Among my peers, few have sung the praises of Colombian folk goddess Karol G but that album outjukes Bad Bunny’s. If Danny Brown can get his whole health together, so can I. Death was a constant presence in my personal life in ’25, so Brotzmann’s stunning final live sessions of autumnal free jazz—if he was ever too much for you, this is where to get on board—empowered me. I liked woods’ and Fanon’s reimagining of woods’ original version way more, because it seemed to deliberately tackle the problem folks occasionally have with woods’ tracks. And I’ll stop with a big plug for Natural Information Society’s perfectly-titled album: I saw the group perform the piece (on the album, in multiple versions) live and was completely mesmerized by their militantly disciplined minimalism across nearly an hour’s playing (36 minutes in its long version here). Apologies to Sudan Archives, Lil’ Wayne, C-MAT, and maybe-just-maybe Geese for not giving your work the time it very likely deserved

Living to Listen’s Top 25 for ’25 

  1. Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (RCA / Hickman Holler)
  2. The Delines: Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom (Jealous Butcher) 
  3. [ahmed]: Sama’a [Audition] (Otoroku) 
  4. Los Thuthanaka: Los Thuthanaka (Studio Pankara)
  5. Hüsker Dü: 1985—The Miracle Year (Numero Group) 
  6. Karol G: Tropicoqueta (Bichota)
  7. Sabrina Carpenter: Man’s Best Friend (Island)
  8. Bad Bunny: DeBI TiRAR MaS FOToS (Rimas Entertainment)
  9. Danny Brown: Stardust (Warp)
  10. Peter Brotzmann: The Quartet (Otoroku) 
  11. August Fanon & billy woods: Gowillog (reimagined) (BackwoodzStudioz)
  12. Steve Lehman: The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings)
  13. Christy Moore: A Terrible Beauty (Claddagh) (11/2024 release in Ireland, so I’m counting it)
  14. Natural Information Society: Perseverance Flow (Eremite)
  15. Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts (Nonesuch)
  16. Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind (Red Hook) 
  17. Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta:  Mapambazuko (Nyege Nyege Tapes) 
  18. Sharp Pins: Balloon Balloon Balloon (K / Perennial Death)
  19. Various Artists: The Bottle Tapes (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
  20. Cosmic Ear: TRACES (We Jazz) 
  21. Lily Allen: West End Girl (BMG)
  22. Tommy Womack: Live a Little (Schoolkids)
  23. doseone & Height Keech: Wood Teeth (Hands Made EP)
  24. Dijon: Baby (R&R )
  25. De La Soul: Cabin in the Sky (Mass Appeal) 

My Jazz Critics Poll Ballot (FWIW)

Best New Jazz Albums of 2025

  1. [ahmed]: [Sama’a] (Audition) (Otoroku)
  2. Peter Brotzmann: The Quartet (Otoroku) 
  3. Cosmic Ear: TRACES (We Jazz) 
  4. Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts (Nonesuch) 
  5. Steve Lehman: The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings) 
  6. Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind(Red Hook) 
  7. Deepstaria Enigmatica: The Eternal Now Is the Heart of a New Tomorrow (ESP-Disk)

  8. William Hooker: Jubilation (Org Music) 
  9. OTHERLANDS TRIO: Star Mountain (Intakt)
  10. Joe Chambers, Kevin Diehl, Chad Taylor: Onilu(Eremite)

Rara Avis (reissues and/or music recorded in 2015 or earlier)

  1. Various Artists: The Bottle Tapes (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
  2. Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Jump Up & Down Fast—Vibrations in the Village, Live at the Village Gate (Resonance) 
  3. Cecil Taylor / Tony Oxley: Flashing Spirits (Burning Ambulance)
  4. Marco Eneidi Quintet: Wheat Fields of Kleylehof (Balance Point Acoustics / Botticelli) 
  5. Shamek Farrah & Sonelius Smith: The World of the Children (Strata-East) 

Best Jazz Vocal Albums

  1. Silvana Estrada: Vendran Suaves Lluvia (Glassnote)
  2. Laura Ann Singh: Mean Reds (Out of Your Head)
  3. Lena Bloch: Marina (Fresh Sounds)

Best Latin Albums

  1. Roger Glenn: My Latin Heart (Patois) 
  2. Miguel Zenon: Vanguardia Subterranea (Miel Music) 
  3. Aruan Ortiz: Creole Renaissance (Intakt)

Lowe’s Highs: Music Scholar Crashes The 2023 Record Pull / girlgeniuses get it very together (Best New Records, Reissues, and Excavations, January 1st – April 26th)

Rushed Ramblings:

I’m headed down to Bentonville, Arkansas this weekend, so I’m pushing this out a bit early. Why Bentonville, you ask? Yes, it is a corporate town of Wal-Mart’s devising, but the Crystal Bridges Museum one heir has established is the cat’s ass, currently features a Diego Rivera exhibit, and hosts The Roots and Congolese electronic band Kokoko! Saturday night, so don’t be so snobby! Northwest Arkansas is a GREAT place for all this to be, whatever the machinations behind it. You can tell, I know, that I don’t fully trust it myself, but it’s the only place I’ve ever seen a Black Power Art exhibit and viewed an actual top-flight Basquiat–with my parents, no less. So….

  1. My big news is the return of American pop music scholar, composer, horn man, and occasional guitarist Allen Lowe to the record hop. Lowe’s probably best known for his fascinating book American Pop: From Minstrels to Mojos (other books of his that followed are just as fascinating), but his recorded output is very high quality, and his survival of and recovery from sinus cancer and related health struggles have actually helped propel him to perhaps his best composing and writing ever–four total discs worth. I hope to post today an interview I conducted with him recently in which he speaks of those subjects and many others, but the single-disc America: The Rough Cut is likely to appeal most strongly to those of you who are rockists as well as jazzists: aside from songs that range from raucous to reminiscent to romantic–with the blues always threaded through them–many feature the very underrated electric guitarist Ray Suhy, who’s full of creative and often explosive surprises and has worked with Lowe for years. Marc Ribot fans should proceed directly to this disc. The second set, a three-disker, is called In the Dark, Volume 1, and strikes me as not only a survey of jazz styles Lowe admires but, as Lowe admits in our interview, also a response–or answer, if you will–to what he has heard as a lack of interest and imagination in composing in current jazz circles. That’s not a small claim, but the range of structures Lowe leads the Constant Sorrow Orchestra through (both records feature a unit by that name, but on In the Dark the band’s much larger with mostly different personnel) is stunning. Three disks is a lot to ask of a listener, but they frequently swing–when they don’t, they do very interesting other things–and the playing is fabulous, especially by Lowe, who is truly on. You may have read keyboard master Lewis Porter’s Coltrane bio; he’s Lowe’s frequent collaborator, and on these recordings his playing is regularly eyebrow raising–especially when he imitates Augie Meyers and Jimmy Smith through a synthesizer. So…check ’em out, pronto.
  2. Though I was a very early convert to Julien Baker’s writing (thanks to a songwriting former student), I’ve found it hard to cozy up to boygenius, Baker’s collaborative group featuring her good friends Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus. I’m not a fan of mope for the most part, and that’s how their early work struck me. the record, their new release, however, has stunned me. The writing is full of razors and barbed wire, which I don’t associate with mope, and I find it hard to think of a better time for women to respond to this world with songs like these. I can’t get enough of them, truly. When that happens, I buy vinyl for my imaginary offspring to enjoy after I die.
  3. Without a doubt, much of the new additions here are of the jazz variety. I’d like to call your close attention to London Brew, a kind of tribute to/interpretation of Miles’ Bitches Brew by players you should know from that locality; National Information Society’s Since Time is Gravity and Fire! Orchestra’s Echoes, both of which evoke Northern Africa is an exciting way; the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble’s tribute to trumpeter Don Cherry, which continues a streak of fairly magical releases by long-time AACM ace Kahil El’Zabar; and that indefatigable font of pianistic ideas, Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii, who hasn’t let hitting her 100th album last year stop her from releasing several more already, including her fantastic soon-come solo album Torrent. She’s got an album at #35 below, Torrent‘s at #43, and her occasional collaborator, vibraphonist Taiko Saito, has Tears of a Cloud at #39. Those rankings may seem unimpressive, but folks, that’s out of a lot of records, and I don’t take the rankings that seriously (other than the Top 10) until November. Satoko is the bomb, as the kids no longer say.
  4. Speaking of “The East,” if you are a fan of dissonant, ambient, and atmospheric noise, check out pretty much anything WV Sorceror Recordings has been putting out. I am definitely a fan of such stuff, and I can play their releases twice a day (especially when I need such stuff, the dissonance of which tends to calm me). Also, if anyone who reads this blog took me up on my strident recommendation of Les Raillizes Denudes’ reissued work on Temporal Drift last (and this) year, check out the reissue of Shikuza’s Heavenly Persona on Black Editions, which features several guitar eruptions by LRD’s Maki Miura.
  5. It is obvious below, but I finally separated reissues and excavations from the brand-new work. Not that anyone had written in to complain, but I think it helps for some of us who are still obsessed with reaching backwards through the years (to complement our love and desire for the new).

New, Reissued, and Excavated Albums I’ve Found Most Delightful, January 1st-April 30th, 2023

(Bolded items are new to the list)

  1. Gina Burch: I Play My Bass Loud (Third Man)
  2. 100 gecs: 10,000 gecs (Dog Show/Atlantic)
  3. boygenius: the record (Interscope)
  4. Allen Lowe and The Constant Sorrow Orchestra: America—The Rough Cut (ESP-Disk)
  5. Allen Lowe and the Constant Sorrow Orchestra: In the Dark (ESP-Disk)
  6. Liv.e: Girl in The Half Pearl (Real Life / AWAL)
  7. Islandman (featuring Okay Temiz and Muhlis Berberoglu: Direct-to-Disc Sessions (Night Dreamer)
  8. Kelela: Raven (Warp)
  9. National Information Society: Since Time is Gravity (Eremite)
  10. Rodrigo Campos: Pagode Novo (YB Music)
  11. Ethnic Heritage Ensemble: Spirit Gatherer—A Tribute to Don Cherry (Spiritmuse)
  12. Yaeji: With a Hammer (XL Recordings)
  13. Jason Moran: From the Dancehall to the Battlefield (Yes Records)
  14. London Brew: London Brew (Concord)
  15. Fire! Orchestra: Echoes (Rune Grammofon)
  16. Wadada Leo Smith: Fire Illuminations (Kabell)
  17. Parannoul: After the Magic (Poclanos/Top Shelf)
  18. Belle and Sebastian: Late Developers (Matador)
  19. Satoko Fujii & Otomo Yoshihide: Perpetual Motion (Ayler Records)
  20. The Urban Art Ensemble: “Ho’opomopono” (CFG Multimedia 16-minute single)
  21. The Necks: Travel (Northern Spy)
  22. Kali Uchis: Red Moon in Venus (Geffen)
  23. Willie Nelson: I Don’t Know a Thing About Love—The Songs of Harlan Howard (Legacy)
  24. Tyshawn Sorey: Continuing (Pi Recordings)
  25. Karol G: Manana Sera Bonito (Universal Music Latino)
  26. Andrew Cyrille: Music Delivery / Percussion (Intakt)
  27. Walter Daniels: “From Death to Texas” / “Seems Like a Dream” (Spacecase Records 45)
  28. Tyler Keith & The Apostles: Hell to Pay (Black & Wyatt)
  29. Algiers: Shook (Matador)
  30. Henry Threadgill: The Other One (Pi)
  31. Kiko El Crazy: Pila’e Teteo (Rimas)
  32. Rough Image: Rough Image (WV Sorcerer Productions)
  33. Ingrid Laubrock: The Last Quiet Place (Pyroclastic)
  34. Rob Mazurek & Exploding Star Orchestra: Lightning Dreamers (International Anthem)
  35. Kaze & Ikue Mori: Crustal Movement (Circum/Libra)
  36. DJ Black Low: Impumelelo (Awesome Tapes from Africa)
  37. Lonnie Holley: Oh Me Oh My (Jagjaguwar)
  38. Rocket 88: House of Jackpots (12XU)
  39. Taiko Saito: Tears of a Cloud (Trouble in the East)
  40. JPEGMAFIA x Danny Brown: Scaring the Hoes (self-released)
  41. Lakecia Benjamin: Phoenix (Whirlwind)
  42. Mat Muntz: Phantom Islands (Orenda)
  43. Satoko Fujii: Torrent (Libra Records_
  44. Das Kondensat: Anderen Planeten (Why Play Jazz)
  45. Iris DeMent: Workin’ On a World (FlariElla)
  46. Baaba Maal: Being (Atelier Live/Marathon Artists)
  47. Romulo Froes & Tiago Rosas: Na Goela (YB Music)
  48. Florian Arbenz: Conversation #9—Targeted (Hammer Recordings)
  49. James Brandon Lewis: Eye of I (Anti-)
  50. Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple Double: March On (self-released EP—coming in March)
  51. Ice Spice: Like…?(10K Projects / Capitol Records EP)
  52. otay:onii: Dream Hacker (WV Sorcerer Productions)
  53. Yves Tumor: Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds) (Warp)
  54. Aroof Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad, Ismaily: Love in Exile (Verve)
  55. Angel Bat Dawid: Requiem for Jazz (International Anthem)
  56. Kara Jackson: Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? (September Recordings)
  57. Lana Del Rey: Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd (Polydor)
  58. Yonic South: Devo Challenge Cup (Wild Honey)
  59. Rudy Royston: Day (Greenleaf Music)
  60. Lankum: False Lankum (Rough Trade)
  61. Staples Jr. Singers: Tell Heaven (EP) (Luaka Bop) Note: the vinyl gets you more great minutes of testifying.
  62. Brandee Younger: Brand New Life (Impulse!)
  63. Heinali: Kyiv Eternal (Injazero)
  64. Tri-County Liquidators: “Flies” / “Weep Then Whisper” / “Bitter” (self-released)
  65. Vinny Golia Quartet: No Refunds (Unbroken Sounds)
  66. Black Country, New Road: Live at Bush Hall (Ninja Tune)
  67. The Art Ensemble of Chicago: From Paris to Paris (Rogue Art)
  68. Billy Valentine: Billy Valentine and The Universal Truth (Flying Dutchman)

Excavations and Reissues

(Note: These are not in order of my love for them–still sorting that out.)

  1. Balka Sound: Balka Sound (Strut)
  2. Hiatus Kaiyote: Choose Your Weapon (Flying Buddha / Sony Masterworks)
  3. Dream Dolphin: Gaia—Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works (1996​-​2003) (Music from Memory)
  4. Various Artists: Purple Haze from East, Volume 1 (WV Sorcerer Productions)
  5. Various Artists: Purple Haze from East, Volume 2 (WV Sorcerer Productions)
  6. Shizuka: Heavenly Persona (Black Editions)
  7. Jacqueline Humbert & David Rosenboom: Daytime Viewing (Unseen Worlds)
  8. Bob Dylan: Time Out of Mind Stripped Naked (Columbia)
  9. Various Artists: Blacklips Bar—Androgyns and Deviants / Industrial Romance for Bruised and Battered Angels 1992-1995 (Anthology Recordings)
  10. Les Raillizes Denudes: ’77 Live (Temporal Drift)
  11. Luther Thomas: 11th Street Fire Suite (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
  12. Eddie Lockjaw Davis and Shirley Scott: Cookin’ With Jaws and The Queen (Craft)
  13. Professor James Benson: The Gow-Dow Experience (Jazzman Records)
  14. Walter Bishop, Jr.: Bish at the Bank—Live in Baltimore (Cellar Live)