My music on heavy rotation up to April 22

For several weeks I’ve been decorating my aural experience with repeated spins of the following excellent albums:

Sun Ra - ‘Jazz in Silhouette’ This is the album that best demonstrates Sun Ra’s strengths as a composer, arranger and bandleader in the more conventional regions of jazz, prior to his headlong plunge into the waters of the avant-garde. It’s very inventive, but like his contemporary Charles Mingus, Sun Ra is applying his creative rigour here to earthy materials that feel less abstract than much of the period’s ostensibly more unconventional modern jazz. A truly excellent record. 

Metallica - ‘Kill ‘Em All’ Metallica’s debut is known for its precision, and its unrelenting visceral impact, but by contemporary standards it’s neither that brutal, nor that technically intimidating: what it has, that none of their subsequent albums had to the same degree in my opinion, is a hungry and workmanlike punk energy. Rather than experimenting with their musical materials as they did later, they simply see how much sturm und drang they can squeeze out of them. A unique and groundbreaking album.

Sneed the Jade Badger - ‘Palace Spirits’ Lo-fi, mainly instrumental hip-hop from a Hong Kong-based Strange Gibberish associate. The beats are glitchy, chunky and creative, and the samples come from one or several martial arts movies, featuring something called the ‘jade badger’. It’s founded on a resolutely underground approach, and it’s a lot of fun.

Ken Masters - ‘This Is Not A Mixtape’ Continuing the martial arts/hip-hop theme, Ken Masters is not the Street Fighter character, but a rapper from Tyneside, with a hard-hitting, rhythmically exact delivery. He’s been at it a while, and this release features some mature and reflective lyrical work, although I have to say I find him at his strongest when he’s in boombastic, primary-colour mode. Old school boom-bap and Northeast wit: what could be better?

Diebenkorn - ‘Big Car’ Experimental but not inaccessible electronica, whose bold colours, broad expanses, and carefully worked textures bear some resemblance to the work of the painter by whose name the project goes. This is one of many projects serving as pseudonyms for the artist best known as Dementio 13; I’m not sure what it’s precise distinction is from his overall oeuvre, but this release is an immersive and very enjoyable listen.

I’ve also been getting up close and personal with splendid singles and EPs from Neville Staple (old-school 2-tone), Ill Move Sporadic and Ddubble (humorous underground hip-hop), Dëv Nïhïl (experimental dark-ambient) and Los Trasgos Muertos (psych-garage pop).