After many, many, many, many months (since November, by my count), The Lot Radio finally jumped through enough hoops that the NYC Dept. of Health allowed it to reopen. It was a grim time and its not out of the woods and red tape just yet. The next few months become crucial as The Lot attempts to make enough cash the rest of summer and fall to sustain it through the winter and (hopefully) undertake some new construction. I wouldn’t be there monthly if I didn’t believe in the endeavor so please visit it in-person, grip some cold ones, and support The Lot.
Onto this month’s set…
1st Hour: Aiolos to Zuyua
Ideeyah - Light
Patricia Wolf - Subconscious Familiarity
Markus Guentner - Sommergewitter
Jason Kolàr - Kegon Falls
Kristen Noguès & John Surman - Baz Valan
Matthew Young - Inflexion
Secular Music Group - Zuyua
Tony Vacca & Tim Moran with Don Cherry – City Spirits
Wolf Müller & Cass. - Aiolos
2nd Hour: Shrimps in Love in the Big Apple
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force - Nimzat
Hugh Masekela - The Big Apple
Louis Moholo-Moholo Octet – You Ain't Gonna Know Me 'Cos You Think You Know Me
Florence Adooni - O Yinne Te Son Tue!
Manu Dibango - Echos Beti
Tim Barnes - Daeshi
The Mighty Diamonds - Declaration of Rights (dub)
Dawuna - Love Haunt
Startled Insects - Shrimps in Love/ Fastest Claw
Antonio Adolfo - Questao de Dois
Kassav’ - Souf Zouk (Breath of Love)
Herbie Hancock - Sound-System
Listening Notes
Ideeyah- Sweet Chariot
A few months back, I wondered/ worried that I had somehow fallen off of Theo Parrish’s Sound Signature promo list. Almost as I had that thought, a promo email came through announcing the debut EP from a new artist, Ideeyah. It’s the handle of Detroit-based singer LaKeisha Johnson, and her voice felt very familiar. A quick dig back and I realized that’s her on Theo’s 2014 opus, American Intelligence (them IQ levels seemed to have plummeted since then). I called her delivery being mantra-like, where her humming and self-harmonizing was magical, as “rapturous as beatless R&B exhalations.” (She’s also blessed tracks by the likes of Amp Fiddler (RIP) and Waajeed.) So that’s perhaps why I gravitate towards the drum-free hover of “Light,” wherein Johnson’s incants of “turn on the light” turn and spire in the warm glow of a Rhodes organ.
Kristen Noguès & John Surman - Diriaou
I was not previously familiar with the work of French harpist Kristen Noguès, even though the astute SouffleContinu label had reissued her 1976 debut a few years ago. It can feel a bit tricky getting a handle on Noguès and her artistry, and I feel that when she passed in 2007 she remained slightly under-appreciated. How to categorize a figure who taught herself to sing in Breton, mastered the Celtic harp, but also managed to have her music get slotted as “Celtic, Free Improvisation, Electroacoustic”?
SouffleContinu recently unearthed a stunning duo performance with Noguès and ECM artist John Surman (who I know from his strong outings on Paul Bley ECM dates like Fragments). The label calls this performance captured one Thursday back in the summer of 1998 as “free folk, traditional ambient, modal ‘fest-noz’.” Noguès’s harp playing is exquisite, harkening back to its ancient heritage yet letting its strings quiver wholly in the present (whether you imagine that to be the summer of ‘98 or circa ‘25). Together, both artists feel both deeply rooted and wholly adrift in the ether. A luminous archival treasure.
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force - Khadim
Mark Ernestus’s name rests at the top of the third Ndagga Rhythm Force record –his exploration of the collision between his dub techno gear and Senegal mbalax– but he naturally prefers a cover visual of rusted metal and old tires with a photo collage of his collaborators on the back, the man himself nowhere to be seen. But the credit “everything else by Mark Ernestus” speaks volumes.
In the Fried Archives: Mark Ernestus
Lloyd “Bullwackie” Barnes and Mark Ernestus, Little Senegal 116th St., New York 2019
He triggers subtle Prophet synth lines and makes the drums hit in an uncanny manner. Seven years have passed since the last Ndagga album and its four tracks are a distillation of these huge mbalax drums and their vibrations, a whittling and reduction that breaks it down to a thunderous essence. The music feels at once unknowable and heartbreaking.
Florence Adooni - A.O.E.I.U. (An Ordinary Exercise In Unity)
Deep in the doldrums of the early pandemic, a Bandcamp buying spree somehow led me to “Mam Pe’ela Su’ure,” the debut single of Ghanian singer Florence Adooni. “Yinne” also was a big hit, a burst of bright sunshine that promised something big and open even amid the shutdown. I lost track of Adooni’s movements soon after, so her debut album was a surprise. I’m not buying many new records at the moment, but the homie Evan mentioned it in passing and I had no problem pulling the trigger on ordering a copy of A.O.E.I.U. Modern Ghanian highlife with iridescent horns for good measure. Jimi Tenor is involved in the album in some capacity, a nice surprise. It’s the powerful pipes of Adooni that matter though, bold and resilient. Sad to not see it garnering much coverage in the music world, so maybe consider this a list of some of my 2025 favorites and proceed accordingly.