The Lot for March
I Play a Role in Peace on Earth and I Know plus notes on Laurel Halo, Marquis Hill, Chantal Michelle, Isabel Pine
New month, new Lot Radio show. Last Friday was an auspicious day for listening, one that started with John and Alice Coltrane’s “Peace on Earth” and concluded right at the stroke of midnight when Four Tet dropped the needle on one of my favorite tunes off John Coltrane’s Ballads, “Say It (Over And Over Again),” thus wrapping his luminous set at Planetarium.
(Note: I also wrote a recent essay about Ballads over here.)
No more YouTube embeds for The Lot Radio so if you must gaze upon I, you can stream the video here.
This month’s edition:
John and Alice Coltrane - Peace on Earth
Jason Moran - Black and Tan Fantasy
Yeong Die - Burnt
Whitney Johnson|Lia Kohl|Macie Stewart - fog|mirror
Ana Roxanne - Berceuse in A-Flat Minor, Op. 45
Chantal Michelle - Presence of Border
Laurel Halo - Hadal
Isabel Pine - A Flickering Light
Frankie & Kelman Duran - BWV 639 feat. Iris Moldiz
Norman Connors - Dindi
Brother Ah - Sekou
Irreversible Entanglements - The Spirit Moves
Johnny Dyani - I Will Let Spring Po Explain
Harriet Tubman and Georgia Anne Muldow - Assata
Marquis Hill - Water (Feelings, Emotions)
Alabaster DePlume - I Play a Role In It and I Know
Gato Barbieri - Falsa Bahiana
Charles Tyler Ensemble - Children’s Music March
The Visitors - Naima
Admin - Step Into Light
Some Listening Notes:
Laurel Halo - Midnight Zone (Original Soundtrack to the Film by Julian Charrière)
As a kid, you fixate on the most random things. My best friend at the time obsessed over Willow and collected every action figure and trading card imaginable for it. The very next year, I found myself reading Orson Scott Card’s book adaptation of James Cameron’s The Abyss in anticipation of the film and obsessing over life at the bottom of the ocean and what it would be like to have to breathe in that pink goo.
I haven’t seen Julian Charrière’s film about the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone yet, but Laurel Halo’s original soundtrack for Midnight Zone rekindled those old memories. Her music replicates that claustrophobia thousands of feet down in the ocean to harrowing, body-disentegrating effect. Frequencies clang in your ear, foreboding shadows lurk in the murk, the inevitable dark seems always to be rising up to meet you. In earbuds, it turns any commute or bike ride into a plunge into that abyss.
Marquis Hill - (Beautifulism) Sweet Surrender
Back in the fall of 2023, I was working on the cover story for an issue of We Jazz, focusing on Donald Byrd and a small sliver of his discography between his hard bop heyday and his pivot to primo Mizell-ian jazz-funk. I had a good amount of quotes from the past and from Larry Mizell himself, but needed a contemporary perspective. A friend connected me with Maquis Hill, whose insight was spot-on.
Hill’s new EP, (Beautifulism) Sweet Surrender, feels steeped in that adventurous Byrd spirit. Loose yet crisp, taking leaps to find new amalgams, it’s a generous ten-track exploration. (Beautifulism) is built from a solid foundation of bassist Junius Paul and drummer Marcus Gilmore, while Hill brings in an array of voices to reveal new angles in his compositions. There’s plenty of hip-hop, gospel, and R&B flavor to it, thanks to contributions from vocalists Manasseh and Zacchae’us Paul and MCs Kumbayaa and Cisco Swank. Hill’s processed horn lines gives each track a visceral edge. His wah-wah horn on “Blues” gives it a psychedelic wooziness, while “Water” is one part future R&B, one part smoldering jazz groove with Immanuel Wilkins. Hill is making his debut at the Village Vanguard this week (with the likes of Junius Paul and Makaya McCraven(!) also making their Vanguard debut, which seems well overdue) and who knows where he might rove each night?
Chantal Michelle - All Things Might Spill
After a series of small-batch cassette runs and an edition-of-100 release in 2024, Shelter Press’s recent release of All Things Might Spill presents Chantal Michelle to her widest audience yet. It isn’t really Chantal Michelle’s debut, but it is my first encounter with her soundworld. On a playlist with other recent works from the likes of Leila Bordreuil + Kali Malone and Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart, Michelle’s music always made me check back and see what was playing.
Michelle’s bio lists her as a composer, but she has multiple disciplines which draw upon modern dance, sound installations, field recordings, conceptual scores, centering breath work, and the like. Is that a photo of one of her sculptures on the front cover? I can’t expand the thumbnail enough to properly tell. But it does capture the sensation of feeling familiar yet unfamiliar at once. One descriptor of the album says it is about “sustained tension and the mystifying experience of time dilation in the moments just before a rupture or collapse.” The abstract sounds and drones here teeter on the precipice of chaos and collapse, but they do so with poise and grace. Really gorgeous stuff.
Isabel Pine - Fables
Another newcomer who isn’t quite new. Since peak pandemic era, British Columbia-based Isabel Pine has been uploading singles and EPs to her Bandcamp page. Fables is her first full-length and the first to see release on Kranky, presenting Pine’s absolutely gorgeous and unhurried music to a wider audience.
Classically trained on viola, Fables finds Pine utilizing her main stringed instrument, plus viola, violin, and double bass. Made throughout the fall of 2024, the secret ambience in the record comes from doing a fair amount of the recording outdoors, as Pine was interested in “how it would sound if I recorded outside entirely, with the natural reverb and sounds of the environment in the recording from the very beginning. The rustling of the leaves or a raven’s beating wings were as integral to the music as whatever I played.”
That sort of intimate rustle and hushed movement makes the music shimmer with wonder. Most of the pieces here are succinct, perfect for those moments when you’re knee-deep in snow, the air well below freezing, breath hoary around your skull, and you pause, suddenly aware just how pristine and silent the world can be.