Stuff I'm Digging - part 6

Enjoy these highlights of the year in jazz -- from the striking new fusions of Terri Lyne Carrington, Shabaka Hutchings, Christian Scott, Robert Glasper and others, to brilliantly swinging acoustic jazz by Branford Marsalis and Jon Batiste, to revelatory 

Best of Jazz 2019

AVANT-GARDE

AA and CS

Buyer Beware

Dry Cycle

For Translucence

65|66

Entrance

Trancher and the Inheritors

C(or)N(e)T

Serenity

featuring Burniss Earl Travis II & Marion Ross III

Open Up

From the forthcoming album "Nuits Sans Nuit", to be released on May 30th.

Pierre Bastien and Michel Banabila return with Nuits Sans Nuit, their second collaboration following their Baba Soirée debut from 2023. Recorded as an intuitive exchange between Rotterdam and Valencia, the album emerged from a simple ping-pong process: Banabila sculpted sounds and atmospheres, to which Bastien responded with his distinctive instrumental palette: flute-augmented cornet, mechanised log drum, and more. Mixed by Banabila, the result is a raw yet immersive work that resonates with a somnambulant, wide-awake presence.

Pierre Bastien: "When Michel had finished mixing and editing, I listened to the whole record and sensed a dreamlike quality in it. It reminded me of a book I read years ago: ‘Nuits Sans Nuit Et Quelques Jours Sans Jour’ by Michel Leiris.  Around that same time, some fifty years ago, I was playing in Nu Creative Methods with Bernard Pruvost, a duo that appears on the Nurse With Wound list. Since then, Pruvost has turned to painting, and his work is as dreamlike as our music. We asked him to contribute one of his paintings for the album cover."

Nuits Sans Nuit unfolds through shifting shades of melancholy. "I don't know how to describe the feeling of these crazy times we live in," says Banabila. "Les plus désespérés sont les chants les plus beaux,”  Bastien quotes De Musset. Wordless yet deeply expressive, the album invites listeners into a space of contemplation, where meaning emerges through immersion — like ritual music carrying an unspoken message. Echoes of saudade, blues, fado, and soleá surface in the duo’s playful noise, reimagined through their singular vocabulary.

DL / LP

Pierre Bastien, Michel Banabila: Le Système Déraille (Pingipung 090, LP / digital)

written, performed, arranged, & produced by Soft Glas

Orange Earth 9.21

Orange Earth

Perks of Being a Sunflower

Activate by Theon Cross

Snake Hip Waltz

A Wall Becomes A Bridge

>>>Plēh

Relaxing Celtic Music - Evening Breeze

Blue World

Lifeforce Part II

Mr. Roscoe (consider the simultaneous)

on the tender spot of every calloused moment

Cynical sideliners

Tide of Hyacinth

Yessss

An Interlude (that get' more intense)

>>>Plēh

Kendrick Scott Oracle