Electronic Jazz

The first release on Jim O'Rourke's legendary Moikai imprint in over two decades, 'Spectral Evolution' is a defining statement from Portuguese vanguard Rafael Toral, an album of subtly orchestral, jazz-inspired guitar music that's been slowed to a vertiginous crawl. Using his arsenal of hand-made synths to sing like birds around stretched, steel-wound drones, he evokes Bach, Loren Connors, Gavin Bryars and Rhys Chatham on a longform piece full of conventional chord progressions and alchemical sleights of hand that will have you reeling, and no mistake.

Dystophilia: A fascination with the rate of societal decline. An unravelling of order as it careens into a dystopian AI future where melodies pile helter-skelter over phrases, genres melt seamlessly into one another, metal textures crash into chamber-like enclaves, forms teeter on the edge of collapse, violent rhythms transform into ghostly voices, and spiralling polyphonies end in jazz riffs or pop songs.

Herbie Hancock's edition in the Columbia This Is Jazz series draws six tracks from the approximately 12-year period between 1974 and 1986. An electric band is featured on half of the selections, including "Gentle Thoughts" from Secrets, "Actual Proof" from Thrust, and "Calypso" from Mr. Hands. These aren't exactly the best tracks from Hancock's electric period, and the acoustic portion – covering "The Sorcerer" from a 1981 V.S.O.P. performance in Tokyo, the live duet "Maiden Voyage" by Hancock and Chick Corea, and "The Peacocks" from the 1986 film 'Round Midnight – are similarly erratic. All of the selections on This Is Jazz are good, but it doesn't make much sense to feature such a scattered set of tracks.

Extended guitar hero Oren Ambarchi returns with Shebang, the latest in the series of intricately detailed long-form rhythmic workouts that includes Quixotism (2014) and Hubris (2016). Like those records, Shebang features an international all-star cast of musical luminaries, their contributions recorded individually in locations from Sweden to Japan yet threaded together so convincingly (by Ambarchi in collaboration with Konrad Sprenger) that it’s hard to believe they weren’t breathing the same studio air! Expanding on the techniques of these past works, intricate themes and variations build upon the staccato rhythms via expansive improvisations from BJ Cole, Sam Dunscomb, Chris Abrahams, Jim O’Rourke and Julia Reidy. The ensemble surges through a slow series of harmonic changes before the whole shebang dissolves into a delirious synthetic mirage.