Best of 2016

From what I can tell, this list is not like many others (#1 pick notwithstanding). I'd love to have seen more people talking about Veda Hille, Michael Kiwanuka, Eric Bachmann, Tami Neilson, The Comet is Coming, Black Mountain, Nels Cline, Glauco Venier, Paul Simon, Lizzo, Hidden Cameras and Jim Bryson, as well as many more great records found at the bottom of the main list. 2016 gave me panic attacks and made me think more about my mortality than at any time in my life, but at least there was no shortage of great music.

Some of these blurbs ran over two columns in the Waterloo Record, some ran on Macleans.ca.

1. Beyoncé – Lemonade (Sony). This is the only album that drove the collective conversation in 2016—and deservedly so. It’s the rare blockbuster pop album by a superstar that prompts political headlines, endless think pieces and taps directly into the zeitgeist in ways we haven’t seen in decades. It was also the first time the seemingly untouchable goddess appeared human, vulnerable, even vindictive, just as flawed as the rest of us. That came through not only in the lyrics but her vocal delivery, which was far more emotionally raw than she’s ever shown us. The cast of A-list collaborators gives the record an eclectic yet still consistent musical vision that by no means diminishes who exactly is in charge here: one queen to rule them all.

2. Veda Hille – Love Waves (independent). The Vancouver art-pop songwriter writes melodies that could sell a musical (which she’s done, to great acclaim), has the gall and the talent to rewrite and (gasp) improve her favourite songs by David Bowie and Brian Eno, employs many of Vancouver’s finest players, pens a plaintive ode to her young boy and reimagines the ordeal of Orpheus and Eurydice—in German, no less. Oh, and she’s wickedly funny when she wants to be. There’s no end to her insatiable curiosity—or her talent. (Original review here.)

3. Kaytranada – 99.9% (XL). The year’s weirdest success story also spawned one of the best records: 23-year-old bedroom-dwelling Haitian-Montrealer known for SoundCloud remixes pulls in up-and-coming international collaborators (Anderson.Paak, AlunaGeorge), almost-forgotten R&B and hip-hop artists (Craig David, Phonte), and new Toronto beatmakers (BadBadNotGood, River Tiber) and ends up creating the straight-up funkiest record to come out of Canada—perhaps ever, winning the Polaris Music Prize in the process. It’s draws from old school hip-hop, jazz fusion, Brazilian beats, Donna Summer disco, house music, DJ Shadow deconstruction, and anything else that sounds fantastic on the dance floor. Drake may have dominated the charts and the headlines, but Kaytranada made the infinitely superior—and much more fun—record. (Original review here. My take on his Polaris win here.)

4. Leonard Cohen – You Want It Darker (Sony). Frankly, Leonard, I’m not sure we did want it darker; 2016 turned out bleaker than we could ever have imagined (and it’s not over yet). It was enough that Cohen left us with one final masterpiece before he died, but his death proved to be a gift that gave us reason to re-examine his entire catalogue in a year when we were grasping for a glimpse of any light through the cracks. Unlike the elliptical Bowie record, You Want It Darker dealt specifically with death, with finality—and it was also funny, characteristically so. But there were no more chilling words sung (or spoken) this year than Cohen intoning, “I’m ready, my Lord.” (Original review here. My obit for him in Maclean’s here. I curated some memories of him from ordinary Canadians here.)

5. David Bowie – Blackstar (Sony). Even before his death shocked the world, this was already being hailed as his best album in (gulp) more than 30 years, one in which he fully embraced the influence of his hero, Scott Walker, and joined forces with Donny McCaslin’s powerful jazz band. Coy devil that he is, on Jan. 10 the always-innovative Bowie was also the first person to tell us that, other than music, 2016 was going to be a steaming pile of shit. (Original review here. My obit for him in Maclean’s here.)

6. The Tragically Hip – Man Machine Poem (Universal). Gord Downie was a newsmaker of the year for staring down death and delivering a series of triumphs, but least discussed among them was the fact that the newest Tragically Hip album was alone a reason to celebrate. Written and recorded before Downie’s diagnosis, and co-produced by Broken Social Scene’s Kevin Drew, it was a reinvention that could well have turned over a new leaf in the legendary band’s catalogue—and still might. Downie claims it’s not the last we’ll hear from them. (Original review here. My story on the Hip’s farewell and legacy for Maclean’s here. My review of the “final” show here. My year-end piece for Maclean’s Newsmakers here.)

7. A Tribe Called Quest – We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service (Sony). It wasn’t just Baby Boomers dying off; Phife Dawg was a mere 45 years old when he succumbed to diabetes, just after completing Tribe’s first album in 18 years. Both he and Q-Tip, neither of whom had prolific solo careers, proved they’d lost none of their potency and elevated their already-strong status as legends, not by emulating their glory days but by looking forward. Also: what a glorious thing it was to hear an actual rap group play off each other, as opposed to random guest verses on a superstar's record. It's a lost art. (Original review here.)

8. Michael Kiwanuka – Love and Hate (Universal). This British soul singer transformed his unassuming, folkie take on soul into the realm of the psychedelic, crafting a devastatingly beautiful respite in troubled times. The sound is undeniably retro—Nick Drake fronting Pink Floyd, or Marvin Gaye fronting Funkadelic—but never goes out of style. Nor should it. (Original review here.)

9. Eric Bachmann – s/t (Merge). Bachmann has been one of my favourite writers for more than 20 years (Archers of Loaf, Crooked Fingers), but it was his 2016 song “Mercy”—haunted by personal loss, impending apocalypse, and intense political divisions—that might well be his crowning moment, and was the one song I played more than any other in 2016, for obvious reasons. The rest this self-titled album is just as strong and heartbreaking (starting with “Modern Drugs”), a collection of perfectly crafted songs that pick up pieces of a shattered psyche. (Original review here.)

10. Anderson.Paak – Malibu (Steel Wool). This late bloomer (okay, he’s 30) is a studio veteran and multi-instrumentalist whose second album easily staked his claim in a crowded field of R&B reinventors. Malibu owes musical debts to D’Angelo, Erykah Badu and Kendrick Lamar, but with a considerably more joyous vibe—it’s no surprise that he also shows up on Kaytranada’s record. Miguel should watch his back. (Original review here.)

11. Tami Neilson – Don’t Be Afraid (Outside). No, really, one more record about death: this one by a Canadian expat in New Zealand, writing about her late father, the patriarch of a family band that toured Canada in her youth. Don’t Be Afraid is emotionally deeper than anything Neilson has done to date, which was well-executed but decidedly retro, bordering on kitsch. Not this time. The deeper she goes into the blues, the better she gets. Neilson’s voice has few equals in this country—k.d. lang? Serena Ryder?—and has to be heard to be believed, when she’s either hollering gospel (“Holy Moses”) or delivering a gorgeous country ballad (“Lonely”). (Original review here. Live review for Maclean’s here.)

12. The Comet is Coming – Channel the Spirits (Leaf). Led by saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, this London trio’s debut is a synth-heavy, percussive, interplanetary psychedelic journey that lives up to titles like “Cosmic Dust” and “Slam Dunk in a Black Hole.” The New Musical Express dubbed the band “the Mercury Prize’s least-known nominee”—they were shortlisted alongside Bowie, Radiohead, Kiwanuka and other heavy hitters (and lost to Skepta). There’s nothing obscurist about them; this would go over like gangbusters in a Canadian rock club on a bill with Holy F--k and BadBadNotGood. (Original review here.)

13. Black Mountain – IV. If any rock record in the history of this country has a more powerful opening track than “Mothers of the Sun,” I’m not sure what that would be. A pulsing synth, a droning organ, a monster guitar riff, and the chilling vocals of Amber Webber and Stephen McBean keep us in suspense for more than three minutes before drummer Josh Wells kicks in to kick things into overdrive on what is an incredibly satisfying psychedelic rock record that never fizzles into pointless jam territory. McBean’s guitar solos are lyrical and evocative of Funkadelic great Eddie Hazel, but it’s Jeremy Schmidt’s keyboards that steal this show. (Original review here.)

14. Nels Cline – Lovers (Blue Note). The lead guitarist in Wilco appears on more than 200 records by others; his solo work, until now, has largely been experimental and skronky. On Lovers, his debut for the prestigious Blue Note label, however, he delivers a double album of love songs by composers ranging from Richard Rodgers and Henry Mancini to Arto Lindsay and Sonic Youth, along with original compositions. Lovers is lushly orchestrated, utilizing some of New York City’s most renowned avant-garde players, yet allows for plenty of abstraction and colouring far outside the lines, alongside more straightforward, classically beautiful performances. Though it never gets loud, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get deliciously weird. (Original review here.)

15. Glauco Venier – Miniatures: Music for Piano and Percussion (ECM). Many were the days when headlines made me want to bury my head in the sand. For those days, this prolific Italian pianist—who normally performs in a trio format, studied Italian Renaissance music, and has recorded albums covering Tom Waits and Frank Zappa—offers sparse compositions and improvisations augmented by gongs, bells and other metallic instruments. Only two of the 14 tracks are uptempo; the majority are meditative yet melodic, not sparse enough to be ambient music, but played with a delicacy and somewhat cautious deliberation. (Original review here.)

16. Paul Simon – Stranger to Stranger (Universal). "The fact is, most obits are mixed reviews." When his day comes, that's going to be as true of Paul Simon as anyone else, but at least he's still here, even if he's strongly hinting this will be his last album. He sounds far from spent. He's still borrowing from wherever he can, including a young Italian DJ, but, as always, there's no sense he's trying to shoehorn himself into something he can't turn around and make his own. He can write circles around his peers or descendents, even if no one seems to care anymore; the man can't even get a Grammy nomination these days, even though those seem to get handed out like participation stickers. Stranger to Stranger, indeed.  (Original review here.)

17. Badbadnotgood – IV. Space-age bachelor pad music from a jazz band steeped in hip-hop and joined by guest singers, including Future Islands’ Sam Herring, Chicago MC Mick Jenkins and Toronto newcomer Charlotte Day Wilson (Kaytranada and Colin Stetson stop by as well). This band gets better with each record, and the permanent addition of saxophonist Leland Whittly pushes them even further. Also—for the love of God, don't judge this album by its cover. (Original review here.)

18. Lizzo – Coconut Oil EP (Universal).  “I’m lit / don’t mess with it,” says Lizzo, on a track where she demands that you “worship me.” She doesn’t need to ask twice. Lizzo is as strong a rapper as she is a singer—and she’s one hell of a singer, which puts her on the level with Lauryn Hill, Queen Latifah and Nicki Minaj right off the top. One of the last new artists to be taken under Prince’s wing before his death, Lizzo is equally political and playful, a feminist who rolls with an all-female crew, a plus-size woman pushing body positivity, and whose music fuses old-school hip-hop with modern trap, with Latino elements and nods to James Brown interspersed throughout. After two promising independent records, this is her major-label debut, six songs with producer Ricky Reed (Pitbull, Meghan Trainor) that strip everything down to the pop basics and set her on a path to stardom: expect to see her everywhere, starting with her own MTV show (Wonderland). (Original review here.)

19. Hidden Cameras – Home on Native Land. Joel Gibb’s Hidden Cameras inspired Arcade Fire’s debut album, brought a queer aesthetic into a straight-laced indie scene, and went full-on electro on their last album. Here, however, Gibb goes full-on country, which suits both his songwriting and his voice. He throws in a few covers—including a take on “Dark End of the Street” that places the classic soul song in a closeted context, and a joyous romp through “Log Driver’s Waltz” with Feist, Rufus Wainwright and Mary Margaret O’Hara—but it’s his originals that serve as a reminder of his unique talent. (Original review here.)

20. Jim Bryson – Somewhere We Will Find Our Place. On the surface, this Ottawa singer-songwriter (and sideman to Kathleen Edwards, the Weakerthans and Tragically Hip) writes pleasant, sad-sack Ontario folk-rock (one of my default favourite genres). But his interest in synths and experience doing production work on the side—as well as bringing in Broken Social Scene’s Charles Spearin as a collaborator, and Shawn Everett (Grammy-winning Alabama Shakes engineer)—informs the expanded sonic palette heard here, which provide vivid colours to his tales of disconnection and ennui. (Original review here.)

Runners-up:

Anchorsong – Ceremonial (Caroline) (Original review here.)

A Tribe Called Red – We Are the Halluci Nation (Pirates Blend) (Original review here.)

Daughter – Not to Disappear (Glasshouse) (Original review here.)

Craig David – Following My Intuition (Sony) (Original review here.)

Deerhoof – The Magic (Polyvinyl) (Original review here.)

Johan Johannsson – Arrival OST (Deutsche Grammophon) (Original review here.)

Jordan Klaasen – Javelin (Nevado) (Original review here.)

Loscil – Monument Builders (Kranky) (Original review here.)

Selina Martin –  I’ve Been Picking Caruso’s Brain (independent) (Original review here.)

Aaron Neville – Apache (Sony) (Original review here.)

Agnes Obel – Citizen of Glass (Play It Again Sam) (Original review here.)

Operators – Blue Wave (Last Gang) (Original review here.)

Poirier – Migration (Nice Up!) (Original review here.)

Rihanna – Anti (Universal) (Original review here; this album grew on me considerably.)

John K. Samson – Winter Wheat (Anti) (Original review here.)

Sturgill Simpson – A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (Atlantic) (Original review here.)

Colin Stetson – Sorrow: A Reimagining of Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony (52hz) (Original review here.)

Allen Toussaint – American Tunes (Nonesuch) (Original review here.)

TUNS – s/t (Royal Mountain) (Original review here.)

Donovan Woods  – Hard Settle, Ain’t Troubled (Meant Well) (Original review here. This too grew on me considerably.)

August 2016 reviews

Highly recommended: Anchorsong, Deerhoof, Anderson.Paak, Glauco Venier

Highly recommended, reviewed earlier: TUNS

Well worth your while: Sharon Jones, The Julie Ruin, The Magic, Nao

As always, these reviews ran in the Waterloo Record.

Streaming is great for sample purposes, but please find a way to support your favourite artists financially.

Anchorsong – Ceremonial (Caroline)

Anchorsong is the name of the last track on Bjork’s Debut album. Now it’s also the name of a Japanese artist, Masaaki Yoshida, whose eclectic palette would have been right at home on that 1993 record. Call-and-response melodic percussion lines, Spaghetti Western guitar, bells and gamelans that could have been lifted from Pantha du Prince, plaintive strings, kalimbas—at times it sounds like a Moby remix of early Bjork, at others a more worldly Tycho. But mostly it sounds like a curious traveller in search of beauty, propelled forth by insistent rhythms that never let the listener drift off, asleep at the wheel. (Aug. 4)

Stream: "Eve," "Mother," “Butterflies”

Bat for Lashes – The Bride (Warner)

Ah! The Bride. It’s a concept album, no? A peek inside the narrative of a marriage, either an epic love story of perseverance or a psychological torture story, right? The first song is a lovely lullaby about, presumably, engagement, called “I Do.” But from there we go right into “Joe’s Dream,” with the opening line: “There's a tear in my lover's eyes / He's at my window, it's a gloomy night.” Uh-oh! What are we in for? The next track, “In God’s House,” makes it clear: she’s been stranded at the altar, her fiancée dead, the bride-to-be denied even the status of widowhood. For the rest of the album, she goes “Honeymooning Alone,” driving along the seaside, mourning the life that could have been.

Natasha Khan spent two years working on The Bride, both the album and what will be an accompanying film. The British songwriter recorded in rural New York state, and the resulting sound is a combination of the sea-swept gothica of PJ Harvey and David Lynchian smalltown-U.S.A. weirdness. Yet Khan is more conventional than many of her outré influences; there’s also a lot of Sarah McLachlan in here—though the side of that songwriter that we haven’t seen in a very, very long time.

Part of Khan’s charm is her ability to sound so haunting and creepy and yet simultaneously alluring; it’s a lot sexier than a record about a dead lover should probably be. (Aug. 4)

Stream: “Joe’s Dream,” “In God’s House,” “Sunday Love”

Deerhoof – The Magic (Polyvinyl)

It’s been a weird summer. And when the going gets really weird, no other rock band makes more sense than Deerhoof. The California quartet’s delightfully playful absurdism—executed with technical precision, lyrical naivete, and a sonic mashup of Zappa, punk rock and the weirdest parts of the Beatles—were a welcome tonic to soundtrack the Bush years. Deerhoof is always at the very least interesting, but every so often their oddball inventiveness coalesces into a top-to-bottom fantastic album. This is one of those albums. Considering their discography now stretches back almost 20 years, entry points can be hard to find for the uninitiated. So start here. And don’t miss them when they swing back this way again. (Aug. 11)

Stream: “Kate Mania!” “Life is Suffering,” “Plastic Thrills”

Hannah Georgas – For Evelyn (Dine Alone)

Mining the same vibe as Bat for Lashes is Vancouver/Toronto singer Hannah Georgas, whose third album is dedicated to her 98-year-old grandmother—for once, it seems, an artist celebrating someone still alive rather than writing an album-long obituary (see also: The Acorn’s Glory Hope Mountain or the Fiery Furnaces’ Rehearsing My Choir—which they recorded with their grandmother). Georgas doesn’t do so with a plunky ukulele or sad piano ballads (though there is one or two of those): she dives right into the synths found in the studio of producer Graham Walsh (Holy F--k, Operators) and comes out with a hot-blooded new wave record that trumps anything in her promising discography so far. (Aug. 4)

Stream: “Don’t Go,” “Evelyn,” “Naked Beaches”

Sharon Jones – Miss Sharon Jones OST (Daptone)

Sharon Jones was 40 years old when she first had her name listed as lead vocalist on a recording. That was in 1996. She’d sung live with plenty of bands and recorded backup vocals, but paid her bills as a corrections officer and lived with her mother. In the recent documentary Miss Sharon Jones, and in the one new track on its soundtrack (“I’m Still Here”), she says she was always told she was “too fat, too short, too black, too old,” to front her own band—an assertion that is patently ridiculous on every imaginable level. This woman is Otis Redding and Tina Turner reincarnate. If this woman is not a rock star, then that term might as well not exist.

Jones got her break by falling in with a group of sympathetic musicians in New York who would come to be the core of Daptone records—members of Afrobeat revivalists Antibalas and ’70s jazz-funk enthusiasts the Sugarman 3, among others. There were many excellent acts on Daptone, but all of them were instrumental. Sharon Jones quickly became the star of the show. As her profile rose, so did that of her band, the Dap-Kings, who were hired to record with everyone from Amy Winehouse (that’s them on “Rehab”) to David Byrne to Michael Bublé to Bruno Mars (that’s them on “Uptown Funk”).

Just as Jones was about to release her fifth and easily her best album, 2014’s Give the People What They Want, Jones was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She postponed the album while she underwent treatment, but came back to triumph and tour—only to have the cancer reappear just as this documentary, directed by Oscar winner Barbara Kopple (Harlan County USA, Shut Up and Sing) debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. Instead of retreating during this round of treatment, she’s been on the road ever since, fighting as strong as she can. If you thought Gord Downie was brave (which he is), you should witness Sharon Jones in action (check out this April 2016 performance for KEXP in Seattle).

All of which is even more of a reason to celebrate the soundtrack to that documentary, which compiles some of the best tracks of Jones’s 14-year discography. The power of her voice and her band often overshadowed the songs, but that’s not the case here: this is all top-shelf material. The uber fan could quibble about omitting her covers of Janet Jackson or Woody Guthrie or Shuggie Otis, but as a sampling of her five albums and more, this is hard to top—especially with the addition of hard-hitting early singles like “Genuine.” (Aug. 18)

The Julie Ruin – Hit Reset (Hardly Art)

Kathleen Hanna has a lot of baggage. A principal architect of the riot grrrl movement of the ’90s with her band Bikini Girl, a key member of political electropop band Le Tigre in the 2000s, Lyme disease victim, subject of the acclaimed 2013 documentary The Punk Singer: anytime she steps back into the public eye with new music, it’s a major countercultural event. 

Not that she lets that get to her. After her reinvention with the new band The Julie Ruin, whose 2013 album Run Fast was full of themes of perseverance, age and triumphing over adversity, here she sounds more than happy to just make a fun rock’n’roll record with her new pals—one steeped in the bubblegum melodies and enthusiastic punk party music she loves (lots! of! handclaps!), with politics taking a backseat or expressed in considerably more subtle fashion than she’s known for. That said, she can still skewer like few others, like when she lambastes a gushing yet shallow male fan in “Mr. So and So,” who boasts, “I’ll show your autograph to my women’s studies class!”

Is this one of Hanna’s better records? Not really. But baggage be damned. The 47-year-old singer has nothing to prove to anyone, and sounds like she’s having the time of her life. (Aug. 11)

Stream: "Hit Reset," "I Decide," “Rather Not”

The Magic – Night Falling (Hailstone Entertainment)

What a Magical summer it is. There’s the aforementioned Deerhoof album, a new album by the international Toronto pop-reggae sensation Magic!, and now a new album from the Guelph band from whom the “Rude” band stole a name: Evan and Geordie Gordon, who perform and record as The Magic. This Magic makes blue-eyed synth soul with an ’80s bent, with Evan serving as the studio wizard and Geordie the cool-cucumber crooner who slips between his seductive lower range and a falsetto that keeps getting better with age. (He’s now 30, but keen audiences will remember him as a teenager in the Barmitzvah Brothers 15 years ago.) Night Falling was four years in the making, scheduled during time off from the brother’s duties as touring members of Islands. Once a full band, it’s now a duo, but they don’t sacrifice any side of their lush sound, which has nods to Sade, Hall & Oates, Haim and Blood Orange—and you’d never guess it’s a bedroom recording. (Aug. 11)

Stream: “If I Were You,” “Over and Over,” “Season’s Crown”

Whole album here.

Nao – For All We Know (Sony)

Last year, this British R&B singer dropped an EP with the slinky summer bass line on “Inhale Exhale,” announcing yet another bright new light in what is turning out to be a golden era in R&B. That track reappears on her major label debut, as it should, but Nao proves she’s certainly no one-trick pony. Her voice might be girlish in pitch, but there is a command and confidence here that sounds anything but naïve. There are many times here, notably “Bad Blood” (no, not a Taylor Swift cover) she feels like the missing link between Prince and Kate Bush (who, of course, were mutual fans and collaborators). Or, in modern terms, she sits somewhere between FKA Twigs and Miguel. Nao herself calls her music “wonky funk.” Either way, she’s staked out a claim in a competitive field this year. (Aug. 25)

Stream: “Inhale Exhale,” “Adore You,” “Fool to Love”

Anderson.Paak – Malibu (O.B.E.)

While R&B fans spent the first half of 2016 fretting about the arrival of a new Frank Ocean album, this California artist quietly dropped this minor masterpiece in the dead of January. He was the talk of the SXSW festival in March, appeared on one of the best tracks on Kaytranada’s Polaris Music Prize-shortlisted 99.9% in May, and sold out the Phoenix in Toronto in June. Why? Because Malibu is second only to Beyoncé’s Lemonade as a high-water mark for R&B in the last year. 

Paak is no spring chicken. He’s 30 years old, with experience as a professional drummer (for an American Idol contestant) and a Dr. Dre protégé (with several guest appearances on Dre’s comeback, Compton). He was raised on old soul music and California G-funk and his world was turned upside down by Outkast. His first gigs were in a Baptist congregation. He sings with a delicious rasp not dissimilar to Kendrick Lamar’s timbre as a rapper, with layered harmonies akin to D’Angelo and a psychedelic palette worthy of Miguel; on the straight-up funk of “Come Down,” he channels “Payback”-era James Brown. He’s a father and husband who was raised in a violent household and is determined to find the positivity in life. You can hear all of that life experience in Malibu, which announces the arrival of a fully formed artist ready to seize the crown. As an independent artist, he doesn’t have marketing hype behind him, but an album this good doesn’t need it. The music does all the talking. (Aug. 11)

Anderson.Paak is playing the Manifesto festival in Toronto on Sept. 17, on a dream bill with Kaytranada and Daniel Caesar, at Echo Beach. 

Stream: “Come Down,” “Heart Don’t Stand a Chance,” “Am I Wrong” feat. Schoolboy Q

Fatima al Qadiri – Brute (Hyperdub)

"You are no longer peacefully assembled," are the first words you hear on Qadiri’s second album. They’re sampled from a police officer at the 2015 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, which helped kick off the Black Lives Matter movement in the States. Qadiri’s electronic soundscapes are meant to evoke a dystopia—not a fantastical one, but one very much rooted in current realities. As an instrumental artist, she works to evoke these themes with groaning synths that sound like sorrowful choirs, with beats that sound disorienting and dazzling, with eerie melodies that are just waiting for the right sci-fi director to use them in film—though it would be Qadiri doing that director a favour, not the other way around.  The cover art, by Josh Kline, depicts a Teletubby-like humanoid in riot gear, looking like it just woke up to this strange new world with no idea what role it might play. Qadiri doesn’t have answers, just questions, colours, hues. That’s all she needs. (Aug. 4)

Stream: “Blood Moon,” “Oubliette,” “Power” 

Glauco Venier – Miniatures: Music for Piano and Percussion (ECM)

Pianists like Nils Frahm, 33, and Chilly Gonzales, 44, get a lot of attention for reinvigorating the art of neo-classical solo piano, in part because of their age and associated record labels and artists. More power to them, especially if they help open ears to this solo recording by 53-year-old Italian pianist Glauco Venier. Venier is a Berklee-trained jazz player who has primarily performed in a trio format. Here, he was hired to score a documentary about an Italian sculptor, with the intention of grafting on the sounds of “sonorous sculptures” to his minimalist piano compositions. That he’s doing so on the ECM label, home to Keith Jarrett’s legendary ’70s recordings, carries a certain weight among jazz fans. Venier is more than up to the task. Miniatures is meditative and lovely, melodic and gentle, the resonant gongs and bells and other metallic sounds employed tastefully and effectively. If, like me, you’ve had a hectic summer of visits and excess and joy and mourning and too much rock’n’roll and sweaty R&B, here’s your antidote and a perfect comedown. (Aug. 25)

Stream: “Byzantine Icon,” “Prayer,” “Asian Songs and Rhythms No. 40)