Pazz & Jop 2010

The results for The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop critics poll have just been posted. This year, not very surprsingly won, in a landslide victory, by Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. A quick count reveals that eight of the top 10 are on my own year-end list, even if not all of them are very high on said list, which has to be a record of some sorts. The highest placed jazz record is Mary Halvorson's Saturn Signs at 135.

Catching up with last year's records: William Hooker's Earth's Orbit

Inspired by various year end lists ,as well as some late purchases/arrivals, I've be assessing and/or reassessing some records from last year. More will be posted in the coming days.

• William Hooker: Earth's Orbit (NoBusiness) - A limited edition double LP, the first of which, "Bliss (East)", is a live recording with Adam Lane on bass and Darius Jones on alto from The Stone in New York. "Bliss (East)" is groovy, freewheeling jazz, where Hooker's wonderfully skitting drums is pushed along by Lane's deep and rumbeling bass, while Jones honks and screams on top. They mix the heady with mellower parrts, which adds dynamics, and Lane's knack for a groove plus Jones bluesy tone give the music some focus between and during the more rip-roaring parts. Highly exciting set, slightly reminicent of Charles Gayle's great Touchin' On Trane. The secod part, "Bliss (West)", is a live quartet set recorded in San Fransisco with Aaron Bennett on tenor, Weasel Walter on guitar, and Damon Smith on bass. It leans more towards free improvisation, with plenty of skronk provided by both the sax player, the guitarist as well as some bowed bass. In between, they slip into some sludgy noir-like bluesy parts, and with Hooker shouting from behind his kit. "Bliss (West)" is the less engaging of the two sets (I'd say "Bliss (East)" is even close to an 8) but not without it's charms and exciting parts. As a whole, though, Earth's Orbit showcases Hooker as an inventive and lively drummer, playing in two different set-ups with slightly different outcomes, but still keeping an artistic unity which works very well over the space of two vinyl LPs. (7/10)*

* Grades are tentative, based on three or four listens, sometimes a few more. Much of the writing is done during listens, and should be considered notes more than final reviews.

Tom Moon and Don Was on Liner Notes

"When somebody downloads an album from most places on the Internet, what they get is a file containing fairly decent digital representation of the music and a tiny image of the front cover. For those who come to music to expand their horitons, it’s essentially a dead-end. More than that, the absence of information sends a signal: The folks who were involved in the creation of this work are relatively meaningless, just a shade more important to the end-user than the factory worker who bolted the player together. "

Go read the thing! Liner notes provide more than fodder for fact geeks. More importantly, they provide info on who made/provided what on a given record, and can point those interested in the direction of these other musicians' work, should they be so inclined. Which we often are. Of course, a lot of information on recordings is available online nowadays, on Wikipedia, discography pages and so on, but when you buy a physical record, most of this info comes with the package. Downloading files, in order to get this information, you'll have to do exstra work.