RECENT LISTENING #50 (Special 50th Issue! Several No-Prizes Within!)

field kitchen, Geologist, Wendy Eisenberg, Ruth Garbus, Kelby Clark, Mississippi Records Tape Series, Ed Hall

FIELD KITCHEN An Active Rendering of Being Vol. 1-7 (NO LABEL) If you’ve read my Chicago Show Report on the Detroit group Spite of Darkness playing at the Catalytic Sound Festival back in February 2026, and by god I hope you have, you’re already aware of at least 3/5th of this new Detroit musical collective field kitchen, specifically Ben Hall (here on surdo and conga), Mike Khoury (viola), and Indira Edwards (viola). The other 2/5th of field kitchen is Sharon Udoh on organ and (Palilalia recording artist!) Cyrus Pireh on guitar, rounding out what they call the “starting five,” which can be augmented by various combinations from a “deep bench” that includes a mix of newcomers (to me) and legends (to me) like Ken Vandermark, Jaribu Shahid, Tony Holland, Garrett Frees, Guilherme Granado, and the Ankhettes. But, even if field kitchen is essentially a quintet, members of which have played jazz music before, I still would not think of them as a “jazz quintet,” or even “jazz” at all; field kitchen isn’t any one thing, of course, but if I’m breaking out the forward slash (and I always do), I might say they play a very unique brand of world/groove/drone/spectral music. Hall’s playing is disarmingly minimalist, especially if you’re expecting the post-Graves trap-set style we’ve heard from him before, laying down apparently simple ostinatos, using the surdo for deep pulse and not obviously doing a whole lot more besides ever-subtle accents from the congas; Udoh plays (that word again) minimalist organ chords behind that, with just a touch of electric Miles; I don’t know what Pireh does when he records for Palilalia because I haven’t heard that record yet, but here he’s playing raspy prepared-guitar ostinatos, indeed quite minimalist (though not unfunky). That leaves the violas, and whaddayaknow, they lean minimalist too, deep into those spectral/drone zones I was talking about, but also sneaking their way out and up and down into lyrical solos, the metaphorical flowers growing from cracks in the metaphorical concrete. There is one track in particular where this very thing happens beautifully, but there’s so much here (seven albums released simultaneously!) that right now I can’t find it, and every time I look for it, I find something else entirely, and not necessarily minimalist at all. Either way, go listen, and I’ll leave you by quoting field kitchen’s own super-fun descriptions in their bio: “Ronald Shannon Jackson playing Tortoise,” “the Revolutionary Ensemble plays the Grateful Dead,” “No wave by a church band,” “Penny Rimbaud meets Folkways,” “DJ Assault meets Jerome Cooper.”

GEOLOGIST Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights? (DRAG CITY) I was an early Animal Collective adopter, back when they were an actual noise and/or costume rock and/or post-post-hardcore band (anyone else remember that 2001 Black Dice/AnCo photo tour diary in Sound Collector #7?), and even saw them play two great Chicago gigs circa 2002. (Here’s one of the two, thanks Aadam.) Then they started blowing up on the international festival circuit and what can I say, I got tired of seeing them bopping around with the light-shows and yelping Beach Boys harmonies. This new album by member Geologist might be the first time I’ve sat down with an AnCo-or-related record since Sung Tongs, and damn, it’s a true ripper that I believe sounds nothing like the fathership band, or much else besides; my initial take was “Nommo-meets-Torch of the Mystics with Arabic melodies winding relentlessly down a Lynchian night highway to an ever-present vanishing point.” (And I swear to you I wrote that before noticing what the cover art actually was.) Or, as the one-sheet has it, “what if, back in the 80s, Ethan James had made a hurdy gurdy album for SST??” It’s easy to think after a casual listen or two that the whole album is like that, possibly due to the more Saharan implications of a title that contains the phrase of “pack of camels,” but it’s actually quite varied. There are also tracks like the mellow and loping side B closer “Compact Mirror/Last Names,” which is essentially a trio jam, Geologist in minimalist mode, hitting long-held chords on the hurdy gurdy (albeit with deep fx and wah-scooping), backed up by Dave Portner aka Avey Tare on sweet-moving highlife bass guitar and Emma Garau on gentle four-on-the-floor trap set. This trio groove is augmented very nicely by Ryan Oslance on spacey hand percussion, but for the last half of this 10-minute track, after what I assume to be the switch from “Compact Mirror” to “Last Names,” the percussion drops out and it becomes a wild space jam for ripping hurdy gurdy and the low-end free jazz bass clarinet of Shane McCord. (There’s more going on than that — I don’t know if Portner and Garau and Oslance have switched from their instruments to synth/electronics or whatever else, or if the two sections are even from the same session — they may not be.)

WENDY EISENBERG s/t (JOYFUL NOISE) Sometimes sitting down and listening to a 40-minute singer/songwriter record is an equal experience to sitting down and watching a thoughtful 2-hour dramatic film with excellent dialogue (the lyrics) and rich cinematography (the instrumentation and arrangements) and brilliant editing (the sequencing and the act of songwriting itself). This is one of those records, and it’s coming from Wendy Eisenberg, someone who I had mostly thought of as an experimental/rock/jazz musician (their 2024 double-LP Viewfinder is a ripper, especially side-longer “After Image”). As Wendy has said of this album, “The songs are genuinely folk songs,” and their guitar playing is genuinely folk guitar playing, though bursting with intricate arpeggiation, progressive turnaround runs, and harmonically rich chord changes, all supported in turn by a great rhythm section, Trevor Dunn on bass and Ryan Sawyer on drums, to which crucial co-producer Mari Rubio adds pedal steel, synth, and string arrangements. It all takes you right into the Joni and Judee zones you know and love (Eisenberg covered “The Kiss” in 2023), with a touch of Mike Nesmith’s First National Band floating in through the pedal steel, but it’s those aforementioned lyrics that make this s/t LP truly special, sung with Wendy’s plain, clear, and kind delivery, the imagery and feeling thereof always readily available. The whole album — every song, every line, every instrumental move — rewards deep listening and consideration, but “Another Lifetime Floats Away” stands out as an immediate modern mortality classic (“The morning ink has barely dried/The sky, a navy blanket over Mission Drive/My mother makes breakfast, she keeps me alive/Another lifetime floats away”), with “Meaning Business” close on its heels, making a great chorus hook out of one of my favorite words: “et cetera/et cetera/I’ll let her out backwards/as in a dream/like memory alters timelines/with each repeat/find something sweet/and make it speak backwards/like dreamers do/illogically/meaning business/I’m in the game/et cetera/so let me be lonely/as everyone/keeps telling me/they mean business.” P.S. Man I hope the Mr. Bungle completists are lining up to buy this record of Trevor Dunn brilliance along with Mike Patton’s 19th (nervous) stunt project or Secret Chiefs 17: The Reliquary or whatever else those crews are up to now.

RUTH GARBUS Profound (ORINDAL) Among all the deserved accolades for the Wendy Eisenberg LP, let’s not lose sight of another 2026 LP by a not-dissimilar singer/songwriter who also uses her/their first and last name to make disarmingly intelligent, moving, and indeed profound music. Profound by Ruth Garbus was released just two months after Wendy Eisenberg, and it’s fascinating to listen to these two records back to back and to ponder how they start in the same general zone but make such marked detours apart from each other. While both have a clear sense of humor, Garbus’s is more jarring, twisted, and upfront; after all, Profound does begin with the lines “When I penetrated that man/I felt just like a dog/Getting fucked is the season of the world/My life springs forth/into the jewel of creation/The arched back of the imagination . . .” Also, both LPs feature sparse (but not solo) folk/rock band arrangements, though Eisenberg has a trad rhythm section throughout, while Garbus, although the sole songwriter, does not accompany herself with an instrument, backed only by the keyboards of elle mcafee-han and the subtle electric guitar of Nick Bisceglia (and a drum machine used on two or three tracks). I feel like mcafee-han’s keys are the center, perfect Fender Rhodes style throughout (with a ripping overdubbed synth solo on track two “The Lost Soul” deserving particular mention for its Paul Bley/“M.J.” heroics). And all that said, let’s not only consider Profound in relation to Wendy Eisenberg, as it goes still further into its own heady zones as side one plays through; the exquisitely slow/classical “Clair de Lune” (not a cover), the drum machine pulse and dreamy hit-single melody of “Nothing and Everything” (with lyrics that still have that odd sense of humor but are also downright cosmic: “On top of the mountain, but I can’t see anything/Mr. Rogers firelight on the ocean/Nothing and everything in space and out through me/Standing still, running around, emotions”), and then closing with the wordless-but-not-instrumental (and tbh also exquisitely slow/classical) “500.” And still side two awaits . . .

KELBY CLARK Language of the Torch (TENTATIVE POWER) I saw this guy play live on tour with Derek Monypeny back in March, where he did solo banjo over pre-recorded tamboura drone, building beyond Basho snowstorms and into a kind of acoustic string density I’ve only heard on (extremely specific reference alert) Rod Poole’s Death Adder album (1996, WIN Records). When the show was over, Clark was nice enough to hand me a review copy of this record; jump ahead a couple months and I had it playing in the house while Angelina was doing some work on her laptop, and it was so good that after side two ended and we had sat for a couple minutes in silence she said “What happened to the music? I miss it!” This is despite, or perhaps due to, Language of the Torch not featuring the dense snowstorm style I saw live, instead based around calm and lyrical and really downright lovely single-string playing, the solo setting giving it an enormous weight (even if there is subtle live harmonium accompaniment on 4 of the 7 tracks, filling that pre-recorded tamboura role from the live gig). Which makes this a good time to quote something I like to quote every few years (and would you believe the last time I did was in a Derek Monypeny review, back in 2012), a few lines that have always stayed with me from an essay on solo improvisation written by Jeff Fuccillo way back in September of 1995 in the third issue of his Woolly Bugger zine: "...every sound made by the solo acoustic improviser plays into empty silent space and thus 'adds to the empty space of silence' that is the only (non)accompaniment given to the solo acoustic improviser's playing."

VARIOUS ARTISTS Return to Shombolar: Rock, Exotica, Ballads & Rock Exotica (Mississippi Records Cassette Series Volume #106) CS (MISSISSIPPI RECORDS); Runnin’ From the Trash: Spiritual & Emotional Jazz (Mississippi Records Cassette Series Volume #104) (MISSISSIPPI RECORDS) Finally made it to Mississippi Records on Albina Ave up there in Portland back in March. Saw about two dozen records I would’ve bought, but wasn’t sure how to fit them in my luggage, and I already have a good 3,000 records at home, and my #1 superpower is talking myself out of buying vinyl records, so all I walked out with was a T-shirt that says “ALICE COLTRANE FOR PRESIDENT - JUNE TYSON FOR VICE PRESIDENT” and two of those always-killer in-house cassette-only mix-tapes that the store makes. Back home in Chicago I’m now listening to Volume #106, Return to Shombolar: Rock, Exotica, Ballads & Rock Exotica, and to quote D. Boon (who was all over my algo just last week because it would’ve been his 68th birthday), “I’m fucking overwhelmed!” You would be too, the way this tape starts with the maestro Erkin Koray’s sad/spacey/suave “Cemalim” into unknown garage madness by both The Emeralds (“Like Father Like Son”) and Los Frangins (“Changhoi”) and then a weird Eden Ahbez ballad (“The Wanderer,” and are there any Eden Ahbez ballads that aren’t weird?) and next thing you know the side’s almost over and you’re listening to the weirdest Gal Costa song ever (“Tuareg,” complete with Arabic chanter melodies winding through its soft garage backbeat, and are there any Gal Costa songs that aren’t weird?). OK, I just said I was going to review two tapes, and I’ve only reviewed one side of one of them. That’s how overwhelmed I am! Three sides missing! I will tell you that the second tape focuses on “spiritual and emotional jazz” and has tracks by a bunch of legends like Pharoah Sanders, Louis Moholo, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, and Don Cherry, but also grips non-Peanuts Vince Guaraldi, the obscure Duke Edwards, and relative newcomer Alabaster DePlume.

ED HALL Motherscratcher CD (TRANCE SYNDICATE) When I worked in a record store from the years 1991 to 1995 I was voted “clerk most likely to move Ed Hall CDs misfiled in the H bin to the E bin.” Never actually really heard Ed Hall though, just their brief but memorable appearance every time I’ve watched Slacker (1991, d. Richard Linklater), until right now, over 30 years later, after casually re-reading an interview with Brian McBride (RIP) of the Texas ambient duo Stars of the Lid in my old copy of Ptolemaic Terrascope #25 in which he says the following: “Stars of the Lid started making recordings around the end of 1994. Adam [Wiltzie] at that point was running sound for some different bands. We both used to help out a local band, Ed Hall, who would have these ridiculously long shows where they’d stretch out their last song forever. Their music was basically ‘psychedelic’ rock opera, real bassy at times. Adam and I had recorded all of these samples which we’d fill their shows with by playing them in between songs and what-not. Eventually, someone thought all this playing around was music, or close to it, and we drafted a track for an Ed Hall record. It’s called ‘Track 23,’ playing for 23 minutes at the end of the Motherscratcher disc. About a year after that Music for Nitrous Oxide was released.” There you have it, all you SotL completists, or should I say “Liddites,” it sounds like Motherscratcher is a necessary purchase for you out there on the used CD market. When you get your own copy, take note that there is not actually a track called “Track 23” listed on Motherscratcher. The sleeve lists 10 tracks, the last one being “Afghani Harvest Period,” which clocks in at almost 8 minutes long and I’m pretty sure the song McBride was referring to as the band’s stretched-out set-closer. It’s followed by that old 1990s CD trick where there’s a bunch of 5-second tracks of silence, in this case 12 of them, which creates a one-minute false ending before we get to the fabled and unlabeled track 23 which is indeed 23 minutes long, and for Stars of the Lid sounds a little rough and raw compared to their subsequent full-lengths on the Sedimental and Kranky labels — but it’s cool. As for the first ten tracks of the CD, which are definitively by Ed Hall, and again, the first time ever that I’m really sitting down and listening to this band, the first two strike me as way-mid Butthole Surfers wanna-be material, opening track “White House Girls” even sounding like MTV-style Surfers, and waitaminnit, the lyrics even tell a story from Surfers lore, specifically the ‘Amy Carter suitcase’ incident which I won’t detail here as it’s common knowledge for any Surfers fan and/or reader of Our Band Could Be Your Life, i.e. 99% of you. The second song “Big Head” is another explicit Surfers cop, this time of that band’s “marauding shuffle” style. After that, Ed Hall actually settles down into their own “real bassy” take on noise rock that isn’t quite so Surfers-dependent. Not as saturated with stand-alone weirdo personality as the grandaddies, of course, but who is? Still a good heavy 1990s psychedelic noise-rock band from Texas.