No bones about it, we are on the cusp of a tumultuous time in a world already fraught with troubles, stress, and strife. But understanding that the path forward will be a struggle, let’s recognize that no fight is won and no trial endured without moments of respite. Refortification of the spirit through pleasure and joy is essential; for regular readers of this site, music is a major source of both. And so, please bookmark this week’s Best of the Year lists to revisit later when an emotional recharge is needed. As is our norm, we start with the box sets and expanded releases.
10. Creation Rebel – High Above Harlesden 1978–2023 (On-U Sound) 2024 was another solid year for the On-U Sound reissue program, starting out strong in March with the release of this 6CD box set collecting the six albums this estimable and persevering UK-based dub unit recorded in the titular quarter century. Those half dozen LPs were given concurrent standalone LP pressings, so vinyl hardliners take note. Maybe the biggest compliment that can be bestowed on this set (and by extension, the group and Adrian Sherwood) is that Creation Rebel’s most recent album Hostile Environment isn’t the weakest of the six.
9. Tsunami – Loud Is As (Numero Group) Having decided to devote a portion of their energies to assorted bands from the late-1980s-’90s rock underground, Numero Group’s resulting reissue program has been commendable, and nowhere better than this 5LP set. Tsunami’s frontwomen Jenny Toomey and Kristin Thomson co-founded Simple Machines, which quickly became one point on a thriving DMV label triangle with Dischord and Teen-Beat. The band’s guitar-based sound was pleasingly tough and raw and yet a needed antidote to rampant u-ground rock scene testosterone. Best of all, Tsunami’s music, which has become difficult to find in physical form, still sounds fucking great.
8. Soft Machine – Høvikodden 1971 (Cuneiform) Last year it was The Dutch Lesson, which took the seventh spot in this site’s Best Box Sets of 2023. Slipping one spot isn’t indicative of anything; Høvikodden 1971 is likely stronger than The Dutch Lesson, but I’ll confess that I haven’t thought of them comparatively that much, in large part because Mike Ratledge is the only commonality between the two bands. This set offers the “classic” lineup captured in two performances held in an art museum with projections rather than in a rock club. They sound inspired, and indeed progressively (see what I did there?) more inspired on disc two, as they got comfortable and really started dishing out the expansive grooves.
7. The Saints – (I’m) Stranded (In the Red / Universal Music Australia) With this 4LP set, the case can legitimately be made for The Saints as the greatest Aussie punk band of the original wave. There are other contenders, but we’re not going to list them, as this remarkable collection is wholly deserving of the entire spotlight. It holds the band’s classic debut remastered for vinyl, the previously unreleased alternate mix from 1976, the “This Perfect Day” 12-inch and the “1-2-3-4” double 7-inch, and two live sets, one short (five songs) and one album length. The title track has been anthologized countless times and will likely remain the band’s signature tune, but this set is positively stuffed with goodness.
6. Hans-Joachim Roedelius – 90 (Groenland) In addition to his collaborations with Brian Eno, German electronic musician Roedelius is best-known for co-founding Cluster with Conrad Schnitzler and Dieter Moebius and then Harmonia with Moebius and Michael Rother of Neu! But Roedelius also has dozens of solo works and additional collabs, and now there is 90, which is presented as an audio diary of sorts, pared down from 80 hours of tapes to a 4LP set that’s surprisingly digestible and downright engaging as it moves through a series of stylistic progressions. That Roedelius travels from an electronic framework to a grand piano shouldn’t be misconstrued as a backslide in traditionalism.
5. Phil Haynes’ 4 Horns & What? – The Complete American Recordings (Corner Store Jazz) This 3CD set gathers two studio discs released by the German label Open Minds in 1991–’92 and an unreleased live set from the Brooklyn Academy of Music in ’95 as part of an “Alternative Jazz” fest curated by clarinetist Don Byron. By ’95, listeners outside of NYC could be left wondering about the “Left of Lincoln Center” jazz stuff that wasn’t getting the national-global push by the major labels and their subsidiaries, the larger indies, and the jazz press. Haynes’ is correct that this band, where he is the rhythmic catalyst, never got its due in the USA. Featuring Joe Daley, Ellery Eskelin, Paul Smoker, Andy Laster, Herb Robertson, and the great John Tchicai.
4. Robbie Basho – Snow Beneath the Belly of a White Swan: The Lost Live Recordings (Tompkins Square) Of the cornerstone names in American Primitive guitar (or Guitar Soli, if that term is preferable), hearing Robbie Basho once proved most elusive, at least for a generation of curious listeners that were required to scour used LP bins for an entry point to his catalog. Time and tech have remedied the difficulties in hearing Basho, who is clearly related to John Fahey but unique, and yet he still often rides in the back seat behind Fahey, Leo Kottke, and some of the younger guitarists that have expanded this tradition. The unexpected arrival of this performance trove adds massive weight to an already exceptional body of work.
3. Miles Davis – Miles in France 1963 & 1964 – Miles Davis Quintet: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8 (Columbia) Chemistry. In a band context, it’s essential. The Davis Quintet had chemistry with saxophonist George Coleman. It’s just that the chemistry of the group with Wayne Shorter on sax towers over everything. Both groups are included here, and some will naturally assume that at six CDs or eight LPs, this collection is for the obsessives, but I’ll argue that when combined with Seven Steps to Heaven, Miles in Tokyo (where Sam Rivers briefly replaces Coleman prior to Shorter’s entrance), and finally E.S.P., Miles in France provides the deepest picture yet at how Miles arrived at the Second Great Quartet. And that’s a pure pleasure ride, baby.
2. & 1. (NOT A TIE) Allen Lowe & the Constant Sorrow Orchestra – Louis Armstrong’s America Vols. 1 & 2 (ESP-Disk) & King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band – Centennial (Archeophone) It’s impossible to discuss the brilliance of the Lowe volumes, which are intended to be considered as one thing (Vol. 2’s discs are numbered 3 and 4, dig?) without bringing Centennial into the discussion. Archeophone’s set is special because it is more than just another lazy and cheap disc dump of public domain recordings. It’s also collects contextualizing examples of Louis Armstrong’s influences plus contemporaries of the Oliver band and those who immediately followed their lead, with enlightening notes included. Oliver gets his deserved props, but Centennial is really about Armstong’s big splash onto the scene.
And Louis Armstrong’s America is concerned with his legacy, but in a way that is wondrously and wickedly alive (rather than museum safe). It’s correct to say 20th Century music history would be far (unrecognizably) different and likely pretty boring without Armstrong as the spark. Lowe understands this, but he’s not interested in everything; there are some unexpected references in the song titles and notes, e.g. Bo Diddley, The Kingsmen, Paul Revere & the Raiders, and Steve Albini, but Louis Armstrong’s America is ultimately a strikingly personal rumination on Lowe’s loves with plenty of opinions in the notes and with Armstrong as the great kick-starter smiling down from above. It’s wild and fun and sad and inspires thought. It’s another gush-burst of late-life creativity from Lowe that will endure for generations.
The 37 sides recorded by King Oliver’s band that are collected on Centennial are the bedrock, but in part because Armstrong was a steadfast entertainer long after jazz took the art music offramp from the pop highway, he’s often cited as an early innovator and then belittled as a guy who coasted for decades on corn and increasingly stale regurgitations of trad style. Centennial illuminates that Armstrong was one of 20th century music’s great adapters right from the start, subsequently navigating changes while remaining as instantly recognizable as The Ramones. Any notions of jazz purity were surely foreign to him. He was a borrower and a builder and a synthesizer. He spent a significant portion of his later life taping his record collection. Louis Armstrong was one of us.
