Sometimes, you just connect with a CD — immediately, powerfully, viscerally. That’s how I reacted when I first heard Sinéad Lohan’s No Mermaid, a 1998 disc that few people heard and fewer bought (her Wikipedia entry claims that No Mermaid ‘enjoyed moderate success’ in Ireland, the UK and the US — which means she sort of got swept up amongst all the Lilith Fair stuff at the time).

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Lohan is an Irish singer/songwriter of immense talent and clarity of voice, and a masterful songwriter of great simplicity and effortless depth. Lohan’s material never sounds like it came easily to her, but rather appears to be the result of much consideration. Her lyrics — assertive, independent, searching — are elegantly crafted and thoughtful, exploring the highs and lows of human relationships.

The disc is produced by Malcolm Burn, former collaborator of Daniel Lanois and independently the mastermind behind the subtle but recognizable sound language of several excellent records by Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan, Blue Rodeo, Lisa Germano, Tara MacLean and Patti Smith. Where Lohan’s previous album Who Do You Think I Am (1995) — also quite beautiful — was a folky affair with conventional instrumentation and a couple of Irish radio hits, Mermaid takes on a mysterious sheen, a new commitment to really exploring instrumentation and rhythm. Burn’s tasteful electronic textures —never dated, never out of place, never pandering to the ‘trip hop’ and downtempo predilections of the late 90s — swirl around Lohan’s exquisite voice and simple picked or strummed guitar, engulfing her, challenging her to not be too sweet, cute or folksy. The contrast to Who Do You Think I Am is stark and fundamental; No Mermaid is a mature collaboration between two outstanding musical individualists that represents a unique moment in time.

Sinéad Lohan’s voice is a fantastic instrument. She sings in a way that’s profoundly unaffected and without artifice. To be sure, Ireland has a long history of accomplished female folk singers, and Lohan certainly and obviously carries an immense debt of gratitude to the tradition around which she grew up. What’s so touching about her vocals is her complete disregard for ‘runs,’ embellishments, coloratura — call it what you will, but there’s none of it here. This is sung as straight up as it gets. Lohan can definitely ‘carry a tune,’ as the saying goes. She may define carrying a tune on this record.

As with many artists whose records I have loved deeply, every so often I check in to see what they may be up to these days. I note with some sadness that Sinéad Lohan has basically disappeared from the music industry, and apparently from public life, altogether. She seems to have made the switch from performing and recording musician to motherhood/family life sometime in the early 2000s (a noble and important calling). Malcolm Burn’s website indicates that there’s a new album the two recorded together several years ago which remains unreleased. Her website hadn’t been updated in years and the domain finally expired sometime this year.

Perhaps waiting for another Sinéad Lohan record is an exercise in futility. As she says in ‘People and Tables,’ probably my favourite track on No Mermaid:

waiting for nothing confuses the mind
letting go pieces for no one to find [...]
i never wanted, i never wanted and i never got, i never got
i never wanted, i never once wanted and i never got, i never once got

(Sinéad Lohan’s previous record — while certainly no Mermaid — is filled with uniformly appealing, accomplished songs and also highly recommended.)

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A review of Food’s Quiet Inlet (2010).

In its web review, the BBC calls this “a magical hybrid of technology and improvisation, Europe and America, ambience and dance.” It’s definitely all those things.

I find myself especially excited about this release because there have been so few genuinely successful jazz/electronica hybrids worth listening to. This music manages to be idiomatic and credible in both genres. The genre transcendence achieved on this disc has a magical, mystical, almost spiritual aspect that – in an interesting way – places it firmly into the tradition of ‘acoustic music’ regardless of the actual sounds and instrumentation used. It’s not really jazz, not really electronic music, but it’s not world music either. It’s what Miles Davis tried to do in his electric days, only in 2010, there are no more limitations to instrumentation, sound design or the possibilities of arrangement.

Food is Thomas Strønen (drums, live electronics), Iain Bellamy (tenor and soprano saxophones), Nils Petter Molvær (trumpet, electronics) and Christian Fennesz (guitar, electronics). A super group of sorts, at least in the areas of European improvised jazz and brainy, glitchy electronica. Strønen and Bellamy have been at it for a while as Food. Molvær had a short but intense brush with fame in the late 90s when he released a few reasonably successful electronica/jazz crossover records on ECM (only to leave the label when it couldn’t get its head around the openness of remix culture, preferring to think of albums as complete artist statements). Fennesz has enjoyed a surprisingly high profile given that he has released only a handful of records of ambient, glitchy, noisy guitar-driven electronica in the last 10 years (his latest, Black Sea, is brilliant and very listenable; Venice and Endless Summer are quite brilliant but not terribly listenable).

Quiet Inlet is a collection of fiercely rhythmic ambient jazz, partially composed and partially improvised. The overall profile of this ensemble is saxophone, trumpet, electronic pads and textures, and electronically treated drums.

Thomas Strønen is a fantastic drummer – the booklet images (in typically stylish black and white ECM photography) show him using a huge amount of electronics, possibly greater in number than actual drums – with a fail-proof sense of groove and the uncanny ability to shoe-horn any amount of polyrhythmic detail and ornamentation into a track without cluttering it. He strikes me as a sort of contemporary Manu Katché, an impossibly groovy and musical drummer, but with an embrace of the full spectrum of electronic enhancements, sampling, loops, and so on.

Iain Bellamy sounds like a very focused free jazz improviser. Given that this is an ECM release, his sound often comes across as not entirely unlike Jan Garbarek‘s, but with more Celtic (and obviously fewer Nordic folk) influences. I really find myself appreciating the restraint he exercises in these pieces – there’s a great economy in his playing, not dissimilar to Jon Hassell‘s, maybe.

Nils Petter Molvær has a beautiful, subdued, muted, yet sharply-drawn Miles Davis trumpet sound that blends easily and effectively with Bellamy’s. I recall not liking his previous ECM efforts all that much (they seemed like the explorations of someone fascinated by electronic music who was nonetheless not entirely able to make the jump), but here – since he’s not setting the agenda (I assume) – he’s an outstanding session contributor. Of course, it’s hard to say which of the four musicians is responsible for which electronic texture, so it’s quite possible that Molvær is much more instrumental to this than I think. (I should also say that I haven’t heard anything of his since Solid Ether.)

It’s even harder to say where Christian Fennesz’ noises on Quiet Inlet begin and end. His guitar mostly acts as an ‘input’ instrument and he hardly ever plays a lead part (although you can hear his guitar clearly on ‘Fathom’). Knowing his other work as I do leads me to imagine that quite a lot of the textures, pads and ‘bass lines’ here may be his.

ECM’s sound, as always, is impeccable – clear, crisp, spacious, great imaging, full, present without losing any of the dynamics of the music. I love this label (I’ve been listening to a lot of ECM lately), and this release may be one of its best in 2010. Highly recommended.

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De-Phazz is a revolving cast of singers and performers around German jazz/electronica producer Pit Baumgartner. For more than 10 years, De-Phazz has released an interesting and unique blend of jazz, German cabaret music, electronica, hip hop, reggae/dancehall and r’n'b. Baumgartner changes his lineup between albums, and there are very few singers who stay for more than a record or two. The music is sung mostly in English, but there are songs in German and French, too. Everything has a delightfully old-school, continental European touch: a 40s-style cabaret tune here, a 50s Brazilian-inflected German Schlager there.

But there’s also some seriously funky, and not-German-at-all soul here: a track like ‘True North’ shows off Baumgartner’s production chops – chops that could grace any contemporary ‘big’ r’n'b artist’s album. The path he chooses, though, is quirkier than that. And it’s a very likable quirkiness, one I find myself returning to time and again. The sound is cultured and aware of the world’s musics in a way that British or American electronica isn’t. And that makes this first-grade pop music that doesn’t become dated.

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For anyone still standing at the end of the long, strange journey through the tunnel of electronic music, particularly all the different forms of house over the years, this is lovely, emotional, introverted and perhaps a little nerdy. It’s also very, very good in a genre-transcending sort of way. The producer (whose real identity is apparently a secret, woo hoo) makes dubby headphone soundscapes based on the fast-yet-somehow-serene broken beats of two-step and grime. It’s really great to put on repeat while working. Not sure what that says about it, but I find it strangely motivating :)

Detailed Pitchfork piece here.