On Repeat: Oval, Henriksen, Owl Song

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I’ll later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all. I had this entry mostly done last night, but the book reading I attended went later than I’d expected, so I’m finally posting it today.

▰ Space Man: Glitch progenitor Oval has delivered the 8th in his series of occasional mini-EPs, under the Now / Never / Whenever umbrella, the title seemingly related to the bits largely being archival. This time around that means a 1998 remix of Japanese duo Cappablack, a 2000 piece inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a previously unreleased track from a scrapped 2012 EP.

▰ Taking a Break: The track title “Morphine flutes all over the place” hints at what’s going on. Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen broke his leg skiing, and recorded an album of edgier-than-usual Fourth World jazz-inflected electronica, Break a Leg!, while recuperating, reworking material he’d stored up on his laptop.

▰ Two Out of Three: On Friday I attended a great trio set by trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, guitarist Bill Frisell, and drummer Herlin Riley at the Bing hall at Stanford (their album Owl Song is highly recommended), and while I can’t find much in the way of live footage of them online, there is this clip from 10 years ago of two of the three of them, when the concept was just getting started.