Bob Moses - When Elephants Dream of Music (1983)

A tour-de-force of big band compositions. This goes from pretty swinging horn charts to modal ruminations to world music touches, threaded together by impassioned playing and the mind of Bob Moses. Too many jammers to count in this cast - I quickly browsed and saw Bill Frisell, Jim Pepper, Nana Vasconcelos, Sheila Jordan (with an amazing vocal on "Happy to Be Here Today")... This is a soul record, as in, good for the soul. Share widely and protect the dreaming elephants.

enjoy!

Mix for Fall

New mix for you. I've been listening to the recently departed John Ashbery read his work. Some losses hit harder than others. I suppose there's some comfort in the fact that he seemed more equipped, intellectually and emotionally, for death than most other people (I'd include myself in this group). I hope that in the poems that bookend this mix, I've selected works that are representative of his singular mind and to the experience of this point of the year, a moment of profoundly felt transition. 

john ashbery - collective dawns / roscoe mitchell quartet - naima

george shearing - a tune for humming

glenn copeland - ghost house

don voegeli - remembering

mark barrott - driving to cap negret

gene pitney - autumn leaves

miroslav vitous - when face gets pale

yves tumor - ciervo / phill niblock - A Y U (live) / john cage - three dances for two amplified prepared pianos, part. 1

giovanni venosta - woman in late

faust - jennifer

gastr del sol - blues subtitled no sense of wonder

marion brown - november cotton flower

cleaners from venus - a fool like you

steven brown and benjamin lew - moments

nico - no one is there

david sylvian - where the railroad meets the sea

yumiko morioka - moon ring

john ashbery - just walking around

lmk if you want a d/l link in comments! 

Terje Rypdal - Works (1985)

Y'all probably know Terje better than me. For me, he's always been the ethereal dude my creative writing teacher played for us during a stream-of-consciousness writing sesh in high school, the guy whose music I snidely brushed off at the time but always secretly (thought? felt?) was cool. 

A good place to start for the uninitiated, or, like me, re-initiated. Rypdal seems to be getting his due, with a reissue of his debut album and a Rune Grammophon-backed tribute album (gotta check that one out). But you know what you're getting here - the cover says it all. Nothing but ECM-soaked mood, with the piercing cries of TR's axe to guide you through the misty night.

Here's a live version of 'Waves':

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