Before recordings, taking an opera home meant having the town band play it. 一把吉他，把哥倫比亞高山的霧氣織進爵士。

Jorge Bolet — The Ambassador Auditorium Recitals

Genre類型

Classical / Solo Piano / Historical Live

Label廠牌

First Hand Records

Format介質

3 CDs / Hi-Res / Streaming

There were, in effect, two Jorge Bolets. One made the studio records that critics admired and slightly distrusted, the way one distrusts a photograph that has been retouched into flawlessness. The other walked onto a stage. These two recitals, taped at a Pasadena hall that no longer stands and unheard until now, belong to the second man: the November 1981 program apparently went so well that he returned for five encores, which is not the behavior of someone hedging. The playing is Bolet's usual late-Romantic estate — Chopin and Brahms ballades, the Schumann Fantasie, Liszt's Schubert transcriptions — but warmed by the presence of people in the room. He preferred it that way; the tragedy is how little of it survives. 古巴裔美國鋼琴家 Bolet 死於一九九○年。這是他兩場從沒發行的現場，錄在帕薩迪納的 Ambassador Auditorium——那是一九七四到九五年間西岸最重要的音樂廳之一，辦過約兩千五百場音樂會，如今已拆。

Weber: Der Freischütz arrangirt in Harmoniemusik — Wolf / Jean-Philippe Poncin

Genre類型

Classical / Wind Ensemble / Opera Arrangement

Label廠牌

Ricercar (RIC489)

Format介質

CD / Hi-Res / Streaming

In 1821 you could not take Der Freischütz home, because home had no way to reproduce an orchestra. What you could do was buy the Harmoniemusik: a reduction for wind band that let the overture and the big choruses be played in a salon or a garden by whoever could hold a clarinet. Karl Flachs made his version almost immediately, in 1822, and it is that arrangement the Belgian ensemble Wolf revives here — the Huntsmen's Chorus, Agathe's cavatina, the whole haunted forest folded into nine or ten winds. It is a reminder that the copy long predates the recording, and that a good copy can outlive the thing it copied. 一八二一年，你沒辦法把《魔彈射手》帶回家，因為家裡沒有任何東西能重現一支管絃樂團。你能做的，是買一份 Harmoniemusik：一種管樂合奏的縮編，讓序曲和幾段大合唱能在沙龍或花園裡，由任何拿得動單簧管的人吹出來。

Freyja Garbett — Sowden House

Genre類型

Jazz / Cinematic / Psychedelic Funk

Label廠牌

Earshift Music

Format介質

CD / LP / Streaming

The Australian composer Freyja Garbett wrote this music for a virtual-reality game that set the player loose inside the Sowden House, the Mayan-Revival pile that Lloyd Wright built in Los Feliz and that later belonged to Dr. George Hodel, a man some believe was tangled up in the Black Dahlia case. The game's director was Brendan McNamara, of L.A. Noire, so the pedigree of noir is genuine rather than borrowed. What is striking is how little the score needs the game. Written as fifteen scenes — Tomb Entrance, Ballroom '44, Asylum, Labyrinth — it moves between a Sydney funk band called Mister Ott and a large hybrid ensemble, and it carries the specific unease of a Seventies psychological thriller: not horror exactly, but the feeling that a beautiful room is watching you. A soundtrack that lost its picture and turned out to prefer the dark.

Daniel González Rodríguez — Tejido

Genre類型

Jazz / Latin / Colombian Guitar

Label廠牌

Self-released

Format介質

Streaming / Digital

Tejido means weaving, and the Colombian guitarist Daniel González Rodríguez has titled the record after its own method: he threads the music of the Andean páramo through the grammar of jazz guitar until you cannot quite say where one ends. The song titles keep the metaphor honest — Siembra (sowing), Telar (loom), El Sendero del Páramo (the moorland path) — and the playing is warm, conversational, unhurried. Bandcamp's jazz column tucked it in as its last recommendation of June, with the small sigh of a critic afraid it will be missed. It probably will be. Give it the quiet hour it asks for.

Non Plus Temps — Conditional Bunker

Genre類型

Post-Punk / Avant-Rock / Leftfield Dub

Label廠牌

Siltbreeze Records

Format介質

Vinyl LP (ltd. 250) / Streaming

Non Plus Temps is a Bay Area collective whose members you may know from Famous Mammals and Naked Roommate, and their second album plays like a genealogy quiz for people who read the fine print on Y Records sleeves. There is Canterbury in the odd meters, On-U Sound in the dub, a little of Laughing Clowns in the way the saxophone is used as an irritant rather than a lead voice. One track is called "Godzilla Improv," which tells you the tone. It is difficult music that would rather you danced than admired it; the label prints the instruction plainly — "Fuck art, let's dance" — and, pressed to 250 copies, it is barely pretending to want a wide audience. Non Plus Temps 是灣區的一個群體樂團，成員你可能在 Famous Mammals 和 Naked Roommate 見過。這張第二作，像一場給「會讀 Y Records 內頁小字」那種人準備的族譜測驗：怪拍裡有 Canterbury，dub 裡有 On-U Sound，薩克斯被當成刺激物而非主奏，是 Laughing Clowns 那一路。有一首直接叫〈Godzilla Improv〉，調性可想而知。

J and the woolen stars — Puff (28912)

Genre類型

Ambient / Twee / Lo-fi Folk

Label廠牌

se Dessaisir Publishing (28912)

Format介質

Streaming / Digital