IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases

Richard X Bennett: Away From The Many (usual download and streaming service)

We have introduced this New York-based pianist/composer previously when attempted the difficult art of raga piano on his New York City Swara album then two albums of jazz, one with horns and the other a standard trio setting. He was so interesting we even offered him a Famous Elsewhere Jazz Questionnaire.

This time out he is different again, pieces which he describes as a “mostly (but not exclusively) ambient solo piano and electronics album inspired by cigarettes, insomnia, death and France”. There's also a brooding and slow version of Benny and the Jets plus a couple of remixes by the British electronica collective HUW and a three-part suite for melodica interspersed which is quite lovely.

So there you have it, another and different again outing by a musician you have probably heard first (and only) at Elsewhere and whom we will continue to follow because you don't quite know where he's going to go next.

Everywhere so far has been engaging and interesting for one reason or another.

Sentiment, Richard X Bennett

 

Eva Cassidy: Songbird 20^thAnniversary Edition (Blix)

Quite why this album on its original release captured the imagination of so many is perhaps easy to discern.

In part it was because the singer/guitarist wasn't marketed but “discovered” when radio in Britain played her versions of Sting's Fields of Gold and the standard Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

The album – a compilation of live and studio recordings which covered jazz, folk, pop and standards – topped the UK charts and people felt a sense of ownership of this artist who hadn't been sold to them but whose music just came without a sales pitch. And of course she was a delightful, clear singer on material which was familiar.

Then of course there was the major selling point: she'd been dead for two years.

Without being cynical, this was a good story and of course other albums followed taken from studio sessions she had done.

This anniversary edition comes with four solo acoustic versions of the Christine McVie title track, the old spiritual Wade in the Water, Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready and the standard Autumn Leaves.If you are one of the few who didn't get this album the first time around – hundreds of thousands did – here it is, expanded.

Autumn Leave (solo), Eva Cassidy

 

Jonny Greenwood: Phantom Thread soundtrack (Nonesuch/Warner)

Radiohead guitarist/composer Greenwood really nailed this orchestrated soundtrack for the Paul Thomas Anderson “costume drama” (it's about a London couturier played by Daniel Day Lewis, set in the Fifties) because it was nominated for a number of best soundtrack awards including the Oscar (and won a few others).

Needless to say, given the rare air and poise of the film, these pieces are sometimes imbued with a romantic melancholy and taken together come off as a series of elegant interludes.

The Hem, Jonny Grenwood

 

Joe Kye: Migrants (usual download and streaming services)

Born in South Korea but raised in Seattle, this singer-violinist apparently took refuge in the instrument when struggling with the idea of being an outsider in his adopted homeland. A breakthrough came when he discovered loop pedals, hip-hop and the idea of creating his own music as a voice for what he felt about his racial otherness (and also not least being a Christian as most South Koreans are).

This debut album doesn't exactly break any boundaries but Kye – with rappers Rasar and Jason Chu, and NYC composer/percussionist William Catanzaro on the title track – manages to blend classical, layered loops, an echo of the early experiments of Arthur Russell, ballads and personal reflection on being a migrant across an album which offers a bridge between pop, hip-hop and, on Joseph Rests His Head, something rather elevated.

More interesting than essential but certainly worth checking out.

Migrants, Joe Kye