Robbie Basho The Art of the Steel String Guitar 6 & 12

Rosalía Lux

Bert Jansch Jack Orion

Lucrecia Dalt A Danger to Ourselves

David Sylvian Blemish

Carnic folk meets avant-garde minimalism – Silverio Massimo pushes his radical sound even further on „Surtùm“.

A fine example for an album where you don‘t understand a word, and it doesn‘t matter. I can understand the comparisions of reviewers when they mention certain aspects of the late works of David Sylvian, certain moments of Sigur Ros or Swans, but that doesn‘t take away a spoonful of secrets from these fractured ballads.

Playlist for an imaginary Christmas radio hour in mind:
Natural Information Society: Perseverance Flow (instr.)
Emma Swift: The Resurrection Game
Silverio Massimo: Surtùm
Jan Garbarek / Anouar Brahem / Shaukat Hussain: Madar (instr.)
The Mountain Goats: Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan
Steve Gunn: Daylight Daylight
Steve Tibbetts: Close (instr.)

Vielleicht ist es vier Wochen her, als ich mich mit Zurli traf und wir endlich unseren kleinen Spaziergang durch die alte Siedlung unserer Kindheit unternahmen. Er war ganz schön angeschlagen, und ich war auch nicht bester Stimmung. Der Himmel war tiefes Grau, ab und zu zog ein dichter Vorhang voller Regentropfen über uns hinweg. Der Weissdornweg. Das Seltsame war, dass die ganze Siedlung wie ausgestorben dalag. Also, weil alle Menschen fort waren, blieben die Dinge allein, um Erinnerungen auszuösen. Das war die grosse Garagenfront, wo wir Fussball spielten, und das Knallen des Balls gegen metallische Tore einen solchen Krach verursachte, das ein Rechtsanwalt an der Grotenbachstrasse immer wieder laut rumtobte. Aber wir waren Kinder, unangreifbar. Natürlich wurde einiges in der alten Siedlung, die um 1960 hochgezogen wurde, renoviert, die Fassaden glitzerten runderneuert. Aber die als Tore dienenden alten Teppichstangen waren verschwunden. Zurli konnte sich nicht an die buschikose Beate erinnern, die genauso gut mit dem Ball umgehen konnte wie wir, und in die heimlich verliebt war. Wir tauschten unsere Erinnerungen aus wie Bilder einer Wundertüte, wohl wissend, dass diese fernen Dinge der Volksschuljahre immer nur kurz aufblitzen würden, um dann wohl für immer zu verschwinden. Die Melancholie war greifbar. Einmal begegnete uns dann doch ein Mensch, der aussah wie ein Oberschullehrer und sich seltsam zielstrebig und fussläufig duch die Siedlung bewegte. Er schien hier ein Leben zu haben, wir hingegen hatten den Wind, den Nieselregen und all die kurz aufflackernden Momente aus der Tiefe des letzten Jahrhunderts, Momente, die einmal den Anschein hatten, für immer und immer zu sein, bruchfest, verlässlich, widerständig. Sie waren alles andere als das. Ich liege auf der Couch, der Himmel hat das gleiche Weissdornweggrau, und ich gehe gleich in meine Höhle und höre „The Resurrection Game“ von Emma Swift. Ein wunderbares Album.

Vor ein paar Tagen erschien auf der Lyrik-Onlineplattform signaturen-magazin.de ein Interview, das Elke Barker mit mir geführt hat: über Hintergründe der von mir herausgegebenen Anthologie „20 Jahre Literaturwerkstatt in Darmstadt“, die Arbeitsweise im Seminar, Herausforderungen und schöne Momente, was mir das Seminar persönlich bedeutet und einiges mehr. Hier ist der Link.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – Gift Songs (Mexican Summer)

Even if I’ve loved it from the start, this record has grown so much on me since its release in May 2025. There’s an undeniable magic about this unassuming work that made me keep coming back to it. Whenever I needed a sonic equivalent to a soothing weighted blanket, I could rarely resist the call of that infectious 20-minute piece on the A-side, “The Milky Sea”.

Shortly before the album release, I interviewed Jefre Cantu-Ledesma for the Buddhist magazine Tricycle. He’s an experienced experimental musician who’s originally from Texas but has been living on the Westcoast for a long time and has now been based in Upstate New York for a while, working by day as a Zen Buddhist priest and hospice chaplain. This gentle acoustic ambient record is an offering and an expression of his compassionate worldview – an fascinating kaleidoscope of timbres, tones and textures, based on decades of mindful improvisation practice.

(Written by the man behind Zen Sounds)

Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas – Totality
Caroline – Caroline 2
Ambarchi, Berthling, Werliin – Ghosted II
Alan Sparhawk With Trampled By Turtles
Ben Lamar Gay – Yowzers
Enji – Sonor
Daisy Rickman – Howl
The Necks – Disquiet
Gwenifer Raymond – Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark
Joannne Robertson – Blurrr

response from flowflowHQ:

Moin, Norbert! The world of 2025 is full of wonderful music we simply don‘t know. From your list I did hear exactly 5 of 10, and on a little afternoon walk I listened for the first time to that pastoral song meditations by Daisy Rickman. Afterwards I found a package from Italy at my door, exactly 90 minutes ago. I listened to it and thought, well, a perfect pair, Daisy and Massimo. So i highly recommend this album to you. Probably too late for the Christmas tree. Massimo Silverio‘s Surtùm is a discovery for me as is the lady from Cornwall. Coincidence or convergence? Thank you, and good evening. (m.e.)

Between the years I have much time to read and listen and watch. Yesterday I opened the winter season of my small „Electric Cave“, with six people watching that movie „Medium Cool“ by Haskell Wexler that I regard as a masterpiece of political cinema from the late 1960’s. It comes along with a deepness and emotional nakedness that I put on par with Walter Salles’ recent Brazilian movie „I’m Still Here“ set in the darkest times of dictatorship in 1970.

Before that, I had the opportunity to listen to an album of uninhibited magic. Afterwards I read about this album of former Can Man Irmin Schmidt. i was impressed by his latest solo piano work that has been running under the public radar like so much wonderful music is. The old hard core fans shortly pay attention, but then miss the ancient vibes and look at such works as a footstep or a reminder to go for the old records again. Reading this announcement, it seems to be another solo work with our terrible state of the world in mind – and a quantum of utopia. Finding solace. Resistance.

It would probably fit well with that „uninhibited magic“ (I mentioned in the first sentence) of Björn Meyer‘s second solo work for ECM, „Convergence“ to be released one day after my Steve Tibbetts portrait at the Deutschlandfunk, on Jan 23, 2026. Darker than his debut „Provenance“, and miles away from any self-indulegnt virtuosity running on empty, it is another burner from the electric bass player who once was part of Nik Börtsch‘s Ronin and its „zen funk“. I love the cover of „Provenance“, and I love the cover of „Convergence“. A visual signifier par excellence. (The cd can already be ordered at jpc.)

Convergence comes from the prefix con-, meaning together, and the verb verge, which means to turn toward. We can use convergence to describe things that are in the process of coming together, like the slow convergence of your opinions with those of your mother, or for things that have already come together, like the convergence of two roads, or for the place where two things already overlap, like the convergence of your aunt’s crazy wardrobe with avant-garde fashion.

John Darnielle’s sprawling discography ranges from DIY cassettes to this prospective musical about a dwindling trio of shipwreck survivors, complete with orchestral overture and Broadway star Lin-Manuel Miranda. It’s an anguished metaphor for perishable humanity and cosmic mortality. “One day the stars will all go out”, Darnielle’s nameless narrator sings, an event to be told of in future prophets’ tales. But as disaster remorselessly mounts, the soft ’70s New Orleans brass of “Through This Fire” is among the musical balms. Somehow, as sweet strings swell, “everything that sinks will float”. (Nick Hasted, Uncut)

ONE) Beatie Wolfe & Brian Eno: Luminal
TWO) Steve Gunn: Daylight Daylight
THREE) Hilary Woods: Night Criû
FOUR) Lucrecia Dalt: A Danger To Ourselves
FIVE) Jeff Tweedy: Twilight Override
SIX) Rich Dawson: End Of The Middle
SEVEN) The Mountain Goats: Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan
EIGHT) Ryan Davis and The Roadhouse Band: New Threats From The Soul
NINE) Emma Swift: The Resurrection Game
TEN) Baxter Dury: Albarone
ELEVEN) Stereolab: Instant Holograms On Metal Film
TWELVE) Annie & The Caldwells: Can‘t Lose My Soul
THIRTEEN) Robert Forster: Strawberries
FOURTEEN) Mavis Staples: Sad And Beautiful World

2025’s music:  I work occasional weekend evening shifts as a nurse in a care facility.  By 8:30 PM just about everyone is in bed except for one or two residents who have difficulty sleeping.  The aides bring them over in their wheelchairs and park them by my station. This year, while I wrote my shift notes, we listened to Eno and Wolfe’s „Luminal“ until 11 PM.  Most of the time.  One man often insisted on Sinatra.  He and I would sing to „The Summer Wind“ over and over.  

2025’s album:  Sunday night seems to belong to ECM.  In the 80s if I needed to call the Munich office I would stay up very late with an ECM mix tape on, and make the phone call in my Minnesota night, their German morning.  Someone would always pick up the phone, surprised.  This year my Sunday night music was Anouar Brahen’s „After the Last Sky.“  It is an ECM classic in every respect:  it is like a painting come to life.

2025’s song:  „Sunblind“ by Fleet Foxes.  Someone I cared for very much died a few years ago.  She made a playlist that begins with that song.  I only play that at work when nobody is around because I know what will happen.

EINS Steve Tibbetts: Close  (I really wrote enough about „Close“. The most exciting things happen before and after words. In a private space that may be a cave, a horizon. Well, you‘re stumbling upon these lines? HERE are some words!)

ZWEI Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe: Liminal  (The voice, close-miked,  has an unexpected range of  intimacies to offer, but is not really reliable, coming along like an uncanny entity, ghost-like, a figure from a dream, a meditation on human fragility, a delicate splash of colour.  What a seamless balance between the moments on the brink, and the almost warm-hearted adventures with „oceanic“ vibes in between!  Exit strategies for sheer amazement are hard to find on this visionary, wild and strangely relaxed ride!)

DREI Anouar Brahem: After The Last Sky („The album’s title is drawn from a question the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish posed in one of his poems: ‘Where should we go after the last frontiers? Where should the birds fly after the last sky?’ This thought resonates deeply as I listen to this album’s often mournful soul-searching….“ (Michael Gates))

VIER Ambrose Akinmusire: Honey From A Winter Stone („These pieces achieve the kind of rhapsodic intensity that Miles Davis did on Sketches of Spain, feeling almost like something that has always been, field recordings of an older world that has existed just outside of view.“ – Dieses Album werden viele „schwierig“ nennen. Gibt man sich und der Musik Zeit, öffnen sich, ab einem bestimmten Punkt, Welten. So habe ich es erlebt. Wer mal „kurz hineinhört“, hat schon verloren. Der Clou war, wie sich, hinter aller Strenge, irgendwann tiefes Empfinden auftat.)

FÜNF Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe: Luminal (Das Gewicht der Welt, tief und schwebend, Lajla spielte es „on high rotation“ auf Gomerrha. Die Zugänglichkeit behindert die Tiefe nicht. Fantastische lyrics, perfekter Zyklus, seltsam betörend.)

SECHS A Bill Callahan My Days of 58 (When Bill started, it sounded for him like a new Merle Haggard album. Then he changed that. And it became another excellent Bill Callahan album. The privilege of a music journalist, to listen, from time to time, to timeless music from the future.) /// SECHS B Henriksen – Seim – Jormin – Ounaskari: Arcanum (that‘s the „real number six“ … Norwegian excellence!)

SIEBEN Roger Eno: Without Wind, Without Air (The „Elderly Brothers“ on a late career high. Beunruhigende Ruhe, immenser Reichtum, Erschütterungen im melodischem Terrain. Eines seiner schönsten Alben.)

ACHT Steve Gunn: Daylight Daylight (Song- und Soundgewebe der besonderen Art: in der Abmischung üben die Worte keinerlei Dominanz aus, zerfliessen im Raum. Aber hinhören darf man trotzdem:  „Bevor der Film dir erklärt, was er bedeutet, ist die Geschichte völlig falsch und wird es vielleicht auch immer bleiben“, singt Steve G. an einer Stelle und weist damit diskret auf die Sinnlosigkeit hin, nach Anzeichen für einen großen Plan zu suchen, wenn doch die unmittelbare Gegenwart alles ist, was wir haben.)

NEUN Hilary Woods: Night Criû (Eimal taucht, aus dem Nichts, ein Kinderchor auf und singt zu einem schrägen, asynchronen Uhrwerk-Rhythmus. Es ist die Gegenüberstellung von Präzision und Zerfall, die dem Album seinen wahren Charme verleiht. Dream-Pop der besonderen Art. Thanks to Leah Kardos, and her brilliant portrait of Hilary in the January 2026 edition of „Wire“, I discovered this album five days ago.)

Zugabe: Zwischen Rang 1 und 30 liegt allein ein Down Beat-Stern. It’s personal. Macht schon Sinn. „Close“ zum Beispiel, meine Nummer Eins, enthält ein Tor, einen Schlüssel, eine Höhle, einen Horizont. „A shelter from the stars.“ Oder, wie sagt es Mike Gates: „Masterfully crafted, the album’s strength lies in its intimacy and restraint. Steve Tibbetts doesn’t shout – he whispers, he breathes, he invites you to sit with him in the dusk. It’s a work for reflection, for many listens, and for those who value nuance over bombast.“

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