The Newsletter Lives on

The three-part film titled 'Sometimes When We Touch' will be aired on Paramount+ starting January 3rd.

From the 1960s, Italy’s thriving film industry pumped out commercial movies that often had better soundtracks than they deserved. Once lost, now a new generation is keen to share their unique sound

2022 started off really well. A bunch of great albums came out in January, including alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins’ The 7th Hand; bassist Luke Stewart’s The Bottom; the Matthew Shipp/Michael Bisio duo Flow Of Everything; 2 Blues For Cecil by the trio of trumpeter Enrico Rava, bassist William Parker, and drummer Andrew Cyrille; John Zorn and Bill Laswell’s first collection of duos, The Cleansing; and Historic Music Past Tense Future, an archival recording by Peter Brötzmann, Parker, and Milford Graves. I hosted a streaming event on New Year’s Day, the Burning Ambulance Festival, that included performances from bassist William Parker, saxophonists Muriel Grossmann, Rodrigo Amado, and Patrick Shiroishi, pianist Lisa Ullén, drummer Gard Nilssen’s trio Acoustic Unity (see the list below), and many other musicians from the worlds of jazz, avant-garde improv, noise, and electronic music. In February, my book Ugly Beauty: Jazz In The 21st Century, which I’d spent most of 2021 writing, came out. The year held incredible promise.

The best of the year.

Montreux Jazz Festival has released the complete list for its MJF Spotlight initiative for 2023. Read on for more on the line-up…

Here they are: my top ten thrillers, and a few other outstanding crime books and TV shows. ___________________________________ Top Ten Psychological Thrillers ___________________________________ Ew…

Nursery rhymes, excessive vinyl colorways, onstage gender reveals, and more.

In 2022, you can’t budge for new music memoirs and scene histories. But who’s reading them, where’s the quality control – and the diversity?

How the CIA stole $5 million from Creedence Clearwater Revival to bust commies.

After detailing a few major changes that are happening at The Quietus, JR Moores champions his favourite psych rock records of the year