Weekly Music Roundup: Vaya Futuro, Oceanator, and Alan Braufman

Week of July 20: This week, premieres from Mexican band Vaya Futuro and NY sax player Alan Braufman; and Bill Callahan’s protest song. Plus, an unexpected collaboration between Sudan Archives and Martin Kohlstedt.

PREMIERE: Mexico’s Vaya Futuro Take On The Weight Of The World

The Mexican dream-pop/indie-rock band Vaya Futuro are preparing to release their fourth album, El Peso Del Mundo (“The Weight Of The World”) in September, but today we premiere the video for the album’s opening track, “El Abuelo” (“Grandfather”). The subject is nothing less than humanity’s relationship with nature, but it is framed by the reminiscences of a single older man, looking at historic photographs of his family – a sort of “think global/act local” move.  The song begins with the lone sound of Luis Aguillar’s voice… but give it a minute and the rest of band comes in, with a soaring, almost orchestral sound.  Meanwhile the video seems to have been inspired by Godfrey Reggio’s classic silent film Koyaanisqatsi, with its contrasting and sometimes strangely dovetailing imagery of the natural world and the modern human one. 

El Peso Del Mundo comes out on September 4. 

PREMIERE: Sax Player Alan Braufman Releases His Second Album.  45 Years After His First.

In what must surely be a record of some kind (and will presumably be a record of the vinyl kind), veteran NY sax player Alan Braufman is preparing to release his sophomore album, The Fire Still Burns. Braufman, along with the pianist/educator Cooper-Moore, was part of the downtown NY jazz scene in the mid-70s, a time of turbulence and creative ferment; they released Valley of Search under Braufman’s name in 1975. That album became a document of the scene – and a collector’s item when it went out of print. But the reissue in 2018 of that album led to Braufman and Cooper-Moore leading a live performance of it in The Greene Space, and after all those years of not releasing anything under his own name, Braufman apparently felt that the fire was still burning and it was time to put out another record. While the first album was a blast of free improvisation, with a couple of moments in the “spiritual jazz” style, this new one is much more rooted in melody. “Home,” which we’re premiering today, was a song that Braufman wrote about returning to New York after years of living in Salt Lake City. Cooper-Moore and bassist Ken Filiano pound out a steady rhythm, and when drummer Andrew Drury kicks in, the piece takes on the rockin’ “groove jazz” sound that has made bands like The Bad Plus or GoGo Penguin so popular. Meanwhile, Braufman and fellow sax player James Brandon Lewis offer a soulful melody that spawns a series of solos, with Braufman’s alto reaching towards the heavens and then Lewis offering a remarkable moment where his tenor almost sounds like it’s been pre-recorded and played backwards. 

The Fire Still Burns comes out on August 28. 

Bill Callahan Protests Protest Songs with “Protest Song.”  I Think…

The doleful voice of Bill Callahan – who previously recorded many albums under the name Smog – was largely silent for many years until he reappeared with last year’s Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest. But now that he’s back, he’s making up for lost time. He has a new album coming in September, and every Monday he’s releasing a new track from it. This week, it’s “Protest Song.” Longtime fans know to look for a streak of dark humor in Callahan’s work, and this song features a man who’s come home from work and just wants to relax in front of the TV, but finds himself watching a singer doing a protest song. And let’s just say our narrator is not impressed. But is he simply appalled by a simple-minded approach to a complex issue, or is there something else going on? I could easily hear this as a guy who sees his white privilege and easy access to guns being threatened by the song and the protests behind it. But you may hear it differently – often the sign of a good piece of songwriting.

Bill Callahan’s Gold Record comes out on September 4. 

An Unexpected Collaboration: Sudan Archives and Martin Kohlstedt

Here’s one we didn’t see coming. Sudan Archives is the nom de musique of vocalist and fiddler Brittany Parks, who draws on African fiddle traditions as well as Western R&B and experimental hip hop. Martin Kohlstedt is a pianist and composer who trained as a jazz pianist before becoming an electronic music producer. But the Black American woman and the white German man both love classical music, and while there is nothing in their new collaboration that sounds like Mozart or Beethoven, that connection is at the heart of this piece. It’s called “AUHEJA (Sudan Archives Recurrent),” which suggests it’s a remix; but it’s actually something quite different. The original “AUHEJA” is part of an album that Kohlstedt recorded with the famed Leipzig Gewandhaus Choir in Germany. His “Recurrent” project offers fellow musicians access to the choral sounds, the piano tracks, and the electronics of the original album, to use or simply to be inspired by; so Sudan Archives uses a tiny bit at the beginning and then a bit more at the end – but in between it’s all her, creating an easy hip hop beat and layering her violin and vocals over the top. It’s an effortlessly breezy tune, especially given its unusual genesis.  

The 80s Live Again In New Music By Oceanator

Oceanator is the work of the Brooklyn-based singer and musician Elise Okusami, who is way too young to have been around when The Cure were in their pomp. But her new single, “I Would Find You,” is full of synthesizery goodness of the sort that you’d have heard from on any number of New Wave bands in the early 80s – think Thomas Dolby, Human League, and yes, Robert Smith’s band The Cure. In fact, the opening line, “and if the sun never came up tomorrow, how long do you think it would take us to notice?” sounds like something Smith might’ve written. (I hope that sounds like the compliment I intend it to be.) Of course, this isn’t the 80s, and the indie/DIY vibe is also part of the Oceanator sound, so rather than a slick, glossy studio sheen, Oceanator has a charmingly lo-fi, unpolished sound. Her voice is clearly not Auto-tuned, and that works to her advantage, especially in a song like this with its simple message – that no matter what happens, you will not be left alone. 

Oceanator’s LP Things I Never Said comes out on August 28. She’s also, by the way, done a fun cover of the Dead Kennedy’s song “Police Truck” and shared an EP with Bartees Strange in which she sings an unadorned version of the Sam Cooke classic “A Change Is Gonna Come.”