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Micro album reviews 04 ---------------------- It's been, yikes, over a year since I did some short album reviews. I stopped writing but I didn't stop listening. In fact, the quest I embarked on some years back to expand my musical horizons and to be less passive in my consumption of music has been an unmitigated success. I listen to and enjoy a much wider range of musical styles and eras today than I ever have in the past. And I'm not done yet! No over-arching theme to today's three, just a hodgepodge. John Hassell's "Aka / Darabi / Java" (1983) [1] This album feels, to me, waaaay ahead of its time. I've never heard anything else like it that isn't a decade younger or more, but maybe that's just ignorance on my part. This album is the ~45 minute (cassette enthusiasts rejoice!) result of the enthusiastic application of early digital audio technology to recordings of Hassell's own Indian raga-inspired trumpet playing plus recordings of a diverse range of traditional ethnic instruments. Hassell called this a "unified primitive/futurist sound". It's repetitive and trance inducing and unmistakably digital/electronic, while also being smooth and mellow and organic sounding, like the incredible and unexpected lovechild of ambient/minimal techno and record store bargain bin "world music" compilation discs that violently outshines both of its parents. If you can recommend me more stuff like this, please do! Donald Byrd's "Fancy Free" (1970) [2] It took a long time, and a circuitous route via jazz rock and jazz fusion, if that's a distinction you care to make, but it finally happened and I've become a fan of "proper" jazz, whatever that means. Donald Byrd is a *firm* favourite and I could easily have made a post just recommending three of his albums, but let's not get carried away. I might hesitate to dub "Fancy Free" my favourite of the Byrd albums I enjoy, but it is, to my neophyte jazz mind without the proper taxonomic skills to explain how or why, the one which feels the stylistically purest and simplest. The album name and the album art (sea birds soaring against a lovely cloudscape) fit the music perfectly. It's cheerful and playful, relaxed and unhurried, sure to induce a good mood. Ose's "Adonia" (1978) [3] Goodness me, I'm not even sure what to call this. Electronic progressive rock? The French answer to Krautrock? Ose was a short-lived (well, originally short-lived anyway, back in the 70s; astonishingly, they resurfaced with a new release on Bandcamp in 2021 after a multi-decade hiatus! [4]) project lead by prolific experimental musician Richard Pinhas who recorded many more albums with his earlier band Heldon, and if you enjoy "Adonia" you will likely enjoy Heldon's output and Pinhas' solo work, too. I'm sharing "Adonia" here rather than anything else simply because this album was