Daily Drops · Vol.085每日唱片 · Vol.085

A Zimbabwean star and a Bristol post-punk crew, shelved for thirty-five years and only now allowed to speak. 剛把話說清楚，他們轉頭就讓你聽他們怎麼把話想出來。

Friday, June 26, 2026 2026年6月26日星期五

01 Pick of the Day 今日精選

SML — Spontaneous Music Live

Genre類型: Jazz / Free Improvisation
Label廠牌: International Anthem
Format介質: LP / Cassette / Streaming

Weeks after releasing their second studio album, HOW YOU BEEN, this Los Angeles quintet put out its inverse: two side-length improvisations, unedited, recorded across a three-night December residency at Zebulon and committed live to analog tape by Bryce Gonzales. The lineup is a who's-who of the city's improvising class—Anna Butterss on bass, Josh Johnson on saxophone, Jeremiah Chiu on synthesizer, Booker Stardrum on drums, Gregory Uhlmann on guitar. Live improvisation usually ends one of two ways, either collapsing into display or curdling into politeness; SML hold the narrow middle, five players breathing as one organism, nobody grabbing, nobody withdrawing. If the studio record is the band saying something clearly, this is the rarer pleasure of hearing them think it up. My pick of the week. 剛發完第二張錄音室專輯《HOW YOU BEEN》幾週，這支洛杉磯五人組就放出一張完全相反的東西：兩段長達單面的即興，一刀未剪，去年 12 月在 Zebulon 連錄三晚，由 Bryce Gonzales 直接錄混到類比母帶。陣容是洛杉磯即興圈最熟的幾張面孔——Anna Butterss 的貝斯、Josh Johnson 的薩克斯、Jeremiah Chiu 的合成器、Booker Stardrum 的鼓、Gregory Uhlmann 的吉他。即興現場最怕兩種結局：要嘛炫技散架，要嘛禮貌得發悶。他們偏偏穩在中間——五個人像同時呼吸的一個生物，誰都不搶，也沒人退場。錄音室專輯是把話說清楚，這張是聽他們怎麼把話想出來的。本期我的首選。

Tift Merritt — Sugar

Genre類型: Americana / Country-Soul
Label廠牌: One Riot Records
Format介質: Vinyl / CD / Streaming

Nine years. After 2017's Stitch of the World, Merritt mostly stepped out of the light—raising a daughter, serving as a practitioner-in-residence at Duke, advocating for musicians' rights—and the songs that accrued across that span became Sugar. Lawrence Rothman produced; it was tracked live in Nashville with a cast of ringers (Audley Freed, Robert Ellis, Dr. Dog's Eric Slick). Her voice has always belonged to what The New Yorker once filed under a "proud tradition of distaff country soul," somewhere between Dusty Springfield and Bobbie Gentry; Emmylou Harris called her a diamond in a coal mine. A comeback album is the easiest thing in the world to overplay, all compensatory effort. Sugar does the opposite—loose, warm, proving nothing, the sound of someone no longer in a hurry to be heard. 九年。上一張《Stitch of the World》之後她基本退出聚光燈——撫養女兒、在杜克大學任駐校、替音樂人爭權益。這九年的詞攢成了《Sugar》，製作人 Lawrence Rothman，在納許維爾現場同步錄，樂手是 Audley Freed、Robert Ellis、Dr. Dog 的 Eric Slick 一票熟手。她的聲音一直是那種「distaff country soul」——The New Yorker 把她排進 Dusty Springfield、Bobbie Gentry 那一脈，Emmylou Harris 乾脆說她是「煤礦裡的鑽石」。回歸專輯最容易寫成補償性的用力，但《Sugar》反著來：鬆、暖、不證明什麼，像一個終於不急著被聽見的人。

Aliya Ultan — Looks Far Woman

Genre類型: Contemporary Classical / Experimental Cello
Label廠牌: Kou Records
Format介質: LP / Streaming

A solo cello record produced, recorded and mixed by Randall Dunn—the man behind Sunn O))) and Jóhann Jóhannsson—which is reason enough to sit up. The title comes from a figure in Ultan's private mythology, a seer who moves between worlds carrying patience and the medicine of transformation, drawn in part from Jamie Sams' The Thirteen Original Clan Mothers. The six movements are named for wind, road, mountain, sky, seed and heart, but narrative isn't the aim; Ultan writes states rather than stories, treating breath and sustained attention as compositional material and settling on the hypnagogic threshold just shy of sleep. Her cello rarely sings. It rubs, it rings in overtones, it advances on you like a slow change in body temperature. For an hour with the lights off. 由 Randall Dunn（做過 Sunn O)))、Jóhann Jóhannsson）操刀的大提琴獨奏專輯，光這條就夠讓人坐直。專輯名取自她私人神話裡的一位女先知——在世界之間來回、帶著耐心與轉化之藥的「遠望之人」。六段組曲按風、路、山、天、種子、心來排，但別指望敘事；Ultan 寫的是狀態，把呼吸和持續的注意力當成作曲材料，停在快睡著還沒睡著的那道臨界上。大提琴在她手裡很少「歌唱」，更多是摩擦、是泛音、是一種緩慢逼近的體溫。封面是手繪，封底肖像出自科幻插畫師——一半土地神話，一半星際迷幻。給關燈、放空的那一小時。

Abul Mogard & Rafael Anton Irisarri — Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun

Genre類型: Ambient / Drone
Label廠牌: Black Knoll Editions
Format介質: BioVinyl / Streaming

Two seasoned hands at ambient and drone meet for a second time, and the method is the message: rather than book a conventional studio, they spent three days at Berlin's Morphine Raum—a stageless room that is both venue and studio—remaking the music each evening and recording it live to multitrack. The sources are rotary speakers, modular synthesizers and bowed guitar, all routed through a 1970s console; Martina Bertoni's cello and Andrea Burelli's violin and voice surface on a few tracks like light through a seam in cloud. The six titles—the eastern wild, over the domes, a blue descent—read like landscape but behave more like the shape time takes once it's stretched. Pressed on bio-based vinyl. It hurries you nowhere; it simply enlarges the room. 兩位氛圍/drone 的老手第二次聯手，方法本身就是內容：他們沒進傳統錄音室，而是在柏林 Morphine Raum——一個沒有舞臺、既能演又能錄的房間——駐了三天，每晚把音樂重塑一遍，現場錄到多軌。聲源是旋轉揚聲器、模組合成器、弓拉吉他，全過一臺 1970 年代的混音臺。Bertoni 的大提琴和 Burelli 的小提琴在幾軌裡浮上來，像光從雲縫裡漏。六段標題——東方的荒野、穹頂之上、一次藍色的下沉——聽著像風景，其實更像時間被拉長後的形狀。壓在生物基黑膠上。它不催你去任何地方，只是把房間的體積放大給你聽。

Walrus Ghost — If You Could Be Here Now

Genre類型: Indie Rock / Post-Rock
Label廠牌: Hush Hush Records
Format介質: Vinyl / Streaming

Walrus Ghost is the alias of the Brooklyn musician Christian Banks, and this is his second solo full-length, arriving after a stretch of quiet. He records real instruments and then kneads, stretches and sands them with electronics, building a homespun species of post-rock soaked in ambient, folk, lo-fi and a faint mist of late-'90s electronica. The fifteen tracks scan less like an album than a faded home movie—each one short, each one trying to hold onto an afternoon already walking out the door. The title says most of it: this is a record about absence, about filling the empty chair with sound. Out on the reliably tasteful Hush Hush label, run by the KEXP DJ Alex Ruder, on twelve-inch vinyl. 布魯克林的 Christian Banks 一個人做的計畫，蟄伏許久後的第二張。他把真實樂器錄進去，再用電子手段揉、拉、磨，做出一種家庭作坊式的 post-rock：底子是 post-rock，但浸過氛圍、民謠、lo-fi 和一點 90 年代電子的潮氣。十五軌聽下來不像專輯，更像一卷褪了色的家庭錄影——每段都短，每段都像在挽留一個正在走遠的下午。標題《如果你能在這裡就好了》幾乎把它說盡了：這是一張關於不在場的唱片，關於把空出來的位置用聲音填一填。由 KEXP 的 DJ 主理的 Hush Hush 發行，12 吋黑膠。

Alden Hellmuth — Tether

Genre類型: Jazz / Punk / Free Improvisation
Label廠牌: LEITER
Format介質: Limited Vinyl / Streaming

The New York alto saxophonist won a German Jazz Prize for her 2024 debut, Good Intentions; this is the follow-up, eight tracks that jam jazz, punk and free improvisation into the same small space and refuse to lower the volume—two basses underneath, Justin Brown driving from the kit. The album's title names its governing idea: however far the music scatters or detonates, a tether always pulls the players back to one another, and back to the listener. That anchoring is exactly what makes it wear better than most "avant-garde jazz"; the chaos has a mooring. Out on LEITER, the label Nils Frahm co-founded, on limited vinyl. The titles bite, too—"Microfictions," "Definitely Not Friends," "Supply Chain"—a musician writing contemporary nerves straight into the horn. 紐約中音薩克斯手，2024 年首作《Good Intentions》拿了德國爵士獎，這是第二張。八軌裡她把爵士、龐克和自由即興塞到一起，吵起來毫不收斂——雙貝斯打底，Justin Brown 的鼓在後面頂。但專輯名點破了核心：再怎麼散、怎麼炸，總有一根「繫繩」把樂手拉回彼此、也拉回聽者。這正是它比一般前衛爵士耐聽的地方——它的混亂是有錨的。發行方 LEITER 是 Nils Frahm 的廠牌，限量黑膠。曲名也帶刺：〈Microfictions〉〈Definitely Not Friends〉〈Supply Chain〉——一個把當代神經質寫進薩克斯的人。

Biggie Tembo & Startled Insects — House of Stone

Genre類型: Zimbabwean Jit / Post-Punk
Label廠牌: Bristol Archive Records
Format介質: Limited Vinyl (200) / Streaming

A reel left in a drawer for more than three decades. Biggie Tembo was the former frontman of the Bhundu Boys, the great Zimbabwean jit band; in the late 1980s, having left the group, he relocated from Harare to Bristol and cut this material in Startled Insects' studio, after which the whole project was quietly shelved. Zimbabwe's bright, scalding guitar lines collide with the exploratory edge of Bristol post-punk, four musicians playing freely and ignoring the question of what genre this is supposed to be. Tembo died in 1995, never seeing it released. Bristol Archive now presses it to two hundred copies of vinyl—the kind of belated meeting that usually gets turned into a nostalgia specimen, except this one was alive all along, only now permitted to make a sound. 一卷擱了三十多年的錄音。Biggie Tembo 是辛巴威 jit 名團 Bhundu Boys 的前主唱；1980 年代末他離了團、從哈拉雷搬到布里斯托，鑽進 Startled Insects 的工作室錄下這批東西，然後整個計畫被悄悄收進抽屜。辛巴威那種亮得發燙的吉他律動，撞上布里斯托後龐克的實驗稜角，四個人放開手做，誰也不去管這算什麼類型。Tembo 1995 年就走了，沒等到它面世。如今 Bristol Archive 把它壓成兩百張黑膠——這種遲到的相遇最容易被做成懷舊標本，但這張不是：它當年就是活的，只是現在才被允許出聲。本期唯一非英語。