time to log off

but first...

I’m taking a break from hitting you with depressing political news to look back at some pieces of music/film/literature that has resonated with me this year. I’m not going to smother you with a year-end listicle because we’re tired of that, and also, time doesn’t really matter anymore with Covid and all. Everything is one long stream these days.

But let’s talk about art…man. Art is the ultimate truth, amiright? Because the truth is what you make it. Some people think everything we do as people is art—whether you’re a painter, a county tax assessor or a serial killer—it’s all really just a form of deep expression. John Wayne Gacey? An incredible artist. The Bolshevik Revolution? Definitely one huge art coup. We know this because once the Communists got into power they didn’t want to do shit but sit around and smoke cigarettes.

Anyway, I’m going to nerd out right quick on some of the best music out of Los Angeles this year: the zone-out jazz of Sam Wilkes and Sam Gendel…

The Sams—Sam Wilkes and Sam Gendel—make music that oozes down the credits of an old PBS show. Or picture the Weather Channel’s warm VHS glow after an edible. This is jazz meant not so much to be heard, but felt through your lower chakra.

The duo’s first album, 2018’s Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar, is one of my favs from the past few years. If you watched the film Malcom & Marie, you may have caught the demure sounds of BOA floating through the warring couple’s home during one of their détentes. The album toggles between sounding really out there and really familiar. It sounds produced and improvisatory at the same time.

This year the Sams released their second album together, Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar More Songs (Leaving Records), a collection of live cuts mixing minimalist hip hop, ambient, and John Hassell’s 4th World. It is meditative at its core, but also celebratory. Gendel’s saxophone sometimes sounds like it is played through a ping pong machine, other times it is a languid bath. Wilkes’ bass sounds more like a touch-screen keyboard. There’s a cover of The Beach Boys’ Caroline No with a bit of a plot twist halfway through. “GREEDINGS TO IDRIS MORE SONGS” is like Doug Funnie music, in the best way possible.

There has been a great jazz scene in Los Angeles over the past decade, and this music is an exciting, new evolution of that. Gendel might have had the most prolific year out of any musician doin’ it right now. He’s released like eight albums, one of which is 3.5 hours long.

Wilkes, meanwhile, also dropped one of my favorite records of 2021, the transportive One Theme & Subsequent Improvisation, a double drum and keyboard album that feels like being sucked through a wormhole. Its nine tracks flow uninterrupted for 30 minutes, one giant soup of cymbal splashes, rolling drums and sweeps of a Roland Space Echo. Just when you seem totally lost at sea, a few repeating motifs return to hook you back in and bring you home. All the musicians on here are great, but Christian Euman’s drumming is so good.

The album has received almost zero coverage in the music press, including Pitchfork, so even more of a reason to give it a shot. Wilkes remains one of the best (and cheapest) live shows I’ve seen in LA, a musician who has been gigging all across the city with his bass and loop pedal. This one is majorly slept on.

If there is something that helped keep your mind off things this year, drop a comment. Happy holidays. I hope you get to log off for a little while.