Looking ahead, September 2010-October 2010

So much news kept popping up on Bounce and other places, I couldn’t even squeeze the time to post them on the Facebook page.

My new job is really kicking my butt but in a good way.

Still, I feel self-conscious for letting so much time pass between entries. So many albums I’ve overplayed on my playlist but too much inertia to let you know about them. When will I accept the backlog will never be cleared out?

New releases are only going to compound the problem. What else is new?

Quruli, Kotoba ni Naranai, Egao wo Misete Kure yo!, Sept. 8

I do hope at some point Quruli will reach a point where they end up recording something akin to R.E.M.’s Accelerate. Not a loud rock record flying in the face of so much painstaking detailed lushness, but an album that reminds fans past and present why they started listening in the first place.

Robin Holcomb/Wayne Horvitz/Talking Pictures, The Point of It All, Sept. 14

Steve Reich, Double Sextext/2×5, Sept. 14

Sept. 14 looks like New Music Day. Steve Reich’s Double Sextet won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009, but it’s taken this long for Nonesuch to get a recording of that work out. By contast, Jennifer Higdon’s 2010 award-winner was already recorded by the time award was handed out.

Nonesuch alumni Holcomb and Horvitz team up with Vancouver jazz quartet Talking Pictures on an album of Holcomb’s work.

THE BACK HORN, Asylum, Sept. 15

Damn, this band has been around for a long time.

Nico Muhly, I Drink the Air Before Me, Sept. 21

Nico Muhly, A Good Understanding, Sept. 21

Nico Muhly’s work makes the major label leap with these two recordings released by Decca. Crap. A Universal label. That means it won’t be on eMusic.

VOLA & THE ORIENTAL MACHINE, PRINCIPLE, Sept. 22

GO!GO!7188, Acoustic Taisakusen! Acoustic Live Best, Sept. 22

Despite the departure of guitarist Aoki Yutaka, SA-KA-NA ELECTRIC DEVICE was a pretty decent album. It wasn’t the compact keeper like Halan’naca Darkside, but it was a vast improvement over ANDROID ~like a house mannequin~. Here’s hoping PRINCIPLE can keep the momentum.

ACO, devil’s hands, Oct. 6

BONNIE PINK, Dear Diary, Oct. 6

ACO goes the independent route after a long career with Sony Music Entertainment. I was disappointed the singles preceding this album were released online, and thus out of range of the overseas market. (Unless, of course, the Evil Sharing Networks were employed.) I still wouldn’t mind seeing a Golden Pink Arrows album surface at some point.

BONNIE PINK also releases her umpteenth album on that day.

Annie Lennox, A Christmas Cornucopia, Nov. 23

Christmas albums are usually a source of ridicule on this site — Sting? Enya? — but a Christmas album by Annie Lennox sounds intriguingly appropriate. Countless times have I described her voice as "icy", and my hope is that she injects some of her trademark poignancy to music generally devoid of depth.

Updated dates

Duran Duran, Notorious (Special Edition), Sept. 28
Duran Duran, Big Thing (Special Edition), Sept. 28