excellent and excellently-titled

Supergroup dynamics at play.

Wilco, The Whole Love (streaming at NPR)
John Cale, The Academy in Peril
So Percussion, Mackey: It Is Time
Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Berio/Xenakis /Turnage: Trombone Concertos Dedicated to Christian Lindberg
David Tudor and Ensemble Modern, John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra (on YouTube)
Yvar Mikhashoff, Yvar Mikhashoff's Incitaion to Desire
SuperHeavy, SuperHeavy

• Along with the comments on Wilco's new album, I'm holding off my comments on So Percussion for the 225 Record Crate blog as well. I'm sure the suspense is killing you, but think about how excited you'll be when they finally get here next Wednesday. It's like being a week out from Christmas, the most anticipatory time of the year! Like Advent!. You can wear purple and sing "O antiphons" to bide your time.
      
• This week's Record Crate discusses the Radio Bar, new music by Blitzen Trapper and Grace Jones and tonight's local performance by jazz master McCoy Tyner, whose 1970's music I summed up as
  
  if it can be summed up, is atomized, clouds of notes forming the melodies.
  
  Sounds like something I'd say. I also got a new picture! It's the same one as on here, but it's new over there! It's like when you have that second, less-exciting Christmas over at a relative's house after real Christmas!
    
• There was a time when this was my favorite album.
  
  
  
  Below is not the same recording (Cagey sorts: Is there a difference between Concerto for Prepared Piano & Orchestra and ...& Chamber Orchestra?), which is important with Cage given all the chance operation stuff, but it puts the same kind of smoke in the room.
  
  
  It is in three parts (part 2 and 3), but really, it sounds not that different with all three parts going at once. Maybe more "eventful." The Slinky-laser zaps about a minute into part 3 go with everything.
    
• The excellent label copy for the excellent and excellently-titled Yvar Mikhashoff's Incitaion to Desire:  Yvar was an internationally known virtuoso pianist, bon vivant and ballroom dancer who died of AIDS a few years ago. One of his obsessive passions in life was to commission tangos from living composers of all ilk. This collection is drawn from sessions we recorded near the end of his life, when his sight was failing but his playing was still brilliant. These short pieces are mostly played from memory and include some terrifically funny titles: "Fromage Dangereux", which is self explanatory, and the final "Thorn Torn Lips" which observes the condition of the gypsy dancer who was kissed before the rose in her mouth was removed.
      
• OK, I don't usually bother to throw stuff under the bus from this comfy perch, but SuperHeavy is a supergroup involving Mick Jagger, Joss Stone, Damien Marley,  Bollywood composer A.R. Raham, and Dave Stewart of Eurythmics. It's like a special music episode of The Love Boat where Captain Stubing steers the Pacific Princess into an iceberg and the guest stars wake up shipwrecked on Bad Idea Island, doomed to overcome their differences and cobble together a new kind of popular music to brighten their lost horizon and perhaps, learn from one another.
  
  
  SuperHeavy, "Miracle Worker"