Onward And Upwards, That’s The Way

Robert Wyatt “Trickle Down” – This is taken from last year’s Cuckooland, which I sampled on the strength of O. Nate’s glowing review. It’s a beautiful record, and it reveals its strange charms to me the more I listen to it. “Trickle Down” floats along on a beautiful rising and falling bassline and light-but-busy jazz percussion, and features Wyatt’s distinctive reedy vocals. Like the rest of Cuckooland, it’s a rare contemporary jazz recording that sounds vital and alive while also maintaining a musical continuity with the jazz of the late 50s and early 60s. There’s a fairly obvious Charles Mingus influence here, but it’s not overly reverential or stodgy.

Also: Check out the videos for the Scissor Sisters’ “Laura” and “Comfortably Numb.”