Would you believe I mostly succeeded in shutting the world out while on vacation? It helped that the weather was gorgeous and we ended the trip with a snorkeling excursion that was so good I almost extended our trip. I even was able to use the extremely spotty wifi to get two archive reviews out – I planned on adding Can and Zappa at a minimum but had to make due with the abrupt, kind of braindead writing on The Doors and Neil Young. I’m okay with that – the priority was vacation and hanging with my family, and that rocked. I DID listen to a lot of music while on the beach, so this is the weird aural summary of my trip, I guess…

• Soft Machine – “Teeth”
• John Abercrombie – “Back-Woods Song”
• Can – “Ashton 77 Zwei”
• Chime Oblivion – “NEIGHBORHOOD DOG”

I had been meaning to get into Soft Machine for a while now, and found a great budget CD set spanning their classic run of albums from 1970-1973. The opening track to 1971’s Fourth has a great Zappa/jazz rock vibe I really dig…I recently watched an overview of the ECM jazz label over on Sea Of Tranquility and fell for the work of John Abercrombie. This track from Gateway features him, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette – a killer lineup…I got about a paragraph and a half into my review of Can and their Live in Ashton 1977 release before internet problems and beach beckoning, so you’ll have to settle for a track from the album here…Moving in a completely different direction, Chime Oblivion is the latest project from Osees mastermind John Dwyer and it might be the best thing he’s done in ages, great post punk with a distinct 80s vibe…

• Blood Vulture – “A Dream About Starving to Death”
• Dessiderium – “Dover Hendrix”
• Hiromi – “XYZ (featuring Sonicwonder)”
• Caroline – “Tell Me I Never Knew That (featuring Caroline Polachek)”
• Sons of Ra – “Disintergration (Alabama Revisited)”

I had no idea that Blood Vulture is from the guy behind one of my favorite pandemic discoveries Two Minutes To Late Night, and the single from their forthcoming debut sounds fantastic, gothic and metal in all the right ways…There’s been some great progressive death metal coming out this year, including Fractal Universe and Tómarúm, but right now my money is on Dessiderium, the solo project from the guy behind Arkaik…I had no idea who Hiromi was, or that she’s been putting out albums for over 20 years, but this latest collaborative album with Sonicwonder is fantastic, proggy and jazzy in equal measure… Caroline was a recommendation from Erik, and after a great debut their sophomore album is coming soon, and this single featuring Caroline Polacheck is gorgeous…Finally we have the jazz/rock/metal hybrid of Sons of Ra, whose album I had pretty much on repeat for the entirety of my flight to Aruba. Great way to start the trip and end this playlist.

Be safe, be good to each other. See you next week.