Peter Margasak's 40 Favorite Albums of 2017, Numbers 10 Through 1 | Bleader

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By Ben Joravsky | 03.27.18 BLEADER Her style? ‘A little weird, a little masculine, a little trendy, and a lot of streetwear’ "I really try to teeter the line between extremes," says design manager Katrina Wolf in this week's Street View. By Isa Giallorenzo | 03.27.18 BLEADER The secret lives of food critics, circa 1980 It was a dangerous profession, as the Reader's Toni Schlesinger discovered. By Aimee Levitt | 03.27.18 BLEADER Meet the trio of young Latino ‘Berniecrats’ who shocked the Chicago political establishment on election night 5 The members of “Team Chuy” swept their races on the southwest side. "They took on big-money interests and the Democratic machine, and they won." By Ryan Smith | 03.23.18 The fourth and final part of this year's countdown begins below. You can read about picks 40 through 31 here, 30 through 21 here, BLEADER and 20 through 11 here. A spoof of 80s teen movies and more of the best things to do in Chicago this week Chicago Dance Month Kickof Celebration and more goings-on March 26-29 ADVERTISING By Rachel Yang | 03.26.18 Ad Ad 10. Mariel Roberts, Cartography (New Focus) New York cellist Mariel Roberts is best known as a founding member of the adventurous Mivos Quartet, but she's achieved her greatest feat thus far with the bracing solo recital Cartography, which consists of four works written specifically for her. The album opens with "Gretchen am Spinnrade" by Wet Ink Ensemble pianist Eric Wubbels, named after a lied by Franz Schubert that's arguably the first art song; Wubbels's piece bears little surface resemblance to Schubert's, instead colliding and snapping apart its charged lines in an intense, electric dialogue. The record never quite recovers—if that's the correct word—from the furious brilliance of "Gretchen am Spinnrade," but the works that follow (by Cenk Ergün, George Lewis, and David Brynjar Franzson) are almost as rewarding and less draining. Roberts plays with a serrated tone and diamond-sharp precision when that's called for, but she's just as efective with ominous overtones and icy, ringing upper- register flurries (on Franzson's "The Cartography of Time") or percussive pizzicato passages that ping and pop (on Ergün's electronics-saturated "Aman"). Her performances are dazzling technically, but the cellist isn't just a virtuoso—she's also a fearless explorer with a keen curatorial mind-set. Cartography buy share by Mariel Roberts 1. Eric Wubbels: gretchen am spinnrade 00:00 / 16:38 9. R. Andrew Lee, Randy Gibson: The Four Pillars Appearing From the Equal D Under Resonating Apparitions of the Eternal Process in the Midwinter Starfield 16 VIII 10 (Kansas City) (Irritable Hedgehog) Denver pianist R. Andrew Lee has proved his mastery of hyperminimalism and durational music, and he tackles both on his recording of this three-and-a-half-hour opus by New York composer Randy Gibson. Like Ellen Arkbro (see below), Gibson is a disciple of minimalist icon La Monte Young, and he particularly shares the master's interest in just intonation. That tuning system requires a piano to be thoroughly retuned, though, and because Lee wanted to be able to take Gibson's piece on the road, the composer developed a technique whereby subtle amplification and electronics could achieve a similar efect without mucking endlessly with the strings. The Four Pillars uses only one note of the scale (albeit in all seven octaves of the keyboard), but its variety of rhythmic attacks—single tones separated by chasms of silence, for instance, or rapid tones that pile up overtones like billowing smoke—prevent it from growing tedious. The music stays in constant motion, exploring decay and harmony, and the closing movement, "Roaring," digs into the piano's bass register in a thrilling, thunderous climax. Randy Gibson: The Four Pillars Appearing f… buy share by R. Andrew Lee 3. Processing 00:00 / 16:02 8. Dálava, The Book of Transfigurations (Songlines) Vancouver singer Julia Ulehla and her husband, adventurous jazz guitarist Aram Bajakian, collaborate with cellist Peggy Lee and drummer Dylan van der Schyf to present sorrowful 19th- and 20th-century Moravian folk songs in a variety of styles: art-rock, folk, even archival recordings by the singer's grandfather Jiri. (Her great-grandfather Vladimir, a biologist by trade, was also a passionate ethnographer who wrote a key book on the folk music of his region, which is the source of the songs on this remarkable album.) The arrangements are sometimes delicate, sometimes punishing, but the beauty of the songs always comes through powerfully. Ulehla careens, sails, and shimmers through the varied interpretations with penetrating strength—her singing is sometimes heavenly and ethereal, sometimes gruf and earthy, as though she were channeling the spirit of a hardscrabble village woman who's known these songs her whole life. Dálava - The Book of Transfigurations buy share by Julia Ulehla & Aram Bajakian 9. Na stráznickém rynku / War 00:00 / 05:45 7. Ikue Mori, Obelisk (Tzadik) Few computer musicians have developed an aesthetic as instantly recognizable as that of Ikue Mori, a Japanese expat who got her start in the late 70s playing crude but inimitably original drum parts in the great no-wave trio DNA. For most of the past few decades, however, she's focused on electronics, developing a wonderfully liquid sound suggestive of chiming bells, chirping insects, and dripping water—a constant stream of shifting, globular tones. She's used that approach in many improvisation- oriented contexts, including the prolific duo Phantom Orchard with harpist Zeena Parkins, but until recently she's tended to stay inside her comfort zone in these collaborations. In 2017 Mori released two albums that pushed her out of that space: a duo with pianist Craig Taborn called Highsmith (Tzadik) and a tune-oriented quartet recording with cellist Okkyung Lee, pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, and drummer Jim Black called Obelisk. Both are excellent, but the latter really blew my mind. Mori's laptop manipulations alternate between sinister and whimsical within arrangements that combine rhythmic ferocity, melodic whimsy, timbral surprise, and atmospheric ambiguity. The pieces include plenty of improvisation, but their relatively strong compositional frameworks bring out new dimensions of Mori's creativity. 6. Ellen Arkbro, For Organ and Brass (Subtext) Young Swedish composer Ellen Arkbro, known previously for her work in underground rock circles, claims as mentors Canadian composer Marc Sabat, minimalist pioneer La Monte Young, and Young's wife, Marian Zazeela—and she's surely made them proud with this beautiful, meditative album. On the album's three pieces, she guides organist Johan Graden and Berlin-based brass ensemble Zinc & Copper through harrowing microtonal alleyways— because she wrote in meantone temperament, for the recording she found a 17th-century church organ in Tangermünde, Germany, that used that tuning system. The musicians move among a handful of sustained pitches, generating clouds of overtones that shimmer outward from tight note clusters. On "Three" the brass players operate on their own, foregrounding the interaction of French horn, tuba, and trombone—every subtle change in pitch creates thrilling collisions of sound, as if new instruments were produced by each combination. The writing is simple and mesmerizing, relying on a continuously cycling tone progression, but the way it's orchestrated makes it feel timeless and profound. For organ and brass buy share by Ellen Arkbro 1. For organ and brass 00:00 / 20:08 5. Chris Speed Trio, Platinum on Tap (Intakt) Reedist Chris Speed's trio with drummer Dave King and bassist Chris Tordini places his velvety tenor saxophone front and center, and the group's second album, Platinum on Tap, feels like a major statement. The volatile rhythm section maintains an energetic swing even when it fractures time, forcing Speed to weave through the shards—and even at those moments, the reedist's tone never loses its cool. His sound has never been more glorious—a kind of hazy pastel marbled with a serious grain, it's both airy and substantive. Sometimes he almost seems to be playing from under a blanket, but instead of mufing him it creates extra intimacy. Speed wrote most of the music on the new album, but the two tunes by other people say just as much about him. When he dances through the Hoagy Carmichael ballad "Stardust," it's as if he's reinvented its melody, shrouding it in darkness. The other cover is a killer version of Albert Ayler's "Spirits," which Speed sprints through as though it were a bebop number—he departs from the composer's gospel-steeped vibe in order to break the melody apart and reassemble it into a mosaiclike abstraction. Album opener "Red Hook Nights" is a tender ballad where Speed uses his elliptical, beautiful style to elaborate on the tune with luxurious patience.

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