Things we like: Linda May Han Oh, Ingrid Laubrock, Spirit of Hamlet

Perhaps this is the year, I tell myself, when I'll let my web presence, such as it is, whither away to nothing. But then I'll have a week like this, when several eminently listenable downloads crossed my virtual threshold, and I figure I might as well give them a listen and a line before erasing myself from the blogosphere.

Listening to the Australian bassist-vocalist-composer Linda May Han Oh's new album The Glass Hours (out June 2 on her ecologically responsible Biophilia label), I'm reminded of her very first album, 2008's trio date Entry, which was the first place I heard Ambrose Akinmusire's trumpet. Since then, she's performed as a side musician with the likes of Pat Metheny, Vijay Iyer, and Geri Allen, and released four more albums as leader. The most recent, 2019's Aventurine, was an intrepid composer's showcase which teamed Oh's jazz quartet with a string quartet and vocal ensemble. While The Glass Hours employs a smaller unit (vocalist Sara Serpa, tenorman Mark Turner, pianist Fabian Almazan, and Entry drummer Obed Calvaire), it's no less ambitious in scope. Here, Oh blends her voice with Serpa's on a set of lyrics that address the composer's feelings about mortality (the folkloric-sounding "Jus Ad Bellum" has a title that refers to the laws of warfare). The musicians develop Oh's themes with a deft and airy swing, buoyed by Calvaire's nimble propulsion. Oh recently collected her first Grammy, for her work on Teri Lynn Carrington's New Standards, Vol. 1 -- a set of compositions by women composers whose work Carrington believes is worthy of inclusion in the jazz canon. To these ears, Oh's in that league herself.

Speaking of female composers deserving wider recognition, I first heard the German saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock in 2010, playing challenging experimental compositions and improv in Paradoxical Frog with Kris Davis and Tyshawn Sorey. Besides performing as a side musician with Davis, Mary Halvorson, and drummer Tom Rainey, among others, Laubrock has also led her own ensembles, including the orchestral projects Contemporary Chaos Practices and Dreamt Twice, Twice Dreamt. On her latest album, The Last Quiet Place (out March 31 on Pyroclastic), she fronts a string-heavy sextet (violinist Mazz Swift, cellist Tomeka Reid, guitarist Brandon Seabrook, bassist Michael Formanek, and Rainey) through a series of compositions inspired by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert's books The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History and Under A White Sky: The Nature of the Future. Rather than New Age-y meditation music, Laubrock's compositions here capture the tension and uncertainty of living in a world on the brink of environmental disaster, blending scripted and spontaneous creation seamlessly. Her best foil here is Seabrook, a disruptive improviser whom I saw duet effectively (on banjo) with Jen Shyu during the Nasher Sculpture Center's Harry Bertoia retrospective last year. A new milestone in Laubrock's musical journey, and likely the best avant-rock chamber music you'll hear in 2023.

Last and most noisome, Spirit of Hamlet's Northwest of Hamuretto is a remote collaboration between drummer Scotty Irving of Christian noise-rock juggernaut Clang Quartet, punk-rock eminence Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Stooges), Japanese psych-rock shaman Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mothers Temple), and songwriter-producer Benjy Johnson. Spirit of Hamlet coalesced after Irving appeared on Watt's internet radio show and the sociable elder suggested a collaboration. Irving sent Watt drum tracks for eight songs, over which Watt dubbed his bass and Kawabata then added guitar. While mixing the tracks, Johnson had the idea of adding additional vocal and instrumental parts, which he did with the other participants' blessing. If guitar-heavy, acid-fried experimentalism is your bag, you'll find plenty to like here, served in bite-size chunks that go down easier than some of AMT's side-long extravaganzas. On "Float," Johnson's spiel has something in it of Ohio poet Dan McGuire's work in Unknown Instructors (with Watt) and elsewhere...a damn fine thing, in my opinion.