Things we like: Peter Van Huffel's Calisto, Ivo Perelman, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Shane Parish

Bandcamp Friday #40 is coming May 3, then the program (in which the platform foregoes their cut of profits for a day, leaving all your coins for the artists) goes on vacation until September 3. A few suggestions for the suggestible listener follow.

After five albums with Gorilla Mask, an "angry jazz" band with rock dynamics, Berlin-based Canadian saxophonist Peter Van Huffel returns with something different: a bassless quartet called Callisto and a new Clean Feed CD, Meandering Demons. This time out, Van Huffel lays down his alto in favor of his baritone and turns his co-conspirators -- fiery trumpeter Lina Allemano, pianist/electronic musician Antonio Anissegos, and drummer Joe Hertenstein -- loose on a set of his finest compositions yet.

"Rude Awakening" opens with head-spinning loop effects on the bari before the band enters, playing an angular melody over an oddly syncopated groove, then Anissegos' electronics propel the band into '70s Miles territory. "Transient Being" is a darkly ruminative piece that creates a cinematic mood of unease. "Barrel of Monkeys" juxtaposes Andrew Hill-like impressionism with a shuffle beat. My favorite Van Huffel outing to date, and I'm now motivated to check out Allemano's work as a leader.

The next item under consideration came my way via a Discogs seller as a "something's extra." (Thanks, colinec!) Brazilian saxophonist Ivo Perelman is known for his work in the freeblow arena (particularly his collaborations with the estimable pianist Matthew Shipp). On Truth Seeker, released in February on the Polish label Fundacja Slucaj (who also have some archival Cecil Taylor items in their catalog, among other delights), he stands where Rollins, Ornette, and Joe Henderson once stood, at the helm of a tenor-led trio. Backed to the hilt by Mark Helias on bass and Tom Rainey on drums, Perelman undertakes some Rollins-esque thematic improvisation -- the result, he says, of switching to an MC Gregory mouthpiece, which focuses and directs his explorations in unaccustomed ways. An eminently satisfying set.

Latest from San Francisco-based guitar experimentalist Ernesto Diaz-Infante is a cassette, Amor Celestial, on the Albany, NY-based Tape Drift label, just released on April 5. The two-part dronefest starts out with Diaz-Infante obsessively repeating a fuzzed-out arpeggio like a one-man doom metal band over singing bowls, then interjecting stinging Sharrockian chaos-slide, which gives way first to slowly pulsing feedback, then gently chiming harmonics that build to crashing thunderclaps of metallic clangor. Second part opens with throbbing tanpura pulsations and tuneless strummarama like a kid who's showing you he knows how to "play" guitar before the arpeggio from Part One returns, albeit with less density. 

As I begin to dissociate, the strums give way to single note picking, and the slide returns, but ethereal this time, like the interstices between songs on Strictly Personal. There's even a little Jeff Beck-on-Yardbirds-"I'm a Man" choke-strum action, my pick for the angriest guitar sound ever, only here it's decontextualized to another ghostly memory on the trip. I even started to hear the Winkie Guards' chant from The Wizard of Oz in that drone. You get the idea. A groovy piece of DIY psychedelia, recommended if you'd dig meditating to a loop of the intro from Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride," or if your favorite Boris albums are Flood and Feedbacker. (Me too!)

Last but surely not least, my very own last month's Bandcamp Friday selection: Repertoire, the brand-new (drops May 10) solo acoustic LP from North Carolina-based guitar ace Shane Parish. Shane's one part math-rock nerd (ten albums and counting with the band Ahleuchatistas), one part Fahey-esque American primitive folk weirdo. He transcribed the music from Bill Orcutt's Music for Four Guitars and helped play it as a member of Orcutt's Guitar Quartet. (His Quartet-mate Wendy Eisenberg penned liner notes for this album, and they have a neat duet album, Nervous Systems, that they cut within scant hours of their first meeting back in 2018.) For his trouble, Parish got this album released on Orcutt's Palilalia label, and it's a corker (at least judging from the half-dozen tracks I got to download for having pre-ordered it last month, plus I've been watching two year old YouTube video of Parish playing Captain Beefheart's "One Red Rose That I Mean," also included here). 

Repertoire is a collection of Shane's reimaginings of other people's songs, and their provenance gives you an inkling of the depth and breadth of the guitarist's musical interests. Besides the Beefheart, there are tunes here from Ornette Coleman, Aphex Twin, the Minutemen, John Cage, Kraftwerk, Eric Dolphy, Alice Coltrane, and Sun Ra. Parish really digs Charles Mingus -- covers no fewer than three of the titanic bassist-composer's works, my current favorite being his countrified take on "Better Get Hit In Your Soul." Biggest surprise here is probably Fred Rogers' "It's You I Like," but it really shouldn't be, Parish being a good dad -- there's YouTube video of him and his kid with music from his earlier solo acoustic LP Undertaker Please Drive Slow, on John Zorn's Tzadik label. Dig it? Get it!