*Will Oldham: My Life in 15 Songs, a.k.a. Will Oldham (a.k.a. Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Palace Brothers mastermind, etc.) on 15 songs spanning more than 25 years. This was a special one for me. I've been a fan of Oldham's since around 1993, but I've never had a chance to interview him before. We talked for a long time, broken up into several conversations, and he couldn't have been nicer, more forthcoming or more insightful. I had to cut a ton of great material, but I'm really happy with how this turned out nonetheless. As part of my research, I re-read Will Oldham on Bonnie "Prince" Billy — Alan Licht's 2012 book of Oldham interviews, which I reviewed for Time Out back then — and was reminded of how insightful it is. If you're a fan and haven't yet checked this out, you should remedy that asap.
*My take on Tom Surgal's new free-jazz doc Fire Music, which premiered at the New York Film Festival this past weekend. This one's been in the works a long time and it's great to see it finally being released. As I say in the piece, the interview material is really special. It's not a comprehensive film by any means, and at least in this cut, I don't think it's trying to be. Still, I think it works really well as a 101 intro to the movement. Seeing this made me realize what a robust array of free-jazz/"avant-garde"–related docs we now have to choose from, spanning close to 40 years. I ran down a few of those near the end of the piece. Imagine the Sound is still my personal gold standard, but having recently watched Ebba Jahn's 1985 film Rising Tones Cross — which documents New York's 1984 Sound Unity Festival, the predecessor to the Vision Festival, spearheaded by Patricia Nicholson and William Parker, and features those two along with Charles Gayle, Peter Kowald and many others — I can say that this film is another absolutely essential part of the canon of free-jazz cinema, not to mention a gritty and intimate portrait of a bygone New York.
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