What’s New for the 1st of February: Kage Baker retrospective; new Americana, Buddhist chants and Finnish songs, new and reissued jazz, and more

I don’t think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It’s instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That’s why I write science fiction — even though the term ‘science fiction’ excites disdain in certain persons.

Kage Baker

I was thinking about Kage Baker, who has been  gone 15 years the end of last month, so I decided give a selection of the reviews we have done. Of course she was much more than a writer of great speculation fiction, as she was the companion to a space pirate named Harry, a baker of barm brack,  very fond of Terry Gilliam and perhaps smitten by Bruce Campbell. English cooking with slabs of meats and desserts made with lots of butter by two fat ladies on a motorcycle with a sidecar cruising the countryside? Oh yes! And finally I must mention that she had a deep love for the early years of Hollywood and the film industry in general.

Cat has a neat work for us: ‘At a mere one hundred and three pages, this is one of the best Robert Heinlein works I’ve ever read. Oops, I meant Kage Baker works. Or did I? Ok, let me reconcile the contradiction I just created (somewhat). The Empress of Mars reads like the best of Heinlein’s short fiction from the golden period of the 1940s and 1950s. It is so good that I’ve no doubt John W. Campbell would’ve published it! It would sit very nicely alongside much of his short fiction such as ‘Blowups Happen’, ‘The Long Watch’, and ‘The Green Hills of Earth’, to name but three classic Heinlein tales. It’s that well-crafted. It’s that entertaining. And it’s that rarest of short works — one that is just the right length.’

Matthew looks at a Kage Baker venture into children’s fiction: ‘In comparison to her other works,’ says he, ‘I would consider The Hotel under the Sand to be one of Kage Baker’s lesser works, but it is still highly enjoyable.’

Matthew also reviews Kage Baker’s Not Less Than Gods, her last Company novel which Kathleen, her sister, told Cat that apparently only she and Kage liked. (Cat says he liked it too.) Matthew says of this novel that ‘Ultimately, this is not going to be considered one of Kage’s strongest works. For someone who is a Company junkie, it is a nice installment, but the newcomer would not understand the novel’s position in the entire series. A lot of “inside” knowledge is required to more fully appreciate the novel.’

Gary here with some music. I jumped at the chance to review the new record by Eric Brace and Thomm Jutz; I’ve been writing up Eric’s music — solo, with band, and in various duos — for a quarter century now. ‘Circle and Square is full of gentle but sturdy songs about the human condition and the important role art of all kinds plays in the lives of us all. A good record for now.’

‘If you know the music of Värttinä you have some idea of what Tuuletar sounds like,’ I note in my review of Tuuletar’s third album Maammo. ‘All four of the women of Tuuletar — Venla Ilona Blom, Sini Koskelainen, Johanna Kyykoski and Piia Säilynoja — sing and do vocal effects and percussion, and Blom does some beatboxing as well.’

I also wrote about Tibet: The Voice Of The Tantra, a new two CD set of an old recording of the Monastery Of Gyütö’s monks. ‘The discs preserve a 1975 recording at the monastery and university of Gyütö performed by the first generation of Tibetan monks who went into exile from Lhasa to India with the current Dalai Lama. It’s an astonishing and utterly tranfixing auditory experience, of very high quality for 50-year-old field recordings.’

Lastly for me this time, I wrote an omnibus review of three new jazz releases, Martin Wind’s Stars, Dave Pietro’s The Butterfly Effect, and John McNeil & Tom Harrell’s Look To The Sky. The latter is a reissue: ‘These days I’m all about the trumpet, so I’m totally delighted by this classic reissue from SteepleChase. John McNeil and Tom Harrell are legendary horn players who rose to prominence in the New York scene of the 1970s, and this recording is the only one they made together.’

From the archives, Rebecca enjoyed the Christian Celtic folk pop of Ceili Rain’s Say ‘KAY-Lee’. ‘It is cheerful, enthusiastic, and well-crafted. Those people who are more comfortable with a bleak, cynical view of life will not like it, nor will those who are mistrustful of Christianity. However, those looking for a positive alternative will enjoy it. I think the warmth and optimism expressed here are as valid as any of the darker emotions expressed by musicians today.’

Finally, Richard was highly impressed by Jennifer and Hazel Wrigley’s Mither o’the Sea, one of the earliest recordings by the Wrigley Twins. ‘Most of the pieces played on this all-instrumental CD are composed by the sisters themselves (nearly always by Jennifer) or by other Orkney musicians, and respect local traditional forms. A couple come from mainland Scotland (not to be confused with Mainland in Orkney). To my surprise, a perusal of the booklet revealed that only the very last of the 23 tunes spread over 12 tracks is a traditional piece, a jig from Holm (a Nordic word that simply means “island”).’

I’m going to leave you with the Kage‘s reading one of her own works, that being her Empress of Mars which Cat reviewed anove. It was supposed to be included on a CD in the limited edition version of the story that was going to be published by Nightshade Books but that never happened, so she gave us permission to have it here. So find a quiet place to listen and settle in to hear a most excellent sf story told by a master storyteller!

Kathleen, her sister, notes that ‘she was an old-fashioned storyteller. She loved adding dimensions, and felt that all her stories should be either copiously illustrated or read out to an audience.’