Every year it’s worth repeating that these lists are in no way striving to be authoritative and are by no means definitive, as the recordings of 2022 remaining unheard dwarf this list, even when this one combines with the lists to come later this week. A preponderance of old stuff with newer material in the top spot: here’s our picks for 2022’s Best Box Sets and Expanded Editions (that is, releases offering three LPs or more).
10. V/A, Life Between Islands, Soundsystem Culture: Black Musical Expression in the UK 1973–2006 (Soul Jazz) There’s no shortage of compilations devoted to Jamaican music currently in the store racks, which makes it difficult to stand out amongst the sheer volume. Soul Jazz’s thematic releases are consistently near the top of the heap through ambitiousness and sheer listenability, and this 3LP is no exception. The Jamaica-UK connection is long-established, but Life Between Islands goes deep, spanning five decades and never running out of gas as the 20 selections cover a wide range of reggae sub-genres.
9. Elvin Jones, Revival: Live at Pookie’s Pub (Blue Note) Recorded in late July of 1967, just three nights after John Coltrane’s death, this 3LP set is a wonderful discovery, with drummer Jones up front in the mix and in often spectacular form. Joe Farrell, who made his biggest mark in the fusion scene, dishes some potent Trane-esque tenor sax, the mysterious Billy Greene is sharp on piano (organist Larry Young sits in on piano for “Gingerbread Boy”), and Wilber Little holds it down on bass. Had Farrell concentrated on tenor and left his flute at home, this would’ve climbed a little higher on the list.
8. The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, Grounation (Soul Jazz) When roots are mentioned in relation to Jamaican music, it’s generally referring to the roots reggae style as personified by Horace Andy, Toots & the Maytals, The Congos, and of course, Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. But Grounation is an altogether deeper and stylistically broad plunge into Jamaican roots, and with an intense historical focus. Reggae is part of the equation, but The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari, led by drummer Count Ossie, can swing into horn-laden grooves that at times radiate a similar intensity to Dustin Laurenzi’s Snaketime. Wow.
7. Frank Kimbrough, 2003–2006 – Volume One: Lullabluebye / Volume Two: Play (Palmetto) This set, available as a 2CD and 4LP, combines two CDs released consecutively by Palmetto but by different trios (Kimbrough obviously the shared link), Lullabluebye with bassist Ben Allison and drummer Matt Wilson and Play with bassist Masa Kamaguchi and drummer Paul Motion. It serves as an excellent tribute to the departed pianist. 2003–2006 expands the possibilities of the piano trio configuration rather than just luxuriating in them, focusing almost exclusively on original material, mostly Kimbrough’s.
6. Charles Mingus, The Lost Album From Ronnie Scott’s (Resonance) There’s been a lot of Mingus reissue action over the last few years, so this killer live set, which is out in 3CD and 3LP editions, doesn’t pack as heavy a wallop of rediscovery as it would’ve if it’d entered the contempo reissue landscape in isolation. It’s still an indispensable document for fans of Mingus and jazz in general. Indeed, anybody still opining that Mingus’ work fell off in quality in the 1970s is peddling the phoniest of baloney. A vocal turn by pianist John Foster and musical saw by drummer Roy Brooks add value to a total blast of a show.
5. Marvin Tate’s D-Settlement, S/T (American Dreams) This 3CD or 4LP set corrals three self-released recordings from a terribly undersung Chicago outfit extant from the ’90s–’03, landing a heavy blow of surprise and reinforcing that any claims from on-high that “we now have access to everything in the streaming era” are wholly spurious. D-Settlement combined soul-R&B-funk-gospel with punk and classic rock (“Mr. Junkie Maker” brought Abbey Road to mind) and reggae, plus Tate’s sharp poetic edge. Touches of Sly, The Last Poets, P-Funk, The Specials, and even OutKast subtly yet grippingly arise.
4. Karen Dalton, In My Own Time 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (Light In the Attic) Sadly underappreciated while alive (she died in 1993 from an HIV-related illness), Dalton’s two studio albums have been widely available for a long while. This loaded collector’s set expands her (in my estimation, slightly underrated) second LP, adding bonus material and a 12-inch live EP featuring performances from Montreux in ’72, so it jibes with the period, as do the two 45s, one live at Germany’s Beat Club, the other a repro of a French single. A loving, wholly deserved tribute, with nary a trace of dolled-up ephemera.
3. Tall Dwarfs, Unravelled 1982-2001 (Merge) Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate shaped New Zealand’s Tall Dwarfs, the weirdest of Flying Nun’s “Big Four” (purely my designation, the other’s being The Clean [Hamish Kilgour RIP], The Chills, and The Verlaines) and also the most resistant to comparisons, as they cohered and persevered into one of the underground’s true joys. Home recorders who helped to ignite the lo-fi movement before it had a name, Tall Dwarfs could also be beautifully, unconventionally psychedelic. But it really comes down to the songs. Nearly all of their best ones are here.
2. Albert Ayler, Revelations: The Complete ORTF 1970 Fondation Maeght Recordings (Elemental Music – INA) Revelations is fucking right. This 4CD/5LP expansion of the performances by saxophonist-vocalist Ayler, soprano saxophonist-vocalist Mary Maria Parks, drummer Allen Blairman, bassist Steve Tintweiss, and pianist Call Cobbs at the Fondation Maeght in Paris turn the fascinating excerpts on the prior Shandar and ESP-Disk releases into a triumphant (and pretty damned seamless) mingling of Ayler’s spiritual, avant-garde and mersh R&B impulses. The crowd going nuts is icing on perfectly baked cake.
1. Wadada Leo Smith, The Emerald Duets (Tum) & String Quartets 1-12 (Tum) The Emerald Duets is a 5CD set featuring trumpeter-composer Smith in creative conversation with drummers Pheeroan akLaff, Han Bennink, Andrew Cyrille, and Jack DeJohnette, with each duo getting a disc and the Smith-DeJohnette union getting two. On disc four, Freedom Summer, the Legacy, DeJohnette also plays Fender Rhodes (Smith plays piano on disc four and on disc one, Litanies, Prayers and Meditations, with akLaff). Altogether a massive addition to Smith’s brilliant stream of activity across the 21st century.
It pairs with String Quartets 1-12, a 7CD affair and the most expansive release of Smith’s work to date, to establish the seemingly endless flow of Smith’s contemporary creativity (similar in some ways to fellow AACM alum Anthony Braxton). The strings are by the RedKoral Quartet (Ashley Walters, cello, Andrew McIntosh, viola, Mona Tian and Shalini Vijayan, violins), with the occasional addition across the set of harp (Alison Bjorkedal), percussion (Lynn Vartan), guitar (Stuart Fox), a third violin (Lorenz Gamma), piano (Anthony Davis), voice (Thomas Bruckner), and trumpet (Smith, natch).
Recorded in 2015 and 2020, String Quartets 1-12’s relationship to diligence and time is tangible. The Emarald Duets, recorded in 2014, ’19 and ’20, unsurprisingly register as more spontaneous, and yet are clearly the byproduct of interactive discipline that’s been sharpened and heightened to an exhilarating degree. Combined, they considerably boost an already amazing body of work.
