Crate Digging: August 2024

We’re back for another round of Crate Digging as the summer starts to fade, and the slightest trace of fall weather begins to appear (at least in our homebase—your mileage may vary). Last month we colored outside the circle a little but this month the digs are deeper than ever, including some odd ones from a few legends, jazz from the ’80s, shelved masterpieces, and a lot of jazz fusion.

Dive into our monthly Crate Digging picks and discover what might be your new favorite album.

Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.

3BallMTY – Inténtalo

The television was always on in my household. I recently recalled this memory of being 10 years old and hearing the intro of 3BallMTY’s “Inténtalo” every few minutes, right before this Latin daytime show would go to a commercial break. I thought its stuttering high pitched synth was the most annoying sound to exist. I decided to give the song and its eponymous album a proper listen and was unexpectedly stricken by the insane production.

A mini choir of Rate Your Music users recently determined Intentalo was like “if Death Grips discovered tribal [guarachero],” a genre that recontextualizes traditional Mexican folk and cumbia rhythms and fuses it with 2010s electro house. (It also spawned a subculture dedicated to dancing with long-ass pointy boots.) And honestly, it’s not a far-fetched take. The sharp melodies are distorted and manic at times, with the constant banging of the tambora drum being the only thing keeping it from going rogue. I thought my headphones were giving out when the staticky synths on “Solos Tú y Yo” randomly shoot out.

I’ve come to admire the shrill synths and autotuned vocals that make up the mating ritual that is “Inténtalo.” Its narrator desperately seeks to press bodies with someone at the club, as the rapid claps signal a sense of urgency. “Inténtalo,” “try it out,” he repeatedly pleads until his lover opens up to the idea. Was not expecting so many bangers from a group brushed off as a one hit wonder. – Mia Euceda

Listen: Spotify

Luiz Bonfá – Introspection 

Though Luiz Bonfá will always be known as a legend of bossa nova, it’s this single dive into solo classical guitar that I return to most. These are short, unpretentious tunes, played across a range of guitar types. Bonfá is lyrical and unrelentingly romantic, his virtuosity and total command always secondary to the emotional core of the songs. Antônio Carlos Jobim once said that “Bonfá plays the guitar like no other, in a very personal, charismatic style. His guitar is a little orchestra.” Perhaps more than anywhere else in his discography, Introspection proves that point. Despite their brevity, Bonfá packs a world of emotion into these tracks. Most remarkably, this is all achieved with great ease and subtlety. Bonfá never pushes for emotion, never demands a reaction from the audience. Rather, like any great bossa nova musician, he gently lulls you into those feelings. – Noah Sparkes

Listen: Spotify

Cuásares – Afro-Progresivo

The road of the crate digger somehow inevitably leads to jazz fusion. I’ve definitely included at least one jazz odyssey in each of these monthly roundups thus far, and I’ve arrived on yet another one with this 1973 gem from Argentina’s Cuásares. And yet this one’s relatively concise, most of its 10 tracks carving out a groove in three minutes or less. Rife with ‘70s funk-fusion rhythms, Latin jazz flourishes and more than a little Hendrix/Santana blazing guitar leads for good measure, Afro-Progresivo makes a strong case that jazz can, and sometimes should, rock. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Holger Czukay – On the Way to the Peak of Normal

Can’s Holger Czukay released an underrated if cult-celebrated series of records in the aftermath of that group’s late ’70s hiatus, some of them incredible dub-post-punk essentials such as Full Circle, with Public Image Limited’s Jah Wobble and Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit. On the Way to the Peak of Normal is a little more abstract, similarly spacious and rhythmic but with an emphasis on more peculiar instrumentals. Many of the tracks ease into a nice oddball groove, like on “Witches’ Multiplication Table,” but the side-long sprawl of “Ode to Perfume” is where that mesmerizing sense of disorientation gives way to something more cosmic and adventurous, channeling the epic explorations of his former band on songs like “Halleluwah” while treading on strange new ground. – Jeff Terich

Listen: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)

Doctor’s Cat – “Feel the Drive”

HBO is back, baby!  Remember how you’d wait, pine, and claw for the Sunday night lineup on HBO? The Sopranos. Silicon Valley. The first season of True Detective. Sheeit… All those had folks buzzing about on Monday even if it was NFL football season. Why? The shows had this epic tune embedded in the plot that’d play for 30-45 seconds, but minutes after the show, America is googling the shit out of it because you can’t go back to living without that tune in your head. 

So here I am watching the season premiere of Industry on HBO last week: It follows a group of young graduates competing for permanent positions at Pierpoint & Co., a prestigious investment bank in London, and Man, these writers start cooking plot from the opening frame. Forty three minutes in, a cocaine truth exchange in a judge’s chambers featuring two of the show’s main characters, riding that white horse high to the epic “Feel The Drive” by Doctor’s Cat, an Italo-disco classic, but new to my ears. 

With Giorgio Moroder-type drum programming, Blade Runner-esque basslines, and the most swoony synth patterns, you can’t help but be seduced within 15 seconds. It’s a bop, a beat, your new sneaky link. There is an oceanic-type keyboard solo that’s enhanced by a judge in the background doing a line talking about Robbie Williams. HBO is back! – John-Paul Shiver

Listen: Spotify

Issam Hajali – Mouasalat ila jacad el ard

First things first: Habibi Funk is an awesome label that consistently releases great music from Middle Eastern artists, most of them reissues, some of them never-before-released, at least one of them a new recording. Isaam Hajali’s Mouasalat ila jacad el ard falls in the middle category. A previously unreleased set of eclectic, progressive folk, it’s characteristic of the eclectic and lushly arranged Arabic pop of his band Ferkat Al Ard (whose 1979 album Oghneya is likewise incredible). In fact, if anything, Hajali stretches those eclectic instincts further, sometimes literally, as on the 11-minute opening track “Ana damir el motakallim.” Yet even at its most sprawling and intricate, the album features luxurious textures heavy on Rhodes piano and other gorgeous instrumentation, the kind of rich headphone sounds I love to get lost in. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Khan Jamal – Infinity

I’ve frequently written about my adoration of the saxophone in rock music, and it goes without saying that I likewise have an affinity for jazz saxophone. But you know what instrument I really love in jazz? Vibraphone. Bobby Hutcherson, Roy Ayers, Cal Tjader—anytime I hear one of these players with their mallets, I’m enchanted. The same goes for Khan Jamal, a Philadelphia vibraphonist whose self-released 1984 album Infinity was reissued in 2021 after many years of being an underground legend. As jazz was getting smoother into the mid-’80s, Jamal captured a wide spread of its permutations on the album, from frantic post-bop to more laid-back and loungey soul-jazz. But the standout is “The Known Unknown,” a dazzling and hypnotic spiritual jazz centerpiece. – Jeff Terich

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)

Nate Morgan – Journey Into Nigritia 

It’s widely considered that jazz entered the doldrums in the ’80s. The electrifying fusion experiments of the ’70s had subsided, giving way to the more conservative wing of the genre. Figureheads like Miles Davis, who had gone so far as to reject the boundaries of genre altogether, were replaced by “straight-ahead” traditionalists, self-styled custodians like Wynton Marsalis. Jazz, in an era of declining sales and dwindling public interest, essentially enters the museum, becomes artifact. But if you look hard enough there are always glimmers within the interstices of the music industry, signals of a beating heart. One such artist emerged from the supposed backwaters of jazz culture, Los Angeles. Pianist Nate Morgan, an acolyte of LA jazz legend Horace Tapscott, displayed a dynamism that the ’80s was in drastic need of. Though most of his 1982 record (released on the storied Nimbus West imprint) will sound familiar to fans of post-A Love Supreme spiritual jazz, there is an individuality to Journey Into Nigritia that warrants closer inspection. This is ’80s jazz continuing the trajectories started in the ’60s and ’70s, straddling the spiritual and the avant-garde, expanding the legacies of John and Alice Coltrane, of Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman. Journey Into Nigritia and indeed much of Nimbus West’s output is a vital resource for those interested in the jazz of that oft-forgotten era. – Noah Sparkes

Listen/Buy: Bandcamp

Lou Reed – The Bells

The more I dig into Lou Reed’s catalog, the more Transformer gets pushed down the ranks of being one of my favorites. The Bells is an odd sampler of disco, R&B, and free jazz. I get why many can’t stand this record. It’s disorienting and provoking; the overpowering background laughter and banter on “All Through the Night,” the mind numbing trance of “Disco Mystic,” its dragging free jazz title track, it all can be pretty jarring. It’s pulling everything it can to drive the listener away, but those willing to put up with Reed’s flimsy and sarcastic performance are rewarded with an experimental set of songs hidden with some of his most piercing lyrics. 

The kitchen sink blues of “Families” features an estranged Reed yelping about his failure to fulfill the suburbanite aspirations his parents set up for him. By the end of the visit, he realizes “there’s nothing here we have in common, except our name,” an agonizing observation intensified by the innocuous refrain constantly inquiring, “how’s the family?” Don Cherry’s muted trumpet channels Ornette Coleman on the equally haunting closing track following a suicidal actor. “Here comes the bells,” Ellard Boles’ backing vocals helplessly proclaim, announcing an apocalyptic catharsis signaling the narrator’s final attempt at escaping despair. What makes The Bells so brilliant is that it isn’t a pleasant listen, nor is it trying to be. – Mia Euceda

Listen: Spotify | Amazon

Satellite Lovers – Sons of 1973

Algorithmic streaming has few redeemable qualities, but YouTube’s push of rare, often un-streamable Japanese imports is not to be taken for granted. The latest gem to surface is Satellite Lovers’ breezy lounge pop opus Sons of 1973. The album was only posted two months ago, but has already been viewed more than 1.7 million times. That number makes sense, since the contagious jazz funk of opener “Best Friend” guarantees the sustained engagement that fuels the algorithm. Keep listening and it’ll be hard to pass up on the upbeat guitar pop of “How Much I Love You, Baby” and “空へ (S.L Meets HV!),” the latter of which sounds like Japanese Sheryl Crow, radio-ready twang and all. Satellite Lovers’ combination of indie rock, city pop, and Shibuya-kei, a microgenre of pop celebrating all things kitsch, sounds especially timeless in the wake of city pop’s international resurgence, making Sons of 1973 the perfect find for crate diggers and autoplayers alike. – Patrick Pilch

Listen: YouTube

Luiz Carlos Vinhas – O Som Psicodelico de LCV

Pianist and composer Luiz Carlos Vinhas left a pretty significant impact on Brazilian music in the 20th century, having performed and recorded with the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina and Maria Bethânia. Yet his most thrilling accomplishment is this late-’60s work of acid-laced bossa nova that seemed to bridge contemporary jazz with the psychedelic buzz of the growing Tropicalia movement in Brazil in the 1960s. O Som Psicodelico de LCV is a wild ride, at times leaning toward the lush samba pop of Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66 while at others, particularly in Vinhas’ own compositions, putting an even more thrilling spin on Brazilian jazz. The album remains a bit hard to track down; Portugal’s Mad About Records reissued it back in 2020 but since that limited run its Discogs price has been climbing. It’s also no longer available on streaming services or on Bandcamp. What that means, I can’t say for sure, but let’s hope this vibrant gem of a record doesn’t remain in limbo for long. – Jeff Terich

Listen: YouTube

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