Three Albums Welcome The Young Guard

Short chords from electric piano and synthesizer set the mood, contemplative but with a pulse. ​“Estoy aquí / ya estuve allá / ya fui feliz / y acaba mal,” Ene de Nadie croons — ​“I’m here / I was already there / I was already happy / it ends badly” — as the beat drops. The lyrics are full of longing and regret, while the music pulses on, the kind of song you can dance and cry to.

So begins Good Morning, Good People, a full album of Spanish hip hop from Ene de Nadie. It’s one of a few recent releases from New Haven-based artists who are more than finding their footing in the music world; they’re running with their ideas in ways more than compelling enough to follow.

Ene de Nadie (“n for nobody”), a.k.a. Javier Villatoro, is an MC who describes themselves as a ​“two-spirited Zapotec Poet and rapper. They explore moments and feelings through poetic written and spoken expression depicting life and the human experience as a displaced native living in the so-called U.S. metropolis.” That dual nature runs throughout Good Morning, Good People, as Villatoro blends together feelings of displacement, family, sadness and hope in their lyrics, over beats and samples that insist on not giving up. As Villatoro relates at the end of the second song, ​“Radiante,” we tell stories to each other to become siblings in a common struggle.

So ​“Wings of Song” floats along on a cloud of hovering chords and a swinging beat while Villatoro searches for understanding. ​“Manos duras” tilts into outright jazz while ​“Mezcal con los dioses,” true to its title, gets positively woozy. ​“Sálvase quien pueda” (“save yourselves”) is a call to arms for self-realization that bumps along on a catchy riff and driving beat. And ​“Flores en la yera” (“flowers in the meadow”) lets the listener swim in a sunny haze of music and community values. All in all, Good Morning, Good People is a strong debut from an MC with much to say, and musically and lyrically, beautiful ways of saying it.

Meanwhile, Trance Macabre — Wes Lewis on saxophones, Michael Larocca on drums, Autumn Asbridge on flute, Vigilance Brandon on brass, Noah Baerman on keys, and Nicholas Serrambana on bass — come out swinging on their debut release, ​“a jazz album born in the punk-house-basements of Connecticut,” the liner notes state. ​“Inspired by the ensemble’s Hartford roots, this music responds to figures like Jackie McLean and Alice Coltrane and their outcry of speculative musical timbres within pop forms.”

The band’s collective ear for its own music is accurate. ​“Pharoah,” the opening track, opens on a blast of noise from horns while the drums lay down a deep, driving groove. Then, on a dime, the rhythm shifts, and the horns lay down an urgent head over a tight swing. What follows is a blaze of ideas, as the band members follow each other through one rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic idea after another, without ever losing the tune’s initial pulse.

The second cut, ​“Serpentine Belt,” then slithers along on a swampy beat, anchored by a curling, twisting melody and supple solos. The band builds ​“Shiny” from a huge riff that they take into sparse, funky rhythmic territory. The album’s closer, ​“Lisa’s Dream” begins on a spacious keyboard solo before settling into a loose, swinging beat that, in time, shows the band playing collectively at its most free. In drawing from punk, pop, funk, straight-ahead jazz, and free improv all at once, Trance Macabre has made an album full of surprises, humor, and thoughtfulness, challenging and accessible all at the same time. The band goes on a wild trip, but makes it easy to follow.

New Haven-based composer and pianist Aaron Vaurio Jackson has released much of his music on Bandcamp lately. As his most recent release, Sandbox, shows, Jackson is interested in creating music that is immediately relatable, yet rewards more careful listening with detailed arrangements and textures. ​“Clay,” Sandbox’s opening track, features a simple, serene, sensitively played piano melody surrounded by electronics that piano effects that add a sense of distant lushness and just a sprinkling of unease. ​“Frankincense” builds from a three-note figure to a wall of wailing guitars and drums before subsiding again. ​“From Afar” deploys warped recordings of gongs and the sound of crackling vinyl, while ​“Building with Materials” is constructed from stabbing, swooping strings and slapping percussion. ​“Against the Bars,” ​“Son of Bohor,” and ​“Waiver” lean harder into electronic and otherwise manipulated sounds for the album’s more experimental tracks. ​“Mass” is a romantically inclined piano and saxophone duet, while ​“Thaumazein” is a shiny, pop-oriented composition that isn’t afraid to dip into grittier textures for a middle section.

It all shows Jackson as a wide-ranging composer who always lets the listener find a way in. The music is evocative enough to serve as a soundtrack for a film about characters with complex emotions, or — for that matter, like the other two releases above — for the final days of summer, a last breath of leisure before cold temperatures drive us to work.