Whew, in addition to some personal tragedies and departures, 2011 was a trans-formative year when it comes to the popular, recorded music that has come my way. That's right, music is a companion throughout the thick and thin of our daily tribulations-through the mundane and unique, it is there making its mark on your conciousness. And so, 2011 has become a year when the precise music of Haydn's piano sonatas and Mozart's piano concertos acquired a deeper meaning, a more exact reference as when I sat by my mother's bedside and we reminisced over the same terrain that had given us an elaborate sense of past. Music provides continuity, an essential background, lightimg to our own personal histories. Like religion it weaves us closer together. Or apart.
In 2011 we enjoyed the prevalence of the electronic, as much as acoustic realness from period instruments in early music. It all made a lot of sense-together or apart.
This was a year of least surprises from my ears perspective. Different than the years before, less surprises with a consumer that has mastered the logistic of finding what they want on the Internet. Unfiltered and direct-we are now able to go to the core to get the sound as it is being produced. And we have mastered the art of change-this probably applies more to the music below- the best from 2011 and in no special order-which pushes the so called sonic envelope into new and fertile fronteirs.Long live music!
Dubstep soaked music with trip-hop influenced vocals by Emika make her first outing a thoroughly enjoyable venture into new sounds. Let's see where she takes this classical minimalist pop sound but there is tons of potential in this freshman effort. Highly recommended.
If you aren't familiar with Czech-born Berlin-based producer Emika from her own bass-heavy broodings on Ninja Tune, you might be familiar with her role as the disembodied voice in Tommy Four Seven's Primate, or as the one who provided the field recordings for Ostgut Ton's Funf compilation. With a winding musical history that stretches from the dubstep caverns of Bristol to the Berghain, the sound she's let trickle out on a steady series of singles is a parched take on dubstep equally influenced by trip-hop and techno, the hardcore continuum running through its ice cold veins in all its extant forms. You probably could have guessed that Emika works as a sound designer even if I hadn't told you; her music is painstakingly, well, designed, the kind of thing you could expect to soundtrack an installation as much as a club night.
As a result of this approach, Emika's songs tend to feel like empty shells rather than proper structures, aside from a few notable exceptions like the thundering dubstep of "Be My Guest." She doesn't approach them as songs so much as discrete spaces for sound to inhabit and reverberate. Above all, Emika's music is formidably physical, a quality only amplified by the tense silence that constantly threatens to swallow everything around it. Listen on headphones and you'll get an uncomfortably absent 48 minutes; listen on a good system and you'll be entrapped and immersed. The effect is a record that feels like it lives in a vacuum of permanent blackness, a gothic sensibility that extends itself to the album's baroque instrumental flourishes ("Drop the Other").
Emika releases her self-titled debut 'Emika' on Ninja Tunes. Born in UK but from Czech heritage she has spent much of her time exploring sound in Bristol. She currently lives in Berlin, fitting for an experimental artist who wants to push the boundaries of sound and voice. Indeed her debut is a dark brooding electronic soundscape that reminds me of many prolific artists from Bristol like Tricky and Portishead.
Music is so diverse these days and there's so much opportunity to push boundaries with recent technology that I have admire Emika's debut for. She is indeed experimenting with electronic music and voice dexterity that creates a compelling mix on this album, however it's certainly will not appeal to everyone. There are some nice dubstep influences, certainly from the Burial school of thought, that creates some deep sub base sounds on some parts of the album and 'Be My Guest' is pure dubstep. 'Emika' starts softer but gets more brooding and darker, although ends with a piano piece. The fusion of experimental sounds, piano and Emika's haunting and angelic voice, mixed with original compositions is aurally challenging to say the least. It's classical to the sublime, with loads in between.
Dubstep with classical music influence is not a sheet that many artists would drape across themselves, but Emika wears it and wears it well. Her sound is very deliberate and her beats have a hardened edge that still manages to cultivate a spacey mood and drive the listener into a dizzy haze. Similar to the likes of Portishead’s Beth Gibbons, Cat Power and Evanescence’s Amy Lee, Emika’s sound is like a powerful musical serum that filters through your veins. With the release of her latest self-titled album, Emika lets out the big guns.
“Professional Loving” is a cocktail of mystique, indiscretion and flirtation. This song creeps along followed by a pounding backbeat, sinister ringing, an airy hollowness and dense repetition. The electronic thumping bleeds in and out and the gentle strokes of the piano act as the song’s classical element. Emika’s vocals are breathy and sweet, which not only supplement the sinister beat, but also highlight the amazing detail.
“Double Edge” begins with a light, chiming that morphs into a heavy thudding that stutters into the track. Emika’s vocals innocently lie amongst the hard beat, but soon enough, morph into fragmented quips. It’s as if she’s losing touch with reality and descending into her own head. This song reels its audience in and leaves listeners mesmerized.
An pyrotechnical soloist and superb composer, Binney reaches crescendos on Graylen Epicenter that characterize the best of jazz as we know it.Working with a great crew of colleagues Binney creates a modern Jazz tapestry of 2011 unique to our reality here in the U.S. with the superb intensity experienced in live performances. This recording brings binney to the forefront of the best music made today. Anywhere.
Teaming up with some of the jazz world’s finest musicians, David Binney has recorded another fantastic album. “Graylen Epicenter,” features Chris Potter, Ambrose Akinmusire, Gretchen Parlato, Wayne Krantz, Craig Taborn, Eivind Opsvik, Brian Blade, Dan Weiss, Kenny Wollesen, and Rogerio Boccato and it is clear that this group was chosen for a reason.
The blend in the horns is beautiful, often with Gretchen Parlato doubling horn lines or adding another layer of harmony. What I really like about the pace to this album is the horn arrangements. In so many albums, the horn arrangements are too similar and remain unchanged from start to finish. Dave Binney is well-known as a talented producer, and it is more obvious than ever on this album.
Wayne Krantz’ solo on the title track is one of my favorites on the album. Lyrical and thoughtful, the dense tune suddenly opens up at the start of the solo and moves forward from there. Track eight, “Home,” features Gretchen Parlato singing a tune that Binney has recorded twice previous, but this breathy, heart-wrenching vocal version is absolutely my favorite.
Binney feels that the voices move the music from jazz into a more rock music direction that he believes is easier for audiences to digest. This approach is immediately obvious on the knotty 10-minute opener, 'All of Time,' as well as on 'Everglow.' 'Home,' which makes it third appearance in the Binney catalog on 'Graylen Epicenter,' features a new set of Parlato lyrics with the band backing in her in a way that isn't all that different than one of Radiohead's slow-building linear songs, except that the music here is acoustic.
"It happens sort of naturally, but once it does happen I found that it is an area that I wouldn't mind trying to bridge on purpose," says of this breakthrough. "Because its not really being done in an organic way by anyone else, at least no one that I'm hearing. There's been jazz-rock, which is electric jazz, essentially. There's been rock influenced by jazz. But there isn't anything I can think of that melds the two in an organic way."
Writer Ben Ratliff compared Binney's music to that of Steely Dan in his review of 'Graylen Epicenter' in the New York Times, and that is on the mark; but whereas the writing of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker is wonderfully tight while retaining strong elements of jazz, it almost sounds dumbed-down in comparison to Binney's more sprawling vision, which makes no concessions to commercial expectations.
So dedicated is Binney to these labors-of-love CDs that he's even stopped touring with his own bands for the most part to focus even more on his music. However, out-of-towners should fret not: There appears to be a method to this madness.
A daring saxophonist who was raised in L.A. before moving on to New York, David Binney enlists a who's-who of that city's eclectic jazz scene for this album, including longtime collaborator and fellow saxophonist Chris Potter, guitarist Wayne Krantz, keyboardist Craig Taborn and rising young trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire.
And while the record has the free-wheeling vibe of an all-star jam session, it never feels overcrowded with Binney at the controls. His fiery, free-wheeling solo on "Any Years Costume" spirals around an unreal orchestra of percussion from the duo of Brian Blade and Dan Weiss, and lilting vocals by Gretchen Parlato form an airy counterpoint to Binney's horn before an acrobatic acoustic turn by Krantz flips the song on its head. With more than 70 minutes of music, the album's highlights come from so many directions they're almost overwhelming -- in a very good way.
From New York, this duo of electronic musicians combine nicely to produce bass infused dance music with lots of beats. Treading some new ground this music borders on both the familiar and avant. Who could have imagined this type of music as pop 10 years ago!
The resulting product fits nicely between Hotflush Recordings label mates Mount Kimbie’s distant bass rumble and Joy Orbison soulful stutters. But there’s a scent of something more epic in reach on Sepalcure. It aspires to do something bigger than filling floors with uptempo club jams or impressing fellow musicians with studio wonkery.
If Kimbie evokes a sense of place (a Brighton boardwalk physically and sonically distant from London’s throbbing dub) and Orbison evokes Abelton-clipped emotion (moaning human sentiment trapped under the icy glass of Orbison’s click), then Stewart and Sharma together evoke something like art-gallery conceptual reach (mood music that could fittingly score a minimalist installation piece).
As Braille, Praveen Sharma deals atmospheric, blanketing house. A full-length from him along these lines would be more discernible from the Sepalcure stuff than Room(s) is, but the emphasis on varied beat sounds can definitely be heard on his work with Stewart. Sharma’s hypnotic club track “The Year 3000” dropped in February for Netherlands-based Rush Hour Direct Current, and EP A Meaning for Hotflush followed, where he probes comparably straight floor-ready house that’s even more built-out, surging with thick melodic synth stabs and mixed-bag percussive accompaniment. On his own, Sharma (and Stewart as well) is driven to bend vocal cut-ups into grotesque, sometimes guttural forms that are as much a part of his heady records as, say, kicks. He attributed the art of making MC pitch-shifts “cool ... in recent years” to Burial in a Time Out New York piece, but Sepalcure are improving upon such experiments with great success, even amid bass music producers who are exhausting the technique’s appeal.
Dabbling in house/UK garage hybrids has certainly come into fashion, but on Sepalcure’s album, there’s an unmistakably psychedelic but tender feel established by the two industrious heads at the mixing board that proves both refreshing and resonant as the playing time is wound down. Choral parts on the debut are manipulated into textures that become critical to the brew. Heady, propulsive collaborations between Stewart and Sharma come to fruition around a track’s core lyrical sample (“The One”, “See Me Feel Me”) and seemingly on separate occasions, the artists are collaborating by accident – a close listen to the latter’s “Leavin’ Without You” (on The Year 3000 12-inch) reveals a vocal sample in play that also appeared on Stewart’s Room(s).
Pitchfork: As listeners, how much of an effort do you guys make in keeping up with the trends in bass music?
Travis Stewart: I'm not concerned with it. Even if you did try to do the coolest new thing, by the time it gets released someone else has already done it. Why even bother?
Praveen Sharma: It's exhausting-- you don't end up enjoying it because it's changing so fast.
Pitchfork: A lot of bass music artists usually go the solo route, which you guys do as well, but how does your Sepalcure partnership work out creatively?
PS: It took us years to actually start making anything serious.
TS: It has a lot to do with maturing on our own. I don't think I would have been ready to collaborate with another electronic musician [when we started working together]. We try to always remind ourselves that this is for fun. We try not to pressure ourselves to have constant output, like a solo artist would.
Pitchfork: It seems like the notion of "fun" is somewhat touchy in certain spheres of dance culture.
TS: We got a bad writeup when we opened up at Jamie xx's release party in New York, something about how we were trying too hard by dancing around and having fun while Jamie just looked like he was barely trying and still moved the audience. Like, come on.
PS: You've got to have fun up there, man. When we do a Seplacure live set, it's a blast. It's amazing. You have an opportunity to play music to these people, and they're going to enjoy it.
Elastic and dreamy with essential beats that hook you into the a definite progression, this inventive mix of music and sounds is lots of fun. Classified as electronic and driven by all the wonderful devices afforded to today's music producer, Alias makes the most of his tools. A broad and expansive play of beats and sounds.
Silence and duration heighten the intensity of the return. And over a decade of output makes any subsequent release significant. Anyone reviewing this album is forced to reckon with both the wait and the weight of an oeuvre. But Fever Dream doesn’t return to the heavy company of its predecessors. Instead, it looks back upon it all (as a means, or a way) with a happy nod and smile. Sometimes a silence is just a break, and sometimes time is just growing up (uneventful in a lot of ways), and sometimes angst just dissipates. Freud knew this well. I think Alias does, too. But I don’t wish to psychoanalyze (Alias on the iCouch, and me with my headphones on and tablet in hand), so I will get on with the album.
Fever Dream is Alias’ sixth studio album for anticon. It follows Resurgam, if only sequentially. This is not to suggest that Fever Dream is an absolute departure from a prior aesthetic, because it’s not. But there is a different quality to Alias’ recent work that puts it, conceptually and practically, ahead of his previous albums. There remain obvious similarities between Fever Dream and its predecessors: the beats, for example. Alias’ beats (the patches and patterns) have always stood out as remarkable, exciting things. Their architecture has been a complex one often closer to IDM than traditional hip-hop production. But if they previously relied too heavily upon abrasive noise sampling and curious time signatures, now they’ve found comfort in their shape and weight. Less reliant upon glitch and abrasion, Fever Dream liberally utilizes big-, break-, and house-beats, while also incorporating certain downtempo elements of trip-hop and a casual, tame jazziness of Air. That’s not to suggest that rhythmic experimentation has entirely given way to something conventional or bland, but, rather, that Alias has turned something conventional (and often bland) into something that is totally his own.
It was only when listening to Fever Dream for the final time before starting to write this review that I realised what an incredibly appropriate name it is. Whilst dreamy and ethereal in its chilled, electronic sound, the latest album by Maine-based hip-hop artist and producer Alias has a feverish element that runs throughout; an underlying feeling of unrest brought about by dark, distorted samples and some devilishly wicked beats.
The opening track, Goinswimmin, sets the mood for the album perfectly. With a triphop beat reminiscent of Melody AM / The Understanding-era Röyskopp, a slow and haunting repeated lyric “Only a fool would ignore this” and heavily reverberated instrumental samples, Goinswimmin is a powerful, atmospheric introduction. Goinswimmin runs into Wanna Let It Go, another wonderfully mysterious track that's altogether dubbier, with a synthesized riff and vocal samples that wouldn't sound out of place on a Burial album. Fever Dream briefly dabbles in more traditional instrumental hip-hop beats, before venturing off into breakbeat and more complex Four Tet-style rhythms, even moving onto Asian beats at one stage. All the while, the music maintains a chilled and enigmatic edge.
Brendon Whitney, founder of indie and weirdo hip-hop label Anticon, has a prolific production career as Alias, proffering a kind of old-school-indebted, lush hip-hop independent from chunky L.A. beat styles. His debut album The Other Side of the Looking Glass was full of old-school leaning hip-hop spelled out in dusty sampled breaks, but by the time we got to his fourth and latest solo album, 2008's Resurgam, rich synth sounds and gorgeous melodies had begun to subsume the percussive frameworks. His fifth album Fever Dream further displays a more cosmopolitan, otherworldly sound—one that's less orthodox and freer to meander.
Tightly constructed, with not a moment wasted or a single throwaway track, Dream has none of the tangential or slapdash qualities of modern instrumental hip-hop. Alias fashions tunes out of broken synths, sawn-off bits of organ and God knows what being banged together. Whitney's stitched-together quiltwork feels detailed and elaborate and never, well, stitched-together. "Feverdreamin" is like a cross between Forest Swords and Madonna's Ray of Light, and most other tracks find a similar unexpected synthesis through the fusing of disparate elements.
Wow, Alex Wilson's wonderful African infused Latin album featuring Toumani’s brother Madou Sidiki Diabate is agreat surprise from late last year. What is encouraging with this music is the inventiveness and blend of two cultures into a sound that seems unified and natural. Great works coming from all over the world.
A slightly new angle on the familiar theme of blending West African music with Afro-Cuban and Latin styles. Hank Jones’s excellent Sarala and Dee Dee Bridgewater’s mostly successful Red Earth are probably the closest touchstones for this joyfully jazzy attack on Mande music, and Toumani Diabate’s Symmetric Orchestra is another touchstone for the marrying of traditional Malian styles with western jazz-derived sounds.
It’s Toumani’s brother Madou Sidiki Diabate who provides the kora fills for Mali Latino, with compatriot Ahmed Fofana on balafon and vocals, with Alex Wilson’s piano and Hammond organ completing a trio that forms the core of an album that veers between studied kora-jazz and rollicking, horn-driven dance numbers. It’s the big-band Bamako-meets-NY moments that are bound to draw most focus, where the trio are joined by various Malian guest vocalists (Doussouba Diabaté, Kandia Kouyaté and more) whilst bass, congas and all manner of brass instruments combine for some rip-roaring Mande-salsa. Opener Donkan is a fine example of this, the kora and balafon riffing between thick blasts of brass, and Bamako 2000 invokes 70s Latin soul, the watery warblings of Wilson’s Hammond organ to the fore (a marmite instrument if ever there was one) and balafon fitting snugly to the arrangement beneath swaying Mande harmonies.
Kansala is perhaps the best of the more reflective tracks, a showcase for Diabaté’s darting melodies, and Remercier Les Travaillers stops the album in its tracks to pay due respect to Kandia Kouyaté’s magnificence (presumably recorded some time before her recent bout of ill-health). Wilson’s piano is suitably respectful here, duetting tenderly with Diabaté kora.
The idea for Mali Latino was born on tour and is the brainchild of master kora player Madou Sidiki Diabaté (brother of Toumani Diabaté) and pianist Alex Wilson.
In 2004, while on the road with Malian singer and griot Kandia Kouyate, Madou and Alex struck up an instant connection and at the end of the tour decided to cement the musical encounter by recording a track together - Remercier les travailleurs.
Madou then returned to Mali but the two remained in contact. Skipping four years ahead, Alex was offered Composer Residency at the prestigious Aldeburgh Music and his first thought was to continue on the project initiated in 2004.
In preparation, Alex visited Mali in February 2008, six months ahead of the residency, and it was there that Madou introduced him to Ahmed Fofana. Alex was struck by Ahmed's virtuosity, musicality and openness and they all agreed that he would be an ideal third musician to lead the project.
In September of 2008, the three found themselves in the Suffolk countryside with the resources of the Britten-Pears building at their disposal. An intense week followed where the three penned fifteen song ideas followed by an hour's recital to a rapturous audience.
An album recording followed, featuring the full band lineup of trumpet, trombone, latin percussion section, balafon, kora, piano, bass and Malian vocal, totalling nine musicians.
he album opens with "Donkan" - a powerful track that showcases the entire band and some supertight arrangements. Ahmed Fofana's punchy, compelling balafon, Madou Sidiki Diabaté's rippling kora runs, faultless dynamic trombone backing (very much a Wilson trademark), very muscular kit-drumming (and timbales) from Giovannini traded against Solis's popping congas, and those wonderful earthy vocals from guest vocalist Soumaïla Kanouté (a real find!). And then there's Wilson's authoritative, exhilarating latin jazz piano effortlessly glueing the rhythm section together and intermittently pouring out over the rhythm in waves of rich sound.
Straight into "Sangre Mandinga" (Mandinka Blood), a strong rocking dancefloor track, with Giovannini's Spanish lyrics set against the voice of young Malian Aoua Kassé Mady Diabaté. The track includes a wonderful trombone solo (Nichol Thomson) as well as a delightful conversation between the piano and kora.
Of the 12 tracks on the album, it's the third one "Ankaben" that really speaks to me at a visceral level and it's almost entirely due to the vocalist Soumaïla Kanouté - simply stunning delivery!! Every time I hear it, it gives me shivers down the spine. Amazing tremelo effect . Diabaté is also very much on form on the kora trading riffs with Wilson's piano as the whole track builds and builds over a rock solid cowbell and soaring moñas on the trombones.
This vivid recording of Byrd's deep and sophisticated string works by Phantasm is a real treat. Playing this introspective and brainy music with lot's of soul, Phatasm's rendering of Byrd's music is the best available and should go a long way to convince uninitiated listeners to early music that there is plenty to appreciate in music from this era.
The music of William Byrd has been something of an obsession for the members of Phantasm, featuring on their early recordings Still Music of the Spheres (1996) and Byrd Song (1998), as well as their 2004 collection The Four Temperaments. Here they return again to the Elizabethan composer with the benefit of nearly two decades' performing experience, to gather together his complete output for viol consort, bar the fragmentary or spurious works. Spanning some 40 years of Byrd's life, this is a condense but subtly varied album of styles: courtly dances interleave with cryptic spiritual and devotional works - fleeting expressions of the recusant Catholic's unwavering faith - and variations on popular Tudor songs, like the magnificent tour de force, Browning. Among the finest works are the Fantasias, which range from lush-textured six-part tapestries to the laconic three-part pieces, haiku-like in their poetic expressivity. Throughout them Byrd retains the ‘Angelicall and Divine' qualities that his contemporaries remarked upon - qualities that Phantasm captures perfectly in this collection.
The ensemble's director, Laurence Dreyfus (himself something of a Renaissance man), combines rigorous intellect with sensitive musicianship. He leads his colleagues through a series of urbane discourses exploring the abstract, cerebral nature of Byrd's consort music, beyond its earthy, folk-influenced style. Ensemble and intonation are flawless; keen rhythms and feather-light bowings give a lightness of touch to the dances. The recorded balance is acutely judged, too, ensuring that Byrd's contrapuntal lines are always distinct. Listeners with surround-sound are placed thrillingly in the centre of these musical conversations.
Laurence Dreyfus, who directs Phantasm from the treble viol and also provides extensive written commentaries on the music, has rather stuck his neck out in attempting to itemize all 27 pieces not just in chronological order but with specific dates for each, his thinking being that there is a very clear sense of development through the music. I have to say, having spent time re-programming my player to hear them in the order he suggests, there does seem solid logic behind his thinking, although it presupposes that Byrd was a more organized and methodical composer than most and that no influences other than purely stylistic development affected the circumstances surrounding the music's composition. Thankfully, though, the order of pieces on the disc itself does not begin to follow his projected time-line, and we are treated to the full range of Byrd's genius, not as a gradual transition from the foursquare simplicity of the works Dreyfus proposes date from 1560 - Semone Blando a 3, Christe qui Lux es (I and II) and the Miserere - to the much more complex and extended Fantasias a 3 (I and II) and the six-part Pavan and Gilliard, but as a series of often quite abrupt stylistic and textural leaps, the juxtaposing of the Misere and the Fantasia a 4 (I) presenting a stylistic shift which can only really be accounted for by the 30-year interval Dreyfus suggests separated them.
Whether the music is simple, introspective and texturally uncluttered, like the deeply devotional In nomine settings or the four-part Te lucis, or full of enchanting complexities and rhythmic twists and turns (Prelude and Goodnight Ground), Phantasm presents performances which are full of character, commitment and complete confidence. The lovely unity of purpose about everything on this disc brings the music in its many varied guises vividly to life. The dance movements have a wonderfully light-toed lift about them, while the prayerful items seem suitably decorous. Along the way we encounter raw country dances - Fantasia a 6 (‘A song of two basses'), elegant madrigal-like caressing of parts (Browning a 5) and clever little musical jokes - there's a quotation from Greensleeves in the Fantasia a 6 (III).
Phantasm is an instrumental ensemble that plays Renaissance viols, the forerunners of today's modern strings such as violins, violas and cellos. The group has a new CD of music by the English Renaissance composer William Byrd — and it helps clear up some musical misconceptions about what that music sounded like in the 16th century.
I'm a big fan of movies about the Elizabethan age. But I've always been bothered by the music, which, for the most part, is historic fakery. Let's face it: Queen Elizabeth never heard a symphony. Modern orchestras wouldn't exist for centuries. So what did Queen Elizabeth really listen to? Well, music by Byrd, for one. . .The players of Phantasm handle the complexities and nuances of Byrd's style with perfection. His agile melodies sound spontaneous. His rich harmonies emerge as full-bodied colors. His dense counterpoint sounds easygoing. Indeed, the earthy elegance of William Byrd's music is perfectly matched to this ensemble's temperament. Let's hope that the director of the next Queen Elizabeth movie gives them a call.
Mr. Akinmusire — who in 2007 won both the Thelonious Monk Institute trumpet contest and the Carmine Caruso International Jazz Trumpet Solo Competition — is The up and coming trumpet player of our times and he has arrived! At 28, his second effort with a group of extremely talented colleagues is pure success for the jazz idiom. When the Heart Emerges glistening is a great example of what can be accomplished within the tradition.
I have been unable to find his debut album, Prelude (Fresh Sound/New Talent; 2007), but I'm still gobsmacked at the strikingly exuberant second album, When The Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note).
Akinmusire has been on the scene only a short time but the musicians he has already performed with along with the growing maturity in his writing is sure to make an impact on listeners this year. Surrounding himself with a cast of musicians he has worked with already over the years makes the album a cohesive and exciting venture from start to finish.
Opening up with "Confessions To My Unborn Daughter", Akinsmusire sets the tone that he is willing to make bold statements and even bolder performances all with beauty and skill that might be beyond his years. There's an energy on this opener that both encompasses the fierceness of Clifford Brown and the modern styling of Terence Blanchard. The exchanges between Smith and Akinmusire are tight and intense. But they underscore the longstanding relationship two have had for some time now. Brown's pulsating timing adds another laying of urgency to the piece that illustrates the quintets effort to make every piece important.
"Hyena" is a midtempo piece but still holds a fresh bold consolidation in structure. Akinmusire allows guest pianist, Jason Moran (on fender rhodes here) to take some of the lead here but moves quietly in and out of the foreground. There's a heavy tone in Akinmusire's voice on "Hyena" that made me feel a lot more emotional than usual when listening to ballad. The performance cuts right into you. I loved that.
For his octave-vaulting lines and incandescent high-end tones, 28-year-old California-born trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire suggests connections with Norwegian ambient-brass virtuoso Arve Henriksen. But this is American jazz, and the newcomer already sounds like a redefining force in that sphere. Akinmusire honed his craft with sax trailblazer Steve Coleman, and this music echoes that, and also the work of the album's producer, Jason Moran. But Akinmusire's arresting sound and the collective strength of his band of long-time friends – the dry-toned, Wayne Shorter-like saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Justin Brown – power it all. Passages of minimally accompanied trumpet are masterpieces of patient development, as is the ensemble ballad Henya, with its deliberate, slow-blown dissonance in an otherwise mellifluous theme. Akinmusire's empathy with tenorist Smith gives an updated Miles Davis/Wayne Shorter atmosphere to jolting faster pieces such as Jaya, and the bass and drums pairing nails everything with steely relish. Get used to pronouncing ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee: we're all going to be saying it a lot.
The standout on this album has to be “Henya.” Another thoughtful piece, Raghavan’s rhythmic walking bass line is the driving force throughout and it is paired nicely with Clayton’s slight touch on piano. “Henya,” which is Farsi for “mirror,” naurally captures the experience of seeing one’s reflection in a mirror as the music, notably Akinmusire’s trumpet and Smith’s saxophone, builds into an in sync wave that comes in and out. It pays homage to not only Blanchard, but the mood of this piece is evocative of the Joe Chambers’ composition “Mirrors,” which was written for the late great trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.
This 29 year-old Oakland-native may be a relative newcomer to the jazz scene but he already has an impressive resume under his belt. In 2007, he won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition with a distinguished panel of judges, including Quincy Jones, Clark Terry and Hugh Masekela. And he’s already worked with Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Joe Henderson and last year’s stunning upset for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards, bassist/singer Esperanza Spalding. When The Heart Emerges Glistening shows us all why he’s very much in demand today. His prowess as a trumpeter is evident, but what will stand out most as you listen to this album is the thought that he puts into his compositions, which are both nostalgic and progressive all at the same time. Listeners will appreciate the personal, declarative statement he makes on the album and with the help of fine, young musicians, Ambrose Akinmusire will definitely get his point across to many listeners.
Jaar's music sounds unlike other electronic music made today. It has a distinct beat, regular and systematic, but there is a real organic element, human element, that gives this music a distinct sound and funky flavor. Another young phenom whose talents are evolving at a fast pace. Aren't we lucky?
Jaar is a Providence via New York via Chile producer. He is 21, he attends Brown University, and he already has several well regarded singles and EPs to his name in addition to running the Clown & Sunset imprint. Requisite hot remixes: check. He exhibits all of the earmarks of a rising techno star: He remixes dance music, and his early singles were released as 12"s on dance labels. He counts Chilean techno giant Ricardo Villalobos as a prime inspiration. Little with Jaar is straightforward, however. His father is an acclaimed visual artist. His mixes play like outsider pastiche. There are conflicting reports about whether his downtempo beats-- usually clocking between 90 - 110 bpm-- actually move dancefloors (Jaar himself is skeptical).
Here is an alternate theory as to why Jaar occasionally fails to shuffle Nikes: He makes weird, self-contained music that only lands a glancing blow on house or any other particular dance subgenre. Jaar's music incorporates lounge pop, African jazz, hip-hop, and sound collage in addition to house and pinches of dubstep. The type of soundsystem most appropriate for Space isn't a sleek club hi
-fi but a Victrola in a stop-motion film ("steampunk house"-- let's please not go there).
The textures and ingredients of Jaar's music exist in the context of techno-- rhythm and repetition are clearly important to him-- but Space is not dance music. It's too slow, sure, but it's also too diffuse in its methods and results. Pianos, organs, guitar strings, and, most surprisingly, Jaar's voice all fall under Space's sepia-toned veil. This sounds like a lot to take in, but Jaar goes to great lengths to ensure that Space settles lightly. The tracks are short, funny, and always hitched to a melody. He sidesteps impulses-- during the quivering "Almost Fell", for instance, or during "Specters of the Future", during which actual techno threatens-- to drift into full-on ambience, skronk, or extended beat passages. The goofy bass bumbling of "Problems With the Sun" is as likely to stick with you as the elegiac "Colomb". Functionally I keep thinking of my first listens to The Books' Thought for Food: familiar styles and influences are wafted under my nose. There is a lot of teasing recognition but very little realization. The record passes easily and quickly.
Nicolas Jaar’s Space Is Only Noise is the type of album that teeters on the edge of something special, wobbling between utter brilliance and the plunging cliff reserved for those records that try to do a lot but end up stretching a bit too far. The album’s fourteen tracks are stuffed so silly with ideas that the main thematic elements are often overwhelmed, requiring the listener to either hone in or tune out. Jaar anticipates that tendency, though, and Space Is Noise attempts to tackle the threat of becoming background noise by tackling its harshest volleys head on; most of the time, it succeeds.
Take, for example, the album’s opening seconds. “Être” begins with the sound of waves washing against a shore, as two men exchange lines in French. Soon, as the Frenchmen vanish and the waves continue to lap, a film voiceover monotones a meditative riff: “Look, it’s a body, floating into the land. Now it’s a body swimming out into the water. Now it’s the land itself, here, that is a body; a body of land. It’s the water itself that’s a body of water.” The French voice returns, and by the time the first true note of the album sounds, we are over a minute into the track. You want background nature sounds? Jaar asks. Here you go. Do your best.
You grew up for a bit in Chile. Do you think that influenced how you approach making music?
A little. But most importantly I think the fact that I was separated from NY and then went back – there was that break. That has influenced a lot I think.
Yeah, so when you moved back to New York were there any particular sounds or music that interested you?
Right before coming to New York, my dad sent me like a small, MTV compilation and it had Coolio in it. You know Coolio? And it had Gangsters Paradise in it. And I thought that was the coolest song in the world. When I was like nine. Or eight. Yeah. And that’s kind of the first American song that I remember, that was kind of… And New York is very like that. I don’t know if he’s from New York or anything but to me Gangsters Paradise is a very New York song, and when I got to New York I was like this is a very New York song. So hip hop in a way. That’s the first thing I started really liking for sure. Because on the radio they were playing hip hop and hip hop was good back then. You could listen to the radio and it was amazing. Now it’s…different. There was a moment in between 1999 until 2003, mainstream hip hop was like, good. So I lived through that, listening to the radio. That really was what I was listening to when I got to New York.
You’ve been involved with Wolf + Lamb for quite a few years now. How did that start out?
I sent Gadi a track when I was seventeen. It wasn’t a dance floor track at all. I don’t know why he even answered. I had nothing to do with Wolf + Lamb. But I was into minimal at the time and so were they. They were kind of in a darker minimal techno idea than me, I was more into an experimental Villalobos type. So I just started, I made a couple of songs thinking like why not put a kick underneath or whatever. And that’s how it kind of started.
I want to ask about your approach to songwriting. The low BPM, slow pace, is something people always bring up. What appeals to you about working within that?
I think people bring it up because they need a nice little catch phrase to sell. But there’s more people probably making slow music than fast music in the world. I’m just making music in a tempo that is I guess experimental for dance music, but kind of normal for any other music. The heart, it’s not going that fast, you know? I’m just trying to make something honest, and honestly, it comes out around 100 or 105 BPM. That’s just what comes out of me.
Zenon with the collaboration of composer, arranger Guillermo Klein have produced an impeccable CD that showcases the incredible music of great popular music composers from Puero Rico. Not only music of the influential Rafael Hernandez, but also of Bobby Capo and innovative Sylvia Rexach and others. The orchestrations are lush and full and Zenon's quartet provides the lasting logic. Zenon is proving all of his promise.
Zenon brought Guillermo Klein on board to write arrangements for the ten-piece woodwind and brass ensemble that joins with the saxophonist's quartet, and the results are mesmerizing. Klein uses the large group to magnify the power of Zenon's horn lines ("Silencio"), create a harmonic haze ("Alma Adentro"), and accompany him in classy fashion during straightforward moments of musical clarity. Zenon's playing can be tender and romantic ("Amor"), or lithe and feisty ("Alma Adentro"), but his ideas always serve the song, and Klein's arrangements fit him like finely tailored suits.
While the large ensemble plays a big part in this ten song production, Zenon's connection to the members of his quartet is equally important. Zenon and bassist Hans Glawischnig seem to have a special bond together, as demonstrated during their duologue during "Temes," while drummer Henry Cole provides the sparks that help these songs catch fire. Pianist Luis Perdomo covers the harmonic middle ground, balancing things out between bass, horns and Zenon, as he helps to flesh out a complete picture of this music by filling in the spaces with just the right amount of sonic support.
The wait-for-nothing opener, “Juguete,” composed by Bobby Capó and made popular by Cheo Feliciano as a ballad, is dominated by up-tempo, staccato rhythms. The lyrics are a declaration of love in spite of being made into a juguete, a plaything, but Zenón’s howl is exigent rather than bemoaning. On “Incomprendido” the extensive personnel that Zenón collaborates with on Alma Adentro, which includes a ten-piece woodwind ensemble conducted by close friend Guillermo Klein, can be heard in full force. On Zenón’s spirited new arrangement of “Silencio,” originally composed by Rafael Hernandez, the woodwind ensemble led by Klein aggrandize Zenón’s horn lines, which underline the folkloric rhythms that Zenón hints at. The hauntingly expressional title track, “Alma Adentro,” is the song that Zenón’s working quartet, composed of pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Hanz Glawischnig and drummer Henry Cole, has the most experience playing and according to Zenon, in reflecting on the song and the album, “There was a deeper, more emotional connection here. I grew up with these songs and they all had a very special and lasting effect on me.”
“Olas y Arenas,” one of the more complex arrangements on Alma Adentro features overlapping time signatures that progress into a harmonic haze under the ambiance of the woodwind ensemble. “Amor,” composed by Pedro Flores, is lyrically about rejoicing in the idea of love itself and it features Zenón effervescent signifying. “Perfume de Gardenias” is a tribute to Zenón’s first saxophone teacher, Angel Marrero, which he played in a wind ensemble with her in his youth. The last track, “Tiemblas” is constructed out of layers of harmonically intersecting textures/tempos and the ensemble brings clarity here. Overall, Alma Adentro showcases the infinite possibilities of Afro-Rican jazz in terms of fusion and demystifies latin jazz by bringing a new–non-Cuban/Brazilian–sound into the limelight. The album follows in stride from Zenón’s Jibaro and Esta Plena, which are other performances worth checking out.
For his latest work, Zenon is again backed by stellar musicians from his quartet -- pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Hans Glawischnig and drummer Henry Cole. Added to their exquisite playing are the rich tones of a 10-piece woodwind ensemble put together by composer Guillermo Klein, who expands the music with layers of classical turns. The stunning recording has brought continued acclaim to the highly regarded Zenon, who performed the work at the Newport Jazz Festival.
From the first notes of the Bobby Capo composition Juguete, in which the opening measures are followed by a flurry of notes, it's clear that Zenon aims to evoke the Caribbean spirit of the original melodies while also using well-structured arrangements to launch soaring -- and pensive -- explorations into jazz.
Capo's Incomprendido, played as a salsa tune by the incomparable Ismael Rivera, becomes a soothing ballad. Soft updrafts of English and French horns buffet Zenon's elegant phrasing on alto saxophone.
On the Rafael Hernandez composition Silencio, the saxophonist starts off with a repeated phrase before turning to an initial melody, itself only an introduction to a roaming and improvisational discussion by Zenon and Perdomo that eventually returns to the repeated hook.
A brilliant performer and MacArthur Foundation award winner who is clearly inspired by the island, Zenon goes beyond a mere tribute to the five composers. Avoiding nostalgia, he transforms the tunes, using just enough of them to retain their essence while taking them in new directions, varying tempo, rhythm and mood.
