v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Best Music of the Year 2017- Cortex

In the spirit of Ornette and the Art Ensemble, energetic carefully constructed roller coaster solos that navigate the extremes. This Norwegian group has been around for 5 years at least but only now am I becoming aware of their infectious pyrotechnics and daredevil stunts. Definitely brings free music back in the forefront. Get their newest, Avant-Garde Party Music-you wont be sorry.

From Music and More:

Who says outsider music can't be fun? Cortex has become one of the best bands on the modern jazz scene and a personal favorite. (In fact, their Live in New York release was my album of the year for 2016.) The band consists of Thomas Johansson on trumpet, Kristoffer Alberts on saxophones, Ola Høyer on bass and Gard Nilssen on drums. The album's opening track "Grinder" develops confidently with brash horns and crisp rhythm, with a saxophone breaking out for an emotionally resonant solo, raw and acid toned, met by manic drumming that forces the music inexorably forward. There is crisp full band interplay, developing the music further, akin to the classic Ornette Coleman quartet and subsequently launching a punchy and powerful trumpet feature, blasting the music into the stratosphere. An urgent fanfare from the horns launches the track "Chaos" with the stop and go theme leading into a ripe trumpet and drums section that is thrilling in its intensity. Not to be outdone, Alberts takes off on an inspired feature of his own, with a deep toned and well articulated saxophone solo, reaching for ecstasy in the music of pure energy. The thick bass is the glue that holds them together as the rip into the choppy finale. "(If You Were) Mac Davis" is a fast and furious full band opening, a collective improvisation that is very loud and exciting, destroying everything in their path.

From The Chicago Reader:

The band has been referred to as the new Atomic—never mind that the "old" Atomic is still very much active and playing at a high level—and Cortex does convey a similar embrace of 60s freebop models with a contemporary vocabulary. Last year the group released its third and best album Live! (Clean Feed), which captures a charged performance taped in Oslo in December of 2013. (Full disclosure: I contributed liner notes for a new vinyl version of the album due soon from the same label). The frontline of cornetist Thomas Johansson (recently heard in Chicago as a member of Paal Nilssen-Love's Large Unit in June) and saxophonist Kristoffer Alberts is formidable—they play post-Ornette melodies with precision and spirit, attacking attractive themes in both dead-on overlapping patterns and yin-yang counterpoint, even when they move away from lines written for improvised variations. They're both killer soloists, subtly dropping in flashes of extended technique in composerly improvisations that open up every tune. It certainly helps that the dynamic rhythm section of bassist Ola Høyer and drummer Gard Nilssen provide such a rich foundation by propelling the music, adding muscle, and dropping accents that keep the frontline on its toes.

Cortex seems to be part of a new wave of Norwegian improvised music that's rejecting some of the more ethereal, highly measured sounds that have been the cause of the useless phrase "Nordic tone" and the tired suggestion that everything is a response to fjords and mountains. While some artists have voiced downright animosity for American jazz, the members of Cortex understand their inspirations even as they push the art form in new directions. As much as I love musicians trying radical new things, sometimes there's nothing more satisfying than hearing a young band embrace tradition in their own way—making the mixture of blues, swing, and grit sound like the greatest thing in the world. Below you can check out "Cerebrum" from the latest album.

From All About Jazz:

Do you have Blue Zone envy? You know the places where people live the longest and happiest lives on the planet. They seem to get more physical activity then we do, eat better, love their communities and politicians. Politicians? I know. They even make some of the best modern jazz. Case in point the Norwegian quartet Cortex. It includes trumpeter Thomas Johansson (Friends & Neighbors, Paal Nilssen-Love Large Unit), saxophonist Kristoffer Berre Alberts (Saka, Snik, Starlite Motel), bassist Ola Høyer (Akøde) and drummer Gard Nilssen, who simultaneously released the 3-CD Gard Nilssen's Acoustic Unity Live In Europe (Clean Feed, 2017).

Avant-Garde Party Music is the quartet's fifth release and it follows last year's critical success Live In New York (Clean Feed. 2016). Keeping with its title, the music is a celebration, a soirée, and a jamboree. The obvious connect-the-dots here is to Ornette Coleman's early quartet with Don Cherry. The music also evokes the energy of Charlie Parker's collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie, back in the old post-war American Blue Zone days. It starts with the vitality of Nilssen's drumming. His muscular attack on "(if you were) Mac Davis" ignites Alberts' tenor to blow Peter Brötzmann-like notes into the vortex of the piece before the music jump-switches to locomotive rocker. The party Cortex throws has nothing though to do with mayhem. The compositions, all by Johansson, are exacting and precise. "Grinder" opens with a good-natured theme before popping the cork of energy music where both saxophone and trumpet excise jazz demons. Same modus operandi for (of course ) "Chaos." The insistence of the music yields to an orderly disorder, things disentangle only to be combed out in the end. To be a party band the quartet is mandated to bring the happiness. Indeed they do. Blue zone bohemians.

Best Music of the Year 2017- Lord Echo

 

 

Delightful soul, African and raggae stew with prime and meticulous mix reminiscent of Marvin Gaye, 60's soul meets House grooves and African rhythms. Each and every cut has been carefully constructed to make your body move and be absolutely positive. Lord Echo has been around (it shows in his sound selections) and it is hoped that he continues his fashion music like this for years to come. Music that will sound great tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

From Music is my Sanctuary:

Harmonies is the new long player from underground super-producer Lord Echo. The new album solidifies his already distinctive mutations of reggae and rock steady with disco, African soul, techno and spiritual jazz. In other words, the Lord has returned from the wilderness with a bounty for his followers. Eat of the bread of life and enjoy access to his crazy World of Sound!

“Many people are concerned with always trying to do something different, but I’m interested in trying make the same thing again and again. It’s a challenge. How many ideas can you squeeze out of one concept, out of one sonic palette? This is one of the restrictions I apply to myself. I tried to use the same instruments and approach as the last record. I made the cover in exactly the same format. Of course, it’s inevitable that it will come out different in spite of this approach, but that’s not the point!

I made this record primarily with DJs in mind. DJs and record nerds. They are generally people who really love music and are often obsessed with various aspects of it. And they still buy records! I respect that. I’m not making music for people for whom it’s just some background noise in their lives, I’m making music for people for whom it IS their lives. And for better or worse, I guess I am one of those people.

Part of my approach has always been to try and take elements of a style of music that maybe somewhat distasteful to my ears – say disco or techno – and try to remake it using my preferred sonic palette of 1960’s production techniques and the influences of my favorite styles of music – Jamaican reggae, East and West African music and American funk and soul.

As part of my process I always test my stuff out when DJing, and I go back to the drawing board again and again. It’s an incredibly disheartening process, but a sound system in a room full of people doesn’t lie – it’ll tell you in the first 5 seconds if your track doesn’t stand up to the one before it. So I may revise and remake a song again and again until it has the effect or atmosphere that I’m after.

I generally only work with people I know quite well personally – so this included Tony Laing (Fat Freddy’s Drop), who is a long time friend and collaborator, Leila Adu – a fantastically versatile composer and songwriter, the excellent singer and producer Mara TK (Electric Wire Hustle) who I was living with at the time and of course the fabulous Lisa Tomlins, whose rendition of “Thinking Of You” by Sister Sledge was such a hit off the last record.”

From 13th Floor:

Mike Fabulous’ new album Harmonies – his third under the Lord Echo moniker and part of a 15 year trilogy (Melodies, Curiosities, Harmonies) since signing to esteemed London label Soundway – has been a true labour of love.  And it shows. 

For the last 3 years the former Mr Mike Fabulous aka Michael August (guitarist extraordinaire for The Black Seeds and regular collaborator with Fly My Pretties) has been holed up in the top floor of a nasty industrial plastic factory in the equally nasty Gracefield industrial site out in the back blocks of Lower Hutt.

The great thing about working with bands like Fly My Pretties is that Mike has gathered some pretty good friends.  So, this album has some very stylish contributions including lavish layers of horns from Fat Freddy’s Drop trumpeter Toby Laing; some delicious smoky vocals from Electric Wire Hustle vocalist Mara TK; righteous sax from Lucien Johnson; contributions from NZ/ Ghanaian composer Leila Adu and heady soul vocals from the one and only Lisa Tomlins.

Putting your finger on exactly what this music is can be an exercise in futility but what I do know is that he’s made a record that references a whole host of musical styles without descending into some sort of pastiche tribute project.  He’s managed to come up with his own hybrid of the music he’s loved for years- disco, Afrobeat, cool jazz, early House, Rocksteady – and blend it all into this earthy urban funk fusion.  It’s deep, warm and moreish.

This is one album I received on digital format and immediately felt let down by.  I want to hear it on vinyl! Only then will the sweet 70’s dub-chug of Whoa! There’s No Limit, the opening track, feel properly aired.  Mara TK and Lucien Johnson tag team between the spaces in the beats to create this deep, smoky groove over the top of an even deeper bass.  The line from an old Brooklyn Funk Essentials song (The Revolution Was Cancelled Because Of Rain) refers to being “packed in between booming speakers”.  This is exactly how we should be when listening to super funky cuts like C90 Eternal (a bit of a nod to the old mixtape traditions) or the Afro-jive of Makossa No.3.  This one takes me way back to my early discovery of Manu Dibango and Fela Kuti.

Lisa Tomplins brings the soul on I Love Music.  It’s a fairly straightforward single verse number but it works a treat.  Fans of UK Acid Jazz legends Brand New Heavies will feel right at home with this one.  We also get a glimpse of Ardijah style Poly-Funk on the very upbeat Low To The Street, a tune that could’ve easily been ripped right out of a neon glow 80’s compilation.  A pleasant surprise is the slow burner In Your Life, which channels a mix of Marvin Gaye, Isley Brothers and plethora of modern grooves but all stitched together in perfect minimalism and led by an ethereal vocal performance by Mara TK.  With some funky keyboards on the fade out it proves it’s a keeper.

From Stuff, an interview with Mark Fabulous:

For people who may not have heard of you, can you describe your music?
It's essentially an unusual mix of dance music from the 1960s and 70s - reggae meets Latin disco in Africa - but made cohesive through my studious application of production techniques, both vintage and modern.

How did you discover music?
I spent most of my adult life producing my own music alongside other bands I was in, like The Black Seeds, but never released any of it. Then around 2010 I was convinced to release an album for a Japanese label called Wonderful Noise. It did really well and since that time I've produced another album and have just finished my third, which will be released in March.

Do you have any projects you are working on at the moment?
I'm taking a break from music as the album I've just finished almost drove me insane, and definitely turned me into a miserable alcoholic for extended periods. So I am really enjoying just looking after my kids, playing a few shows and not making any music right now. I have a small bamboo flute that I enjoy playing, but that's about it.

 Have you been to Womad before?
Yes, I've performed there a couple of times with The Black Seeds and Fly My Pretties. I thought the infrastructure, style and size of the festival was perfect. I was lucky to be here when there were a lot of musicians from Mali a few years back, owing to the political instability caused by Islamic extremists. Music was banned! Can you imagine their pain? But thanks to that situation, I witnessed some incredible music and musicians. Incidentally, there's a great film that deals with that situation - Timbuktu by Abderrahmane Sissako. It's really worth a watch, a brilliant and beautiful piece of work.

Best Music of the Year 2017- Roots Magic

These Italian musicians bring an elemental soulful and bluesy spirit to this eclectic Black repertoire making their free play sound logical and purposeful. For those who long for chaotic order and powerful horns. Great rhythms also. Let the testifying begin. Amen

 

From Jazz Messengers Store :

This is some kind of familiar and bizarre sound creation, rooted in the essence of African-American music in its most Folkish character. Perhaps, only Non-American musicians could get the right distance to imagine something like this. Some sort of synthesized Black-influenced music based on sharp horn charts and a variety of Backbeats from Funk to Dub mutations. A whole sound world coming from the utmost respect for the originals, mixed up with good humor and subversive attitude. Needless to add that Black Music is at the very origin of every urban musical expression of today and this band shows us how and why…

 

From Dusted:

Cultural appropriation has been in a hot potato topic in jazz ever since the Original Dixieland Jazz Band beat its African American counterparts to the punch and cut a short stack of fast-selling acetates back in 1917. Band leader Nick LaRocca parlayed that precedence into a claim that he and his colleagues established the idiom. Push back was immediate and ardent. A century later the members of the Italian ensemble Roots Magic would almost certainly align with LaRocca dissenters. Their second outing for Clean Feed, Last Kind Words, is rooted in both reverence and aptitude regarding the cultural polyglot their musical sources represent.

The band toggles between Pre-WWII country blues and the first generation Chicago-New York nexus of free jazz in its choice of covers. Clarinetist and erstwhile leader Alberto Popolla also contributes a pair of originals and the group also welcomes several guests to the fold. Popolla and Errico de Fabritiis alternating on alto and baritone saxophones make for a flexible and feisty frontline while bassist Gianfranco Tedeschi and drummer Fabrizio Spera generate elastic and propulsive rhythms beginning with an ebullient takedown of Charlie Patton’s “Down the Dirt Road Blues” stacked with hot horn solos and a stomping beat.

The title piece borrowed from Delta chanteuse Geeshie Wiley manages the difficult alchemy of soaking in blues without turning to parodic brine. Popolla’s clarinet wails atop a sawing arco drone and a tumbling cascade of drums and the piece takes on grandly anthemic proportions as an escalating dirge. Patton’s “Tom Rushen Blues” and “Poor Me” work as other choice vehicles for cerulean-tinted release with the former almost sounding like a Tom Waits outtake in its blend of loping, capacious drums, trampoline bass and vibrato-laced, bottom register reeds. Popolla’s “Oh Hush” comes on like a Vegas revue by comparison, its funky frenetic groove and tight unisons abetted by Luca Venitucci’s manic organ.

On the free jazz end of the program Roscoe Mitchell’s “Old” and Julius Hemphill’s “Dogon A.D.” are standouts. The former finds the band lurching through swaggering shuffle with Popolla and de Fabritiis veering from extended technique to properly bent Bourbon Street blowing while the latter flexes with barely bridled collective attitude. A version of Marion Brown’s “November Cotton Flower” imagined as tone poem fantasia also works an engrossing seven plus-minutes of calmative wonders. The dub-inflected rendering of Henry Threadgill’s “Bermuda Blues” that closes the album is less effective as a last kind word although Tedeschi and Spera lock on a credible one drop riddim. Derivation directed in the service of collective expression, deprecation of the same be damned.

From Musica Jazz an interview with the band:

Qual è l’origine del nome del quartetto?
Fabrizio Spera: A dirla tutta, c’è una certa dose di casualità. In una fase molto embrionale della vita del gruppo mi sono imbattuto sul web in uno strano libro intitolato Hoodoo Herb And Root Magic, una sorta di ricettario, o meglio un manuale pratico basato sull’esperienza magico-misterica propria della tradizione culturale africana-americana che va sotto il nome di hoodoo. Vi si trovano informazioni botaniche su erbe, radici e indicazioni vere e proprie su come preparare pozioni e creare talismani personalizzati (le tipiche mojo bags), per arrivare a filtri magici e cose del genere. Questa strana suggestione, che ovviamente corrispondeva già a dei nostri interessi relativi al folklore magico del Sud rurale e alla sua riscoperta in chiave «urbana» – argomenti che hanno già fatto parte della ricerca e del mondo espressivo di musicisti che ci sono cari, come, giusto per fare un nome, Julius Hemphill – spiega sia il nome del gruppo che quello del disco, «Hoodoo Blues And Roots Magic».

E in pratica il gruppo com’è nato?
Errico De Fabritiis: Anche in questo c’è stata una certa componente casuale. Esisteva un gruppo diverso, un quartetto che comprendeva Alberto, Gianfranco, Fabrizio e il pianista Alberto Fiori; suonavano un repertorio originale, con dei brani composti da Gianfranco, di impianto decisamente cameristico… Si era verso la fine del 2011. A me era capitato diverse volte di suonare in duo con Fabrizio e poi in duo con Alberto: questo duo di fiati, che è nato altrettanto per caso, improvvisando all’interno del negozio di dischi romano Blutopia, poi si è stabilizzato come Improgressive. Fu sulla base di questi rapporti che avvenne il mio inserimento. Quando poi, di lì a poco, il pianista lasciò il quartetto, il suono del gruppo subì la giusta trasformazione per l’imminente cambio di rotta. La svolta nella vita del gruppo, che poi lo ha portato verso quello che adesso siamo, è venuta comunque in maniera abbastanza fortuita. Un giorno Fabrizio ha proposto di suonare The Hard Blues, di Hemphill e la cosa ha subito colpito tutti, perché andava, aveva il giusto spirito e un groove finalmente coinvolgente.
Alberto Popolla: Tuttavia per un certo periodo di tempo siamo andati avanti con un doppio repertorio, proprio perché all’inizio non c’era stata una programmazione definita verso questa direzione artistica. Tutto questo è durato almeno sino a tutto il 2013. Anche se debbo dire che la confluenza tra il blues e un mondo espressivo più legato alla musica improvvisata è venuta naturale.
FS: In particolare abbiamo sentito subito il bisogno di stabilire una relazione tra le forme più arcaiche e profonde del blues e quelle più aperte e creative del free jazz e senza tralasciare lo spirito solo apparentemente più «leggero» del funk e del rhythm and blues.

Il fatto di proporre in larga parte dei brani altrui non vi pesa? Seppur scherzosamente, qualcuno vi ha definito come una cover band…
Gianfranco Tedeschi: In questo senso il disco potrebbe sembrare un passo indietro. Si pensa sempre che vi sia uno sviluppo di tipo lineare e progressivo, mentre nei fatti il sistema è circolare, spiraliforme. In realtà noi abbiamo visto il ritorno a forme chiuse come un passo in avanti. Non vorrei buttarmi in dei paragoni insostenibili, ma qualcosa di analogo è avvenuto in settori artistici diversi. Ad esempio nella arti figurative, con il cosiddetto «ritorno ad un altro ordine»; basti pensare all’ultimo Picasso, che per far sorgere figure di altri tempi si riappropria di un sistema di segni che sintetizzano tutti i suoi precedenti stili. Dopo questa esperienza per me è difficile tornare a forme improvvisate totali, perché in una certa misura non mi convincono più.
FS: Su questo punto, ci sono visioni diverse. Personalmente tendo a non fare distinzione tra musica composta e improvvisata: ognuna di queste pratiche, incluse quelle che tendono alla loro integrazione, pongono problematiche diverse ma altrettanto stimolanti e percorribili con lo stesso spirito e determinazione.

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A View on Maier

From a review of a new biography of Vivian Maier by Pamela Bannos:

Maier’s oeuvre is thrilling to explore, but it remains disturbing to think how her privacy in life has been so compromised after her death. This also raises broader questions about orphaned art works and what drives artists to create in the first place. Asked by one acquaintance who glimpsed a few of her photos why she would not show her work to anyone, Maier apparently replied that if she had not kept her images secret, people would have stolen or misused them. Given the exposure of her work today, its proliferation online, in books, and in galleries, one wonders whether she would have been horrified by all the attention. She chose to remain unknown. We cannot even say if she self-identified as a photographer. Every house she lived in as a nanny she asked for a padlock on her bedroom door; whenever she went out alone to take her photographs she refused to say where she was going and got angry if asked; in her bookcases, she turned the spines of her books against the wall so the titles remained hidden. All these details suggest Maier wanted her anonymity to remain intact, and perhaps she never imagined she had anything other people might care to see.

But she is dead, she left no will and made no apparent attempt to determine the fate of her photographs. Should we honor what we think the artist might have wanted? Maier’s oeuvre joins the other art collections, discovered by strangers, in an age of freewheeling circulation of images on the internet. In many ways, Maier and the various ways she has been understood, from the “mystery nanny” to the “street photographer,” is a construction and reflection of our time and much less of her own. This is what makes Bannos’s biography so welcome. For the most part she lets Maier emerge simply from what she did — her travels, her photos, her actions. Only in her closing remarks does Bannos give us the swiftest brush strokes of a portrait, which is worth remembering for it is one of the most lucid and accurate summations of Maier’s work to date.

Vivian Maier was a fiercely independent woman who lived the life of a photographer while also working as a nanny. She had a difficult personality, she was a hoarder, and she sought anonymity. These qualities may ultimately have little to do with her photography, but together they form a picture of a woman who chose to remain unknown.

There are two mysteries around Maier that are neither disrespectful nor irrelevant to pursue. The first is practical. Why did Maier stop taking photographs so abruptly in the ’80s? She would live another three decades. Did she stop? We cannot be sure. All we know is that almost all her known prints were packed up by the end of the ’60s, also around the time she stopped developing her black-and-white film — “a choice that today contributes to multiple readings of her intentions,” Bannos writes. For the next 40 years, Maier carried all her material with her in boxes, alarming new employers, some of whom would give over their garages and attics to store her belongings. Maier’s downward spiral began in the mid-’70s, by which point the subjects of her photographs had changed — the vivid, moving portraits of people started to disappear and were replaced by trash on the street, countless newspapers, fresh piles off the press or single copies torn and discarded. This was an evolution, but was it announcing an imminent end? Or have we simply not discovered all the work from later decades?

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The End of a World

 

 

From CNN via Noticel:

On the southeastern coast of this island, where Hurricane Maria made landfall two months ago, the waves of the Caribbean lash the crumbling foundation of Jose Morales' battered seaside home.

A year ago, the Morales clan kicked off the holidays in Yabucoa with a large outdoor gathering that included turkey and a traditional pig roast. Not this year.

"This year there will be no Christmas," says Morales, who is 74 and legally blind. "Those who can will enjoy the holidays. We can't. We'll be here. Living in fear, in danger."

Up the road, his sister Paula Morales, 67, sits in a plastic chair -- one of two pieces of furniture in her living room -- under the blue plastic tarp that has replaced her roof. A small painting of a clown, one of the few things she salvaged after the storm, hangs on the wall.

At night, Morales sits by candlelight or the glare of her battery-operated lamp and listens to the crashing waves. Most of her belongings lie in a pile outside what's left of her cinder block house.

"I can't think about the holidays right now," she says, eating white rice and red beans from a small plate. "I have too many worries."

A marathon season of revelry

For many Puerto Ricans, Thanksgiving is usually the start of a marathon season of revelry that ends around January 6 with Three Kings' Day, when families hold festive gatherings and children leave shoe boxes full of grass -- the equivalent of cookies for Santa -- for the wise men's camels.

"The way we celebrate ... is not (just) Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's," said Cynthia García Coll, an educational psychologist who lives in Dorado, near the capital city of San Juan. "It's every weekend. You have cousins on another part of the island. So the next weekend the whole family goes to the other side of the island."

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Despues de Maria

Vallejo Nocturno 2017 - Despues de Maria

Best Music of the Year 2017- Pirulo y La Tribu

 

 Pirulo's earthy and street savvy rhythms reflect the positive nature of his Puerto Rico-last week as we cruised through San Juan's streets unguided by the unlit traffic lights his music guided us past all that's bad in today's world. Sooner than expected I think this talented musician will infect the world with his modern soulful salsa. A must hear for anyone who appreciates dance music.

From El Nuevo Dia:

El salsero Pirulo siempre es fiel a su naturaleza, y no importa cuánto haya evolucionado desde el lanzamiento de su disco “Calle Linda 1”, en 2013, sus letras y melodías deben estar impregnadas con su esencia.

De hecho, madurar para el artista es, en gran medida, verse reflejado en su trabajo, y eso siente que lo logra en su nuevo disco “Calle Linda 2”.

Es por esa lealtad con sus conceptos, ideas y filosofías de vida que considera que ha podido diferenciarse entre sus colegas de la última generación de salseros.

“Eso vino conmigo. Yo soy yo en mi vida fuera de la tarima, fuera de la salsa, fuera de la música. Yo soy yo, a mí manera, y soy un respetuoso de los demás. Al respetar a los demás me respeto a mí mismo y tengo bien clara mi particularidad como ser humano. No es algo que me dio con hacer un día para ver si me iba bien en la salsa; yo desde niño, estoy tocando conga y haciendo coros, y soy percusionista, y eso de la salsa es algo que me sale natural”, expresó el cantante a El Nuevo Día.

Sobre su nuevo trabajo musical, que consta de 15 temas contenidos en dos discos, el carismático vocalista indicó que con el mismo quiso dar continuidad a la producción lanzada en 2013 con canciones que apelan a la vida cotidiana y a la idiosincrasia del pueblo puertorriqueño, contadas con su característica jerga callejera y pintoresca.

No obstante, destacó que se refleja en el material una madurez tanto musical como personal.

“Es un ‘upgrade’, como cuando le das un ‘upgrade’ al teléfono. Como persona yo soy más maduro ahora, pues lo mismo pasa con el disco. Se oye mejor, está más firme, con un poco de más calidad. Es la idea, en cualquier oficio uno quiere ir mejorando”, subrayó.

“Calle Linda 2” contiene colaboraciones con la merenguera Olga Tañón y el reguetonero Ozuna, entre otros artistas.

El primer corte promocional “De mí que hablen, de mí que inventen”, según señaló es un tema con mucho ritmo inspirado en aquellas personas a las que les gusta hablar de otras.

“Me gusta mucho, es candela para bailar. Es una temática que todo el mundo la puede cantar. Tú conoces a alguien bochinchero, alguien que habla lo que no es. Es una temática bien nuestra, de nuestros pueblos latinos”, expuso.

From WOW La Revista:

La  música de Pirulo Y La Tribu vuelven a tener presencia en el mercado musical con la salida de su álbum Pirulo y la Tribu: Calle Linda 2.

En esta nueva producción musical, el artista le da continuidad a su primera producción musical Pirulo Y La Tribu Calle Linda con la que logró  destacarse entre los intérpretes  más reconocidos del popular género y conquistar el gusto del salsero joven que disfruta de escuchar ritmos únicos y distintivos.

En esta nueva producción, Francisco Rafael Rosado Rosario (Pirulo), cuenta con la colaboración de reconocidas figuras de la música entre las que se encuentran Pedro Guzmán, Richie Flores, Alain Pérez y como artistas invitados, a Olga Tañón que lo acompaña en el tema “Miro Pal Cielo”,  y Ozuna con “Yo Soy Yo”.

“Soy bendecido y este álbum es un reflejo de esto. Es mi salsa para los salseros del mundo, es la que me cambió la vida y  la que disfruto hacer. Espero que los amantes del género la disfruten”, dijo el artista.

El sencillo promocional, “De mí que hablen”, es acompañado de un mensaje contundente para las personas que comentan sobre la vida de los demás… sobre lo cual Pirulo comenta: “En este tema muestro nuestra realidad como seres humanos, y es que siempre va a haber alguien que hable de ti. Siempre está el que le gusta el comentar lo negativo sobre otras personas, pero también existe el que está claro … de eso es de lo que habla esta canción”, destacó el artista.

  

 

 

 

 

Titi Tati after Maria

Vallejo Nocturno 2017 - Puerto Rico in November 2017

Pirulo y La Tribu Realidad

 

This music and his spirit represents the best of Puerto rico during these last years. A great artist.

Best Music of the Year 2017- Julien Baker

 

Sincerity is not be the easiest emotion to translate into song. Mostly it sounds false or immature. In American music it has a self pitying effect that makes you disregard the message. Julien Baker has a poetic sensibility that bypasses these simple constraints. Her lyrics and her complaints ring true. The arrangements on this big production are sensitive to her talents. She has seen demons and she has missed the prize. Excellent complex ballads of survival and loneliness. Introduced to her raw talents 3 years ago and she has arrived.

From Exclaim:

Turn Out the Lights opens with the creak of an old door and a haunting string and piano instrumental that ushers listeners into "Appointments," which then greets us with chiming guitar lines before layers of Julien Baker's gorgeous voice fill the space with melody. The opening sequence is indicative of the sophisticated sound the Tennessee singer-songwriter has achieved on her sophomore record — a marked but natural evolution from her bare-bones debut Sprained Ankle.

Baker's lyrics remain as raw as ever, vividly detailing despair both mundane and existential. Learning to live with unfixed holes in the drywall ("Turn Out the Lights"), showing up to recovery support group meetings ("Happy to Be Here") and buckling a seatbelt ("Hurt Less") serve as banal metaphors for self-care — a concept that can seem monumentally daunting in the throes of mental illness.

Beyond day-to-day self-preservation, the record also explores questions about the bigger picture. We hear Baker, a devout Christian, wavering in faith during moments of darkness — whether it's challenging a faulty creator on "Happy to Be Here" or debating her own moral standing on "Even."

Of all the barely-there hopeful glimmers ("Appointments," "Hurt Less"), Baker's most striking breakthrough comes at the end of "Claws in Your Back." After contemplating "the easy way out," she instead comes to the conclusion that she just might be able to love her sickness. "I take it all back, I changed my mind," she pleads, before a strangled shout of "I want it to stay" echoes into the void, closing the album.

From Pitchfork:

On “Claws in Your Back,” the last song on her second record Turn Out the Lights, Julien Baker pulls out the stopper from all the tension that’s mounted in her solo music to date. The Tennessee songwriter’s first album on Matador wrestles with many of the same demons that populated her chilling debut Sprained Ankle in 2015. In her cracked but steady voice, a voice trained on pop-punk in her band Forrister and later subdued to spare, acoustic rock, Baker appeals to God. She asks familiar questions: Am I enough? Do I deserve to be here? Will I ever be OK? In the album’s final moments, she at last settles on something like an answer. “I think I can love the sickness you made,” she sings. “I want it to stay.” She thunders out the last syllable in an unbridled belt, the kind that sparks full-body shivers no matter how fortified your guard may be. Her voice echoes into what sounds like a cavernous space, and then you hear her close the lid of the piano, the heavy work of catharsis behind her.

If that “stay” stuns beyond anything Baker’s ever recorded, it’s only because she fought so hard to get there. The fragile, gentle songs on Sprained Ankle played like an open diary of mental illness and substance abuse, with an ember of faith flickering at its core. “There’s more whiskey than blood in my veins,” Baker sang over sparse piano chords on that album’s closer “Go Home,” “more tar than air in my lungs.” On Turn Out the Lights, Baker reckons with the ghosts that follow her even into sobriety. Though the album still centers on her voice, guitar, and piano, she’s got more company this time, both in the form of additional personnel (Sorority Noise’s Cameron Boucher plays woodwinds on “Appointments” and “Over,” and Camille Faulkner lends strings to five tracks) and new characters in the lyrics. The “you” Baker sings to is sometimes God, like before, but also sometimes a romantic partner or friend she feels she’s disappointing. Whomever she’s addressing in a given moment, she dreads their rejection constantly—even on the title track and “Shadowboxing,” where the only person she’s struggling with is herself.

From Consequence of Sound:

No one is more critical of Julien Baker than herself. Throughout Turn Out the Lights, her groundbreaking second album, and first for Matador Records, she refers to herself as a masochist, a hypocrite, a jumble of faulty circuitry resulting from a flawed design. A blistering examination of depression and self-doubt, her album displays just how exhausting it can be to find even semblances of hope when feeling drowned by anxieties. Over the course of 45 minutes, she exposes her deepest insecurities in an effort to form a meaningful connection with her audience, finding no easy answers along the way.

Emerging from the DIY scene in Nashville in 2015, Baker took the scene by storm on Sprained Ankle, a pared down yet achingly powerful album. The then 19-year-old singer built a following with brutally honest ballads about working to overcome substance abuse and live through depression. Whereas her debut was sparse and solitary, Turn Out the Lights finds Baker widening her scope to cavernous levels where each echo is acutely felt. Cam Boucher’s woodwinds and Camille Faulkner’s violin add flourishes, but Baker’s poised use of piano, organ, and electric guitar lays the groundwork for an expanse that can contain her tremendous voice, which she lets out in full force. As songs like “Appointments” and the title track show, she has grown assured in letting her vibrant voice carry the weight of her words, making for a devastating combination.

One of Baker’s many talents is the ability to create entire worlds out of the most intimate moments. The details in a song like “Sour Breath”, where she pretends to lie asleep in bed knowing her partner is drinking alone in the other room to avoid seeing her, capture the raw pain of feeling like a disappointment with searing clarity. On “Hurt Less”, the longing in her voice is pronounced as she asks for just a few minutes more to talk with a friend in a car so she doesn’t have to go inside and face herself. These internal battles are fought in the most personal spaces, the moments alone in the dark with just one’s thoughts.

From Stereogum, a great interview with Julien.