Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Sarah Weaver, Synthesis Series, Music of Sarah Weaver and Collaborations
Thursday, July 6, 2023
Owen Broder, Hodges: Front and Center, Volume 1
There is a truism in the idea that a tribute album can be progressive or regressive, in that returning to a specific artist or genre can help redefine the present or merely recycle it all like heartburn. Here is an album I immediately took to on first hearing but then hesitated, wondering whether we go forward or back with it. I did not know the artist before hearing this, but in the end I kept hearing a fresh newness as I listened so I resort happily to posting on it. Alto and baritone saxman Owen Broder shows himself a real fan of Johnny Hodges and his alto but then takes the swing influence and updates it all in a way that feels good to hear repeatedly. That on this first volume of the digital album Hodges: Front and Center (Outside in Music, Bandcamp Digital Release).
The band is together and motivated to reach backwards and forwards at once, in a lively Quintet of Broder plus Riley Mulherkar on trumpet, Carmen Staaf on piano, Barry Stephenson on bass and Bryan Carter on drums. They go their own way within a kind of Rabbit and Duke in a swing stew that sounds all the clarion feeling of the best of that period without slavishly imitating anything.
The repertoire includes a couple of Swing and pre-Swing classics like "Royal Garden Blues" and "Take the A Train," then a few things, sides Rabbit did on his own, and then others that give us the essence but I do not readily recognize them. Good things all, played with a conviction and steadfast resiliency one does not often hear in such retrospectives. Bravo, bravo. Listen to this on the Bandcamp site and order it there if like me it gets you smiling. https://outsideinmusic.bandcamp.com/album/hodges-front-and-center-vol-1
M'lumbo, The Summer of Endless Levitation
So where to begin? If you go over to the BandCamp page that is devoted to the new album you will read that M'lumbo is a "New York multimedia band that crosses the boundaries of Rock, Electronic, Psychedelic, Jazz, and World Music with over 14 recordings.... 'It's Mickey Mouse, The Stanford University marching band, Santana and Syd Barrett rolled into one...borders on genius'-- Baltimore City Paper."
To get more specific this one is a majestic soundscape evoking the wonderful summers of our youths maybe, of Africa in classic days, of our deepest dreams and complex weaves of associations. Sometimes you might find there is almost a Beatles-in-summer resonance, other times a sunny acoustic-electric back porch dream. It all feels like a pitcher of fresh ice tea and lemon, to me at the moment. It is music most carefully and effectively orchestrated for a heady mix of acoustic and electric instruments and vocals. And it in the end is itself, delectably so.
It is a fruitful excursion into the symphonic realms of acoustic-electronica nowadays, a beautiful tapestry of synthetic and organic dream weaves. To go or to stay is up to you. One thing is certain. This is music in itself, of itself at the highest caliber. So get your ears on it if you can.
Take a walk to the album site to listen. https://mlumbo.bandcamp.com/album/the-summer-of-endless-levitation
Thursday, June 29, 2023
ANNA, Intentions, Progressive and Cosmic Ambient Electronics for the Soul
ANNA is a DJ from Portugal, born in Brazil. Her new (second) album Intentions (Mercury CD) provides you with a sort of progressive avant ambience that lets one float inside a universe one would love to call one's own. And indeed the artist provides us with a meditation technique by which to hear this music which ultimately gives you a way to take this album unto yourself. It is a mesmerizing Post-Minimal Radical Tonality that may be totally laid back but is never the least bit banal in a New Age flatulence, not at all, in fact quite the opposite. The cosmic wrap envelopes you but then when you interrogate the music itself it is not found wanting or pandering.
Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Denny Zeitlin, Solo Piano, Crazy Rhythm: Exploring George Gershwin
Monday, June 12, 2023
Yumi Ito, YSLA
Devin Gray, Most Definitely, Solo Drum Album