jazz
Thomas H. Green
Welcome to the latest edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl, the monthly online musical resource that knows no genre boundaries as it treks through every release on plastic that it can find. This time round we’ve everything from death metal to obscure jazz to electropop, sounds for almost every musical taste. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHDona Onete Rebujo (Maid Um)Known as the “Grande Dame of Amazonian song” Dona Onete, now 80, only recorded her first album at 73. She’s now a sensation in her home country of Brazil. She’s seen as representing the country’s minority peoples and is as much a folk Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Parisian outfit Caravan Palace have now had a career that’s lasted over a decade. They’ve not busted the British charts open (although they have had hit albums in France), but they’ve long been festival favourites with multi-millions of YouTube plays, and their UK profile has never been higher. Their new album dials back the manic dancefloor energy they sometimes emanate, yet succeeds as a wittily constructed, summery, electronic dance-pop concoction.Caravan Palace have long been associated with the dance music sub-genre electro-swing (a mash-up of swing jazz and club beats), an easily Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
To Whom Buys a Record roams through 12 crisply recorded pieces confirming that jazz which isn’t shy of acknowledging its heritage can still have an edge. Though structured and tight, each composition is defined by an attack positing this as an unmediated music: not so much improvisation, but still free-flowing.Take “Bøtteknott”. A sax takes off; stabbing, then weaving. The drums are relentless. A double bass dives, runs and skips. During the more subdued “Broken Beauty”, a mournful sax refrain gives way to a tense wash of cymbal and then, on its own, pulses of bass. A storm is coming.The Read more ...
joe.muggs
You can see why of all jazz acts, the indie-centric Domino label went for this one. In particular if you took the drums and guitar of Lizy Exell and Shirley Tetteh alone, at various points here you could be listening to post-rock, with hints of Sigur Rós or God Speed You! Black Emperor especially on the album's epic centrepiece “EU (Emotionally Unavailable)”.The production, too – from Kwes (Solange, Damon Albarn, Micachu) – is as hefty and sometimes experimental as you'd expect from a left of centre rock or electronica act. But crucially, these parts are just aspects of a larger whole. Once Read more ...
Marianka Swain
It’s too darn hot, BoJo is in Downing Street, and we’re all going to Brexit hell – so we might as well sing the blues. Or at least take a night off from the apocalypse to enjoy a virtuoso company singing them for us in this rousing revival of Sheldon Epps’ 1980 musical revue, which showcases jazz greats like Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen. It’s also unfinished business for Susie McKenna, who directed a short run at Hackney Empire back in 2014.Sharon D Clarke once again plays The Lady, whose concise narration sets the scene. We’re in a rundown hotel Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
As this month’s edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl appears the sun is blazing outside, a heatwave hits, and our record collections must hide in the shadows or warp. Yet still we want more to join them in their sheltered rows and where better to seek the greatest new releases than the longest, most complete monthly round-up of new vinyl releases. As ever, we run the gamut. This time there’s everything from grunge to soul to trap to Qawwali and a whole lot more most of us never imagined could exist. Dive in!VINYL OF THE MONTHQasim Naqvi Teenages (Erased Tapes)Teenages, latest album from New York Read more ...
Katie Colombus
I never quite know where I stand with with jazz. The endless, drifting circular loops of sound, subversive grooves and syncopated rhythms are like having the same conversation over and over, with slightly different turns of phrase and emphasis on different points.Brazilian psychedelia band Boogarins’ interpretation of this intimate interchange saunters from soft whistling and the warm murmur of trancey beats, through the casual discourse of bluesy guitar harmonies and synthy chatter, punctuated by harder rhythmic rock.Their singing in Portuguese distances me even further from a full grasp on Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
"Genius" is a word to be used sparingly, but Django Bates surely is one. “A musical polymath and prodigiously gifted composer” went the citation for his Ivor Award a few weeks ago. “Joyful, insouciant and insanely clever,” wrote Evan Parker in a sleeve-note describing his re-workings of Charlie Parker in Confirmation (2011), the second album with his Belovèd Trio.Last night Django Bates with the regular members of that trio, bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Peter Bruun presented a concert billed as “A double celebration: Evan Parker’s 75th birthday and a look ahead to next year’s 100th Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On “Truth in the Wild”, Erin Birgy sings “Never smother the mystical song that rests deep inside you.” Accordingly, its parent album Dolphine confirms she has no intention of suppressing her vision. Conceptually, the 11 compositions are linked by the premise a being evolved in parallel with humans after our distant ancestors left the oceans – the sub-aqua “dolphine”. The inspiration appears to be that spirits survive after death. Perhaps the cover's medical ultrasound image relates to this?The haunting Dolphine is US singer-songwriter Birgy’s fourth album as Mega Bog. It opens with “For the Read more ...
peter.quinn
Camden’s Jazz Cafe reverberated to the sounds of a 50-year-old spiritual jazz classic last night, as saxist and MC Soweto Kinch and his quintet paid fulsome homage to NEA Jazz Master Pharoah Sanders’ consciousness-expanding album, Karma.Recorded in New York City over two days in February 1969, the album line-up was one of Sanders' finest, including vocalist and lyricist Leon Thomas, pianist Lonnie Liston Smith and bassist Richard Davis, who had performed on a similarly genre-defying masterpiece, Astral Weeks, the year before. The seismic collision of jazz and world music heard in Karma is Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Percussionist Pedrito Martinez is one of those musicians who forces you to re-think what instruments are capable of – while making you wonder if there is actually anything he can’t do. He plays congas, batá drums and bongos with breathtaking facility and flow. He sings everything from Yoruba chants to “Quizás”. He dances. And he can turn a side drum and a hi-hat (no sticks, all played with hand/foot) plus cajon drum as if by magic into a rock drum kit.Last night at Ronnie Scott’s was the first show of a duo tour with a fellow Cuba-born US-based musician, pianist Alberto Rodriguez, touring the Read more ...
Barney Harsent
You hear a lot about living legends, but there aren’t actually that many around – at least not since the first half of 2016. Carlos Santana, however, definitely fits the bill. From his early days stealing the show at Woodstock alongside drummer Michael Shrieve, to achieving bone fide icon status for his pioneering work in the field of fusion solos, he’s at a stage where he can do pretty much whatever he wants. This makes the intent and wide-reaching scope of Africa Speaks all the more impressive, and Santana’s claim that this is a project born out of a love and obsession for the music of Read more ...