What are you listening to? May 2019

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JazzyRandy

JazzyRandy

I'm the off-the-shelf model
Staff member
Kendrick Scott Oracle - A Wall Becomes A Bridge (2019)
FlIsTeN
I enjoyed his previous release (We Are The Drum, 2015), but thought the one before that (Conviction) was one of the best of 2013. This is good, but I'll need more listens to peg down a rating.
 
Jonathan Finlayson - 3 Times Round (2018)


My year-to-date Jazz purchases are sometimes similar, but also very different inside the contemporary Jazz label. But not having any real Jazz-listening friends, it's hard for me to determine if some listeners might consider the differences wide enough to like/dislike different artists/albums, or if they are all similar enough to be considered the same sort of thing in a broad sense.

One of these days, I want to create a roadmap for all the new veins of Jazz being created today. Then, maybe, overlay it over Jazz maps for the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

It would be interesting to roll Finlayson, Kamasi Washington, Snarky Puppy, and Kendrick Scott into comparisons with Hubbard, Shorter, The Crusaders, and Tony Williams.

There's a new host on the local Jazz radio station, WNCU, whose tastes match mine broadly. In one series, he'll play a Miles song from 1967, a spoken word / hip hop versed track from Ambrose Akimsure's latest, Dave Brubeck, Rh Factor with Roy Hargrove, Duke Ellington, and Gerry Mulligan. Listening to him makes me want to get a rotation there and spout my theories (and maybe hang out with Branford Marsalis, who makes random appearances at the university's music department.)

Hmmm, maybe I should have posted this in Random Music Thoughts?
 
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Alicia Keys - Songs in A Minor (2001)

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JazzyRandy said:
Kendrick Scott Oracle - A Wall Becomes A Bridge (2019)
FlIsTeN
I enjoyed his previous release (We Are The Drum, 2015), but thought the one before that (Conviction) was one of the best of 2013. This is good, but I'll need more listens to peg down a rating.
Click to expand...
This, a couple more times.

One of the cool things about this is that the songs are instantly likeable because of the clean clear *something* sound of the music. It just sounds like something I want to listen to. The extended intro might be excused from that decription because it sounds like something a little less random than a warm up session, but even that attracts me.

Then, after listening, I hear layers of composition that spin out from the songs, each instrument pulling the songs forward yet pushing against the group to speak its own voice.

Will Layman, Jazz reviewer at PopMatters describes their sound more lucidly than I do:
Will Layman said:
His music, including a string of records credited to his band Oracle, is among the finest of its new kind: a new generation of contemporary jazz that is slick and funky without being vapid and "smooth", that is soulful and accessible but also sophisticated.
...
On "Windows", for example, the rhythm is established by a tricky/funky acoustic baseline from Sanders, around which Scott plays a syncopated military snare pattern, all while the keys and guitar set up a wash of beautiful sound. Ellis's horn comes in sounding wondrously like Wayne Shorter in his Weather Report mode, with tenor saxophone eerily shadowed by bass clarinet down low.
...
You can hear the ways in which it uses a "jazz band" to execute an arrangement that sounds different, with Moreno's guitar playing both patterns and melody along with the horn, Eigsti thrumming his piano chords in waves rather than punching them bebop-style, and Scott cooking a pattern that syncs with melody rather than just keeping time. The opening wash from the turntables helps to establish the track as being from a different time, but ultimately it is the way the band works in sync that makes it sound up to the moment.
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Jazz is alive, kicking, and growing in wondrous new ways. Viva La Jazz!
 
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Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition (Sviatoslav Richter)

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Pictures at an Exhibition is typically heard in an orchestral arrangement (several exist but the "classic" is that of Maurice Ravel) but Mussorgsky originally wrote it for piano. Richter's interpretation is excellent
 
Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition (National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine/Theodore Kuchar)

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And now the orchestral version

This disc also includes Mussorgsky's orchestration to his "Night on Bare (Bald) Mountain" as well as the more well-known Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration
 
Zeeba Neighba said:
Modest Mussorgsky - Pictures at an Exhibition (Sviatoslav Richter)

MI0003197280.jpg


Pictures at an Exhibition is typically heard in an orchestral arrangement (several exist but the "classic" is that of Maurice Ravel) but Mussorgsky originally wrote it for piano. Richter's interpretation is excellent
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I really liked his album Good News For People Who Love Bad News.
 
Roy Haynes - Vistalite (1979)

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Vinyl Rip Of The Day.

This album screams "70's" from Roy's wardrobe to the arrangements, but in this case that's not a bad thing at all. With folks like Joe Henderson, Stanley Cowell and Cecil McBee helping out, Roy finds a consistent funky groove without sacrificing his jazz integrity.

:4.5: on the Sam-O-Meter. I can't imagine why this was never released on CD.
 
The Real Tuesday Weld - Where Psyche Meets Cupid (2001)

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AMG sez:

Within the first few notes on the first cut of his first official full-length release, Stephen Coates, aka the Real Tuesday Weld, "takes us to a wonderful place" and never lets go. It's a dreamy world of cocktails, romance, melody, tongue-in-cheek kitsch, and timeless pop songcraft. Coates' vocal delivery is a distillation of Serge Gainsbourg and Bryan Ferry, while his arrangements graft the spaghetti Western vibrations of Sergio Morricone with a heavy dose of cabaret. Drawing from influences that stretch from 1930s jazz to lounge and electronica circa 2001, Coates peppers the tracks on this disc with snippets of spoken-word, lo-fi car-radio effects, hip-hop beats, tape loops, wah-wah guitars, reverb, and subtle traces of studio trickery that give the impression of a modern day vintage recording. Behind Coates' jumbled Wall of Sound are memorable songs that echo Brill Building/Tin Pan Alley expertise. An eclectic collection from one of modern rock's most eccentric purveyors of pop oddities, Where Psyche Meets Cupid is an enjoyable romp through the past, present, and future.

:4.5: on the Sam-O-Meter.

But not on Spotify. :thumbsdown:
 
Matthew Stevens & Walter Smith III - In Common (2018)

Guitar, tenor sax, vibes, bass, drums. An album of textures and pulse.

It's a ride to listen to the guitar and vibes trade lead and comp roles, sometimes without this listener noticing the switch unless I'm paying attention.
 
Aaron Parks - Little Big (2018)

AllAboutJazz said:
Rock, hip-hop, fusion, and ambient/electronica all figure prominently in Parks' expansive jazz universe. And by opening with the heated, sinister, piano, push-and-pull polyrhythmic bass and drums, and scratchy, scrunchy guitar of "Kid," Parks immediately essays back to the multi-genre spark that powered Invisible Cinema. The visceral tension Parks and guitarist Greg Tuohey create remains fierce, mysterious and, very often, soothing throughout Little Big's eighty minutes-plus run.
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