Extended Analysis
Wonderful now
by Scott Lichtman
What do you get when you combine the high-velocity beats of electronica with the virtuosic proficiency of fusion, the pristine sound quality of an ECM label record and the “goes down easy" catchiness of smooth jazz? When composed and performed at the highest level, it sounds like Anatole Muster's album, Wonderful now. This album gets better with repeated listening. Muster, who is 22 years old, creates nearly every sound on his orchestrations (except for several cameos), composes, writes ...
read moreString Planes
by Dan McClenaghan
Collin Sherman takes the 'A' train to his day job in Manhattan. Billy Strayhorn, the writer of the tune “Take the 'A' Train" that was made famous by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, must be smiling. Do the seeds of Sherman's compositions germinate during these forty-five-minute rides? Possibly, though his music has no resemblance to Ellington's or Strayhorn's. Day job and train rides aside, Sherman creates his music in a home studio in a one-person endeavor via the overdubbing ...
read moreRFK Stadium, Washington, D.C. 6/10/73
by Doug Collette
As much or more so than any previously released new release or archive package, the cover art of Grateful Dead's RFK Stadium, Washington, D.C. 6/10/73 accurately (and vividly) reflects the nuances of the music behind the enticing graphics. In a pastel green and pink/orange color scheme of both matt and glossy finish, Masaki Koike's intricate designs hint at the dense subtleties the iconic band infuses into its chosen range of material during this approximately four-hour cull from the larger seventeen-CD ...
read moreLive At Sweetwater / Live At Sweetwater Two / Live In Japan
by Doug Collette
Hot Tuna's Live at Sweetwater/Live at Sweetwater 2/Live in Japan (Mercury Studios, 2004) reaffirms the fluidity of personnel that's marked the veteran ensemble throughout its over fifty-year career. Comprised of titles originally issued on the Relix Records label in the mid-to-late Nineties, then re-released in modified form in 2004, this Mercury Studios compendium may represent the definitive versions of those titles (though the lack of notes providing historical perspective, as appeared on previous editions, leaves that a moot point).
read moreA Supreme Love
by Duncan Heining
Alan Skidmore is one of the finest saxophonists to come out of the United Kingdom, Europe or indeed anywhere. In fact, it was hearing Skidmore's tenor solo on “Have You Heard?" from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton (Decca, 1966) that encouraged a young Michael Brecker to take up the instrument. Skidmore had also served his apprenticeship with blues singer Alexis Kornerin the sixties and by the end of the decade was equally well-versed in the blues and in the ...
read moreHarvest 50th Anniversary Edition (CD/DVD)
by Doug Collette
To hear and see Neil Young express such deep-seated personal contentment near the end of his film Harvest Time is to understand more fully why he would go to some lengths to curate a box set of the album upon which the movie is based. While some of the content enclosed on the CDs and DVDs in the 50th Anniversary Edition of the 1972 album has been in unofficial circulation for awhile, immersion in the collection vividly depicts the vagaries ...
read moreRevolver Super Deluxe Edition (5CD)
by Doug Collette
The five CDs in The Beatles' Revolver Super Deluxe Edition reaffirm a fundamental verity regarding the group's work. The Liverpudlian quartet was never more unified in its creativity than in writing, recording and producing the sixteen tracks that comprise the box in collaboration with producer George Martin, engineer Geoff Emerick and the additional musicians and technicians who participated. The curators of this set in turn have channeled the remarkably pragmatic and disciplined approach of the Beatles and company. ...
read moreHellbound Train—An Anthology
by Dan McClenaghan
A career anthology of trumpeter Miles Davis' music would struggle for cohesion, trying to combine sounds from his Birth Of The Cool (Capitol, 1957) to the first and second great quintets, to Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970) and On the Corner (Columbia, 1972). It is a stew that is hard to digest in one sitting. It makes more sense to listen to the albums separately rather than putting snippets into one package. The same could be said for pianist Herbie Hancock, ...
read moreLyceum Theatre, London, England - 5/26/72
by Doug Collette
The final night of any given tour can find the musicians excited at the prospects of jobs well-done throughout the prior road work or exhausted and lethargic from their previous labors. Fifty years ago, when the Grateful Dead's Europe '72 (Warner Bros., 1972) was released, the third LP of the set (conceived as such in part as fulfillment of their contract with the label), included material from the final show of the now mythic tour, clearly documenting how these psychedelic ...
read moreExposures
by John Kelman
Between the impact of the COVID pandemic since 2020, and in the eight year-long tenure of King Crimson's final lineup, which toured between 2014 and 2021, there's been a lot revealed about its sole remaining founding member, guitarist/keyboardist Robert Fripp. Since 2012, the more than five-decade history of King Crimson, live and in the studio, has been painstakingly and exhaustively documented in a series of large multimedia box sets and smaller, more price-friendly editions of key material, often ...
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