Jazz Articles

Brownout: Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath II

by Chris M. Slawecki
March 16, 2017

Brownout bandleader and guitarist Adrian Quesada listened to a lot of different music, including blood-curdling heavy metal monsters Black Sabbath, while growing up in South Texas. Even while creating original music more reflective of their Mexican and American funk, blues and rock roots, he and his bandmates never lost their taste for Britain's Sabbath. Their first album of Sabbath covers, Brownout Presents Brown Sabbath (2014, Ubiquity) was acclaimed by both NPR, who named it one of that year's fifty best ...

The Electric Peanut Butter Company: Trans-Atlantic Psych Classics Vol 1

by Chris M. Slawecki
April 15, 2015

Helping to establish the progressive Latin-salsa Grupo Fantastico and Latin funk legends Brownout is apparently not enough for Adrian Quesada, a multi-instrumentalist who specializes in guitars and production. So he teamed up and began working with one of Ubiquity Records' most unique compositional and instrumental wizards, Shawn Lee, who leads the Ping-Pong Orchestra and specializes in keyboards and production. As The Electric Peanut Butter Company, Quesada and Lee spread thick and crunchy collaborative jams all over Trans-Atlantic Psych Classics Vol ...

Afro Latin Vintage Orchestra: Pulsion

by Chris M. Slawecki
October 16, 2014

A musician friend whose opinion I greatly respect shared with me that he enjoys listening to Pulsion, the fourth release by the Afro Latin Vintage Orchestra (ALVO), in two layers: The frothy jazz-influenced horn, brass and string arrangements on top and, like a musical parfait, the churning Latin, AfroCuban and other funk rhythms underneath. ALVO was founded in 2007 around the core band of Masta Conga (percussionist, ringleader and spokesman), Benjamin Peyrot de Gachons (keyboards), Jean-Baptiste Feyt (trumpet), ...

Clutchy Hopkins: The Story Teller

by Chris M. Slawecki
July 28, 2010

Clutchy Hopkins is one of the most inscrutable musical characters you'll ever meet, if you could meet him. No one seems to know who he is, including and especially his record label, or even if Clutchy Hopkins is a singular him or a collective them. Complicating the matter, The Story Teller has vocals but not one single lyric. So how does this person who may not even be a person use no words to tell a story?The same ...

NOMO: Invisible Cities

by Jeff Stockton
August 2, 2009

Having started out in clubs around the University of Michigan as an octet (sometimes larger), enchanted by the Afrobeat of Fela (seasoned with a bit of avant jazz), on Ghost Rock (Ubiquity, 2008), NOMO emerged as much more inspired by the clanging junkyard percussion of Congolese Konono No. 1 and German eccentrics such as Can and Kraftwerk than by the work of John Coltrane or Charles Mingus. That was a daring record, simultaneously a natural step in this ambitious collective's ...

NOMO: Invisible Cities

by Chris M. Slawecki
June 15, 2009

Invisible Cities is NOMO's companion piece to Ghost Rock, comprising music recorded during Ghost's recording sessions and subsequent, supporting live performances. Cities uses many of the same musicians, structures, and approaches, but Bergman and NOMO seem to focus more on pulling traditional jazz sounds into, and pushing the boundaries of electronic rock out of, its swirling dervish mix.

For example, nothing on Ghost Rock sounds like Invisible Cities' opening, title track. Powered by the dual engines of a ...

NOMO: Ghost Rock

by Chris M. Slawecki
June 14, 2009

The initial sound heard on the opening “Brainwave" offers a first insight into the music of NOMO--the sound of composer, multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Elliot Bergman “playing" an actual brainwave monitor. It's an important clue: NOMO finds music where other people find noise.

Ghost Rock is not an easy listen. It is inventive, challenging, and rewarding, and very often like an onion--each song grows through many layers, and they can be pungent enough to bring tears to the ears. ...

Orgone: The Killion Floor

by Chris M. Slawecki
May 21, 2008

If there's something/ANYthing that you've liked in funk, soul or hip-hop during the last four decades, you'll find something you like on The Killion Floor, the first full-length release from this LA-based funk hip-hop ensemble. This is Orgone's rhythm and blues encyclopedia, an expansive (17 songs, 76 minutes) funk survey refracted through the hip-hop perspective that routinely loops and edits together musical pastiche—except that Orgone is a funk band that plays and sings it all live and hot on the ...

Spanky Wilson & The Quantic Soul Orchestra: I'm Thankful

by Chris M. Slawecki
February 21, 2007

In previous musical lives, Spanky Wilson recorded more than half a dozen albums and performed and recorded with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Marvin Gaye, Jimmy Smith and Sammy Davis Jr. The Philadelphia-born and bred musician moved to Los Angeles then in the early 1980s relocated to France, where she spent more than a decade as a jazz singer before returning to LA in 2000.

Upon her return, she was “discovered by multi-instrumentalist and producer Will Holland. Before they ...

Radio Citizen: Berlin Serengeti

by Chris M. Slawecki
January 14, 2007

Berlin's Niko Schabel knows what German techno-music pioneers Kraftwerk began demonstrating all those years ago: if people program them right, even machines got soul.

A multi-instrumentalist and producer who leads a jazz quartet and plays with The Last Poets and other groups, Schabel weaves together the electronic jungle of Berlin Serengeti from samples, loops and electronic textures, plus his own alto saxophone, kalimba, percussion, Rhodes, clarinet and bass clarinet, flute, synthesizer and vocals.

“I think Radio ...