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Neneh Cherry

Neneh Cherry Blank Project is her first solo album in 16 years – a collaboration with RocketNumberNine, produced by Four Tet, and featuring a guest appearance by Robyn. The 10-track album, recorded and mixed over a 5-day period will be out February 25th, 2014 on Smalltown Supersound. It follows 2012’s The Cherry Thing, a collaborative record with free jazz, noise collective The Thing, which featured new versions of songs by The Stooges, MF Doom, Ornette Coleman, amongst others.

While her energy and demeanor may not have changed since the days of Rip Rig + Panic, musically, Blank Project is a departure from anything Neneh has previously done, initially written as a means of working through personal tragedy. What stands out upon first listen is the album’s sparseness: loose drums and a few synthesizers are the only accompaniment to Neneh’s wildly poetic, sometimes-spoken, sometimes-screeching, soul-flooded and raw vocals. The space created by this minimal aesthetic leaves room for occasional pistes and flurries of rapid, yet throbbing and thunderous instrumentation.

Featuring combined elements of beat poetry, avant-electronica and beautiful vocal melodies, it’s a record that uses simple ideas to create something entirely original. And despite the personal struggles, Neneh was working through in writing this new material, the songs are far from introverted.

As many are aware, the stories from Neneh’s early years are astonishing. She spent her childhood living 50/50 between a loft in New York and in the South of Sweden with her mother and stepfather, the legendary jazz musician Don Cherry. She’s been lifted onto Miles Davis’ lap, Allen Ginsberg regularly passed through their home in an evening and as she got older, she could pop in on Arthur Russell, Talking Heads and The Modern Lovers who all lived in the same loft complex in Long Island City New York. At 14, she started taking trips to Harlem with Ari Up of the Slits at a time when few would venture so far uptown. Soon after, she left home and moved to London, and spent the next 20 years inside the crucial developments in British subculture.

As post-punk became the site of 80s Britain’s artistic and political resistance, she helped form the anarchic multi-ethnic, multi-genre Rip, Rig + Panic, and she was one of the first to bring hip-hop culture to a British audience with “Buffalo Stance” and Raw Like Sushi. Although at points her career had brushes with the mainstream, Neneh remained staunchly counter-culture.

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Radio & Podcasts

When Jazz Pops, Part 1

Read "When Jazz Pops, Part 1" reviewed by Ludovico Granvassu


This week's playlist focuses on the contribution of jazz musicians to pop, hip-hop, and rock projects, from the Art Ensemble of Chicago playing with French singer Brigitte Fontaine, to John Zorn featured on the debut album by the Brazilian queen Marisa Monte and The Thing's mighty alliance with Neneh Cherry. And a tribute to the late Dr. Lonnie Smith, a jazz master known for his boundary-defying attitude.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash ...

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Album Review

Neneh Cherry & The Thing: The Cherry Thing

Read "The Cherry Thing" reviewed by Mark Corroto


The Scandinavian power trio of saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love named their band The Thing in 2000, after the Don Cherry composition from Where's Brooklyn (Blue Note, 1966). In their subsequent dozen or so albums, they have covered Cherry's music and that of Albert Ayler, Joe McPhee, and Duke Ellington. The Thing has also ventured outside the jazz idiom to perform music by The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeah, PJ Harvey, and Cato Salsa ...

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Festival

Neneh Cherry, Larry Graham, Rebecca Ferguson And Lisa Stansfield Added To Line-up For Love Supreme Festival

Neneh Cherry, Larry Graham, Rebecca Ferguson And Lisa Stansfield Added To Line-up For Love Supreme Festival

Source: Dom Christophers

The Love Supreme Festival, which returns to Glynde Place in East Sussex this July, has announced a second raft of names, which includes a broad selection of superstar international acts and outstanding emerging talent from the worlds of jazz, soul, R&B, pop and beyond. Joining an adventurous line-up, that already features the likes of Chaka Khan, Van Morrison, Candi Staton, Submotion Orchestra, The Bad Plus with Joshua Redman, GoGo Penguin and Ginger Baker, are chart-topping UK soul singer Lisa Stansfield, ...

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Recording

Neneh Cherry & The Thing Collaborate And Release The Cherry Thing, Out June 19 On Smalltown Supersound

Neneh Cherry & The Thing Collaborate And Release The Cherry Thing, Out June 19 On Smalltown Supersound

Source: Pitch Perfect PR

Neneh Cherry and jazz trio The Thing met for the first time at a recording session in London in the fall of 2010. It clicked right away as they all shared an open, free approach to the music. The high energy of The Thing's playing found a fitting counterpart in Neneh's intense style. After a performance at Strand, Stockholm in March 2011, they decided to continue the collaboration resulting in their forthcoming, self-titled album, The Cherry Thing, out June 19 ...

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