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Maleem Mahmoud Ghania & Pharoah Sanders: The Trance Of Seven Colors
by Chris May
Producer Bill Laswell gets a bad rap in some quarters, and sometimes he deserves it. During his mid 1980s through mid 1990s purple period, Laswell tended to apply, some would say impose, a one-size-fits-all, avant-rock-and-funk formula across the board to the projects he took on. It was novel and radical and compelling and Laswell assembled a ...
Charlie Ballantine: Cold Coffee
by Mark Sullivan
Indianapolis-born jazz guitarist/composer Charlie Ballantine has a special relationship with American music of all kinds: jazz, folk, the blues (his father was a blues guitarist, providing some of Ballantine's earliest musical memories) and contemporary rock. His previous album Life Is Brief: The Music Of Bob Dylan (Green Mind Records, 2018) made the inspiration outside of jazz ...
New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Songs - The Music of Allen Toussaint
by C. Michael Bailey
After a harrowing experience of administrative scandal, followed by near extinction, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, under the direction of drummer Adonis Rose, rises phoenix-like from the ashes to release the first large orchestra consideration of New Orleans son Allen Toussaint. Songs: The Music of Allen Toussaint is a celebration of the late composer, featuring nine ...
Creedence Clearwater Revival: Live At Woodstock
by C. Michael Bailey
August 3, 2019 was the 50th anniversary of the commercial release of Creedence Clearwater Revival's Green River (Fantasy Records, 1969). Two weeks later the band were taking the stage at the Woodstock Music and Arts festival at 12:30 AM Sunday morning, August 17, 1969 for a fifty-minute set of eleven songs. It was a heady place ...
Ranky Tanky: Good Time
by John Bricker
The West African phrase Ranky Tanky roughly translates to “get funky" or “work it," according to the band's website. The band earns this title with danceable blends of gospel and jazz, celebrating the Gullah culture found in their home state of South Carolina. Although Good Time delivers more infectious energy than their self-titled debut, Ranky Tanky ...
Woodstock—Back to the Garden: 50th Anniversary Experience
by John Kelman
First things first. For all but the most committed of fans, knowledge of what transpired, how it transpired and when it transpired at the now-legendary 1969 Woodstock Music & Arts Fair has, despite a variety of initial, 25th and 40th Anniversary audio and video releases, been severely limited. As engaging, entertaining and well-constructed as these various ...
Espoo Big Band: Espoo Suite
by Jack Bowers
Almost forty years after its inception in 1980, Finland's world-class Espoo Big Band and composer / arranger Marzi Nyman have recorded an often brash and always impressive salute to their home base, the appropriately named Espoo Suite. “This is my attempt to describe [the city]," Nyman writes, “through free-associative composing." The word “free" aptly expresses Nyman's ...
The Wøøøh: Music for Weddings and Funerals
by Troy Dostert
French bassist Sylvain Didou has a fondness for choosing misleading album titles. His previous outing with his drone/noise group, Derby Derby, was entitled Love Dance (Ormo Records, 2017), while his current release, with his band The Wøøøh, is the similarly facetious Music for Weddings and Funerals. Far from ceremonial, mournful or celebratory in any conventional sense, ...
Cartoon: Change Of Meaning
by Roger Farbey
The Confront Recording's Collectors Series is distinguished by the packaging of its CDs which arrive in a DVD sized metal box. Rather than any cover art, there are instead simple stickers affixed to the front and rear denoting the artist, title and track names. The CD itself quaintly replicates the grooves and track markers of a ...
Tony Molina: Songs From San Mateo County
by John Bricker
Songs From San Mateo County would seem like an afterthought from a musician with a normal discography. The compilation of 14 unfinished and unreleased tracks, most barely more than one minute long, gives each song barely enough time to make an impression before rushing on to the next. This brief project only makes sense coming from ...
