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trioVD: Fill It Up With Ghosts
by Chris May
While Oliver Weindling's Babel label has recorded some of Britain's most lyrical and mellifluous artists, including vocalist Christine Tobin, guitarist Phil Robson and the post-bop mutationist band Polar Bear, it has also, true to its name, championed some of the country's most iconoclastic noise-jazz outfits, notably Acoustic Ladyland and Led Bib. Leeds-based trioVD, though ...
Matthew Halsall: Colour Yes
by Chris May
Just gorgeous. Manchester-based trumpeter Matthew Halsall's second album ploughs the same delicate, acoustic, modal jazz furrow as his debut, Sending My Love (Gondwana, 2008). The lineup of fellow Mancunians is much the same too, with flautist Roger Wickham replaced by harpist Rachael Gladwin on three of the six tracks. Just so there's no mistaking where Halsall ...
Michael Janisch: Purpose Built
by Chris May
Since moving to Britain from the US in 2005, bassist Michael Janisch has put much of his energy into collaborative projects involving musicians from the two countries. It's hardly a radical idea, but it's as good a shtick as any with which to carve a profile, and along with his prodigious instrumental talents, Janisch is an ...
Omar Puente: From There To Here
by Chris May
Originally a classical violinist--before settling in England in 1997 he was first violin with the Nacional Symphony Orquestra in his native Cuba--Omar Puente has since focused on modern Cuban music and jazz, exploring the mutalities of the two traditions, and increasingly favoring an electric instrument. From There To Here is, remarkably given Puente's distinguished guest artist ...
Empirical: Out 'n' In
by Chris May
Empirical's eponymous debut album, a stew of mutated bop produced by saxophonist Courtney Pine for his own Destin-E label, created a bushfire of enthusiasm in the UK. That was in 2007, and since then the group has made international strides too, appearing at the Newport Jazz Festival, the New York Jazz Festival, the North Sea Jazz ...
Jared Gold: Supersonic
by Chris May
The organ trio, back in the day at the sharp end of sonic technology--electric organs! electric guitars! special effects!--sounds in 2009 the most dated of hard bop retentions. Compare Jimmy Smith's Blue Note collection, A New Sound - A New Star, recorded in 1956, with many new millennial outings in the style, and try to find ...
Part 4 - Fela: Kalakuta Notes
by Chris May
Fela: Kalakuta NotesJohn CollinsSoftcover; large format; 160 pagesISBN: 978 90 6832 748 9KIT Publishers2009 At the center of Fela: Kalakuta Notes is a diary its Ghanaian-based author, John Collins, kept during his stay at Fela Kuti's compound, Kalakuta Republic, in Nigeria over 18 ...
Franco & Le TPOK Jazz: Francophonic 2: Africa's Greatest: A Retrospective: Vol.2: 1980 - 1989
by Chris May
Franco and Le TPOK Jazz Francophonic 2: Africa's Greatest: A Retrospective: Vol.2: 1980 - 1989 Sterns 2009 The Congolese guitarist, singer, bandleader and composer Francois Luambo Makiadi--most commonly known as Franco but with a raft of other nicknames including The Grand Master and The Sorcerer of The Guitar--had ...
Abram Wilson: Life Paintings
by Chris May
Born in Fort Smith, Arkansas but brought up in New Orleans, where he studied at the Center for Creative Artists--alma mater of fellow trumpeters Wynton Marsalis, Terence Blanchard and Nicholas Payton--Abram Wilson relocated to London in 2002. In 2003 he signed to Dune Records, the recording and management home for a number of significant, London-based, black ...
Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary
by Chris May
Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary Stephen Calt Paperback; 320 pages ISBN: 978-0-252-007660-2 Hardback: 320 pages ISBN: 978-0-252-03347-6 University of Illinois Press 2009 Unlike most dictionaries of jazz and blues language, of which bandleader Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary and the ...
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