You might as well call Macy Gray‘s new album “The Real Macy” – it is simply her best yet because of three simple things: the studio technique, the master musicians, and of course her exceptional voice, too. The recording, her first for the audiophile Chesky label, was done with just one mic and it features…
Madeleine Peyroux recorded her latest country/folk/jazz/blues album in a church in Great Milton, Oxfordshire or in the middle of nowhere. Her partners are Jon Herrington on guitar and Barak Mori on bass. And the repertoire is a potpourri of different styles and genres we’ve become familliar with: Songs by Tom Waits (“Tango Till They’re Sore”),…
So this time around, after so many different projects with guest singers and what have you, the Experiment is back to its core design: all four artists have written tracks for the new album and all of them take over vocal duties, too. Robert Glasper, bassist Derrick Hodge (also with a new album out), drummer…
Prince, Barry Manilow, Cyndi Lauper, Kraftwerk, and Peter Gabriel all on one album – a cover album by piano trio extraordinaire The Bad Plus. It is anyone’s guess if the title of the album refers to the difficult process of finding suitable cover songs for an album like this or to the fact that it can indeed…
The multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer Derrick Hodge has released his second album on Blue Note called, well, “The Second”. This time around though, he has played all the instruments himself (almost all). The Marcus Miller-like bass lines on the opening title track pave the way for this ultra-relaxed, somehow experimental, always entertaining set which is…
The guys from Real Side Records just released their fifth edition of “Soul On The Real Side”, a collection of twenty soulful cuts ranging from 1970 to 2015. As usual, there are real hard-to-find tracks on the album as well as contemporary tunes from Lisa Stansfield (1993) and R Kelly (2015). Several of the songs…
Singer Erin Bode first came to my attention through a couple of brilliant albums on the equally brilliant, now defunct, MaxJazz label: “Don’t Take Your Time” (2004) and “Over And Over” (2006). The former featured the hard-to-categorize jazz/pop/folk singer on more than a dozen tracks, ranging from fascinating originals (like the title track) to pieces…
Little Jacob Collier spent a lot of time in the music room of his family’s home and after years of spending thousands of hours there and filling the room with an abundance of sounds, he has now ended up on Quincy Jones‘ label. I saw him back in January during the annual APAP convention and…
There is a very long string and backing vocal intro on “Cold Little Heart”, the opening track of Michael Kiwanuka‘s long-awaited second album, produced by Danger Mouse, Inflo, and Paul Butler. After the haunting overture, Michael’s signature warm voice cushions a midtempo soul groove which ends up in an ambitious 10-minute little hymn. Michael’s serious…
Gina and I have been listening to a lot of new and recent releases in the last couple of weeks so we wanted to give you a quick rundown on a few of those: Singer Kat Parra has come up with a collection of eleven songs showcasing everything Latin from mambo to bossa nova, from…