Kategorie: Review Archives
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»The Spirit Of Django«
I am not always sure anymore that the Django open reference is a plus for all productions. Of course it allows fans and afficionados to recognize the file quickly but it may drew to an halt all the other ones. Diknu Schneeberger is an excellent player, way up most of the usual archetypal guitarists in…
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»White T-Shirt«
Micky Green has been heavily working out her looks and concept. If you don’t catch the album just from its cover, she would have missed something already. So did I, curious of how what I first saw would sound like. Does such a title as »White T-Shirt« also mean: write whatever you like on? Musically…
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»You can do everything«
From the way they sound I immediately look for places and particularly origins. This only happens in the States, you don’t get that sort of deep fried fat rockin‘ shuffling sound elsewhere normally. Although plenty of influences may cross your mind at times, they take over easily with strength and power. Classic Rock from before…
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»The Kick«
Got that one obviously too late: »The Kick« celebrates 2008’s Euro Football thing, that already happened now. Lyrics are juicy like hell, and suddenly flashes you back to the long-long history of (dull) single albums accompanying some event, celebration, opening and so on … »This Little Ball / Is International / Kick it!, Just Kick…
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»It ain't necessarily Evil«
I feel a bit like arriving in the middle of a familly dinner, while I play that album. First I have no clue to the »Vol. 1«, not much more to Boine’s latest releases and even further less to what a »remix« album can look like this year. »While It Gently Whispers …« is generally…
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»Early Doldinger - The Complete Philips Sessions«
Is there a life before, and therefore after too, such a group as »Passport«? Is German tenor saxophone fame Doldinger the Dave Sanborn, Jan Garbarek or Wayne Shorter or else from the country? Who does still know who are were and will always remain Sigfired E. Loch and Joachim-Ernst Behrendt ? Questions are probably wrong…
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»Colours«
A classic piano trio (bass & drums) melting with pop and electronics, songs and looped grooves. I don’t mind a certain dose of fusion and easy music so that I’m rather pleased to hear such a combination of grand piano and open chord changes. Overall it’s very classy and sounds like peaced music. Vogt as…
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»The Blues«
The cover shows you a Les Paul guitar more or less vintage and supposed to get you into the whole idea via references (from Jimmy Page to Michael Bloomfield and countless other blues rock Les Paul Players). But when you open the case and take the CD out what you see is a computer screen…
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»Mosquito Bite«
In the pure tradition of Organ Blues Soul Jazz combos once more. I guess if you can play and record things like that in 2006 you could have done so in ???66, ???86 or ???98. So what makes people want to go for it over and over again? Well the reason is extremely simple: It…
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»Slow New York«
Directly baked from the Norah Jones academy (featuring herself on piano and vocals too), »Slow New York« is a real ode to the city and a certain way of life pre-911 somehow. Drop Suzanne Vega, Woody Guthrie and add Stefan Grossman plus Paul Simon and you may get a certain picture. Julian’s voice is definitely…
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»Effacement«
A single white page booklet in a thick recyclable double cardboard sleeve (blue, silver and natural abstract prints). Six tracks »Recorded and composed« over 2003-2005 by the still young (Zürich based) artist. »Thermo« (19 minutes) opens the album with a soft industrial atmosphere and classic electronica clicking patterns while »Wüste« (track # 2) emphases on…
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»Copperopolis«
Charlie Hunter is more known for his Groovy Jazz trio albums and performances as an all-man band on guitar (can’t quite remember if that was 7 string guitar or something around that made him sound like a »Hammond organ on guitar« kind off thing). The label proudly insists here on the fact that for this…
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»Peruments«
»Electronic post club minimal house from Berlin«? I actually dunno how you call that kind of sounds. It has a beat, some chords very far in the back of the mix, a repetetive sort of bass line and it’s pretty long to start or go anywhere. It’s more like a background noise trying to transform…
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»Stoa«
Who needs that? ECM maybe? The music is fine though it’s exactly what you find these days in »Jazz« sections, but has as much to do with Jazz as Shakira would with Punk-Rock (not even sure about that). Nice piano repetitive lines with bass clarinet, percussions and »going nowhere« themes. It is a very relaxing,…
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»Weaving Symbolics«
A »Nice masterclass« … Something sounds wrong here but I can’t quite tell you what yet. I mean the line up is very nice (Brazil, France, USA, etc.), very diverse and mixed, the project seems to have taken place over long periods of mutual respect and exchange and has also been recorded in various studios…
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»SuperItalia Vol. 19«
Vol.19: 19 tracks and close to 79 minutes of music … there’s something here. OK that’s 100% dance functional music (with supplies »für dein Handy« too). You know what? After too many boring jazzy, rocky, poppy and more undefined products I must admit that »Super Italia« is a good way to quite a long series…
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»The Ultimate Adventure«
It looks like an advertising for L.Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics but I haven’t started to listen to the album yet, so I can’t tell you if it also sounds as such a thing (well … the first three lines of the booklet now confirm a 1000 % Scientology based album). Older and more recent encounters are…
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»Memory«
Mozart, Chopin, Schumann and Liszt: A very piano-piano program, which is offered to us as a sort of Horowitz tribute but also (as printed inside) as »old memories/new perspectives«. My problem after about four bars of Mozart by Lang Lang is, that he’s close to a certain idea of technical perfection. The way he phrases,…
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»Briefly Shaking«
»Yes she is the daughter of her father …« (and that’s it). But what I can’t tell is, if she ever worked before (they do on that one) with him and, if Jan Garbarek did or didn’t play with Don Cherry in the late 60’s and early 70’s (Gato Barberi did and Neneh started composing…
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»Half-past Human«
Park Attack is a trio from Glasgow with Guitar-Vocals, Drums and Synths with post-past music and sounds. Somewhere around DNA, Sonic Youth or Steve Albini’s 90’s productions. It remarkably interpretated up to the point where you really feel like standing-up and go fetch the original albums off the wall. They really do a perfect »pum-chak-pum-chak«…
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»Berlin Hi-Fi«
The new band of Paul Wallfisch, ex-Firewater singer and keyboardist, from New York is: Botanica. A pretty good mixture of 60’s/70’s pop sounds (lyrical electric guitars with tremolo and cheap organs) together with melancholic vocals and worked out lyrics. It’s rather nice but it has the strange tendency to swop styles every next song (Bad…
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»Waterpercussion« | »Transformation«
If Derek Bailey sounds pretty enthusiastic, as reported on the footnote, I am definetely a little less. He says: »Very interesting, varied, exciting, dynamic, new ways explored by Shineform, congratulations«. The very first number of this improvised music duet (Georg Edlinger on percussions and Volker Kagerer on various electric basses, to make it short) is…
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»Solos«
Looking uncarefully at this CD you’d probably expect a piano duet which in itself is already a sort of mystery and extra-teritorial subject (I think Cecil Taylor is a specialist at that too). But listening more carefully you’d be waiting for long before hearing any two pianos. It is a split album in fact and…
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»Firedance«
We’ve all heard strings improvising before but we can always be surprised when it seems again totally new. That doesn’t happen too often, it is true. If duets are the closest musical form (we could argue on my deliberate choice to use the word »form« here, I know) to gibbering and conversing it does never…
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»Oskar&Emma«
Trunpet, alto, double bass and drums. The sign of modern jazz but as a reference (considering Ornette Coleman’s original quartet and later various bands such as the Paul Motian quartet with Tim Berne and Herb Robertson or Jimmy Lyons groups with Andrew Cyrille and Lester Bowie). I’m affraid I’ve heard a lot of that I…
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»Ultimate Collection«
I’m extremely thankfull to misses and mister Sony for sending me a copy of that best-of-the-best Annie Lenox and Dave Stewart works. Like probably many of us here I’ve never bought any of these albums simply because they’ve had constant and sustained airplay in the last 20 years. It does not mean I didn’t pay…
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»80«
Anything and everything for the Blues. »My heart to daddy« in this case. You’ll never see me saying a single bad word on an artist of the size of BB King (I???m not taking diabetes here). However you value him in the blues history (originator, projector, inventor or simple good preacher), it is his own…
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»Unplugged«
How many MTV unplugged records do we keep at home? At the end I can’t really count much more than three: Nirvana, Bob Dylan and the bootleg copy of Björk with the world Saxophone quartet. Alicia Keys is said to be contesting under the »R&B« section. Vague files and unproper documentations have lead in the…
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»Shelf-Life«
Since some year already I sort of prophetise the »Return of Fusion music and Jazz-Rock« But it didn’t come down on us yet. As I was opening my views to Martin S. in front of a beer the other day he entered a short silence, looking slightly dubious and raised the good point : »But…
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»Opera Proibita«
It became so seldom that the classical music marketing and industry finds in one same artist (and person?), a good product as much as an original talent (and I’m volontary skipping here the circus aspects and other tricks in music business, like »sexy but fast« or »romantic and gay«). Bartoli is an amazing talent, individual,…