Tord Gustavsen Quartet
If you have not heard Tord Gustavsen’s seminal albums this will be, for the most part, a musical joy and a refreshing experience as you discover a quiet but powerful force in contemporary music. Gustavsen and his musical partners are treading on slightly new ground, replacing some of the very melodic and lyrical expressions from […]
Keith Jarrett
These two concerts were recorded in 1981 but the full Munich performance has never been previously released. They came shortly after what would become the height of Jarrett’s commercial success with The Köln Concert and followed the Sun Bear Concerts. Bregenz and Munich were performed five days apart, hence there are versions of the same […]
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Laura Marling Once I Was an Eagle CD Laura Marling has made many great albums for one so young but her latest is the most appealing. The recording is extremely intimate and Marling incredibly seductive as a result, even if the songs themselves tell a different story. Musically it has a strong Led Zeppelin feel, […]
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
I was eating breakfast, BBC 6Music on the radio, then Sean Keaveny dropped Foxey Lady from this album and stopped me in my tracks. Lummy doesn’t fully express the effect that the track had on me that morning, but at least it’s polite. The sheer energy and power that Hendrix unleashed at the Miami Pop […]
Charlie Mingus
What would sound like processed cheese in any one else’s hands comes across with verve, wit and an effortless joie de vivre when Charlie Mingus takes the reins. The title alone might be enough to put many off today but that’s only because it’s associate with so much schmaltz, it must have been a bit […]
Samuel Yirga
Ethiopian pianist Samuel Yirga is the jewel in the Real World crown. He’s not as famous as some of the artists on Peter Garbriel’s label but he’s equally as talented. I spotted him because the six track download only Habasha Sessions came out on Bowers & Wilkins’ Society of Sound, a release that should by […]
Gregory Porter
This review took longer than most because Liquid Spirit is a great sounding record, so good that it became a reference within days of its arrival and looks like remaining one for a long time to come. This is Porter’s first major label release, quite why it took so long is a mystery but at […]
The Swallow Quintet
Steve Swallow is a bass player and partner of the organ player Carla Bley, her sound is as much a key to this album as Swallow’s, it creates the ambiance. The bass is brought to the fore as you might expect but it doesn’t compete with the lyrical skills of Bley, Chris Cheek on tenor […]
Grey Reverend
Grey Reverend has bubbling under on and around the Ninja Tune label for a couple of years now, he popped up on the Cinematic Orchestra’s last outing and that band’s leader J Swinscoe has released this album on his Motion Audio imprint. The influences working on Reverend, or Larry D Brown as he was christened […]
The Last Hurrah!!
Another Scandiwegian gem The Last Hurrah!! is Norwegian guitarist HP Gundersen along with a cornucopia of unusual acoustic instruments played by an international ensemble of great musicians. It’s floaty, light and often features vocals from Heidi Goodbye (great name) accompanied by female BVs. Infuriatingly the CD consists of a single 35 minute track. Mysteriously the […]
Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette
In the past I have found the standards covered by Jarrett, Peacock and DeJohnette are a little too old and soft for my tastes, but this selection, originally presented at a 2009 concert in Lucerne, has just the right balance of beauty and exploration. That’s partly because it combines six standards with two originals, in […]
Thundercat
Just as the sixties has proved a happy hunting ground for Jack White the seventies would seem to be a major source of inspiration for Stephen Bruner aka Thundercat. This LA based singer/bassist’s second album has a lot of familiar sounds and styles to those that appreciate the more imaginative strands of jazz/rock. Stanley Clarke […]
June Tabor, Iain Ballamy, Huw Warren
According to the great Danny Baker: “Any pure music is inferior to mongrel music”. The album reviewed here can be seen as prima facie evidence that the wordsmith/broadcaster is right. I have to confess that when the request to opine on this album was made my heart sank, I know nothing about English folk music. […]
Jaga Jazzist
This pairing seems as unlikely as Deep Purple’s Concerto for Group and Orchestra did back in the seventies yet it works, possibly rather better than the Purp’s efforts judging from its place in the classic rock pantheon. Jaga Jazzist’s effort has some chance of standing the test of the time because this performance captures their […]
The Celluloid Records Story 1979 - 1987
Jean Karakos founded Celluloid Records in Paris in the late seventies but it wasn’t until he started releasing bass player/producer Bill Laswell’s work in the early eighties that it got off the ground. This two disc, 26 track retrospective (the download adds a further five including a rare Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Miles piece Doriella […]
Goran Kajfes Subtropic Arkestra
Last year Goran Kajfes released the beautifully bound X/Y album with his Subtropic Arkestra playing largely original works on disc X and Kajfes with David Österberg doing a modern variant on In A Silent Way on disc Y, the latter is more ambient and has proved the most enduring. The name of this latest release […]