Thursday, March 17, 2016

NEW MUSIC: BILL LAURENCE – AFTERSUN; FREDDY COLE – HE WAS THE KING; MAX RICHTER – SONGS FROM BEFORE

BILL LAURENCE – AFTERSUN

Bill Laurance returns with Aftersun, a paean to space exploration and life in the cosmos. The music is filtered down to its roots in a quartet that features fellow bandmates from Snarky Puppy Michael League and Robert Sput Searight, along with legendary New Orleans percussionist Weedie Braihma. With flavors of Dance music and African percussion at its heart, the album combines deep world grooves with Laurances signature genre-bending exploration. Bill Laurance was named JazzFMs Breakthrough Artist of 2015. Includes: Soti (no I); The Pines; Time to Run; Madeleine; Bullet; Aftersun; First Light; Golden Hour; and A Blaze.


FREDDY COLE – HE WAS THE KING

Freddy Cole serves up a tribute to his famous brother Nat – in a small combo set that also features some nice tenor work from Houston Person and Harry Allen too! Cole's a singer who's ultimately had a lot more of a career than Nat – and we're not entirely sure why he's so often lumped together in settings like this – but the record's a real testament to Freddy's talents in the way he doesn't slavishly repeat Nat's phrasing, and instead makes these classic Cole tunes very much his own. The more jazz-based presentation helps a lot with that – and in addition to the tenor solos, the record also features work from Joe Magnarelli on trumpet, Josh Brown on trombone, Randy Napoleon on guitar, and John DiMartino on piano. Titles include "Love Is The Thing", "Jet", "Exactly Like You", "That's My Girl", "The Best Man", and "Maybe It's Because I Love You Too Much". ~ Dusty Groove

MAX RICHTER – SONGS FROM BEFORE

Beautiful work from Max Richter – a sublime album that mixes his own electronics and keyboards with contributions from a small group of string players – all in that post-classical approach that's made Richter such an important force in recent years! Robert Wyatt also provides readings of text by Haruku Murakami on five of the album's thirteen selections – and Richter's music is in that spacious, moody and blue style he did so well on Sleep – maybe slightly less somnambulant, but still with a very dreamlike quality overall. The mix of electronic elements is very subtle – and the use of viola, violin, and cello really deepen the sound – on selections that include "Flowers For Yulia", "Fragment", "Lullaby", "Verses", "Time Passing", and "From The Rue Vilin".  ~ Dusty Groove



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