Saturday, August 10, 2019

New Music Releases: Arthur Adams - Here To Make You Feel Good; Oum - Daba (Now); Extended - Harbinger


Arthur Adams – Here To Make You Feel Good

Blues legend Arthur Adams brings his best on this fantastic new album of soulful blues guaranteed to make you FEEL GOOD! Standout tracks including "Tear The House Down," "Sweet Spot" and others have already garnered radio airplay courtesy of popular KJazz DJ Gary "The Wagman" Wagner! Arthur's credits as a session guitarist and live musician are simply jaw dropping - they include B.B. King, Sam Cooke, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt, Quincy Jones, the Jackson 5, Lou Rawls, and so many more! His recent appearance at this year's Topanga Blues Festival, which he headlined, shows that this legend can still wow audiences with his unmistakable voice and searing guitar playing!
  
Oum - Daba (Now)

Daba means 'Now' in Moroccan. Giving this title to her third album is, for Oum, all about linking yesterday's experience to the one determined by the present moment. In this 'now', the singer, having achieved a certain artistic maturity, is able to mix traditional Arab and Sahraoui elements with discreet borrowings from more contemporary aesthetics of soul, jazz and electronic trance. Originally from Casablanca, Oum El Ghaït Ben Essahraoui seemed destined to become an architect but then decided to embrace a career in music. She quickly drew the attention of the media, who identified her with the Nayda, a movement of young Moroccans attracted by more urban sounds. She began to write in darija, the everyday dialect of Moroccan Arabic. After Soul of Morocco in 2013 and Zarabi in 2015, with Daba, her third album, Oum reaches a new milestone. Entrusting the artistic direction to the Palestinian poetess, singer and oud player Kamilya Jubran, she went to Berlin with her musicians to make a record that was both atmospheric and danceable. For Oum, this dual aim reflects a sort of state of emergency, one that she describes as dynamic : to be together and share good times is all the more urgent now that the means of communication and transport tend to radically reshape one's experience of the world and of the other. The orchestration on Daba remains generally acoustic, but, for the first time, certain electronic sounds adorn the songs, as if to echo the more contemporary dilemmas reflected in her lyrics; the threat to Nature, the fate of migrants, the status of women, but also an exhortation to live fully in the present. With such themes, Oum positions herself as a Moroccan, an African and a woman of the world who is convinced that cultural barriers are less weighty than that which brings us together.

Extended - Harbinger

Meeting in the storied musical environs of New Orleans, Honduran pianist Oscar Rossignoli, Pittsburgh bassist Matt Booth and Louisiana-bred drummer Brad Webb, bring their varied pasts together in the development of an expansive group identity through their distinctive writing and dynamic improvisational reflexes. With each contributing and structuring their compositions with awareness of the other's musical personalities, the feeling of a collective consciousness invigorates. From the cool groove and fleet soloing from Rossignoli on his own title track, to the galloping 'Connie,' or the delicate and open-aired 'Loft Spaces,' Extended creates a rich, sculpted landscape, much in the tradition of modern piano trios like E. S. T. , but rooted firmly in the musical soil of their adopted hometown.

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