With the last name ‘Sharp’ it might
seem like destiny that Blaine would end up making music but this wasn’t always
so. There were many “zigs” and a lot of “zags” along the way. Moving to LA in
2017 was definitely a game changer though,
it was time to face that namesake destiny head on! Born and raised in Canada Blaine also
spent important time in England, the United States and France and considers all
of these places to have a special place in his heart as well as in his music.
His love of theater and film is also a
big influence. For Blaine it’s all about a real connection to the story and to
an emotion and sharing this honestly with his audience. Blaine’s début release
Wanderlust is an exploration of many of these artistic influences. With jazz
inflections throughout it wanders romantically through musical genres,
allowing this new recording artist a little space to wander creatively too. It
is a fitting introduction for his listeners, one that hints at musical
directions to come. In the meantime, Blaine is based in
LA and Toronto and continues to work as an actor, singer and songwriter. He has
several new projects on the go.
Ephemerals - The Third Eye
The fourth
album from ephemerals, "the third eye" sees them continue their
ever-evolving musical journey. Fusing styles including spiritual jazz,
psychedelia, and spoken word, to convey an identity that is unmistakably their
own. The core of the work is built from the honest and incisive compositions of
Hillman Mondegreen combined with the unmistakably emotive vocal delivery of
singer Wolfgang Valbrun. Experimenting with recording and mixing techniques to
illustrate the artistic concepts behind the songs has been key in the overall
character of the record. Hard panning is used to group together specific sounds
and instruments to the left and right to convey masculine and feminine sides
within the track as within the individual. The album is a deeply personal and
conceptual body of work using ambiguous harmony to discuss gender identity,
polychords to demonstrate the power of being between the gender binaries, and
modal changes to remove the homeliness that you find speaking to the alienation
of being transgender. Although drawn from Hillman’s personal experiences the
writing is always universal, and singer Wolfgang Valbrun relates the pieces to
his own experiences of a young black man leaving the USA. The band has evolved
exponentially over the course of these four albums, and they continuously push
beyond the boundaries of traditional genre ideas and traverse unexplored
musical territories.
Horace
Tapscott Quintet - The Giant Is Awakened LP
The title of Horace Tapscott’s debut release is apt,
if not self-referential, for indeed a giant of West Coast jazz had awakened
with this, the pianist/composer/bandleader’s 1969 album for the Flying Dutchman
label. Tapscott went on to form two groups crucial to the flowering of modern
jazz in the Los Angeles area, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (or P.A.P.A.;
the name is an homage to Tapscott’s predecessor and peer, Sun Ra), which
eventually became part of a larger umbrella organization, Union of God’s Musicians
and Artists Ascension (UGMAA). Out of UGMAA came a host of LA-bred musicians,
singers, and poets, including Arthur Blythe (who goes by Black Arthur Blythe on
this recording), Stanley Crouch (who wrote the original liner notes), David
Murray, Butch Morris, Wilber Morris, Jimmy Woods, Nate Morgan, and Sinclair
Greenwell, Jr. (a.k.a. Guido Sinclair). And anchoring it all was Tapscott
himself; as Kamasi Washington, whose vision of a large, Los Angeles
community-based ensemble echoes that of P.A.P.A. and UGMAA, said in 2015:
“Horace is one of the most important figures in the foundation of music in
L.A., from both a purely musically and socially conscious perspective.” Now,
Real Gone Music is proud to present the first-ever LP reissue of The Giant Is
Awakened (original copies go for hundreds of dollars) taken from
high-resolution audio sources.
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