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.
