Marylou Williams
Nightlife
Chiaroscuro 103
A reminder of greatness: not only does this visit again important piano trio recordings full of sophisticated and earthy peregrinations, but it adds to the original issue previously unheard tracks and a gracious half hour of the legendary pianist's endearing reminescences. In the cd era, probably now the best place to start a love affair with Williams's modern, humane music.
Jimmie Rowles
Subtle Legend, Vol. 1&2
Storyville (v1:8287;v2:8295)
Rowles is today unsung just as he was in days before the late seventies burst of the jazz renaissance put his affable and startling pianism in the spotlight for the briefest of moments. Of course, Rowles isn't with us today, so this newly discovered date spread over two discs offers a special burst of glowing and witty piano play. Although he staked his reputation as an almost ideal chordal painter behind singers and later was identified as an adept in the Monk lineage, here he is in prime extemporaneous frame of mind, smartly uncovering layers of harmonies in rarely played standards, singing in a gritty offhanded manner, and twisting songs rhythmically in defiance of the needs of his bassist and drummer. As always Rowles delights.
Chicago Underground Trio
Possible Cube
Delmark 511
Jazz is nothing but tradition these days. It's edges are well worn and seemingly impervious to being frayed. Even when it gets crossed up by the syncretic impulses of world beaters, chilled to cocktail temperatures by acid mixers, or abused by smooth charlatans, there just isn't much improv which startles with new designs. This group from Chicago could have just reached into a hat and pulled out cards with 3rd stream, electronica, free jazz, bebop, on 'em, but they'd still have to make it cohere. The CUT does just that; their music really does travel through a variety of moods for which the uniqueness quotient is high, and evidently is the result of keen, and new designs.
Pierre Dorgeıs New Jungle Orchestra
Giraf
DaCapo 9440
Bounced to a new label after a three year lag, the Danish guitarist's jazzified big band world beat punches up another grabber. While the band skates once again through an exotically textured highly syncopated groove, this new date achieves gains by virtue of its excellent sounding recording; the NJO doesn't sound cramped here at all. Even in the midst of a lot of fine European players and a crackling rhythm section, Dorge steals the show with his angular solo forays and his neck snapping manner of toying with the pulse.
Leroy Jenkins
Solo
Lovely Music 3061
Incredibly, this is the brilliant violinist's first solo recording in almost twenty years. A surprise then, mostly because so many of his solos over thirty-plus years tended to leap into one's ears; he's always been one of the great masters of unaccompanied playing, like Cecil Taylor or Steve Lacy. Jenkins is a master of sharing space too, but here his soundworld expands and unfolds from itself gloriously. Archaic threads are imbedded in his fiddling, so whether he is reconfiguring bebop lines, abstracting the blues, or generating space age hollers, there's always an evocative atmosphere of the communal projected; Jenkins here is griot.
Fatou Guewel & Groupe Sope Noreyni
Fatou
Sterns 1078
West Africa is rich in melismatic singers. Whether they opt for the Parisian sheen or austere traditionalism, the expectation is: the best will render the backround all but irrelevent. In Mali and Senegal and Guinea this is due to the epic style drawn from ancient sources yet today pumped up into hugeness and weighty affect. Fatou Guewel takes a different tact. Her virtuoso technique is hitched to an approach that is stunning for its beguiling passion that stops short of 'over-the-top'. Something of her obvious power is held in reserve, so when she fans the flames on this record, its bracing. One of the best records from West Africa I've heard this year.
Bim Sherman
It Must Be A Dream
EFA 18697
Four years passed before this remix of Sherman's _Miracles_ reached are shores. Not only was it worth the wait but out of the slew of instantly dated jungle and trip hop comps and remix records, comes this one with its (retained) emphasis on the voice of the mellow and entrancing rootsman. The remixes may be dubbed out drum and bass, yet this music is simply too beautiful to be chilly.
Os Mutantes
Everything Is Possible
Luaka Bop 47251
Easy as it would be to fit the heralded tropicalia experimenters into the slot artifacts of psychedelia warrant, I prefer to let this absolutely essential compilation come alive on its own terms. Those terms are no less than those of the purest of pop for the most now of now people. And, although the original dates are essential, their inconsistency is mitigated by this well chosen set. Intensely playful and vibrantly colorful music that compelled me to listen to it three times in a row. What better test might it meet?
Askia Modibo
Wass Reggae
Sterns 1060
The liner notes sucked me in. The reggae star from Senegal states his music is no less than a pentatonic offering aimed at harmonizing and healing. Rooted in my own interests, Modibo delivers an hour of joyous, heartwarming medicine in the ol' roots style. Primed with mbalax enfused reggae, Modibo sets Mother Africa to her ital dance.
ViniciusCantuaria
Tucuma
Verve 559863
Cantuaria defies the Arto Lindsay treatment and restates the verities of the Samba, again, sublimely. The mood here is soft and elegant. Picture a serenade streaming up from the beach, the curtains flutter in a light sea breeze. . .it's the evening after the carnival has subsided.
Clarence Gatemouth Brown
American Music, Texas Style
Blue Thumb 547536
The octogenerian Brown no doubt just went out to make another blazing party record in the gulf coast style. He did yet he also created the nea plus ultra of swing and ends up 7sitting on the coffin of a bereft trend fiddling and picking and singing up a veritable storm of the real deal.
Chris McGregor and African Exiles
Thunderbolt
PAM 405
South African township jazz exiled yet not in the least bit absented, even if thirteen years have gone by since this last band of McGregor's pounded out this swan song of a live set. The context is terribly sad. None of the core of London-based exiles who stirred up the jazz world as the Blue Notes, Feza, Pukuwana, McGregor, Dyani, or Moholo, have lived to this day. However, in this vibrant captured moment their creativity and verve lives on. Exciting and essential.
Michael Vetter and the Overtone Choir
Ancient Voices
Amiata 1920
Vetter, in the same territory as David Hykes, (the Harmonic Choir), explores the spacial flux of the overtone series breathed out by his choir. Unlike Hykes, his approach is more securely that of a composer with a handle on the architectural possibilities of layers of modes and how it is modulations may be interwoven into discrete, nearly songlike structures. Captivating drones that tug at the reach of one's senses.
Charles Williams and Tom Teasley
Poetry, Prose Percussion and Song
TomTeasley 198
No rap on this record yet it is by far the best instance of African-American rhyming on record in this pre-millenial year 1999. 'Part of the solution...'
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