• Music

    Makoto Kubota & The Sunset Gang

    February 11, 2022 - By 

    We Want Sounds! is on a roll!  They started off the year with a stunning collection of funk which I had the absolute joy of reviewing a coupe of weeks ago, and now this! Dixie Fever is a collaborative effort from guitarist Makoto Kubota, along with Takashi Onzo on bass, Yosuke Fujita on guitar/mandolin, Keni Inoue on lead guitar, Hiroki Komazawa on pedal steel guitar, and Kubota himself on guitar.  The secret sauce in this album comes from co-producer Haruomi “Harry” Hosono, and this work, mixing American swamp funk, blues, music from the Hawaiian islands and their own local influences from…

  • Music

    Geneva Skeen – Double Bind

    February 10, 2022 - By 

    Perhaps I’ll need to renew my subscription to The Wire or spend more time on other blogs, as I can’t believe I missed the work of Los Angelina Geneva Skeen.  My hometown is producing so many fine artists working within ambient and electroacoustic music that it has become (happily) difficult to keep up with this wellspring of talent. Double Bind defies proper categorization, sitting somewhere between academic musique-concrète, noise-style improvisation and a touch of mysticism in Skeen’s work.  Though bleak, there is a feeling of being inside of a warm, pulsating, silvery ocean in these compositions.  The one which won…

  • Music

    Diana Hayes/Andy Meyers – Deeper Into The Forest

    February 8, 2022 - By 

    Andy Meyers is the former guitarist of Toronoto art-punk legends The Scenics.  He’s gone off to do more exploratory work after moving to the Vancouver area, and this, his latest work, is a collection of soundscapes set to the poetry and vocals of fellow Canadians Diana Hayes and Susheela Dawne. From the release’s Bandcamp website: Composer/producer Andy Meyers was co-recipient of Canada Council Grants to score two CDs of spoken word with award winning poet Brian Brett. (“an often unsettling meld of orphan sounds and menacing undercurrents, and an offbeat celebration of those old staples: love, experience, sex and death.”…

  • Music

    Ty Segall – Lemons

    February 7, 2022 - By 

    Ty Segall is a garage-rock music phenomenon, and this album shows him at his beat-rock best, mixing garage, psychedelic rock and the aforementioned beat music this album oozes.  Remarkably raw and impressive.

  • Music

    Bernard Purdie – Purdie Good!

    February 6, 2022 - By 

    Imagine having a resume working with the following acts: James Brown, The Beatles, Jeff Beck, Hummingbird, Steely Dan, Aretha Franklin,Gil Scott-Heron, King Curtis, The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Brecker, Quincy Jones, Hall & Oates, Isaac Hayes, Cat Stevens, Hair and Larry Coryell among so many others. Bernard “Pretty” Purdie is something akin to an institution in modern drumming. This album, reissued by Prestige Records, is one of his more mellow jazz excursions.  The sound is meaty, and it shows off a pleasant finesse he has with percussion.  His touch is about as golden as it gets as…

  • Music

    Various Artists – Zona Electronica

    February 5, 2022 - By 

    Zoharum are one of Poland’s longest-lasting experimental, ambient, minimal and industrial/dub/illbient labels.  On January 30, they released a comp of musicians who are critical in Poland’s underground music scene.  Among familiar names, of course, are Jeff Gburek, Hubert Heathertoes and Mike Majkowski, but the new names I’m hearing on this release are equally as intriguing.  Zoharum have done sterling work documenting the current goings-on of their local scene.

  • Music

    Gui Duvignau – Baden

    February 4, 2022 - By 

    Bassist and composer Gui Duvignau was born in France, but raised in Brazil.  In his latest album, he interprets some classic work by the legendary Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell, whose work left an indelible mark on the samba and bossa nova scene worldwide.

  • Music

    Dragon & Jettenbach – Tales from the Algorithm

    February 2, 2022 - By 

    This is so pleasantly dark and focused that I don’t think calling it ambient would do it justice.  Dragon & Jettenbach are a project out of the United Kingdom who produce a sound that, while bleak, is also musically organized, reminding me of some of the modern Berlin School electronic artists of the 1980s, mixed with a vibe one would have heard from post-Industrial music on cassette during the same time period.  As this is the period where I was reared on great music, it brings a sense of nostalgia to me, and I feel that, for those between 40…

  • Music

    Chris Conway – When Pianos Dream

    February 1, 2022 - By 

    Though his bio on Bandcamp calls him a superlative jazz pianist, I would have to add that Chris Conway handles modern classical music with as much aplomb.  He has also worked with some stellar musicians, including Guy Barker, Andy Sheppard, Stan Sulzman, Martin Speake and the legendary Finnish sax player Sakari Kukko (leader of Piirpauke) amongst others. This album, released today, I believe, is a collection of improvisations and ambient electronic music he gathered while working with the United Isolation Ensemble, of which he is a member.  How ECM Records hasn’t signed such a prodigious talent is beyond me, but…