I wasn’t impressed when I listened to Promises last year, so when I heard that Pharoah Sanders died, I decided to try again. The repeated motif is hypnotic, the strings border on inspired, and I love Sanders’ singing on “Movement 4,” but the sax is terrible. This is the kind of dodgy, ‘80s-inspired playing that led to my hatred of… Read more »
I’ve never heard Back to Back before now, so I decided to research the album. Google led me to what might be the most curmudgeonly review I’ve ever read on Amazon. But I get what the guy is saying. Hodges’ playing is so good that he makes me forget that saxophone is my second-least favorite instrument. The rhythm section is… Read more »
Cover records are a tricky business at best and yet I find myself drawn to them. I’m never sure if it is for the train wreck or the diamond in the rough. In this case, it was mostly just nondescript rehashings. For the most part, what is good on this record is what was good in the original recordings. Where… Read more »
For many of the last 17 years, I have created an end of year comp that I call Missed Hits. The idea was to share music that hit me and that I expected many people had missed. Despite spending a lot of time discovering and writing about music in early 2021, I kind of expected this task to be more… Read more »
Lamb is my biggest sleeper artist of the past 25 years. My reaction to their first album was somewhere between “huh?” and “meh,” but they crept into my subconsciousness and Lou Rhodes emerged as one of my all-time favorite voices. I was listening to Rhodes’ collaboration with Cinematic Orchestra on the lovely Ma Fleur when I discovered she released four… Read more »
My ear isn’t what it used to be, but I think the first downbeat on Now Here No Where is a bowed contrabass over a drum hit. If an entire album can be summarized by a single moment, that is the moment. This record balances things we perceive to be binary: organic and electronic, warm and cool, soundscapes and bangers…. Read more »
When I heard that Joris Voorn mixed a new Global Underground set, I immediately hunted it down. As soon as that first melody opened up, I prepared for an epic release of beats. Other than a bass drone, nothing came. Track two began, and again, no release. While there is a ton of innovation within electronic dance music, the genre… Read more »
I’m constantly humbled by how little I know about music. Bob recently offered me a humbling moment when he introduced me to Late Night Tales, a 20-year-old compilation series that I missed for the past 20 years. As I sit in the wee small hours of Sunday morning, recovering from a marathon workday and recuperating so I can do it… Read more »
1977 is big and easy. The opening track “Goldfisch” accurately sets the stage. The beats are generic, the melodies simplistic, the compositions predictable. This is the kind of electronic dance music that inevitably finds its way into festivals and blockbuster movies. If that’s your thing, I think you’ll like this record. Personally, I struggled to get through “Goldfisch” and the… Read more »
As I’ve gotten older, two things I look for in an album are consistency and flow. I don’t mind if a record takes me on a roller coaster ride or a slow walk around a dark neighborhood late at night, as long as the songs fit together as part of a greater whole. The songs on Frontera fit together. Yes,… Read more »