Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson is a “New-Age Post-Rock Ambient-Jazz Solo-Bassist”, that’s what it says on his website. I found him though the looping work he does.  You really need to hear this guy’s stuff., head over to www.myspace.com/solobassstevelawson and listen to “Grace and Gratitude”. It is just beautiful. The space that surrounds the notes, the notes that chooses to play.

This is just glorious stuff.

Steve Lawson is one of the most respected solo bass guitarists around – his innovative use of looping technology has garnered him plaudits from across the globe, and lead to tours across Europe and the US and radio airplay in over 20 countries. His solo albums demonstrate his melodic multitracked approach to solo bass performance, with all the layers being added in real-time via the use of Looping technology.

I love this video lots of bass and loops and his partner Lobelia on vocals. And it gets wonderfully chaotic  towards the end!  All the loops and layers are live – there are no pre-recorded samples or backing tracks.  And yep, that’s a 6 string fretless bass he’s playing.

I confess that the performance reminded me of osh10 (we covered them last year).

Highly Recommended, damn this guy is a seriously good.

Websites at www.myspace.com/solobassstevelawson and www.stevelawson.net/wordpress/ and www.reverbnation.com/stevelawson

The Either/Orchestra

It finally had to happen… yep a jazz big band. No don’t panic, it’s not going to hurt a bit. The Either/Orchestra is an amazing jazz group from Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. They fired up in the mid Eighties as a “small big band”, with three saxes, two trumpets and one or two trombones.

This is a band with some fairly left of centre approaches to the whole big band thing. Just when you think you have it they just change direction and you as the listener get to take a fairly amazing ride.

While deftly mixing idioms, E/O consistently meets the expectations of the best large-ensemble jazz; the band’s members solo with both passion and skill, navigate complex charts, and swing with abandon.”

The E/O began performing original arrangements of Ethiopian songs, inspired by a compilation called “Ethiopian Groove: the Golden 70s”. In 2000, after three of these songs appeared on their album “More Beautiful than Death”, they scored an invitation to play at the Ethiopian Music Festival in Addis Ababa in 2004.

I assume they went down a treat, the recording is a gem.

Recommended
Websites at either-orchestra.org/ and www.myspace.com/eitherorchestra

Jun Miyake

Jun Miyake is fearless. Play the track “Alvirverde” (It’s the first track over at Myspace) and you will see what I mean. The track starts with a beautifully played and recorded bass, then the drum machine percussion kicks in. And before you have a chance to register what is going on, there are these amazing intimate vocals , almost whispering in your ears. That’s just the first 16 bars or so.  It gets better and better as Jun plunders another dozen or so music styles – simultaneously.  This is seriously cool music.

Is it another “hard listening: piece? Probably, you can’t just throw this on in the background, it insistently tugs at your consciousness. It demands your full attention. It’s not good MP3 player music while you are walking around.

Here is some background…

Soon after he came back to Tokyo from his study in Boston and New York,
He started to work as a Jazz trumpeter, his style of playing was immediately respected and offered chances to make solo albums with people like Ron Carter, Al Foster, Michael Brecker, David Sanborn, etc as well as Japanese top musicians.The success of the albums were’t just for his playing. He started to get offers of composing for commercials, his work quickly became so popular that at one point, he found himself writing music for more than 300 commercials a year for the biggest clients in town.

He also work for movies and features film credit among which Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday”, as well as collaboration with contemporary dance and theater pieces with Pina Bausch, Robert wilson, Philippe Decoufle, etc. His ability to blend the most seemingly disparate element of music garnered him several awards.

Lets face it Jun is a lunatic, his music is like a mystery tour wandering through genres and styles as the whim takes him. The arrangments are amazing as is the musicianship.

Highly Recommended

Website at www.myspace.com/junmiyakehome

Susanna And The Magical Orchestra

Susanna And The Magical Orchestra are a duo from Oslo, keyboard player Morten Qvenild and singer Susanna Karolina Wallumrød.

Susanna And The Magical Orchestra can be found at the place where popmusic, electronica and jazz all intersect. Have a listen to “Believer” over at www.myspace.com/susannamagical. Its a wonderful languid piece that just unfolds at it’s on pace. A truly wonderful bit of work.

But for me the killer track has to be “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, the old Joy Division number. Trust me it has never sounded this good. Morten’s keyboard work is just spine tingling in places and Susanna just teases the words out, each word has just the right amount of emotion. There are places where you cant tell where one performer finishes and the other starts, the words just dive under the lush reverb and ambience and then slyly reappear. The arrangements are just wonderful.

The obvious comparisom is with Nouvelle Vague’s version, it is suprising how uptempo it sounds compared. It’s awfully hard to pick a preference.

Here is the YouTube video of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” …

Highly Recommended. (and too cool for words)

Websites at www.myspace.com/susannamagical and www.susannamagical.com/

The tracks that are available over at www.myspace.com/robertmitchellmusic will give you a pretty good idea of where he is coming from. There is a track called “Space” and it is a really interesting piece.

But the absolute winner in my book is the reworking of “Teardrop”, yep the old Massive Attack standard. Tom Mason on bass and Richard Spaven on percussion just shine on this one, the piano takes a subordinate role to the bass, and when the bowing on the bass starts you are left wondering about where some of the sounds are coming from. It sounds in places like a Middle Eastern wind instrument.

This is just a killer ensemble.

Highly Recommended.

Websithes at www.myspace.com/robertmitchellmusic and www.robertmitchellmusic.com/

“HOT HORNS + HEAVY PERCUSSION“, thats what it says on the Nomo Myspace site. Oh yes, do they live up to it. Minimalist keyboard loops, fuzzed-out bass, the odd soulful vocal, and then there’s the electric mbira (a Zimbabwean thumb piano also known in parts of Southern Africa as a kalimba), an electric sawblade gamelan (I am not making this up) and the horns. Have a listen to one of their early pieces Better Than That and just let those glorious brass sound take you away.

Here’s some hype…

“World music, jazz, electronica, Afrobeat…I hope that we don’t get marginalized by any of these terms. We are an American band, and in our hearts I think we’re more of a rock band than anything else, but we do love so many different types of music,” says band leader Elliot Bergman. “We have a set of musicians, and we are trying to organize our sounds in a way that represents ourselves. We’re not trying to make a record that sounds like it was recorded in the 70′s and we’re not trying to make anybody think that this was recorded in Nigeria. We’re not trying to fool anybody, and especially not ourselves! This is our music. It is full of life, full of emotion. It’s funky, danceable, weird, heavy, exuberant, angry, joyous and raucous,” he adds.

OK, I have to own up, I found these guys totally by accident. I was actually looking for a sadly defunct Irish band called “Nomos” and owing to the vagaries of Google (No, my typing had nothing to do with the S going missing), I found this band. What a find. I would truly love to see these guys play live.

Highly Recommended

www.myspace.com/nomomusic and www.nomomusic.com/

The band had a mix of jazz and folk that I always found intriguing and having listened to the tracks over at www.myspace.com/pentangle it would seem I still am. “Light Flight” for example is still musically adventurous as it was back when I headr it in the early Seventies.

Pentangle – Light Flight at YouTube…

Some stuff from the website…

For six relentlessly active years spanning 1967-73 British folk/jazz ‘supergroup’ Pentangle were one of the most exciting and innovative groups in the world, genuinely pushing boundaries and exploring new musical avenues.

With their unique jazz/folk fusion Pentangle quickly became both stars of the underground and darlings of the mainstream. From humble beginnings at the Horseshoe Hotel in Tottenham Court Road, the heart of swinging ’60s London, Pentangle’s first concert appearance as a band was at The Royal Festival Hall on May 27 1967. They went on to enjoy an unprecedented degree of success worldwide for an acoustic band, performing regularly at The Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, The Fillmore East (alongside Canned Heat and Rhinoceros), The Fillmore West (alongside The Grateful Dead), Newport Folk Festival and two Isle of Wight Festivals – amongst many other prestigious shows.Pentangle’s influence and musical impact is still revered and relevant today, as evidenced by the critical and commercial acclaim for The Time Has Come – the lavish and definitive four CD box set released in March 2007 (which is both a gloriously accessible ‘best of’ for the curious and a treasure trove of lost gems for the faithful) – and Pentangle’s BBC Radio 2 Lifetime Achievement Award presented in February 2007 at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards by Sir David Attenborough – as well as by legions of young emulators and self-confessed disciples on the current music scene.

I can’t recommend this band highly enough. Head to the website at www.myspace.com/pentangle and make sure you have a listen.

Don’t panic though, there is a lot more to her than just a bunch of weird chords, she has a truly intense singing style and her voice is genuinely captivating. Allison’s version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (which surely is on it’s way to being the most covered song of the millennium) will have the hair on the back of your neck standing up. Another song covered is “Time After Time” (always one of my favourite Cyndi Lauper pieces), the light and shade of this track is just wonderful. When she hits the chorus you really know it. A great performance.

Her originals is where the fun is though. She wanders through genres as the mood appears to take her. Rock, folk, jazz, all there all strongly represented. “Skeletons and Spirits” is another song that lets her explore her dynamic range and stretch a bit.

Here is a vid of “Hallelujah” from YouTube. One voice, one piano one take …

Now over at Jamendo you can download a copy of “Little Light” and slip her a few bucks if you like it (you will… trust me). While you are at Jamendo, check out the “Live At Wood Hall” CD

Highly Recommended

Websites at www.myspace.com/allisoncrowe and www.allisoncrowe.com/ and www.jamendo.com/en/artist/allison.crowe/

I don’t know about you but I am pretty sure that the first jazz I heard was in the old Looney Tunes cartoons that I watched after school. No big surprise there, everyone did. And it appears that today’s artist, Jeff Sanford obviously had a similar childood and still has a great affection for the cartoons

The Cartoon Jazz project was launched in 2003 at the Stanford Jazz Festival with the revival of charts from the great American composer, Raymond Scott ( and when you read Scott’s background it gives me a new insight into some of my stranger musical tastes). Jeff Sanford tracked down many charts of the famous composer, written for 13-piece bands in public archives and private collector libraries. Members of his band have since been contributing new arrangements of Scott’s music as well as other jazz pieces which have been used in cartoons.

Raymond Scott never intended to write for cartoons. His frantic rhythms were emulating the fast and energetic sounds of the New York City lifestyle. Carl Stalling, then music director for Warner Brothers and an avid admirer of Scott’s music, used many of Scott’s themes in the scores overlaying the cartoon movies of our childhood friends Bug’s Bunny and Porky Pig.

These guys are just a hoot. You don’t walk down the street so much as slip, slide, strut and saunter when The Gumbo Brothers pop up in the MP3 player. The grooves on this bands music are just deadly and there is a wonderful mix of jazz, funk, soul and reggae. When you hear these guys, you will immediately think New Orleans (well I do) but the reality is that they are from Venice Beach California. It’s not a real problem back in the Seventies my favourite reggae band was from Melbourne. Go figure.

You have to like a band that makes available MP3′s for you listening pleasure, “Funky Freedom” is today’s track of choice, sparse vocals, killer rhythm section understated keys and  the staccato guitars (complete with a full on retro lead break very reminsicent of the Isley Brothers) is fabulous, but “Burning Up“ with it’s slow burn groove and Sly Stonesesque chorus should not be missed.

The Gumbo Brothers are Johann Stein on guitar and vocals, Greg Sonnier on bass and vocals, Jon McBride on electric piano, organ and saxophone, and Reggie Longware on drums, percussion and vocals.

This Venice-based quartet has made it their mission to spread bayou-influenced, psychedelic swamp-funk throughout the southland and beyond. Gotta tell you,I’m onboard.

Recommended

Websites at www.thegumbobrothers.com/ and www.myspace.com/thegumbobrothers