Tag - high-notes

 
 

HIGH NOTES

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jul 10, 2002
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
All jazz groups ultimately descend from the brass band. The legendary Buddy Bolden, often credited with being the first true jazz musician to improvise freely, led the most popular brass band in New Orleans at the turn of the 19th century. A few years later, Louis Armstrong learned trumpet in a reformatory...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jul 10, 2002
Azure Ray: 'Burn and Shiver'
Somewhere between heartbreak and happiness lies a mist-shrouded land of limbo, where it's always raining softly and people stare pensively out windows, contemplating love and life over steaming cups of Earl Grey. Wherever this place is, it seems Azure Ray are permanent residents. On their new CD, "Burn...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jul 3, 2002
Dave Douglas: 'The Infinite'
Dave Douglas hardly needed to write "An Infinite Thank You to Miles Davis" in the liner notes of his latest CD, "The Infinite." The influence of Davis is present throughout this recording. But it's good. Very good. Douglas, who has released a series of tributes to jazz giants such as Mary Lou Williams,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jul 3, 2002
Bill Frisell: 'The Willies'
Bill Frisell, who is ostensibly a jazz guitarist, has been poking around with other forms of traditional American music for long enough now that "The Willies," a collection mainly of bluegrass tunes, comes as no surprise. But as with anything Frisell lays his hands to, this album is not without its quirks....
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jul 3, 2002
Cee-lo: 'Cee-lo and His Perfect Imperfections'
Neo-soul began in the late '90s when vocalists who grew up listening to Curtis Mayfield, Prince and De La Soul made their own records, and in doing so, finally made the urban music charts interesting again. Now progressive-rap aficionado Cee-lo has decided to throw his hat into the ring. It was his group,...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jul 3, 2002
The Cato Salsa Experience: 'A Good Tip for a Good Time'
Trash is the new grunge, and every four-piece band worth its automatic garage door opener is being pursued by record labels who only two years ago were asking Moby if he knew any other bald vegans who could write long essays on religious pluralism. Norway weighs in with the Cato Salsa Experience, a group...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 26, 2002
DJ Cheb-i-Sabbah: 'Krishna Lila'
The "Asian Underground" wave of neo-Indian sounds has, for the most part, rarely betrayed much knowledge of its roots. With the exceptions of Talvin Singh and Karsh Kale, much of this music has been little more than drum 'n' bass with an ethnic spin, all hopelessly out-of-tune tabla samples and rigidly...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 26, 2002
Stanley Smith: 'In the Land of Dreams'
These whiskey-voiced songs of riverboats, New Orleans nights and past loves will speak to you like mellow old friends. None will blow you away the first time through, but many will replay themselves in your head long after you've turned the CD off.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 19, 2002
Omar Faruk Tekbilek: 'Alif'
With the steaming shimmer of a cymbal, Alif magically opens a creaking door, draws aside a heavy curtain and welcomes us into a room thick with the smell of sandalwood incense where revelers recline on silken pillows and smoke from gurgling hookahs, preparing for a night of decadent pleasures.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 19, 2002
Rhythm Love: 'The Best of Turntables on the Hudson'
We live in an age of increasingly diverse yet compartmentalized forms of dance music. The original "one" of disco, has fractalized into a "many," yet rare are the labels or parties that allow the genres to mingle. Funky breakbeats rarely intrude into the sets of clinically mixed trance, while the feel-good,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 19, 2002
Tom Waits: 'Alice' and 'Blood Money'
On paper, Tom Waits' two new albums, "Alice" and "Blood Money," don't look promising. Without yet listening to them and knowing they were originally written for European theater pieces staged by avant-garde director Robert Wilson, they prompt one of two reactions: Here is obviously another misguided...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 19, 2002
Asa-Chang and Junray
If melodic instruments are conduits of Venusian emotion, then percussion is their direct Martian counterpart. While a sax can wail and cry its way through a performance, an equally impassioned drum solo is usually described in terms of brute force: ferocious, cataclysmic, tumultuous.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 12, 2002
The Breeders: 'Title TK'
Ahh, The Breeders -- champions of the low-tech, indie ethic of the early '90s. Those twin sisters, Kim and Kelly Deal, and their spooky-yet-sensual vocals. Those guitar riffs your kid brother could play, but could never pull off like they did. This was the band that helped bring college-rock aesthetics...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 12, 2002
Tom Harrell: 'Live at the Village Vanguard'
The Village Vanguard in New York has long been jazz's sanctum sanctorum, a sacred space where jazz secrets were revealed nightly to the faithful. A list of players showcased at the club since the 1950s would form a musical family tree. Classic recordings there by John Coltrane, Bill Evans and Art Pepper,...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 12, 2002
Kona Records: 'Deep Funk Africa'
With a title like "Deep Funk Africa," this CD compilation had better deliver. And deliver it does -- 14 steaming slabs of rough-hewn funk from Ghana, Mobutu's Zaire, Sierra Leone and beyond.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 12, 2002
Corey Harris: 'Downhome Sophisticate'
At one time, rural folks were thought to possess different priorities from people who lived in cities, a contrast that was made clear by the fact that "country music" was only played and listened to by people who actually lived in the country. These days, you're as rural as you want to be, whether you...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 29, 2002
Wayne Shorter: 'Footprints Live!'
Wayne Shorter first established himself as a central figure in the development of jazz as a member of Miles Davis' seminal mid-'60s quintet. He contributed a major portion of the compositions and a technique honed with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Shorter also released a series of recordings as leader...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 29, 2002
Wilco: 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot'
On the new Wilco album, "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," frontman Jeff Tweedy muses that his mind is filled with "radio cures." Looks like his old label didn't think so. Citing a lack of commercially viable tracks on "YHF" and the band's refusal to rework them, Warner/Reprise Music showed Tweedy and company the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 29, 2002
DJ Shadow: 'Private Press'
When DJ Shadow released his first album, "Endtroducing," in 1996, sample-based music was mostly complementary, designed for MCs or parties, and wasn't generally accepted as a viable creative endeavor by itself. It wouldn't be fair to all the turntablists who inspired Shadow (Josh Davis) to say that "Endtroducing"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 29, 2002
Salif Keita: 'Moffou'
Salif Keita -- otherwise known as the Golden Voice of Mali -- has taken some jabs from world music purists in recent years for straying from his traditional African roots in collaborations with the likes of Vernon Reid of Living Color and the keyboardist Joe Zawinal. With "Moffou," Keita has dropped...

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