Tag - high-notes

 
 

HIGH NOTES

Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 12, 2003
Kathleen Edwards: Failer
Singer-songwriters who take the confessional route run the risk of alienating listeners when they invite them into their psyches. Personality problems and moral inconsistencies are bound to be noticed. That's why so many artists hide their nakedness behind self-deprecation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 12, 2003
Massive Attack
No one would call the trip-hop architects of Massive Attack hopeless romantics, but I suspect that their music has been enjoyed in just as many bedrooms as clubs. Their collages of seductive vocals and slow, fleshy beats appears to activate all the appropriate hormones and makes that itch -- to dance...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 12, 2003
Ry Cooder & Manuel Galban: Mambo Sinuendo
'Mambo Sinuendo" finds Ry Cooder in Cuba again, this time with Buena Vista guitarist Manuel Galban at center stage. After a string of extremely satisfying albums with the Buena Vista crew, this album departs from tradition and finds the two guitarists exploring the sounds of a '50s Cuban guitar band...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 5, 2003
The Lakatos Ensemble
Roby Lakatos was born into a Gypsy violin dynasty begun in the 18th century by Janos Binari, a man known as the "King of the Gypsy Violinists" and the "Hungarian Orpheus" to two of his admirers, Franz Liszt and Ludwig van Beethoven. Lakotas has recently applied those inherited traditions to the world...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 5, 2003
Roy Gaines: "Roy Gaines In the House"
Far from the smoky city clubs where electric blues grew up, some of the best blues is now heard at outdoor summer festivals. The Lucerne Blues Festival in Switzerland is one of the best, and German label CrossCut Records captured many intense sets of lesser-known but serious blues bands in the summer...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 5, 2003
Fennesz
The Austrian guitarist Christian Fennesz has made a name for himself in the rarefied worlds of ambient and avant-garde electronica with what could be called acoustic music, a preference that prompted one Japanese writer to describe his art as "laptop folk." Fennesz retains the clarity of his acoustic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Feb 5, 2003
Baka Beyond: "Heart of the Forest"
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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 29, 2003
Kocani Orkestar: "Alone at My Wedding"
The Kocani Orkestar is a brass band from Macedonia with a formidable rhythm section of four tuba players and a lone percussionist. Their songs are alternately led by male or female singers, a clarinet, several trumpets or a banjo that's played like an oud. On their new album, "Alone at My Wedding," the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 29, 2003
The Branford Marsalis Quartet
Saxophonist Branford Marsalis has always been more adventurous than his younger brother, the better-known trumpeter Wynton. He has jumped outside jazz tradition to back up Sting on his world tours, do a stint as leader of the "Tonight Show's" house band, and dabble with hip-hop and funk in his own band...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 29, 2003
Kimya Dawson: "I'm Sorry That Sometimes I'm Mean"
The biggest star to emerge from New York's antifolk scene is Beck Hansen, but before King Loser went legit he was more of a hanger-on than a guiding light. The Moldy Peaches -- 30-year-old Kimya Dawson and 21-year-old Adam Green -- embody the antifolkies' art-is-fun credo more convincingly, and having...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 29, 2003
"Synkretizm: A Mountain Thinking the River Fire."
Voodoo, with its mix of West African mysticism and French Catholicism, plays a vital role in the lives of Haiti's rural poor, but it gets a bad rap elsewhere. For the faithful, the communion of saints and shamans offers even the most piteous peasant his own sliver of paradise. But to outsiders, voodoo...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 22, 2003
Klimperei: "Pimpant!"
"Pimpant!" contains 43 songs, a signal that the music within could be a little weird. Also, the name of the group, Klimperei, is German for "able to play the piano just a little bit." Add to that the admission "we are not very good musicians" from one of the band's two members, and you might become a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 22, 2003
Ms. Jade: "Girl Interrupted"
Twenty-three-year-old Chevon Young was not an overnight sensation. She was repeatedly passed over by A&R people because Eve was already a star and they didn't think there was room in the majors for two female MCs from Philadelphia. Then someone steered her to the Beat Club, the new record label run...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 22, 2003
Common: "Electric Circus"
Hip-hop and Hollywood share at least one thing in common: Star-studded lineups never guarantee a work of art. In fact, some material's strength is often diluted proportionately to the number of egos featured.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 22, 2003
Roy Haynes: "Love Letters"
With his steady stream of work stretching back nearly six decades, it's hard to think of a jazz figure drummer Roy Haynes has not played behind. He started out with Lester Young, then switched over to Charlie Parker. After that, he played with Stan Getz and Sarah Vaughan. Then from the '60s through the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 15, 2003
Bembeya Jazz: "Bembeya"
The Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon has spread to Africa, but with a difference. Re-emerging African bands also spent years in recording exile, but returned less with a sense of unclaimed historical import than with a readiness to hit the dance floor. The latest rediscovery is the intense Afropop...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 15, 2003
The Sea and Cake
Post-rock seems to have been born a genre already approaching middle age. While rock 'n' roll swaggered and screamed, this reticent cousin of indie-rock purposefully strode away from the testosterone. Post-rock's aim was a departure from rock's basic instincts, placing mood and texture over guitar hooks...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 15, 2003
Toshinori Kondo: "Nerve Tripper"
Among his many accomplishments, trumpeter and electronic music programmer Toshinori Kondo has won the friendship of the Dalai Llama, played on Herbie Hancock's influential album "Future Shock" and produced the World Festival of Sacred Music in Hiroshima.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 15, 2003
hoggboy: "Or 8?"
The British rock press has declared the Sheffield band hoggboy the official scapegoat of the inevitable garage-rock backlash in England, where The Strokes first made a splash and, therefore, the place where their star has been fading most rapidly.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jan 8, 2003
Ladytron: "Light & Magic"
'They only want you when you're 17. When you're 21 you're no fun." This song, "Seventeen," the first single from their new album "Light & Magic," sums up what Ladytron are all about. Their lyrics can be cruel and direct ("Seventeen" is an indictment of the Lolita values of modeling agencies), but...

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