What are you listening to and WHY might anyone be interested? (Vol. XIII)
Posted by: Richard Dane on 01 January 2017
2017 has arrived today, so time to start this thread afresh.
Last year's thread can be found here;
I have to thank Dom Joly and the superb 'Trigger Happy TV' for this one
The Beta Band - The Three EPs
dave marshall posted:
Have y'all seen this boxset, ..................... on The River, ...........................10 X albums for 22 squid ................ bargain!
Good isn't it 
Now Playing......
Greg Brown - The Poet Game
Just the love the opening song "Brand New '64 Dodge" which by itself is worth taking the time to listen to this album.
Had to fit just one more in before bed. Still as fabulous to listen to now as when i first heard it.
Radiohead - OK Computer
Havent played this one for a while and had almost forgotten how good the melodies are on this album. Not a bad recording either, although the cymbals sound a bit like a paper bag at times when it all gets a bit congested.
Now Playing......
Robert Plant | Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
A lovely album - winner of five grammy's
Review in The Guardian
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
Manchester Apollo
Most people expected Robert Plant to saunter on to a British stage this summer, shake his helterskelter hair and belt out Led Zeppelin songs. With one deliriously successful gig under their belts, the feeling was that Zeppelin would reprise their reunion. The money was on the table. Arenas were poised. Private jets were ready to scramble.
Few people could have foreseen that the explosive introduction to Zeppelin's 'Black Dog' would, in fact, be coaxed out of a banjo rather than ripped from Jimmy Page's guitar. Or that, as the sun finally shone, a heavy rendition of 'When the Levee Breaks' would be ushered in by the blare of two fiddles.
In pop, there is often talk of pressure when a band need to follow a successful album. But the plight of Coldplay is as nothing compared to the hundredweight of hassle from several continents bearing down on Plant, the man keeping Led Zeppelin on ice. The rock Titan has chosen to ignore the clamour of millions of fans so he can tour Europe and the US with a God-fearing, bluegrass princess and some mandolins and autoharps.
On this second night of this unLedded tour, Plant is bearing up well, considering. Rangy and buoyant, he exudes pure pleasure as he purrs through 'Rich Woman', the opening track of Raising Sand, the album he released last year with dulcet-voiced fiddler Alison Krauss. 'She got the money/ And I got the honey,' he smirks, as the audience savours this sweet substitute for the lemon juice that once, infamously, ran down Plant's leg.
Krauss, meanwhile, is a vision in ruched pink, purring gamely along with Plant. She probably doesn't realise that she is performing a kind of Yoko Ono role in the minds of less evolved fans, keeping the greatest rock band the world has ever seen off the road. In rock money, Krauss may be the junior partner, a lamb with which Plant's lion can lie down, but Krauss owns more Grammys than any woman alive.
Their relationship on stage is easy and fond, as they pal around in between the dusty, lovelorn cover versions. Plant's old foil Page was handy with the guitar; Krauss has her fiddle, the instrument with which she first found bluegrass fame. Unlike most virtuoso players, however, Krauss shows a terrific restraint tonight, blending in with the sublime backing band (maverick junk-shop drummer Jay Bellerose, double bassist Dennis Crouch, multi-instrumentalist Stuart Duncan, country guitarist Buddy Miller, and band leader T Bone Burnett) for the greater good of the songs. She comes closest to home on 'Green Pastures', a standard once covered by Emmylou Harris.
But the emphasis is firmly on the strange, haunted new place Krauss and Plant have created together, one where Plant's screams are replaced by whispers and the Midwestern goody-goody Krauss can pretend to be a gypsy (as she does on the haunting 'Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us').
The highlights of the album unfurl elegantly across one-and-three-quarter hours: the wonderfully downbeat 'Killing the Blues', the ringing version of Page and Plant's 'Please Read the Letter' that surpasses the original; a spellbinding 'Fortune Teller'.
One of Raising Sand's latent pleasures is Townes Van Zandt's 'Nothing', a song about musicianship so desolate that 'it's hard to get through, or over,' Plant says. It's the one moment of the night when you want the ringing guitars turned down, so that you can hear Plant aching through lines like 'Being born is going blind/ And bowin' down a thousand times/ To echoes strung on pure temptation...'
Well outside her own comfort zone, the demure Krauss sings from a male perspective twice, lending 'Through the Morning, Through the Night' (a Gene Clark song) and 'Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson' a faint Sapphic slant. Their hushed and pregnant reworking of 'Black Dog', meanwhile, is especially radical, with Plant and Krauss mouthing the orgasmic 'ah-ah's with impish restraint. Krauss takes on the role of Sandy Denny on an intense version of 'Battle of Evermore' on which Krauss hollers out 'Bring it back!' as loudly as Plant.
She is very much Plant's equal on stage. In 2004, Krauss agreed to duet with Plant on a Leadbelly song when the bluesman was inducted into the Rock'n' Roll Hall of Fame. But when talk turned to an album, it was Krauss who brought in T Bone Burnett as producer.
The two had collaborated on the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou, the film which put a little bluegrass into every American home. (We get a little bit of it tonight, when Krauss sings 'Down by the River to Pray' a capella, joined by Duncan, Miller and Plant on harmonies.) Live, as on record, this unlikely coupling is really a lopsided threesome.
T Bone Burnett provided many of the songs that ended up on the record and carefully constructed the atmosphere of echoing stillness that made Raising Sand great. In the words of a recent Plant album, he is a mighty rearranger.
Tonight, he leads the band and plays guitar, looking like a country vicar about to be defrocked. When Burnett sings the Cajun standard 'Bon Temps Rouler' (the semi-official motto of New Orleans), it provides a little key to the cogs of this project. 'She don't do nothing but raise sand all night,' runs a line. 'Raising sand' means to kick up a fuss, which hardly describes the dynamic between Plant and Krauss.
You can only conclude Plant's the one raising sand, digging his heels in, stamping around gleefully in the American roots music that is his current inspiration.
Would everyone here rather be at a Led Zeppelin gig? Some would. But Raising Sand has sold upwards of two million copies, becoming the most successful non-Zeppelin album Plant has ever made, as well as Krauss's bestseller. There are Krauss fans here, too, and connoisseurs of Americana. Haunted and spare, an antidote to the entire bloated notion of superstar collaboration, Raising Sand was crying out to be toured. You can see - and hear and feel - why, in Plant's mind, Valhalla had to wait.
Now Playing......
Jakob Bro - Streams
Jakob Bro (guitar), Thomas Morgan (double bass), and Joey Baron (drums)
A beautiful album, just love Jakob Bro guitar work on his albums........
Review in All About Jazz by Geno Thackara found here:
"The music wants to go in its own direction," Jakob Brodeclares, and "it's our job to follow it." If one central theme of jazz is "never the same way once," the Danish guitarist is someone who lives by it more than most. No two of his albums are made with the same cast and rarely do they repeat the same instrumental lineup. A given release may feature a quartet, nonet or fifteen-piece ensemble; there could be three horns or none, two extra guitars or just his own, occasionally no drums, or sometimes electronics and remixing.
At other times a simple trio is all it takes. The music on Bro's second ECM Records outing wants to flow quietly and gently like its namesake. The pieces tend to stay as sparse as the lineup: the leader's compositions here are like the framework for a glass house with wide open windows, allowing lovely natural views and letting in a soothing breeze. He and his trio-mates are pleasantly relaxed and feel no undue pressure to fill the space. The rhythm section ambles with comfortable ease while the guitar's electric sheen lets unhurried notes ring in the air.
As ample evidence for why he remains Bro's most frequent sideman, Thomas Morgan's double bass stays smooth and expressive in as few notes as necessary. The endlessly adaptable Joey Baron is taking this chair for the first time, but having played with Johns from Abercrombie to Zorn, of course he's eloquent enough to join the conversation and more than hold his own. He contributes mostly with light strokes or cymbal splashes, always showing a tasteful feel for just when to liven up more to match the others. Baron shines most in the disc's sole group improvisation as they pay tribute to the late Paul Motian (his frequent predecessor at the drum stool on past Bro recordings), beautifully simmering on the toms amid a cloud of tone haze and warmly plucked bass.
Bro reaches for the distortion knob a bit more with "Full Moon Europa" and the gradual slow build of "Sisimiut," which respectively give the album's overall tone further subtle shadings of dark and light. They're balanced out in between with the prettiest melodic moment in "Shell Pink," followed by a stark guitar reprise of "Heroines" that offers the recording's surest embrace of emptiness. It all evokes the shifting and flowing its title suggests. Largely placid with the odd sharper current underneath, this Streams fluidly finds its path with understated beauty.
Just finished.......
Bill Frisell & Thomas Morgan - Small Town
Bill Frisell (guitar), Thomas Morgan (bass)
Streaming from NAS.....
Review at All About Jazz by Nenad Georievski can be found here.
Duets can be very revealing and very demanding. In best of cases, duets require the utmost attention from two musicians, where playing with another person means playing solo and support simultaneously. When this works well, magic occurs. Over the decades, guitarist Bill Frisell has demonstrated an uncanny power and musicality as a considerable force in various corners and ends of the jazz spectrum. At once a painterly and keenly conversational player, he readily adapts his easily identifiable guitar sounds to various settings, from the fascinating worlds of composer John Zorn or Paul Motian's bands to outstanding and flexible take on the Americana sound on his records. With the luminous duet album Small Town, which was recorded live at the Village Vanguard, he beautifully pares down to an intimate but improvisational encounter with bassist Thomas Morgan, whose rich resume includes stints with drummer Paul Motian, pianists Craig Taborn, David Virelles and Masabumi Kikuchi, saxophonists David Binney, Steve Coleman, and trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, among others.
Over the course of eight spontaneous compositions running over 50 minutes and spread on two vinyls adorned by a mesmerizing Mark Rothko inspired cover, the pair navigates through a subtly shifting terrain of emotionality and musical atmospheres. Regardless if both of them are on the other ends of the generational spectrum one of the joys of this album is how simpatico these two are. Both Frisell and Morgan appear as two erudite sensibilities, each attempting to please and even to delight the other. With an emphasis on close listening, this calm, almost Zen-like approach favors substance over style and space over density. The result to that is quiet music full of inner fire and mystique. Tempo and dynamics are not explored in any innovative ways and no one really grabs for a solo spot. Clean guitar chimes open Paul Motian's "It Should Have Happened a Long Time Ago." Frisell's melodies and harmonic statements are subtly dissonant but always compelling and non-forceful and Morgan's bass playing shimmers rather than pulses. They both meet within a form they have created, not as a soloist and a support, but as a duet playing parts, some written, some improvised.......
Now Playing
Jon Blake w/Olso 13 - Nonsentration
Jon Balke (composer, keyboards), Tore Brunborg (tenor saxophone), Jon Christensen (drums, percussion), Arne Frang (tenor saxophone), Morten Halle (alto saxophone), A. Jorgensen (trumpet), Per Jorgensen (trumpet), AudenKleive (drums), Nils Petter Molvaer (trumpet), Miki Ndoye (percussion), Finn Sletten (percussion), and Torbjorn Sunde (trombone)
Delivered this past Sunday - Ripped to NAS and now streaming.....
Notes on ECM webpage found here
With the number of musicians assembled on Arild Andersen band veteran Jon Balke’s first ECM album as leader, one might expect a big sound. What we get is a subtle and artfully arranged set of 10 originals. Take “Circling The Square,” for example, an easy album highpoint, which with quiet percussion and horns lays down a runway for trumpeter Per Jørgensen’s electronically enhanced flight. Other joyful landing strips can be found in “Stop” (which features some splashes of engagement from Balke at last and superb tenor work from Tore Brunborg) and “Nord.” The album begins in a solemn mood, however, and seems to never to let go of those darker threads no matter how energetic the playing gets. These tender underpinnings are given more overt exposure in tunes like the montuno-flavored “Blic” and the smooth outro that is “Construction Stop.”
One can hardly pass a comb through this session without singling out “The Laws Of Freedom.” With a minimal and open sense of play from Balke over the subtlest of drones one can imagine, this breathtaking journey into a piano’s beating heart turns reverberation into cloud and spirit, and presses between them footsteps of air. One of the most beautiful tracks in the entire ECM catalogue and reason enough to own this album.
Although not an entirely consistent effort, behind the clever title of Nonsentration lies an honest set, one to put on in the background and listen to closely by turns.
Now Playing.....
Kandace Springs - Soul Eyes
Simply a fantastic album, Kandace has a great voice and is a wonderful pianist.
Review from John Fordham of the Guardian found here:
With a move to Blue Note, a simple acoustic-jazz format, the guiding hand of Madeleine Peyroux and Melody Gardot producer Larry Klein, the 27-year-old Nashville singer-pianist Kandace Springs – a buzz on the wires since 2014 as a soul and R&B-inflected artist, who counted Prince among her fans – is taking a career turn. The title track is a classic by the late Mal Waldron – a one-time Billie Holiday pianist – and Springs’s version balances Holiday’s arching long-note turns with sparingly scattered R&B inflections, as Terence Blanchard’s sumptuous trumpet-fills glide around her. The pop-anthemic Place to Hide got the crowd singing on Springs’s recent appearance at the Love Supreme festival, and War’s funky The World Is a Ghetto quickens the album’s mostly languid tempo and sharpens its edge. A generic, dinner-jazzy quality tugs at this music at times, but as Springs’s own delicate jazz-ballad Rain Falling confirms, she has a rare ability that can’t be taught – to sound like an old soul, just doing what comes naturally.
and review from the Jazz Times found here:
Fair or not, there’s an expectation with a label as venerable as Blue Note that any new signing will be a cut above. This is especially true for vocalists. Historically, Blue Note’s roster of singers has remained consistently first-string-Sheila Jordan, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Kurt Elling, José James and Gregory Porter among the select few. Does 27-year-old Kandace Springs uphold so discriminating a legacy? Indeed. Mentored by Prince, the Nashville-born Springs studied the greats-Ella, Billie, Nina-but has emerged with a unique pop-jazz sound that owes no debts, a bewitching amalgam of Dusty Springfield’s caliginous, cream-filled soulfulness and Nancy Wilson’s sensual sophistication, with distinct shades of Michael Jackson.
Accompanying herself on piano, Springs is surrounded by top-drawer players including trumpeter Terence Blanchard, drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, bassist Dan Lutz, guitarists Dean Parks and Jesse Harris, organist Pete Kuzma and percussionist Pete Korpela. In Larry Klein she has been provided one of the canniest vocal producers around. Her 11-track playlist embraces an equally estimable assortment of craftspeople: Harris’ willowy “Talk to Me” and uplifting “Neither Old Nor Young”; the warm hug of Judie Tzuke’s “Place to Hide”; Shelby Lynne’s ruminative “Thought It Would Be Easier” and gently heart-wrenching “Leavin'”; plus the classic Mal Waldron title track and a serpentine cover of War’s “The World Is a Ghetto.” But Springs more than holds her own, adding four originals, including the propulsive, searching “Novocaine Heart” and, alone at the piano, the closing “Rain Falling,” a cleverly constructed ode to lasting romantic fulfillment.
Now Playing........
Charlie Haden & Pat Metheny - Beyond The Missouri Sky
Charlie Haden (bass) & Pat Metheny (guitar)
I enjoy this album quite a bit........
Streaming from TIDAL
Now Playing......
James McMurtry - Complicated Games
I have not heard an album that I don't like from James......
seakayaker posted:Now Playing......
James McMurtry - Complicated Games
I have not heard an album that I don't like from James......
My favourite from him.
(2004)
Chilled listening while I get some things together ahead of dinner later.
(2011)
A lovely live album eventually released after having being "found" following a 1972 appearance in what sounds like a small, intimate and appreciative venue in Philadelphia.
Oscar Peterson - Great connection.
From allmusic.com:
This matchup between pianist Oscar Peterson, bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, and drummer Louis Hayes directly precedes Peterson's recordings for Pablo. The pianist is in typically brilliant form on the LP, performing six standards (including "Soft Winds" and "On the Trail") along with his own "Wheatland." From the results here, it couldn't have been too surprising that Peterson would want to record frequently with Pedersen in future years.