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Tell Your Friends has a very prescient title, as a bunch of musicians in their mid-20s decided to do something wild – cut a live studio album, with no overdubs, with a small live audience and film crew in attendance.  Sound like a plan? Then the band, with Michael League as its leader decided to put all tracks up on YouTube to build buzz and a worldwide phenomenon was launched. It was the beginning of everyone telling their friends about this great band, Snarky Puppy, and led them to make five more albums in this fashion.  You can view theContinue Reading

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The Fearless Flyers are kind of a super-group featuring Joe Dart and Cory Wong from Vulfpeck, Mark Lettieri from Snarky Puppy and Nate Smith (Nate Smith, Chris Potter ). Tailwinds is their first full length album following its two EPS, Fearless Flyers I and II. Although the band is an offshoot, they are definitely distinctive in sound and cutting their own path.  They’ve performed a few live shows including opening for Vulfpeck at the world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden. For this fine effort, they recruited their own horn section, the Delta Force, featuring Alekos Syropoulos (alto sax), KenniContinue Reading

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In: Album of the Week, ALBUMS, BLOG POSTS, Lotus

Lotus is one of my favorite bands, live and recorded.  Their style is always morphing, although many would classify them as jamtronica, a mix between electronic and jam. Their latest album, Free Swim just out, is an eclectic mix of styles but stays true to the Lotus core.  Lotus always has both a funk feel and a fusion feel like some of the bands from the 70s (Weather Report) or 80s (Pat Metheny). Free Swim has enough versatility to appeal to those unfamiliar with the band and many throwback styles to please those well indoctrinated. They’re always pushing the edgesContinue Reading

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Jaga Jazzist return with their new album “Pyramid” on August 7th, 2020, and it’s quite a trip.  It’s from an era when albums were meant to be listened to in their entirety.  Each track builds upon the prior one and seemingly the pace picks up from one to the next. Whilst the band wouldn’t describe “Pyramid” as a concept album, they see the track titles as a conceptual starting point from which the listener can construct whatever story flows out of the songs. The album title refers to the building blocks which make up a pyramid, and how each ofContinue Reading

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Our Kind of Movement is a great intro for me to the band Speedometer out of the United Kingdom.  It’s a helluva album with everything a funk fan could want.  Great playing all around from the horns with some great baritone sax work, B3 organ, plucky guitar and bass and pulsating percussion. Our Kind of Movement is Speedometer’s fifth album release for Freestyle (excluding two compilations of archive releases) and the band lays down a hefty dose of new heavy weight funk and soul tunes, as you would expect.  All the tracks are excellent, with Kashmir a personal favorite.  ClickContinue Reading

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Bill Laurance is a longstanding member of Snarky Puppy, and one of the original keys players.  Often identified by fans for his sensual and sensitive playing, he also provides some of the band’s most amazing keys solos. In addition, he an accomplished song writer having penned some of the groups most memorable tunes like Ready Wednesday and 34 Klezma. Bill also has established a very successful career on his own producing four studio albums and three live albums, two of which are reviewed and contrasted here: Bill Laurance Trio at Ronnie Scott’s and Bill Laurance with the WDR Big BandContinue Reading

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New Cool Collective (NCC) out of The Netherlands, have been around for over 25 years now.  Under the leadership of Benjamin Herman (sax), they have put out around 20 albums including a couple of big band albums and several collaborative efforts.  The eight-piece band’s sound perhaps is best described by one of their early album titles “Soul, Jazz, Latin Flavours Nineties Vibes”, always with a retro feel but bringing something fresh to each album.  On their latest album, New Cool Collective mix all those styles and more with a fast paced jaunt through time and space. Check out and listen toContinue Reading

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Malcolm Strachan is best known as a founding member and trumpeter with the top UK funk/jazz-funk band The Haggis Horns.  The Haggis Horns appeared regularly with The New Mastersounds including their very first album.  Malcolm has been performing for over 20 years with such stellar performers as Mark Ronson, Amy WineHouse, Corinne Bailey Rae, and Jamiroquai but just released his ‘rookie’ solo album About Time in March, 2020. It’s a little change of pace for Malcolm, primarily a jazz collection with all original compositions,written and arranged by Malcolm. From full-on latin vibes to beautiful ballads, soul jazz grooves to cinematicContinue Reading

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Jeff Cosgrove is a drummer and composer that just released his sixth album, HISTORY GETS AHEAD OF THE STORY, as a homage to his longtime collaborator friend and bassist William Parker.  This time he writes the arrangements for an organ trio featuring John Medeski on organ (Medeski, Martin and Wood, Medeski’s Mad Skillet) and Jeff Lederer on sax (Matt Wilson Quartet). Lederer and Cosgrove have played together several times and Lederer and Medeski and John have played together a good bit but the three of had never played together before that first day of recording.  Cosgrove said, “There were noContinue Reading

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Jaga Jazzist, the Norwegian group electronic psychedelic jazz group are amazing time and space magicians that will put you in a trance and take you on a magic carpet ride. I’ve been into them for about 10 years and have just preordered their new album “Pyramid” that comes out on August 7th. You can get it on Bandcamp now ant listen to the first track ‘Spiral Era’ below.  I’ve also put up a fine example of their live show.  The band’s is incredible with each person doubling, tripling or quadrupling on different instruments. I’ll be reviewing the album in fullContinue Reading