You may not necessarily learn a whole lot more about the originators for the songs featured in ‘The Literature,’ but you’re bound to understand Rich Halley a little better. His sweet and spicy artistry uses a lot of quality ingredients.
Satoko Fujii’s and Joe Fonda’s ‘Mizu’ shows the deepening musical communion between pianist and bassist, as this disc captures three of their co-composed pieces performed over two nights in Europe.
Satoko Fujii’s newest combo is This Is It! and their debut album ‘1538’ can’t get much closer to improvisational music perfection.
Jan Hammer’s, ‘Seasons Pt. 1’ picks up right where Drive left off, continuing with his unique brand of wholly keyboard-based instrumental music that sits in a space between prog-pop, fusion jazz and New Age.
Long past the hit-making phenomena of the ‘Silk Degrees’ years, Boz Scaggs is still providing some very good reasons to keep listening to him with his third return-to-my-roots record in a row, ‘Out of the Blues.’
Anyone who liked the MOR music coming from the radio forty years ago will find everything to like about Young Gun Silver Fox’s ‘AM Waves.’ Yacht rock has a new soundtrack, and it’s a good one.
Like Claudio Scolari and Daniele Cavalca’s prior projects, you could call ‘Natural Impulse’ “jazz” for a number of reasons but in the end it just sounds like two (sometimes three) guys following their instincts to make music that’s both unpredictable and inviting. And they have only gotten better at doing that.
The fine folks at Walter Becker Media have dropped another cleaned up ’11 Tracks of Whack’ outtake on us, an edgier number titled “Ghost of Hipness Past.”
The long-forgotten ‘Both Directions at Once, The Lost Album’ is nonetheless as gratifying as many other John Coltrane albums from the Impulse! era; indeed, it holds its own against the entire, history-making discography.
Matthew Lux’s debut ‘Contra/Fact’ contains a good deal of delightful surprises but given his credentials, such surprises are to be expected.
