Among some of my Internet friends, I’m known for being into “obscure” jazz. I suppose this is true, though given the average person’s engagement with the jazz world (face it people, it’s a pretty small number, percentage-wise), the definition of “obscure” is a slippery one. Maybe I just like obscureRead More

by Tom Johnson When a band has more than one “best of” in their catalog, it’s usually because one skimped on a portion of the band’s catalog that was really pretty signficant. This one, however, only fills in a few gaps of the previous best-of, Capitol Punishment, while mirroring aRead More

An album that starts with this sparks-flying slide, on a song called “Death Rattle,” isn’t fooling around. This, friends, will never be confused with fern-bar blues. That’s obvious, even before Cook opens his mouth to sing — in a voice that’s one part gravel, one part Jack Black and oneRead More

“Surprise” is right: Sounding more like a spiritual and sonic brother to 1990’s fantastic Wrong Way Up, by Brian Eno and John Cale, Surprise hardly sounds like a Simon album at all. And that’s what seemed to have long-time fans scratching their heads — the odd instrumentation and textures, notRead More

You’ll have little difficulty in finding jazz recordings that seek to transform popular songs into standards. That’s been part and parcel of the tradition from the very beginning. More unusual, however, is someone like saxophonist Miguel Zenon, who so personalizes the shopworn idea on Alama Adentro. Each of the tunesRead More

by Tom Johnson Leaving aside the goofy name, Pugwash was that weird bastard child we music writers like to talk about — you know, the “this meets that”: They sounded like latter day XTC meets Jellyfish. In one album, in addition to Pugwash’s own Thomas Walsh, we find friends fromRead More

Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke must have had a bunch of material laying around after ‘Kid A,’ because that was exactly what this follow-up album felt like.

by Mark Saleski There are a handful of female voices out there that’ll cause me to stop, listen, and be amazed: Bjork, Diamanda Galas, Rickie Lee Jones, The Roches. Those women rule the landscape with oddball cadences, insane textures, and emotional tones ranging from delicate sensuality to raw violence. ButRead More

by Mark Saleski This is a certified jazz/funk/power trio bomb. With Vernon Reid on guitar, Jamaaladeen Tecuma on bass, and G. Calvin Weston on drums, there is not a flabby moment on this record. Many people know Reid from his fire-spitting days with Living Colour. If you weren’t paying attentionRead More

André Vasconscellos is, like Leonardo E.M. Cioglia, a forward thinking acoustic bassist and composer from Brazil. 2 is, you guessed it, his second album, but the first one released in the U.S. Heading up a five or six piece band (depending on whether Torcuato Mariano’s guitar is included), Vasconscellos leadsRead More