TAKE ME TO THE ALLEY (Blue Note) 8/10 Gregory Porter’s singing and song-writing may have been spawned by a love of jazz, but r&b elements have grown ever stronger until Marvin Gaye now seems at least much of a precursor as Nat King Cole. The lavishly romantic streak present in…
Category: Album Reviews – Archive
ATMOSPHEROS (Move) 8.5/10 What a sound! If a boa constrictor could sing it might sound something like Christopher Young’s bass clarinet. Often this instrument is moody or demur, but in Young’s mouth – and on this reverb-laden recording – it becomes monstrous, boasting an urgency that continually blisters the music’s…
ONWARDS TO MARS (Asphalt Tango/Planet) 7.5/10 Some music is so well-mannered as never to jar polite sensibilities, and then there’s the stuff made by Balkan Gypsy brass bands. Politeness be damned: their music must provoke dancing and fill the heart with joy, or make that same heart bleed with desolation.…