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April 30, 2024
 

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HIGH NOTES

Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 18, 2003
Ted Nash: "Still Evolved"
It's not just anyone who can ask Wynton Marsalis to sit in. Ted Nash can, though, and more than that, he knows how to put Marsalis to work. On Nash's new release, "Still Evolved," he makes sure that Marsalis and other recruited luminaries from New York's post-bop scene don't waste a single note.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 18, 2003
MC Honky: "I Am the Messiah"
Over the course of five albums with The Eels, singer-songwriter Mark Oliver Everett, known professionally by the initial E, has done as much as J.D. Salinger to make mental illness a fit subject for entertainment. If E's tongue-in-cheek songs about manic-depression are "edgy" (his description), it's because the line between despair and parody is so thin.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 11, 2003
Mamai Keita and Marc Minelli: "Electro Bamako"
According to the liner notes of "Electro Bamako," a collaboration between Mamai Keita, a former singer in Salif Keita's band (no relation), and French producer Marc Minelli, this album presents "Malian songs mixed with electro jazz on pop structures but with a rock sound." Translation: slick, hip music with genuine inspiration from Mali.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 11, 2003
Junkie XL: "RADIO JXL: A Broadcast From the Computer Hell Cabin"
Given Junkie XL's successful dance remix of Elvis Presley's "A Little Less Conversation," his appearances on MTV and recent high-profile shows at the Liquid Room in Tokyo, it's difficult to ignore the arrival of his new album, "RADIO JXL: A Broadcast From the Computer Hell Cabin." Not that he's a new kid in town; two previous albums established his reputation since he launched his solo career in the mid-'90s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 11, 2003
Ott: "Blumenkraft"
'Blumenkraft" is the debut album from mysterious mix maestro Ott, but to call it a "debut" is kind of like calling slugger Hideki Matsui a "rookie." Ott has spent the last 20 years behind the mixing desk as a producer and recording engineer with artists such as Sinead O'Connor, Brian Eno and The Orb. That last reference is the most telling, as Ott follows The Orb's example of creating shimmering, pulsating soundscapes that are clearly the result of sparking up enough spliffs to put England in violation of the Kyoto Protocol.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 11, 2003
Radiohead: "Hail to the Thief"
According to Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke, the cover art of the new album, "Hail to the Thief," is a road map made up of blocks of words that "rang bells" in his head whenever he listened to commentary about 9/11 and its political aftermath. Radiohead has always invited as much interpretation as the listener is willing indulge in, but this time the themes are pretty clear.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 4, 2003
Keith Jarrett: "Up For It"
Keith Jarrett has one of those artistic temperaments. After walking out on Miles Davis in the late '60s, he refused to ever touch an electric keyboard again. Throughout his own career, he rejected imperfectly tuned pianos, demanded smokeless environments long before they became a legal offense and disappeared from public view for long stretches of time. He also notoriously moaned, hummed and cried out while playing, a habit which marred some of his best trio recordings.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 4, 2003
The Brand New Heavies
Guiding lights of the late '80s/early '90s acid jazz scene in Britain, The Brand New Heavies throw their weight around this week with a string of dates taking them through Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. They are in Japan to promote "We Won't Stop," their latest album, released earlier this year -- a polished selection of funky U.K. soul. Ostensibly a three-piece production crew, they will be joined by singers Nicole Russo and Hazel Fernandes as part of the nine-member Heavies live band.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 4, 2003
Allison Goldfrapp: "Black Cherry"
Allison Goldfrapp caught the attention of ambient techno-heads The Orbital after they saw one of her first performance-art pieces -- she sang while milking a cow. After contributing vocals to their album, "Snivilization" (1994), she collaborated the following year with dark-hop overlord Tricky on his solo debut, "Maxinquaye." Then in 1999, using her surname for the band, Goldfrapp and her musical partner, Will Gregory, signed with Mute records.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 28, 2003
Spacek: "Vintage Hi-Tech"
With just a few beats, some blips and moist, high-pitched vocals, "Vintage Hi-Tech" explores the promising territory of futuristic soul music. As a group, Spacek has a sweetly extraterrestrial vibe, but here on earth they hail from South London.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 28, 2003
Four Tet: "Rounds"
Whether through dewy-eyed computer-animation's marvels or Sony's Aibo, today's "digerati" yearn to simulate real life through hardware. The same goes for "laptop musicians," but few sound as warm and organic as the one-man band Four Tet, which is Kieran Hebden. Using extensive samples of instruments struck (gongs, trap kits, chimes) and plucked (guitars, banjos, harps), he transforms circuitry into loamy mulch for loop-based music to take root. When stitched together with a human touch, the scraps of disparate striking and strumming form an ear-enveloping tapestry.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 28, 2003
Arab Strap: "Monday at the Hug and Pint"
The Scottish duo Arab Strap are the poet laureates of alcohol-induced sexual torpor. Vocalist Aidan Moffatt's slurred, sotto voce ramblings about unpretty girls picked up in seedy bars and bedded in a haze of beer and E would normally be an acquired taste, but in the U.K. the group's songs have graced both the Top 40 and TV commercials. And while Malcolm Middleton's guitar work has the same hypnotic quality as that of his drinking mates in Mogwai, we're talking real songs here, not heavy weather instrumentals.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 21, 2003
David Murray Big Band: "Now is Another Time"
Boundary crossing and genre mixing are no longer a big deal in jazz, but few do them with the raw power and awe-inspiring glee of David Murray. His list of musical projects reads like a postmodern smorgasbord: Guadaloupian vocals and percussion; Caribbean instrumentation; a musical tribute to Picasso; exploratory takes on the Grateful Dead; etc. And he's continually returning to the legacy of John Coltrane. Murray offers new releases at the rate of two or more a year, and the quality is consistently brilliant. His latest project, "Now Is Another Time," pits his rough, free-form sax style against a vibrant Latin big band for satisfyingly wild jamming and deep Cuban grooves.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 21, 2003
Mira Calix: "Shimskitta"
The music of Mira Calix -- Chantal Passamonte to her friends and family back in Durban, South Africa -- is neither composed nor produced on a computer, though it sounds as if it was. Having burnished her ambient techno style at Warp Records, England's premier "laptop-music" label where she worked in the promotions department before making her own recordings, Calix uses old instruments, prosaic percussion (literally, sticks and stones) and vocals in her work, though to the casual listener the result isn't much different from the product of software-happy labelmates Autechre and Boards of Canada.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 21, 2003
King Sunny Ade: "Syncro Series"
King Sunny Ade of Nigeria came and went as a star of African music, and these days makes only sporadic appearances. At his peak, in the early '80s, he had a deal with Island Records, which was then hoping he would fill the shoes and sales of the recently deceased Bob Marley. But if Ade's music was reigning supreme at home -- where his lyrics, sung in Yoruba, were praised for their power and deep metaphors, and where the music's complex rhythms made sense -- abroad the music never went down quite as easily as Marley's did. After Ade's third release, "Aura," flopped, Island dropped him. He then endured another humiliation when his band up and quit in the midst of a tour in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 14, 2003
Prefuse 73: "One Word Extinguisher"
Atlanta-based DJ/programmer/producer Scott Herren will perform at the Fuji Rock Festival this year, which should come as no surprise. The event has hosted both techno-prankster Aphex Twin and vinyl bon vivant DJ Shadow, and fans of each will easily recognize Herren's cut-and-snip hip-hop project, Prefuse 73, as the logical next rung in the ladder.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 14, 2003
New Pornographers: "Mass Romantic"
In the liner notes of the New Pornographers' debut album, "Mass Romantic," the anonymous band member who wrote them betrays confidence that the record is a good one while continually confessing that most of the details -- such as who played what on which track -- are not clear. The album was recorded over a period of four years by various musicians in Vancouver, Canada, all of whom had other, supposedly more stable gigs. Even the cover art, of a man and woman making love outdoors with a ram looking on, was unattributed, bought off a friend who couldn't remember where he got it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 14, 2003
Papa John DeFrancesco: "Jumpin"'
After Joey DeFrancesco's Hammond B-3 organ became a favorite with a new generation of soul-jazz fans in the '90s, part of the spotlight fell on Joey's teacher -- his father, "Papa" John.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 7, 2003
Phil Woods
The intense be-bop style created by Charlie Parker changed the shape of jazz and created an entirely new vocabulary for the saxophone. Few sax players could keep pace with the incredible dexterity and musical intelligence of Bird, though many tried.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 7, 2003
Koby Israelite: "Dance of Idiots"
'Dance of the Idiots" takes the thrust of heavy metal and slams it together with a Balkan restlessness while maintaining a strong Jewish spiritedness. If you've grown up in a musical or cultural blender, this record will make perfect sense to you. If you haven't, it will strike you as highly imaginative and, more importantly, highly listenable and danceable.
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JAL cancels international flight after captain gets drunk at Dallas hotel
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