For ears raised on breakbeat-fractured future jazz, ‘60s jazz can seem staid, but those LPs represent a burning quest for musical perfection through improvisation and composition. That fire burns in Helsinki‘s Five Corners Quintet, who bop so hard you can almost hear starched white collars being popped and square-rimmed glasses fogging up behind the studio window. Whether it‘s vibes, sax or legendary hard-bop hipster vocalist Mark Murphy (voicing three tunes, belying his 70-plus years!) taking the lead, these youngsters revive classic soul/Latin fusion with a passion that will make you think jazz‘s greatest era never ended.
LAL Warm Belly, High Power
Around the time trip-hop went incognito as “downtempo,” boy-girl duo LAL dropped Corners, a breaks-and-vocals effort that unjustly vanished. Five years on, Warm Belly, High Power sends Rosina Kazi‘s lush and nuanced vocals through a conceptual tour of Southeast Asia across the four seasons. Nick Murray keeps the beats up to the high standards of today‘s future jazz programming-check the warped shuffle of “Dancing the Same,” the winding bass and negative space in “Creep” or the softly evolving slow-mo jungle dub “Brown Eyed Warrior”-while deftly integrating guest percussionists on tablas, sitars and more. Hot like slow summer nights.
Various Artists Blue Note Trip: Jazzanova
Jazzanova‘s six crate diggers emerge grinning from the Blue Note archives, clutching two discs stuffed with 70s-era gems from when Horace Silver and Lee Morgan‘s hard bop met the Afro-Cuban strain. Each plays like a modern DJ set: opening with a blast, going deeper into soulful tracks and spinning out on a relaxed run-out groove. The vocal tracks are skippable, betraying Jazzanova‘s occasional easy listening preferences, but a few standouts-James Moody‘s “Tin Tin Deo,” a banger en espanol, and Sam River‘s epic, Coltrane-ish “Beatrice”-keep things honest.
Gino S & Snake Plissken Myth Maniac EP
Arriving as this label‘s first 12″ release, the sound only leaves listeners aching for more. Cataloged amongst Gigolo, Turbo, Hot Banana, and Kilo, this industrial-aimed electro-tech thriller is full of stinky mid-bass grooves and steadily driving dance-proven percussive bits. The distorted/compressed memo vocal line with Biggie Smalls flavor truly seals the deal.
Darren Gate Slack Space
Introducing some fresh US talent, Skip diversifies with a showcase of genre fusion for this chilled-out installation. The A-side delivers a simple tech-house feel, hosting a syncopated mono-synth lead with an added ornamental slide. Funky yet straight-ahead, the B-side contains a distinct melody atop static haze, set in a Chicago-styled industrial mix.
Herbert Bose Times Up
Oddly hitting shelves as this artist‘s first release, the 12″ combines the arrangement skills of a veteran sequencer and the audio selection of a trained producer. Fusing a bit of Detroit techno, UK electro, and Chicago house alike, the sound ranges from atmospheric synth washes to quasi-acid blips and back to pumping 130bpm percussion. A skilled production no doubt, and true analog vintage synths to boot!
Monne Automne Teco Remixes
With Luciano and Pier Bucci appearing for the last time as Monne Automne, this remix EP blissfully completes their discography. A filtered frenzy of liquid clicks and taunting chords awaits the original hook on this classic Mediterranean delight. Flip for an epic, melody-infused cut from Neville Attree. Think Ibiza at 5:30 a.m.
2Mex/SonGodSuns Over the Counter Culture
2Mex has a wildly stylized delivery, full of massive speed fluctuations and serious bellowing which, at best, makes his strictly so-so lyrics indecipherable. The production here is nothing complicated but makes use of some interesting sounds, tossing heavy metal drum breaks into the middle of a creamy hip-hop tracks and accelerating sampled R&B singers to Chipmunks velocity. His best rhyme (“condom/double entendrum”) is couched in his post-punk track “Lie Love You” and there‘s something Zappa or Ween-esque about his self-hate in “Didn‘t Mean to Touch Your Hand.”
Mutamassik Masri Mokassar: Definitive Works
Mutamassik beat juggles hip-hop rhythms, pounding heavy metal drum riffs and hand percussion. In the context of arty techno, sampled Middle Eastern strings often come across as melodramatic and new-agey, but Mutamassik‘s aggressive, loosely arranged compositions are largely able to avoid hippie raver pratfalls. On the standout track “War Booty,” the melody is peeled away to reveal a rhythm formed of grunts and subconsciously small snippets of funk keyboard. The album seems imbued with the horrors of war, most noticeably in its machine gun snares and rhythms built from the whoop-whooping of helicopter blades.
Sizzla Soul Deep
Increasingly quirky and unpredictable, half the fun of listening to a new Sizzla album is hearing what he‘s gonna do next. By now, we‘re all familiar with his Bobo dread steez, so it‘s expected that he‘s gonna drop some conscious lyrics, positive messages, and otherwise honor-rebel sentiments. But while some ragga deejays never vary their flow, Sizzla switches his tone, cadence, and pitch constantly, making what could have been a claustrophobic listening experience-Donovan Bennett‘s riddims tend toward the minimal-into something else entirely. Sizzla‘s yelps, squeals and falsetto trills keep things interesting, and “Good Morning” and “Mount Zion” can safely be added to the Kalonji catalogue of classics.
