Mister Wagner: The Maturation of Mr. Wagner

Thank God I don’t look like what I’ve been through… you feel me?

This impressively personal and intensely relatable album gallops out of the gate with the urgency of Mr. Wagner’s smooth triplet flow. It is a compellingly thoughtful collection of mature hip hop songs, by turns angry, empowering, confused and inspiring. It deals with the fundamentals of being human – Wagner raps about being alone and struggling to know what’s right and best. It is a window on to Wagner’s life negotiating obstacles, failing, striving, and repeatedly walking up the project steps to build a better one. Through learned hope and hard-won confidence, Wagner is living my life at full energy.

In the emotionally raw “Family Dynamics”, Wagner wrestles with the pain of being shunned by his mother on account of her differences with his father. In “The System”, he calls out inherent racism in public education and incarceration programmes in the US, and rails against commercial hip hop helping to sustain a system that just doesn’t play fair. He nonetheless encourages the next generation to engage in schooling, because after school saved me, day school raised me, and we hear a roll-call of teachers whose influence on Wagner’s life was profound.

The Maturation of Mr. Wagner is an album of hope and solidarity that ultimately looks to dark nights turning into brighter days… in which our protagonist would rather die with a legacy than rich in the moment. This is socially conscious hip hop that relies not on celebrating alcohol, money or drugs to draw in listeners, and not a profane word is uttered throughout. These are intelligent, compassionate and energetic songs with a potent narrative and a torrent of tasty beats to boot. Our work as citizens and artists is urgent; after all, what are we going to tell our kids?

Wagner doesn’t want our pity, he seeks respect, and he’s earned mine with this album, but I’m sure I missed a lot on here too. As a white rock and theatre musician from the southeast of England, I recognize my limits in appraising the hip hop artistry of an African American from northern New Jersey. But as a male, a parent, a human alive today in the United States – we in the Trump era – I hear enough to know that, for Wagner:

this is my pain, this is my truth… this is the beauty, this is the struggle, this is my grind…  this is my hustle… this is my time, this is my soul, this is my mind.

This music is direct, unfiltered and unabashedly honest.

For most of us on this planet, life is both a gift and a perpetual struggle. The final song, “Underutilized”, finishes mid-groove, reminding us that if we’re listening to this, our life ain’t over. So get to it, build or destroy – it’s your choice what you make of it.

Scandinavia: Premium Economy

Premium Economy celebrates with buoyant despair the near-glamour of all to which the squeezed middle class are left to aspire in the withered gloaming of post-War social progress in the West. As the advertising says, this album is the epitome of affordable luxury. It’s less upbeat than the band’s previous record, 2016’s World Power, the sound here peppered with heavier guitars and more aggressive vocals but retaining the jangle and jauntiness of Scandinavia’s character sound – mostly somewhere between Blur, the Beach Boys and the Byrds, with nods to The National, Magic Numbers and Wilco.

Following the zeal and bombast of opening track, “Priority Boarding,” the nihilistic individualism of “I don’t believe in Anything” sets the tone for many of the songs on the album, interspersed with the profoundly mournful (“Autumn Coat”), the deliciously psychedelic (“Melody Glade”) and an homage to the coolest of uncool kids-turned-adults who miss cassette tapes and the late 1980s in “Ghetto Blaster”.

Stand-out tracks include “Dans Le Monde Entier” – a gleefully tautological ballad to heartache sung in the most brazenly awful, couldn’t-care-less Anglicised French accent – and “Pax Americana”, which rounds out the album experience by battering listeners with a Spector-esque wall of sound and calling us to “hallucinate in a new world order” as society hurtles towards catastrophe, “a snake eating its own tail”.

My favourite cut is “Choose Science” – a brilliantly cynical electro-funk anthem to the absurdities of the policies and propaganda around vocationalism and STEM education, featuring cameos by clusterfuck queen, Theresa May, and softly-spoken Mancunian celebrity physicist, Brian Cox. Like the protagonist in the song’s chorus, “I choose feel, I choose soul”, and Premium Economy has plenty of both with swagger to spare.

Listen to Premium Economy by Scandinavia and purchase it here.

Attorney Review: Rupal Aristimuno

I moved to the US in September 2017 and, thanks to Rupal Aristimuno, I am now settled here with my family (US citizens) and a green card. I first applied for my residency visa on my own, but the application was roundly rejected so I looked for a local attorney. I turned to Rupal, who was simply wonderful throughout. I had never paid for attorney for anything before and was deeply suspicious of the whole process and of anyone who commanded the hourly rate of a lawyer. However, Rupal was disarmingly calm, friendly, and put me instantly and repeatedly at my ease, maintaining at all times a cool, competent, comprehensive professionalism that gave me utter confidence in her work. The trust she elicited from me was never once misplaced.

Rupal guided me ably through the opaque language and partial explanations of the Department of Homeland Security website, and steered me and my family through the different-colored notification letters of a high-stakes and otherwise-stressful process. Rupal managed my expectations regarding timelines and outcomes from DHS with aplomb. I am glad I paid Rupal for her services and could not recommend her more highly. Her receptionist even has an English accent (which, as a Brit, made me feel all the more at home). My feelings about the service provided by Rupal Aristimuno are perhaps best summarized in this haiku:

You need a visa?
Rupal Aristimuno
Is the best around

Nat G: Pictures of Mars

Pictures of Mars is a personal and heartfelt album – celebratory, introspective and optimistic. The lyrics are personal and direct, recounting individual experiences and speaking to universals of the human condition, riding on memorable melodies and hard-punching pop production. The record serves as a showcase for Nat G's considerable vocal agility while offering absolution and catharsis to listeners and the artist.

Opener “Back to Life” begins with solo piano, inviting the object of song’s narrative to salvation and paving the way for an album of two halves. The first side is musically more jaunty and organic, featuring swinging jazz toe-tapper “Big Dream”, leading to “Melting”, reminiscent of early Motown classics, and crowned by impassioned “Alive”. These songs highlight Nat’s lush contralto that invokes Etta and Aretha, alongside her soaring soprano lines, propelled by sumptuous string arrangements to breathtaking emotional heights. The tremolo in her voice is heartbreaking.

With “Hard to Me” the album shifts gear sonically and compositionally. This lover’s lament is a standout track, with belted anthemic chorus and huge filthy synths evoking Goldfrapp. “Disappear” is another killer cut from this wonderful album, in which Nat pleads for her lover to stay, offering spiritual and sensual succour enveloped in gorgeous, thick velvet sound. The shoe appears on the other foot in “Drunk” and “Powerless”, in which Nat desires only to submit to the one. “Time of Our Life” is a pop country song about seizing the day, prefacing album closer, “I Choose You”, which wins best bass line of this collection.

This fun, heartfelt and emotionally mature album positions Nat G somewhere between Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and Joss Stone, with the vocal prowess of Christina Aguilera. These songs made me want to hang more with Nat G, so I went straight in to listen again. Who could resist her allure?

Find out more about Nat here.

Phil Mann: Chord Tone Concepts

Chord Tone Concepts Volume One: Triads

The concepts

The title of this book is misleading if you are likely to be seduced (as I was) by the allure of ‘concepts’. An excursion into the book reveals that this, book one of three (two further volumes are planned for 2014 and 2015), deals with but one ‘concept’ – the triad; two further such ‘concepts’ are to be unveiled in future editions. There is, however, no evidence in the book of conceptualisation – of triads or of anything else. If there is perhaps another concept at work here, this could be proficiency in performance – an idea that appears to be at the root of Mann’s conviction that his book will help students learn ‘the things they need to understand, improve, and apply to their musicianship’. Another possible candidate for concept could be the ‘chord tone vocabulary’ that Mann glosses over on page 5, the acquisition of which seems to be the book’s primary aim.

It would be more accurate to describe the book as Jeff Berlin does in his brief (and rather peculiar) Foreword – ‘a collection of chord tone patterns’. The book’s subtitle – ‘An Excavation of the Humble Triad’ – is also helpful, for it prepares readers for the myriad triad permutations that comprise the bulk of the text. Notated exercises are clearly and consistently presented throughout 11 Study Areas, working through major, minor, diminished and augmented triads in all their inversions, culminating in two Melodic Application chapters that introduce simple chord progressions. Mann is to be praised for the meticulous presentation of notated exercises, and for the earnestness of his effort to share scores of technical workouts.

The audience

Exponents of instruments other than bass guitar should beware the advice on the front cover that this book is ‘for bass clef instruments’. While this is not untrue, there are clues (the picture of the bass guitar on the cover, the extensive use of bass guitar tablature, the references only to bassists throughout) that this is a book aimed at and intended for use specifically, and maybe exclusively, by bass guitarists. Mann suggests that Study Area 4.1 (Augmented Triads – 1st Inversion Permutations) might be ‘quite inspiring’ for ‘those of you that own fretless instruments’; he does not, however, go on to suggest precisely how he imagines the following three-and-a-half pages might inspire (for instance) bass trombonists or timpanists. While I am confident that a euphonium player or ‘cellist would find much of relevance in this and other areas of the book, s/he might find the persistently preferential references to bass guitarists alienating and somewhat irksome.

The writing

While Mann is to be lauded for the entrepreneurship and maximum-profit-orientation of self-publishing this book, he would have been well advised to employ the services of both a proof reader and an editor before going to press. The inconsistencies in capitalisation are frustrating; the oscillation between US and British English spellings is disorientating; and sentences are frequently un-fathomable. The writing is often confusing or contradictory, for instance in the ‘Theory Basics’ section where Mann introduces the Nashville Numbering System and then claims that each pitch is given ‘a unique number’ – of course, the whole purpose of the System is to avoid giving pitches (or chords) unique numbers, since the System is transferable across keys. I also had to pause for thought when reading about ‘all contemporary keys’, wondering how these are to be differentiated from, for instance, past or future keys. The pages are rife with superfluity and catachresis. When Mann talks about ‘thorough excavation of the hypotheses’ one is left wanting for even a single hypothesis, while ideas such as ‘raw information’ and ‘apposing chords’ are left hanging. While it is certainly difficult in places to follow, the book is mostly free of misinformation; readers should be advised, however, that when, on page 36, Mann states that JS Bach proposed 48 musical keys, this is incorrect. Bach stuck to just the 24 major and minor keys of Western tonal harmony.

Should you buy it?

The strong sales to date should arguably be left to speak for themselves. By all means, use this book as a source of triad-based technical exercises for helping develop motor control, reading, and melodic invention. You’re sure to come out of the other end of a run at Chord Tone Concepts Volume One: Triads with a more nimble pair of hands, and possibly with a richer sense of how to deploy your newfound dexterity. But the music theory is patchy and anecdotal, and the writing can be confounding. Keep to hand a copy of one of these exemplary harmony handbooks: The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine, or Keith Wyatt’s Harmony and Theory: A comprehensive source for all musicians.

U2 @ the O2

• Commissioned as a review for Drummer magazine.

I’ll come clean – I went to this gig because the tickets were free and I wanted to be able to say I’d seen a U2 concert. I expected the band to be average at best, tiredly regurgitating old hits and bashing out turgid new tunes that drove home how they’ve never grown up from being mildly rebellious post-punk adolescents in north Dublin in the late 1970s but now sound ever more like a bland, easy listening ‘drive-time’ compilation you don’t mind but would rather talk over. I was proven very wrong.

Reviewing Larry Mullen Jr feels like I’m asking the wrong question, because Mullen is not about playing the drums. To quote legendary jazz-rock drummer Jon Hiseman’s phrase – he’s all about playing the band. Mullen’s drumming is integral to the sound and feel of U2, and U2 has an incredible groove. I don’t care who’s reading this – your band just does not sound as awesome as U2. The sixteenth notes and eighth notes from Mullen’s hi-hats were symbiotic with Edge’s guitar. Mullen and the band weren’t even playing the groove – they were the groove. I’ve been going to gigs for around about 30 years, and I’ve not heard another band with that level of togetherness and flow. It was genuinely amazing.

My seat was at a higher altitude than the speakers, and there was a good deal of chilly October air in the cavernous venue (soon warmed by the cheers and body-heat of the 20,000 capacity audience), on account of which there were plenty of flinchingly high mid frequencies from Bono’s voice and the guitar. The good thing about the prominence of these, though, was that the crash cymbals cut through beautifully (especially the one positioned stage-right on Mullen’s main kit), although the hi-hats remained somewhat muted.

I heard not one ‘flammed’ note between the bass drum and the bass guitar – that’s what happens when you play the same songs with the same people for 39 years: you become inseparably musically cohesive. And the snare drum sounded epic! While at a place like the O2 anyone’s drum sound is entirely at the discretion of the sound engineer/s, it helped, visually (which made it sound bigger too!), that Mullen really made a point of demonstrating why the top skin is called the ‘batter’ head; when the live video close-ups showed him in the throes of playing, he always appeared 100% focused, in the zone, smashing home the two and the four. He played three drum kits this evening – one at either end of the arena, and another in the middle of the walkway extending into the crowd. He also shouldered a snare drum, marching-band style, for an emotional rendition of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ – playing that song in London takes courage, even for U2.

The high point of the concert for me came in ‘With or Without You’, when the Edge and Adam Clayton moved right up to the small drum riser (the Edge climbed on to it), and the three instrumentalists looked at each other while they rocked out like band mates in a rehearsal studio. Appropriately, they finished the night with ‘One’, the killer groove on this again being equal parts spellbinding, exhilarating and uplifting.

I once read an interview with Bono in which he claimed that U2’s job is to ‘bring joy’ to people’s lives. While at the time I was highly dubious, I now believe he was right. The effect of U2 playing together in a room – even a warehouse like the O2 – is utterly wonderful.

Ania Hardy: My Beloved

On this, her debut EP, Ania Hardy sings four down-home secular spirituals – simple, folksy, bluesy pastiches, pure and unadorned. They’re a comforting clutch of songs – no surprises as Hardy’s big, all-woman hug of a voice soothes and sighs, lulls and rises to sing, in the title track, of her narrator’s lover. There is an unabashed English-ness to Hardy’s vowels that recalls Maddy Prior, while the timbre of her voice is Allison-Kraus-meets-June-Tabor. Her vocal sits front and centre, the backdrop band maintaining the mood. I would have welcomed a little more double bass (I heard it’s all about that…). The brushed drums, too, remain a little distant, while supportive in the roomy mix. With Hardy’s vocals so full, honest and true, the strings on ‘No One Knows’ sound feint by comparison (a big, real piano would have lifted this EP also). Hardy turns sultry on loungey ‘Call My Name’, and lightly swings on ‘Heavy Load’ – the latter my pick of the bunch on account of the slide guitar. My Beloved is a sound calling card for this empathic English songstress, but with its gospel ambitions simmering, the recording feels timid. Shy it is not, but it hides its boldness under a bushel when I want to hear these songs belted out by a choir, with Hardy and a grand piano at full tilt.

Ania Hardy's website

Ania Hardy's Facebook

Ben Barritt: What Would You Like to Leave Behind?

This record charges out of the blocks with aptly-titled 'Under Way', a captivating and heady mixture of Police, Vampire Weekend and the Magic Numbers. 'Trouble the Water' recalls Steely Dan and early Dire Straits, although the lead guitar sound is all THRaKaTTaK period Robert Fripp. Barritt gets his Gordon Sumner on again in 'One of These Days', while elsewhere on the album the sound world recalls Red-era King Crimson.

The band’s performances are consistently flawless, and more tasteful than ought to be allowed, showcasing their subtle, meticulous arrangements with a spring in their step. Empathic Percussionist and co-singer Mishka Adams harmonises Barritt’s vocals magically, somewhere between Sandy Denny and Allison Krauss. The engaging production achieves both intimacy and finesse (I have no idea how they got Steve Gadd’s snare sound from ‘Aja’ on these songs).

There is an awful lot to like about this album, most obviously and endearingly in Barritt’s delicious voice. His lower range channels Simon Nicol, towards the top he mirrors Sting, and in his mid-range he’s Paul Simon, all the time communicating with the chromaticism, class, and conversational, trust-me smile of James Taylor. Barritt’s melodic writing is wonderful – singable, with enough of a twist to be his own. The lyrics are at once openly personal and yet draw you in – tender, inviting and warm (recall Ben Folds’ agile word-smithery on The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner).

Lazy hack comparisons aside, it is apparent through every moment on this glistening, silky album that Barritt is attempting to be no one apart from himself. This is fortunate since the record is marvellously unique. It is genuinely (as opposed to hipster-) earnest – deliberate but never once contrived. There is even a song about queueing (on which the band out-Strokes the Strokes). The closing song, ‘Companion’, is just Barritt’s vocal with acoustic guitar, evoking Ben Harper and the Proclaimers at their most soulful.

The distance travelled since Barritt’s excellent Sundial EP in 2013 is remarkable, perhaps even for a man who has been gigging and honing his music ceaselessly around the bars, living rooms and concert halls of continental Europe. There is an infectious groove to every song, and a pervasive optimism to the record.

‘Now’ was issued as a single cut, but it’s worth enjoying this album as a whole. Albums aren’t fashionable, of course, and Barritt states in his self-penned press release that he made no attempt to be cool with What Would You Like to Leave Behind? The irony, though, is that, of course, he looks and sounds effortlessly cool.

Follow Ben Barritt here.

Whiplash

I realise that this comes late, and long after the ‘buzz’ has died, but I’m OK with that – I came to prog rock and be-bop late too, and American-style pancakes (I sometimes now eat salty-sweet dinner/dessert at breakfast time, just like the Yanks – mmm, sausage patties and maple syrup and eggs).

I recall music educator friends from the US going a bit crazy when they saw Whiplash in theatres – some read it as an insult to their profession, lest the frustrated psychopathic band director character be perceived by some people to represent what actually happens in actual band rooms in actual schools in the States – all of this heightened in impact, of course, because the story is allegedly based on an exaggerated version of writer-director Damien Chazelle’s memories of his own time at university as a jazz drummer.

Anyway, I suppose because I’m a drummer and a college lecturer, just about everyone I’ve met or spoken with since Whiplash came out has asked me what I thought of it. Until today I had no answer. I read what Bill Bruford thought; I knew Dom Famularo’s opinion, and I heard the movie won some prizes. But I was distracted by a panto, writing, editing, teaching, gigging, etc. and kept rediscovering that iTunes would not let UK customers watch the film ahead of its UK home release. Then I had the DVD in vacuum wrap on top of the TV at home for eight weeks while my wife and I tried to find a night we were both at home and didn’t have to work late, so we could watch it together. We finally saw it on Wednesday. I was pretty excited.

From the first long, ridiculous shot of a drummer wailing away on a drum kit in a room with the doors wide open (something no drummer in any college anywhere has ever, ever done), through the ranks of sullen and defeated brass players all staring morosely at the floor when the director walks in to the rehearsal room, to the epically vacuous closing scene where – guess what! – the drummer plays a concert (!!!), the film left me irritated and cross. I could have been watching American Sniper instead or, better yet, working.

In the interests of concision, I’ll list a few things that struck me about Whiplash:

• Sure, it was tense.

• You can’t punch a hole in a snare drum head – even hitting it repeatedly with, say, bits of hard wood wouldn’t achieve that (see any drummer, ever).

• A blast beat is not double-time swing (it’s a blast beat).

• Playing drums with that amount of tension in one’s body is not sustainable, healthy or even possible.

• Drummers have routinely practised eight or ten hours a day for years and never had their hands bleed. What the actual fuck?!?!(A more likely outcome of intensively playing double-time swing for hours on end is that a drumstick or two might break down the middle; FYI, this also happens when playing Aerosmith covers.)

• “Big boy tempo” was the same as the slower one. D’oh!

• No musician – unless also a dancer, addressing a group of dancers who are not also musicians – would ever consider counting in any piece of music “five, six, seven, eight”.

• Playing fast is not the only measure of virtuosity or competence.

• Neither is keeping metronomic time (which is, in so many ways, antithetical to great musicianship).

• That story about Jones, Bird and the cymbal is not the story about Jones, Bird and the cymbal.

• Sigh…

Did I empathise with the lead character – aspiring jazz drummer Andrew Neyman? In moments, yes I did. I too had a conservatoire jazz education, idolized Buddy Rich for my entire first year of college, and ended a relationship with a girl because I knew I wouldn’t have room for her half-assed life in my obsessively self-absorbed pursuit of drumming as much and as well as I could. I have also broken down and been in a car crash on the way to work.

Although I spent many hours in my first (and second) year at the Welsh College of Music and Drama (it wasn’t “Royal” back then) practising aggressively fast drumming (along with quiet drumming, slow drumming, nuanced drumming, empathic, sensitive and humanistic drumming, and, don’t tell anyone, the clarinet), I did so under the diligent and powerful tutelage of four men whose individual and collective mastery, wisdom and compassion came closer to making “Charlie Parkers” out of me and a generation of my peers than any amount of psychological, physical and verbal abuse has ever done or could ever do for any number of fragile undergraduate student musicians (believe me, we’re all desperately fragile). Charlie Parker’s solos, his stunning ensemble playing and his tragic addictions are testimony to the great man’s own brittleness and knife-edge sanity, and to the presence of similar conditions in a great many artists, at least as much as are the weeping of Andrew Neyman or the pitiful sobbing of the scapegoat (not-) out-of-tune trombonist.

I did really like the music in the film, though – that was marvelous. Except that the film’s epic time-wasting and bullshittery are only heightened by the fact that the piece of music the band rehearses throughout, and from which the movie takes its title, was penned by Hank Levy, who, according to David Aldridge, was one of the most wonderful and encouraging of jazz educators.

Whiplash? I hated it.

Tony Barrell: Born to Drum

This is an entertaining book in which the author demystifies drummers, aiming to separate myths from truths in order to reach “some profound or thought-provoking conclusions” about his favourite breed of instrumentalist. He does this by unpicking a handful of stereotypes (drummers are all mad, all working-class, all have tattoos), situations (recording studio, live performance) and surprises (many drummers are women, and some do other stuff besides drumming). Barrell writes with childlike wonder, his naiveté tempered with serious reassurances that drummers are not all insane or destined to descend to the depths of substance abuse. Despite the book’s promising subtitle, there is no real attempt to account for what might qualify someone as one of “the world’s greatest drummers”, neither is there a discussion of what counts as “greatness”, which mostly Barrell seems to equate to notoriety, celebrity and fame. However, the book is a successful homage to a category of musicians with whom the writer is clearly and unashamedly impressed.

It becomes apparent early on that his interest lies almost entirely in rock drumming, implied in the cover art – a cartoonishly busted human skull with drumsticks inserted dramatically through the middle. Due to the focus on energetic rock, there is an over-emphasis of the relevance of the work of Marcus Smith and Steve Draper, that (to repeated media attention and fanfare) analysed performances by punk and rock drummers, making bizarre and over-reaching claims about the physical benefits of drumming for sport and music education. Barrell intends, he tells us, to explore the culture, psychology and history of drumming. He does so in idiosyncratic fashion, skirting these fields with a bold indifference to recent and ongoing studies that explore them with rigour and vitality. Notable absences include the work of Matt Brennan, Anne Danielsen, Matt Dean, Mark Doffman, Mandy Smith and [clears throat] this reviewer. Barrell’s sources are, instead, a laudable number of interviews with “name” drummers, and a comprehensive list of drummer biopics, biographies and autobiographies

As a drummer, I tend to play down my instrumental abilities, since the pianists, guitarists, singers, double bassists etc with whom I work are almost always far more dexterous, better able to read sheet music, and have a more discerning ear for harmony than many a drummer is likely to need. So it was rather nice to read this book that places drummers and drumming on a pedestal. Born to Drum is charming, if a little anti-climactic. It is a fun read, during which Barrell excitedly propels readers along in his inquisitive prodding of the drummers’ universe, and it is his enthusiasm and alacrity that carry this book and the reader to the author’s conclusion that drummers are peculiarly fascinating people pursuing a particular percussive passion.

Buy Born to Drum, by Tony Barrell, here.

Mr Big, featuring Matt Starr

(This review was commissioned by Drummer magazine)

Koko, Camden Town, Friday night. Mr Big is playing a one-off London show, and the venue is very nearly packed. The audience is 95% white, and 80% male. Uncomfortably OK with fitting the majority demographic at this chicest of north London music venues (and one of only a handful of places left in the city with a room sized somewhere between a dive bar and an arena), I take a warm Becks in a plastic pint glass to what would be the Circle, if this were still a theatre. It’s hot and humid. The band, clearly keen, comes on stage three minutes early, to a huge roar from the crowd.

Matt Star is the archetype rock drummer. Seated behind large Ludwigs, and framed by the Mr Big logo, he has a moustache, wrist bands, and moves big – his single strokes (he rocks too hard for doubles) are high and controlled, frequently starting above his head. He has a tough gig tonight – he is playing in one of rock’s most iconic and virtuosic outfits, in the shadow of its 26-year heritage, with the band’s hugely respected original drummer, Pat Torpey, on stage with him. Torpey is unable to perform drum kit duties due to the recent onset of Parkinson’s Disease, so he plays tambourine, sings backing vocals, and joins in occasionally on a mini drum kit set up to the side of the drum riser. It seems like with every move Torpey makes, the crowd goes wild. Starr needs to be energetic, totally on it, and respectful – to the band, to the audience, and to Mr Big’s slick, well-known back catalogue. The audience is full of fans – the guy next to me plays intricate air guitar to every tune – and most songs are sing-alongs, even the stuff off the band’s latest album.

I’m standing about 60 feet from the stage, and the band members all appear younger than they looked in the 90s, with the exception of bassist Billy Sheehan, who looks more road-worn, and has staunchly maintained his flowing, greying rock locks where the others have succumbed to the new millennium’s preference for a shorter Barnet. The band is faithful to its principles, transporting the audience through a string of classics back to the testosterone-soaked rock scene of Los Angeles, CA in the early 1990s. Mr Big rocks hard, and He plays a lot of notes. Eric Martin’s powerful, flawless, soaring vocals lie somewhere between Bruce Dickinson and Meat Loaf in their size and sincerity. There are no safety nets tonight – no clicks, backing tracks or metronomes – just guitars, vocals, and a man hitting things hard. Starr counts every song in great, and the band charges, never looking back.

Wasting no time in keeping the legend alive, halfway through the second song Martin hands Paul Gilbert the power drill for the use of which he became infamous in shredding circles (somewhat disappointingly, the drill then lies dormant on the drum riser for the rest of the gig). The set includes a three-minute epic guitar solo during which everyone else leaves the stage, and more than two-dozen further solos from the greased-lightning fingers of Paul Gilbert (“faster than a speeding bullet”, says Martin). He’s definitely fast, but I just played drums for the international final of the Guitar Idol competition, and I’m pretty sure all those guys were as quick if not quicker. Maybe this goes to show how much further a reputation will get you than just being excellent (which is, of course, the whole point of a reputation – and Gilbert’s is certainly well deserved).

There is an empty-stage, spotlight moment for Sheehan too, and a fantastic set-piece where the two axe-men duel, their biting, idiosyncratic tones incising the sticky air of the venue. For the choreographed final song (encores last nearly 40 minutes), the band members all swap instruments – Gilbert on drums, Martin on bass, Sheehan on guitar, and Torpey taking lead vocals. The band lacks lack a bit of authority without Starr on tub-thumping duty. For all their brilliance, Gilbert hits the cymbals somewhat apologetically, and Martin’s bass playing is pedestrian and functional. Sheehan shines on guitar, playing with great time and even a highly respectable solo. Starr looks uncomfortable waiting by a mic stand to sing BVs. Maybe for the rest of the tour dates the management will dig him out an acoustic guitar or some shakers for the segment.

This gig was a proper, full-on, two-hour rock-out. For Matt Starr it was a bit like playing drums with the original members of Zeppelin, only with Bonzo watching from the sidelines. Starr killed it. If you get the chance to see Mr Big on this tour, I highly recommend it.

Toe Jam: Dub Jam

This doesn’t sound like a debut EP. It swaggers on to the stereo, all confidence and brazen, ballsy entitlement like the drunken bastard child of King Tubby and the Dust Brothers. It’s a sophisticated rude boy, driving a Bentley through Saturday night Soho with the windows rolled down and the bass all the way up.

The opening track is titled Sitting By, but it might be the soundtrack to a drive-by. I am left feeling like a dirty voyeur, as second cut (“no need for”) Dealing With The Devil tests me further, urging caution as I glide into the moral and sonic abyss. The drums on Reasons to Live hit heavy and hard, and I am almost compelled to dance, but instead I sit, and drink in this dark carnival. Better Way continues comforting and unsettling, brooding and optimistic. The best track is saved for last – the enigmatically titled Who Knows. Part statement, part threat, part question, it’s the most aggressive song here, but still manages to be inviting. I can’t resist, diving in deeper to the subby, sumptuous soundworld.

Toe Jam has assembled here an able team of collaborators, and manipulates them deftly on his powerful rookie release. Where Rudimental descend into over-the-top happy, Toe Jam keeps it filthy, the trumpet underscoring the lingering mal-intent that lurks in the music. These are festival choons, and this EP is dressed for the summer. The best thing to do is light up a fat one, lay back, and sink deep into the Jams.

Dub Jam is available now: https://www.facebook.com/ToeJamTunes/app_2405167945

Nate Williams: Got to Let Go

If Quincy Jones and Michael League collaborated to produce the next Prince album, they would make something a lot like Got To Let Go. Somewhere between Stevie Wonder and Justin Timberlake, this is an R ‘n’ B album of sophistication and class. At least as close to a Michael Jackson homage as last year’s 20/20, it’s like Dirty Loops without the ADHD. I can sing along, and I actually want to dance to it. There is no Mirrors-esque media hysteria around any of the tracks yet, but there is substance here. The overall aesthetic of the album is gorgeous, warm pop, and the lyrics purvey a sad, wistful optimism, with ballad Miss You deeply, almost brutally emotional. Other standout moments include Big Screen Love (featuring Amy True) and the aggressive D.T.M.B. (featuring Vula). It’s probably impossible to avoid the obvious in pop songs, but Williams seems to reference clichés rather than resorting to them – personal and intimate, his lyrics are like clippings from love letters.

The tender vocal delivery and lush panache of the production make Got To Let Go fresh and inviting at every turn, and, in a handful of places, downright filthy. The performances, arrangements and production on the record are a study in measured restraint, although Williams showcases serious vocal and harmonic chops in songs like Not My Problem and Flatlined. He reveals facility and taste in equal measure in occasional keys solos, with drumming and bass playing throughout that are as funky as anything, ever (as well as writing, arranging and producing his album, Williams plays all the instruments too). Like 2014 Grammy winners Snarky Puppy, Williams gives us music “for the brain and booty”. He succeeds where they fail, however, for this is also music for the heart. Got to Let Go has a humility, confidence and love that are rare in music. Bruno Mars wishes his next album could be this good.

Got To Let Go is released 1 October 2014.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/got-to-let-go/id920158959

Jacquelyn Hynes: Silver and Wood

Jacquelyn Hynes is musician of English and Irish heritage, steeped eclectically in Anglo-Celtic folk and roots musics. On Silver and Wood she demonstrates mastery of her musical art through her writing, her performances, and in curating such a wonderful collection of songs, impressions and dances. This is a grown-up record featuring dialogue between artists who humbly serve the music, which is sublime on every cut. This music is honest but never earnest, comprising original and hybrid compositions and arrangements, and confidently understated performances of traditional music.

The Ashplant/Red Haired Lass are two popular reels, played – as all the dance tunes on the album – at an ideal tempo, not too fast, and allowing each note, phrase and melody to breathe. Gini’s Tune, an homage to a late friend, is all pathos, timbral variations from the flute presenting a study in emotive performance. My heart leaps when the piece becomes a lilting jig. The Cuckoo blends English and Appalachian folk with the Baroque, the urgent vocals of Hynes and J. Eoin contrasted by flutes duet-ing as larks overhead. Her Mantle So Green is more gorgeous, evocative melancholy, speaking straight to the heart – a flute a capella until Jacquelyn joins herself on melodica. The bazouki and banjo’s sparse commentary in Sliabh Russell allow this jig to dance with joy. She Moved Through the Fair is Union Station meeting One Giant Leap (without any of the irritating loops or patronizing cod philosophy of that movie); built around an improvised flute exposition, here is poise, dignity and elegance – captivating and enchanting. When Roscommon Reel slips into D’arby’s Farewell to London, a bodhrán makes its sole appearance on the record. The album’s standout track is Do in Di, Hynes’s spellbinding, swirling piano conjuring supra-consciousness, curating a hypnotic, magical canvas for Allison Sleator’s Merrow call. The Rookery/Tommy Mulhaire’s jgs showcase the easy alacrity of Quentin Cooper’s banjo and Yvonne Casey’s fiddle in the best of the Clare tradition on which they draw. A surprise gem is Hynes’ theatrical treatment of Greensleeves, in which she sings eerily over a harpsichord and unsettlingly orates new, feminist lyrics as a poem. I can feel the solo contralto flute speaking to me directly in the sad, frivolous and beguiling An Buachaillín Bán, before the disc concludes with two more lovely Clare reels, Micho Russell’s and Father Kelly’s; my head and my heart both join in the dance.

Listen to this marvellous album on good speakers, with a glass of red wine. For an hour, devote yourself to the music; it will give back in abundance. Expect to be moved to tears.

The album, released by Hobgoblin Music, is available here: http://www.hobgoblin.com/local/products/GM0215D/Silver-and-Wood-Jacquelyn-Hynes/

Keith Tippett & Julie Tippetts at Café Oto, 25 February 2014

The venue is Dalston’s trendy Café Oto, on Ashwin Street. It’s less than 100 yards from where I saw guy getting his head kicked in four summers ago, called an ambulance and lost a t-shirt from Long Island Drum Center because the ambulance crew used it to stem the bleeding. However, Islington’s creep eastwards and the extending western boundary of achingly trendy Hoxton mean that this part of town is becoming more chic than it was back then, at least once you’re indoors.

The venue’s interior is shabby hipster chic. The walls are white or cream, depending on whether they have been plastered and painted or are draped with canvas sheets. The bar is an uneven countertop handmade from plywood, serving two excellent blonde Belgian lagers. The house red is a Malbec, served in battered tumblers. The mood lighting matches the beverages – the Yamaha grand piano and a table of hand-held percussion instruments warmly lit in amber and burgundy. The audience sits expectantly on small wooden church hall chairs, at this high altar of Contemporary acoustic music.

Keith Tippett and Julie Tippetts

Keith, the “mujician” opens with slow, sparse chords, Julie responding with small sounds from her head voice. For 35 minutes the pair explore the possibilities of the reverent silence, sculpting drama and melancholy, darkness and light. Keith’s trademark piano treatments are the perfect counterpoise to Julie’s palette of vocals and percussive sounds. He conjures whale-noises from the piano’s interior, velvet harmonics and harpsichord zings melding with Julie’s rich resonating voice, the timbres combining so as to become momentarily indistinguishable. The duo dances in tandem; they jest and jibe, laugh and weep. There is a pause of almost 30 seconds as they finish, Julie opening her eyes allowing the music’s spirit to depart.

The Octet

Playing the newly commissioned suite The Nine Dances of Patrick O’Gonogon – composed, arranged and performed by Tippett – this new band dives headlong into a set of pieces as fresh and as vibrant as they are diverse, coherent and exciting. Keith has blended Mingus Ah Um and nods to Irish traditional music without once creating a cheap “fusion” of jazz-folk. Rich voicings and jagged harmonies, angular melodies and the sheer volume of the 5-strong horn section in this small room – these create and curate (you will always find mastery of both at a Keith Tippett gig) a music that is uniquely contemporary and alive. Peter Fairclough on drums – Keith’s UK drummer of choice for a couple of decades now – drives the band with passion and fury, humour and sophistication, ears and eyes alive all the while to the pounding graceful gymnastics of bassist Tom McCredie. The second dance begins with a bass solo, building to an electrifying collective improvisation. Thrilling solos follow from James Gardiner-Bateman and Sam Mayne on saxes. The suite lasts an hour, but time has stood still, the music is the moment. The coda, the traditional “The Last Rose of Summer”, showcases ensemble arranging at its most rewardingly gorgeous. Tonight is live art at its most sincere. There is no bullshit at a Keith Tippett concert.

Slowly Rolling Camera

Have you ever wondered what it would sound like if Robert Glasper, Quincy Jones and Teri Lyne Carrington collaborated to write and produce an organic, dramatic chill-out album in Wales? Neither had I, but the answer is right here, and it’s compelling. From the highly regarded Edition Records stable curated by Dave Stapleton, the eponymous debut album from Slowly Rolling Camera presents a cinematic soundtrack to your life in slow motion. I listened to it at home first, and then a few days later whilst driving through England’s Peak District. It was better in the car, especially when the title track emerged majestically as I summited a hill, cruised past a sunken lake, and rode the road around a valley with the setting Cheshire sun.

The album carries itself with an unhurried grace, propelled by lazy grooves in 4, 6, 11 and 5. The lyrical content is banal, so one can’t help thinking that Dionne Bennett’s emotive vocals could have shone more brightly given superior text to sing. The instruments on the album sound truly wonderful, especially the piano, double bass, bowed strings and Fender Rhodes – full marks to producers Deri Roberts and Andy Allan here. There are examples of superb, dynamic soloing from Chris Montague (guitar), Mark Lockheart (saxes) and Elliot Bennett (drums), but the more poised ensemble moments carry the day: stand-out tracks include Two Roads, Bridge and the album’s coda, Silent Song.

With Snarky Puppy’s Family Dinner winning a Grammy, the virtuosic, multi-genre, large-ensemble album format appears to be experiencing a resurgence in 2014. Here’s hoping some well-deserved attention falls to SRC. Slowly Rolling Camera is well worth a listen. And another. And then another.

Edition Records EDN 1048

www.editionrecords.com

Yazmyn Hendrix at the Dublin Castle

The Dublin Castle, Camden, Friday night. I arrive late but am relieved to find that a band is still sound-checking. They eventually clear the stage and allow Yazmyn Hendrix a 30-second line-check while the house lights dim, impatiently announcing the start of Yazmyn’s set while she’s still plugging in gear. Into first song ‘Birth’, and the ticket guys continue to shout unnecessarily to anyone coming through the door (for people charging the public to listen to music, they seem strangely oblivious to the subtle sounds emerging from the speakers directly behind them). Venue staff keep slamming the door behind the sound desk in the tiny venue as though they, too, have forgotten they’re meant to be curating a music experience for their customers. Before the song is done a bartender noisily raises the motorized cover to the venue bar, and a group who’ve come early for the next act gather and talk as though they were standing next to road works.

I manage to focus my ears on Yazmyn, who, amidst the din, creates an oasis. She stands alone on the crowded stage, singing breathily in a microphone, weaving a sonic spell that spreads by the middle of second song ‘Whole Heart’ to everyone in the room. I look around and find we’re ALL silently watching Yazmyn, who is so completely immersed in the moment that she’s barely performing – she doesn’t need to. She’s making her music in the now – carving something from nothing and making time stand still five minutes at a time.  She sings of love and yearning with sincerity and passion. She sets up onstinati with her voice and a shaker, laying down octave-ized bass lines, vocal percussion and full harmonies using a collection of pedals. She has a wonderful way of singing around the beat – lazily and groovily in time with herself. There’s a gorgeous organic feel to this process, as the technology allows Yazmyn to fill the listeners’ consciousness.

With her pedals and multiple mics, her faded black jeans and t-shirt bearing pictures of cassette tapes, Yazmyn’s tech-savvy, contemporary-retro cool recalls Imogen Heap, while her voice combines the sounds of Joss Stone, Sinead O’Connor and Alison Krauss. Her set is short, and in a breath she is into the last song with its cry for freedom, ‘I just wanna be me’. The rapt silence and the calls for ‘more’ tell me the audience wants this for Yazmyn too.

What a wonderful start to the weekend.

https://www.facebook.com/YazmynHendrixOfficial

https://soundcloud.com/yazmynhendrix/be-me

Atar Shafighian Live: The Rise and Fall of Danny Chevron

Ten minutes’ freezing cold walk from Archway tube station up Highgate Hill is Lauderdale House, where chairs are neatly placed in rows of twelve with an aisle down the middle, as though ready for a worship meeting or a community consultation. There is no stage for the ten-piece band arranged  at the far end of the room in a semi-circle, mostly visible between and around pillars that, with the low ceiling, adverts for wedding hire and the wooden flooring, add so much to the curated charm of this place.  The sold-out house of 150 – all musicians or close friends and family of the band – are in their seats ahead of time; you can taste the anticipation for this performance of a yet-to-be-released jazz-rock-psycho-fusion concept album. We can’t wait.

The band is astonishingly good, displaying authority, conviction, humility, generosity, and focused, collaborative purpose in the empathic and soulful attitude the members each bring to the concert. Their musicianship is effortlessly and self-assuredly virtuosic. The rhythm section comprises Steve Green on drums, Nate Williams on bass and Ben Barritt on guitar, a trio who are as comfortable leaving tunes to simmer or idle in neutral as they are to lurch aggressively through the twists and turns of the landscape carved and meticulously polished by the suited and suave Shafighian whose velvet, flat-white singing style couches the cruel and capricious conscience of his protagonist (and alter-ego?), Danny Chevron. Shafighian embodies the role of his disturbed existentialist anti-hero, also playing the character’s darkened ‘inner voice’. Anna Goodwin plays Mama Chevron, and Barritt doubles as Papa Chevron, on whose joint parental advice Danny’s tortured minds spins toward its uncertain fate.

The music sounds like Donald Fagen meeting Ben Folds and Tower of Power to collaborate on a Sting record paying homage to a Coen Brothers movie adaptation of a Norman Mailer novel. Innuendo and sleaze pervade the libretto, as in the first song’s double metaphor of supercars and call girls (Sasha and Erica, sung seductively by Fini Bearman and Mishka Adams) where Chevron ‘pop[s] her sweet ass into gear’. The by-turns shimmering and angry horn section of Mike Chillingworth, Pablo Mendelssohn and Tim Smart expertly punctuates the suite of seven songs; each time Chillingworth unleashes a solo he invokes Coltrane at his break-neck modal peak, and the vibe in the room goes from booty-shaking to near-orgasmic. The dynamic and emotional arc of the evening is almost magnificent, with the energy peaking around the Golden Mean of songs 4 and 5, ‘Reflections’ and ‘The Rush’. After this, Chevron spirals into introspection, and the band relax on the sorbet-and-hot-towel of filthy lounge-jazz play-out, ‘Legacy’, another vehicle for Barritt’s total-taste guitar soloing. There is a brief, satisfied silence before enthusiastic applause lasts far longer than anyone expects.

This is a review of the first concert to be championed by SUSMusic. Upon its release in early 2013, The Rise and Fall of Danny Chevron will be the first album to be championed by SUSMusic. RFDC is Atar Shafighian’s third album, following 2004’s Funkadrome and 2010’s The Royal Showdown.  

Keith Tippet Octet, Vortex, 25th April 2012

It’s a Wednesday night in Dalston, in the unlikely – yet packed – jazz bar that is the Vortex; jazz fans flock here from all over London and the southeast to listen to music and musicians in reverent silence and cramped surroundings. I have a hard wooden chair at a tiny fake marble table within 20 feet of one the UK’s most quietly celebrated and versatile of contemporary musicians. Keith Tippett – big band leader, composer, pianist and master of free improvisation – speaks in hushed tones without use of a microphone, and I hear every word. We are in UK jazz’s highest temple.

Tippett is joined on stage by some of the country’s finest players in a line-up that includes Tippett regulars Pete Fairclough on drums, Paul Dunmall and Ben Waghorn on saxes, and Julie Tippetts on vocals. Completing the band are Thad Kelly on bass and saxophonists Kevin Figes and Sam Mayne. The musicians play with intoxicating intensity. The dynamics and dynamism of which they are capable – perhaps especially in a venue of this size – are apparently boundless. At various points in the music Keith entreaties the band to ‘burn’, with his trademark hand signals and that mischievous, childlike sparkle in his eyes; the audience, meanwhile, sit spellbound, swept along by the swirling, angular, moody, dark, jaunty, wild, tight and anarchic mix that is the trademark of any ensemble performance with Tippett at its helm.

Tippett’s piano playing is unique – he contributes colours, contours and counterpoint; conjuring magic from the soul of the instrument in ways that no-one else approaches. In composition, direction and performance he is by turns playful and mournful, bluesy and avant-garde.  Drummer Fairclough is a long-time musical partner of Tippett’s, and it shows in Fairclough’s sensitivity to his leader’s every compositional and directorial twist; he adeptly drives the band and simultaneously allows free rein to the wild spirits of the front line who strain at the seams of metric and (Tippett’s favourite) circular time. All are tremendous players, with Waghorn and Figes contributing impressive initial solos. However, when peerless music meister Dunmall scorches into an epic sojourn the whole band leaps into fifth gear, his frontline team mates unable to suppress sustained grins of admiration and sheer joy at the master’s effortless, fluid handiwork. As fluent and expressive as Coltrane, Rollins or Peter King, Dunmall’s articulation, phrasing and harmonic overview make him second to none. One striking feature about this band is that from the moment they start to play they sound like a genuine ensemble, with everyone striving for the greater good – even the marvellous Julie Tippetts content for her vocals to dance and flit among the seven threads being woven around her.

As they conclude the magnificent second set, Tippett says in response to the rapturous applause and encore requests, ‘I think we’ll leave it there, on that vibe’. Right on – why would you want him to leave it anywhere else? Tippett has long admired another paradigm-changing instrumentalist, composer and bandleader – Charles Mingus. Mr. Mingus would have dug tonight’s show. Ah um.

Snarky Puppy, London, 3rd April 2012

It's a cold, rainy night - the first London has seen in months - and in trendy hipster venue Cargo, in the East End, a group of geeky, skinny white yanks and Grammy-Award-winning drummer Robert ‘Sput’ Searight are playing harmonically complex jazz fusion to a sell-out crowd. 400 people are rammed into the bar that habitually plays host to the friends and tiny hard core of supporters of local indie, folk and blues bands in a bid to help deepen a band’s descent into obscurity. But tonight the place is on fire, the audience of mostly musicians worshipping at the altar of one of the world's silliest-named bands with all the restraint of a football crowd at a Cup final. This is 8-piece Snarky Puppy's first ever show in Europe, and it sold out weeks ago, hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance and UK smooth jazz-rock legend Atar Shafighian.

The members of Snarky Puppy are some of the finest musicians around today, and they are just killing. Led by bassist, composer, arranger, educator, tour manager and all-round nice-guy Michael League, they lay down the most kick-ass, filthy-dirty funk, sounding like a fight between the Roots, Jon Scofield, Refugee, and Tower of Power. Their dynamic range, self-mixed balance on stage, and virtuosity are nothing short of phenomenal. They play tight, to say the least, but are never once boring, instead being unexpected, clever, fun, danceable, and they have every face in the room grinning for the duration of their set. After the show when the band mingles with the audience you could almost kid yourself they're normal guys. But these are special people, an awesome band, and there is nothing routine about what just happened. Easily the gig of the year so far.