funk
peter.quinn
From fulsome, modally inflected string lines (“Sintra”) to the funkiest of New Orleans brass grooves (“Atchafalaya”), this first major label album from Grammy-winning, NYC-based collective Snarky Puppy, paired here with Holland's crack Metropole Orkest under their principal conductor Jules Buckley, is a brilliantly arranged and artfully executed tour de force.Penned by Snarky Puppy bassist and bandleader, Michael League, while on tour with the band, each of the album's six movements was inspired by a different forest he has spent time in, from the swamps of Louisiana and giant redwoods Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Jazz-funk organ trio Wild Card have been slowly building a reputation for smoking funk tunes and grooves you could lose a pantechnicon in for some years now. Led by French guitarist Clément Régert, with organist Andy Noble and drummer Sophie Alloway, they perform with quite a range of guests, both instrumentalists and singers, which keeps the atmosphere of their repertoire fresh and varied. Their rise to prominence has accelerated recently with the release of their third album, Organic Riot, which has been garnering rave reviews internationally. It was launched last night at Jazz Café POSK, Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Last month, Theo Parrish released his album, American Intelligence, on vinyl and CD. Now it’s available on digital, but make sure you’ve got room on your hard drive – it’s long. Seriously, marathons have been run quicker than the two hours and three minutes here.Things start well. “Drive” is a long, straight road of a track with all exits barred by stuttering cymbals. It’s compelling stuff, but Parrish, having created an audio autobahn, sticks to 70 all the way – presumably trying to pace himself. “Life Spice” is next and the sample, which sounds like it was cut on a slant, is more in keeping Read more ...
Barney Harsent
There is a tradition in oral storytelling of individual embellishments and flourishes, of one tale taking many forms – the more it is told, the finer the detail. Characters are added and the narrative extended. In this way, stories stand up to near endless repetition for they always have something new to offer us, there is always something new to learn.Sadly, The Story of Funk: One Nation Under a Groove is not one of these stories. As soon as the titles had rolled, we were told, again, how James Brown invented the funk. We heard, for the umpteenth time, of Sly Stone’s daring pairing of funk Read more ...
peter.quinn
It's day five of the EFG London Jazz Festival, and Snarky Puppy's show at the Roundhouse has sold out weeks in advance. And, as the crowd sings the gorgeous main theme of “Thing of Gold” in perfect unison, one of the reasons for the band's huge success becomes apparent. Yes, there's brilliant musicianship, spirited improv, blazing energy and the kind of impressively vast textures that only a band this size can achieve. But there's something else, which trumps all of these things. There's melody. And the kind of melody that tends to stick in your auditory cortex for days on end.“Kite”, Read more ...
peter.quinn
Michael League is the Grammy Award-winning bassist, composer, producer and bandleader with NYC-based jazz-funk-fusion band Snarky Puppy. Formed in Denton, Texas, in 2004, Snarky Puppy is comprised of a collective of over 30 musicians. In addition to touring and recording, the band is committed to music education, holding over 100 clinics, workshops, and masterclasses in the US, Canada, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium.Snarky Puppy released their debut album, The Only Constant, in 2006. Following the band's fifth album, Tell Your Friends (2010), League launched his own Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Andy Milne cut his teeth in the 1990s playing with the influential saxophonist and musical theorist Steve Coleman, whose structurally experimental improvised music was so strongly opposed to any kind of commercial influence he became virtually an underground artist. Fortunately for the listener, Milne has absorbed Coleman’s restlessly broad horizons and determination to forge something new, alongside a willingness to charm, intrigue and beguile.Though Dapp Theory was formed in 1998, this is only their third album. The years of concentrated creative thought come through in the diamond-like Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Sinéad O’Connor has adopted quite a range of personas over the 30 years or so of her singing career. There was the proto-Riot Grrl of her first album, The Lion and the Cobra; the ballad singer of “Nothing Compares 2 U”; the Irish folkie of Sean-Nos Nua; and the pseudo-Rasta of Throw Down Your Arms. In 2014, she presents herself as a romantic lover, but then obscures this by wading into the “Ban Bossy” debate and calling her new collection I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss. It was originally to be named “The Vishnu Room”, after one of its songs.While O’Connor has turned out many magnificent songs Read more ...
joe.muggs
If you're looking for good vibes, you could do worse than watch people who've queued up for a surprise show by a megastar finally getting through the doors, having paid only a tenner. The buzz on the way into the Shepherds Bush Empire last night, in fact, was a real tonic – people whooping, spontaneously singing, grinning inanely. A quite peculiar mix of celebrities – Nick Grimshaw, Cara Delevingne, Alan Yentob and George Clinton – all took to their seats looking as excited as the 3,000-odd standard punters. This was what fandom should be about, and it couldn't have started off the evening Read more ...
joe.muggs
In a world where everyone is expected to be a “brand”, Gilles Peterson sets some very interesting precedents. Probably best known as a radio DJ – currently on BBC 6 Music, plus his globally syndicated Worldwide show – he also remains as in demand to play in clubs as at any time in his 25-year career, he runs the Brownswood label, and has his own Worldwide Festival, currently with winter and summer editions in different locations in France plus four years running in Singapore and one in Shanghai. And somehow his individual personality remains at the heart of all of this.His annual award show Read more ...
James Williams
"We got 42 years of music to lay on you" is an audacious opening statement for any live band, but when the speaker is Phillip Bailey, lead singer in the current reincarnation of the legendary Earth, Wind & Fire, it is a statement of intent. Playing at the palatial Albert Hall in support of their new album Now, Then & Forever, the current line-up of young session players, complementing the core trio of Bailey, bassist Verdine White and drummer Ralph Johnson, proved without a shadow of a doubt that they still have the energy and skill to hold a crowd enraptured.This is one of the first Read more ...
kate.bassett
Having boundaries actually sets us free. So Neil Armstrong's wife argues. She is dogmatically keen to stop her husband rocketing off to the moon in the first scene of The Lightning Child – a groundbreaking show in so far as it's the first musical to premiere at Shakespeare's reconstructed wooden "O", opening last night. Armstrong (Harry Hepple in a space suit) does not agree with his spouse's imposed limits, however. A lunar voyage is, he says, his chance to become sublime.Next thing you know, the 1960s astronaut of Apollo 11 fame has gone peculiarly spacey. Climbing a steel ladder, he Read more ...