D-Influence + London (ECHO/BMG), http://www.echo.co.uk/d-influence
At first I was surprised by the low key and non-commercial sound of
this album. D-I has recently done - in my eyes - a lot of (good)
commercial stuff, like various remixes, and of course Shola Ama's
album. "London" reminds me a lot of that cool Loose Ends sound, mixed
with older type of laidback funky horns. I'm a real sucker for that
kind of music so maybe you shouldn't take it too seriously, but for me
this is one of the best albums this year. Solid, pure quality soul!
Sarah Anne Webb, as always, performs brilliantly.
Tab Two + Sonic Tools (Virgin), http://www.look.de/tabtwo
Tab Two is a two piece band from the south of Germany and consists of
trumpet player Joo Kraus (quite often sounding like Miles) and bass
player Hellmut Hattler. Large parts of their music is "machine
made"... which is one of the factors the band says they like use to
make and compose "new" music. Hence the name 'sonic tools' I guess.
Their style has a certain gliding ambient feeling, but is at the same
time mostly uptempo and has a lot of salsa influences. The style could
be called trumpet&bass I believe... ;-)
Yesterday I saw them play live at a small club in town. They were a
bit limited by the too small room and a poor sound system, and they
seemed a bit bothered about that. The set was nice and "cozy"
with good energy. Most of the people there hadn't heard anything by
them before and were pleasantly surprised by the... well, refreshing
sound. I spoke a bit with Joo Kraus after the gig and he said they
would try to experiment a bit more for the next album. He played one
song using a MIDI trumpet (or something) which sounded quite twisted and
a lot like something in oriental/arab music. Brilliant.
The new album is a collection of earlier songs, all remixed or
re-recorded. Track listing:
1. Lieblingslied Lieblings - Mix
2. No Flagman ahead Latin Mix
3. Sad News Slow Motion Mix
4. Mind Movie Cinemagic Mix
5. Club Mambo Curfew Mix
6. My Horn Frisch - vom - Blech - Mix
7. Belle Affaire Bar - Mix
8. Whatchagonnado Rush Hour Mix
9. Public Meditation Fernost - Mix
10. Not A Lot Galileo - Mix
11. No Flagman ahead US - Mix
12. Vorfilm Abspann - Version
Cheers,
Erik.Boralv@CMD.UU.SE Webmaster: http://www.cmd.uu.se/AcidJazz/
Center for Human-Computer Studies Admin : acid-jazz@ucsd.edu
Uppsala University, SWEDEN