Mr. Shing-A-Ling, has long been considered the best of Lou Donaldson’s funk/soul albums from the late-60s, & includes a who’s who of great soul jazz players including Blue Mitchell, Jimmy “Fats” Ponder & Leo Smith. Donaldson’s funky version of “Ode to Billie Joe” is the most sampled track in Blue Note history, with artists including A Tribe Called Quest, Kanye West, Drake, Lauryn Hill, Mary J Blige, J Dilla, De La Soul, Eminem, and many more using the track for inspiration. – Blue Note
Label: Blue Note – B0029677-01, Blue Note – BST 84271
Series: Blue Note Tone Poet Series –
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Stereo, 180 Gram
“"Face to Face", recorded in 1961, was one of two sessions he did for Blue Note (the second "Stop and Listen" was reissued last year) and features Fred Jackson on tenor, the fine R+B/jazz guitar of Grant Green and drummer Ben Dixon. The 6 tunes presented are all Willette originals with the exception of "Whatever Lola Wants". The beefy tones of tenor man Jackson, another long forgotten player, are always on display and he contributes a number of sly, witty solos. Equal space is afforded to Green and his blues-rooted, single note runs mesh perfectly with those of Willette.” – All About Jazz
“Face to Face boasts a mighty meat and potatoes soul-jazz lineup: Green on guitar, Fred Jackson on tenor, and drummer Ben Dixon. Comprised of six cuts, five of them are Willette originals. The evidence of the rough and rowdy side of Willette's playing is evident from the opener, "Swinging at Sugar Ray's." His approach to the B-3 is far more percussive than Jimmy Smith's, each note is a distinct punch; not only in his solos, but in his chord and head approaches. His solo is a nasty, knotty blues sprint that encompasses gospel licks and R&B fills, too. The other notable thing about the cut is Green's guitar break that shows a side of him we seldom got to hear early on, where he's bending strings, playing in the high register, and using intense single-note runs. It's nearly a breathless way to open a record. Things slow down on the blues "Goin' Down" that features a nice emotive solo by Jackson. The mambo-infused "Whatever Lola Wants" by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross comes next and includes some beautiful stop-and-and start moves in the melody, as well as beautiful call and response between Jackson and Willette, while Dixon's drums shift around the outside before the whole thing breaks down into a groover.” – All Music
Item description:
Artist:
'Baby Face' Willette
Title:
Face To Face
Label:
Blue Note , Elemental Music
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo, 180 gr
For his third album on Blue Note, Big John Patton decided to expand his band to quintet. Retaining the services of his longtime colleagues, guitarist Grant Green and drummer Ben Dixon, he hired tenor saxophonist Fred Jackson (who also played on the previous work "Along Came John") and trumpeter Richard Williams. – All Music
Label: Blue Note – BST 84174, Elemental Music – ERLP 1040
"Ghettoville is the bleached out and black tinted conclusion of the Actress image.
Where the demands of writing caught the artist slumped and reclined, devoid of any soul, acutely aware of the simulated prism that required breakout.
Four albums in and the notes and compositions no longer contain decipherable language.
The scripts now carry tears, the world has returned to a flattened state, and out through that window, the birds look back into the cage they once inhabited.
Spitting flames behind a white wall of silence.
The machines have turned to stone, data reads like an obituary to its user.
A fix is no longer a release, it's a brittle curse. Zero satisfaction, no teeth, pseudo artists running rampant, but the path continues.
“At a first glance, techno and contemporary classical music do not seem like ideal partners. One, a bass-heavy hedonistic genre designed for dancefloors, the other suited to the calm of the concert hall. Yet Darren Cunningham, aka electronic producer Actress, and the London Contemporary Orchestra have built their careers in pushing boundaries of genre.
Both sets of artists explore the hybridity between the electronic and the acoustic: the LCO regularly records experimental film scores, including Jonny Greenwood’s recent anxiety-inducing compositions for You Were Never Really Here, and last year Actress performed a live rendition of Steve Reich’s 1988 work Different Trains. On Lageos, rather than have the orchestra approximate the alien sounds of Actress’s electronics, they formulate a new sonic palette that is in equal measures intriguing and unsettling.
The album is often upbeat: strings streak in between clattering, fairground rhythms on Galya Beat, while Hubble and N.E.W. are softer, more melodic interpretations of Actress’s previous releases. It is in moments of quiet ambience, though, that Lageos excels, blurring the boundaries between static and harmony on Momentum or between creaking double bass and kick drum on Voodoo Possee, Chronic Illusion. A challenging yet satisfying listen.” – The Guardian