The Music of Faye Miravite, La Brezza

Originally from the Philippines but residing in Florence, Italy for the last 20 years, Faye Miravite brings you multi-cultural jazz.  On the record, you will hear an array of talented artists contribute their time to make up the recording of La Brezza.  Musicians from three different continents helped make Miravite’s compositions come to life.  All music and lyrics are created by Faye with the exception of Marilina Marescutti writing the Italian lyrics on the title track, “La brezza (“The Breeze”)”. 

Faye Miravite has created a world of jazz that has Italian, Philippine and even Brazilian roots.  The overall sound is very rich due in big part to the many players on the record.  You hear piano, drums, vocals, guitar, soprano & tenor sax along with contrabass.  The musical connection between Miravite’s music and the people playing her tunes is immense. 

The entire album encompasses a feeling of worldly value; a quality that seemed to be very well-polished throughout.  La brezza starts with a number titled “Dolce foschia (“Sweet Mist”)” that contains a very smooth and easy-listening jazz melody.  You really do get a picture of a sweet mist hitting your face while listening to this song.  The title track, “La brezza (“The Breeze”)”, follows up with an equally soothing & calm breeze effect.  I also enjoyed its classy appeal, one very nice piano solo and add to that an impressive sax part.  “Heart on fire! / L’amore grande” comes at you with a completely different set by adding a dance-oriented beat/groove to the mix.  “What I Call a Friend” displays a phenomenal musical connection between drums, sax and piano.  The guitar and contrabass come in adding a nice touch to the whole layout.  Track five moves faster while the next number, “The dream I had of you last night”, slows things down with a romantic mood.  Faye Miravite wraps it all up with “I found love” where the vocalist, Sandra Viray, sings in such a soft & sincere manner.  This tender ballad is captured beautifully by Viray’s voice where she seems to be really feeling the moment, the music and herself. 

The overall listen is worldly, easy listening jazz that offers energy, romanticism, sophistication and one great group of musicians.  Feel the calm & cool breeze for yourself!  For more on The Music of Faye Miravite and her latest work, La Brezza, Skope out www.fayemiravite.com. 

By Jimmy Rae

Rating:

Gala, Tough Love

Italian-born singer/songwriter, Gala, brings her version of Tough Love to you.  Gala Rizzatto is now based in Brooklyn and offers up a mixture of world music, rock, pop, dance and even hip-hop elements.  The record is highly eclectic in taste with a bite of the Big Apple and Gala in each song. The album is representing ALL of the people of NYC and holds a special place in Gala’s own heart as well.  The record’s special quality is all of its flourishing diversity. 

Tough Love really matches up to that “New York State of Mind” or New York attitude/swagger if you will.  Gala brings you an edgy and hip piece of work that she likes to call “intelligent pop”.  Adding a little sass to the picture to spice things up, this platinum selling international music star seems to have hit Tough Love right on the nose.

The six-track EP includes a wide variety of music that seems to have something for everyone.  Dance music for all you clubbers, world music for all you worldly people, rock music for all you rockers, hip-hop for all you hip-hoppers and pop for all you pop tarts.  No limits and no boundaries when it comes to making music is Gala’s promise. 

The opening song, DKOL (Different Kind of Love)”, has a sweet guitar riff along with a zesty/edgy pop rock approach thanks to Gala’s Rock’em Sock’em chops.  This is a joint you can dance your ass off to at the club or simply rock out to.  “Faraway” has a distinct worldly vibe about it whereas “I’m The World” displays a hot ‘n’ fresh beat where you actually hear an accordion.  The title track, “Tough Love”, has Gala belting out lyrics in a sort of cutesy type manner because of an infectious, high pitched squeak.  She definitely is adding a whole lot of pep and pop to her step.  In the end, it’s a major load of pizzazz!

I can’t leave without mentioning the fine musicians that make up Gala’s band: Deantoni Parks on drums, Itamar Ziegler on bass and Joseph Friedman on guitars.  Gala’s Tough Love seems to be no joke here.  For more on Gala and her latest EP, Tough Love, SKOPE out www.galasound.com. 

By Jimmy Rae

Rating:

RANDOM STABBINGS & ARTLESS CRITIQUE, JULY 2009

UFO, The Visitor (SPV Records)
In this installment of SPV Records’s continuing missionary expedition to find survivors of the shredder and power-metal eras and throw them some studio time, we find UFO alive and well to a degree.  The hate-fights between current singer Phil Mogg and ex-guitarist/band-drunkard Michael Schenker long consigned to the gossip bins of history, Mogg’s axe guy is nowadays one Vinnie Moore, whose totally shredding shred-work was the talk of indie metal when the Shrapnel imprint was competing with Metal Blade Records for the Guinness record for total number of forgettable metal bands signed. With Schenker around, UFO was something not totally forgettable.  With so much distance between our times and the 80s, though, it takes an oldschooler’s appreciation for Moore’s mellowing with age to get past Mogg’s rote blues/hard-rock songs (the long and short of this, musically, is early Whitesnake, the end).  Moore’s forte is, as we just discussed, shredding, and there’s plenty of it here, but the highlights here come from his obsession with fretboard control and whatever remains of his interest with decorating unadventurous post-Zeppelin riffs.  Mogg, content in playing at David Coverdale clone, matters little here, as does his longtime sidekick, bassist Pete Way. Grade: B- [street date: 6/2/09]

Kyle Eastwood, Metropolitain (Rendezvous Records)
Boy, talk about a hater’s tackling dummy: the son of Clint Eastwood, trying to sell us on his Innate Jazz Talent, obviously stemming from a firm grounding in deep art, all inherited from a man who could imitate a large obtuse block of wood for entire movies at a time.  And, oh, oh, look, a bunch of snooty French surrender-monkey jazz-hacks being all… you know, jazzy and French. Nothing bad here, though.  Nothing Miles or Dizzy or Thelonious either, no, but if you’re in the market for mature background-patter jazz for romancing a middle-aged science teacher to, this is as good as anything that was ever playing during scenes where Dirty Harry took his date to the gin-n-steak joint where there’s never any kids at the tables.  Have your skip-button finger ready for the first song, wherein Kyle lays his bass down for the single-named French enchanted enchantrix superstar Camille to coo a bunch of oohs and ohs over.  After this bit of silliness, however, you can relax in friendly, uncompetitive vibes that recall restaurant-jazz biggies like Ramsey Lewis circa Routes. Grade: B+ [street date: 6/2/09]

Celan, Halo (Exile on Mainstream Records)
A fast-food recipe that will appeal to very specific tastes, Celan is a risky test-run album co-operated by classically trained pianist Ari Benjamin Meyers (a sometime contributer to Einstürzende Neubauten) and Unsane singer Chris Spencer, whose deal, should you be unfamiliar with Unsane, is angry-young-wifebeater-hollering over garage-doom rancor that’s more attuned to roots hardcore than the sort of plain-Jane roaring-pirate-metal that Neurosis, whose preferred speed is sluggishly similar, does.  With me?  No? Can’t say’s I blame you if you’re a thrasher or tend to avoid music that wants to toss you on a catapult and fire you at platoons of Orcs, but even if you’re jiggy with this in the least, it’s Spencer’s yelling and paint-by-number Crowbar-like riffing that’s mostly running the show, with Meyers and his eggheadisms confined to the quieter moments.  “It’s Low” has designs on smarter, Einstürzende/Swans/Foetus-like anti-pomp with Maximum Rock n Roll overtones, a place where these two minds actually melded instead of swapping turns in the spotlight. Grade: C+ [street date: 6/2/09]

Luke Winslow King, Old/New Baby  (Fox on a Hill Records)
One release to look forward to next month is this collection of oom-pah-pah-ing backdrops for the New Depression, not to venture that King actually had that angle in mind during the design phase.  Kicking off (“As April is to May”) with a girl-group beat played by a sad-sack troupe one can clearly picture wearing holey shoes, the record gets its real quirkiness from King’s vocals, a sound laser-guided to the CMJ set, like a Ben Folds afraid of his own lung-power.  Like Sufjan, Winston Giles and the other interesting-enough weirdos out there, he’s only predictable as far as unpredictability goes, so when “Bird Dog Blues” trots out cha-cha instead of the Blind Lemon Jefferson its title telegraphs, it’s the right thing to do.  Aside from that, it’s small-brass-band drinking music for the recently unemployed cube droid shuffling hir way to the soup kitchen. Grade: A [street date: 8/11/09]

Sean Nowell, The Seeker (Posi-Tone Records)
Apropos enough of an album title here; from leaving behind his Alabama a cappella choir in favor of the big east cities to bombing Kosovo with culture and jamming soundtracks with Stanley Clarke, Nowell’s life is officially a circus of art.  On this 2nd album for Posi-Tone as a leader, however, the surprise lies in the conventionality of his passion for small-combo 50s/60s avant-jazz/post-bop, here branching into uncommon ethnicities (the wizened Jewish flavor of “Oy Matze Matze”), subliminal bar-rock beats (“Dunavski Park”) and chicken soup for the gangster’s moll’s soul (“I Will,” a nice space for some Humphrey Bogart dialog).  “New York Vibe” is pure Blue Note oldschool, with Nowell taking a 3.5 minute solo he probably concocted while playing the Manhattan clubs in which he’s a resident; other sizzle is found between the fusion basslines and psychedelics of “For All Intensive Purposes.” The brain-blower comes last, in the warp-speed Coltrane-like closeout track “I Remember You.” Grade: A- [street date: 6/9/09]

Paul van Dyk, Volume: The Best of Paul van Dyk (Ultra Records)
Lately I’ve been making more and more snide remarks about spandex Speedos and “glorified record collectors,” but truthfully that’s come in direct relation to my fetish for house and trance techno being scratched by awesome promo people sending me the very best of the stuff in the world.  Take van Dyk, for instance, a charter fixture in the same very exclusive cabal as Tiesto, Oakenfold and van Buuren. From this compressed vision of his life’s oeuvre – one CD of originals, another one bearing his greatest remixes – it’s clear that his strength lies in making Britney more bratty and such more than cooking up a trance number for the ages.  His 1994 hit “For An Angel” is here at track one, still standing as his most glorious achievement as a tinkerer of song; it segues into the emotionally raw “Home,” a not-bad second banana.  As for the remixes, U2’s “Elevation” and Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around” are awesomely rendered, but the slammer is the hypnotically cinematic reboot of Lisa Miskovsky’s gigantic video-game-soundtracker “Still Alive.” Grade: A [street date: 6/9/09]

The Blackout, The Best In Town (Epitaph Records)
Aural scrapbooking project centered around the bands loved, admired and worshipped by the 6 emo/nu-metal limeys who were probably shocked as anyone else at being given the money to do this album.  No angle, just pure copycatting at every step – first they knock over Papa Roach’s anthem-emo bank in “Save Ourselves (The Warning)” (yes, that’s how stupid they believe their audience is, adding redundant parenthetical emphasis to the title, which probably refers to catching a glob of Maybelline in one’s iris), and then giddyup varmints, it’s off to rob the Socialburn/Gavin Rossdale general store (“Top of the World”).  But that’s not all folks, act now and you’ll hear our boys get themselves in hot water with P.O.D.’s copyrighting people (“Childen of the Night” a song title so overused it’s probably become a drinking game), pick Saving Abel’s pocket for psycho-boyfriend-screamo chump change (“Said and Done”) and finally forge their signatures on Dashboard Confessional balladry in “Silent When We Speak.”  There’s a generic description for this kind of art, and it is not ‘devilishly innovative’. Grade: D+ [street date: 6/9/09]

Astra, The Weirding (Metal Blade Records)
The “New Wave of Psychedelic Prog” is dawning, colored pretty much the same as the 60s/70s thingie.  Engineered to mimic a Mountain album from the Mesozoic era, Astra’s debut is so wintry and faraway that it’s inconceivable that they’re from San Diego, their only trace of modernity being the vocal resemblance to Bigelf, who, in the great comparative scheme of things, are ELO or Sweet to Astra’s Yes/ELP.  Like anything that’s prefaced nowadays with “nu-“, nu-prog is more homage than innovation, here even down to the album cover art, clearly premised upon the same Planet Bizarro landscape that inspired 5 or so Yes covers.  Thing is, along with Yes (and the first Sabbath album, and even Jethro Tull if you watch closely), slowbie-oldbie SST bands – St. Vitus, to be precise – get a nice foot-rub at the hands of these fellers, particularly in the 15-minute-long title-track, which, in spite of its thick waves of mellotron, ambles along in a cartoon-zombie state of amicable doominess, firing feakazoid Leslie West guitar solos in every direction.  “Silent Sleep” and its Styx-like bliss fare better; “Ouroboros” even more so by doing a seriously good Yes impersonation that would slay My Morning Jacket if the singer was more a Thom Yorke than an Ozzy.  Grade: A- [street date: 6/23/09]

Ted Nugent, Motor City Mayhem (Eagle Records)
On Fourth of July of last year Ted Nugent, one of the few rock n roll banes to liberalism, proudly whipped out 20-ought and 20-year-old chickie in commemoration of his 6000th show, give or take I’m sure, this at the DTE Music Centre in his hometown Detroit.  As captured in this 2-disker, Nugent at 60 is more Imus-looking than Nugent at 25, but that’s the only difference:  hell-yeahs, s-bombs, f-bombs and crazed screaming remain stock props, as do bassist Greg Smith and drummer Mick Brown, and double-ditto for Nuge’s vein-popping intro to “Wango Tango.”  Fans will know the rest by heart – “Stormtroopin’,” “Weekend Warrior,” et al, all the drunkenly shrieked epithets (he’s ordained himself with the rather pervy “Uncle Ted” nick now that he isn’t the bare-chested redneck your mom wanted to jump).  The nostalgia train’s never late in these type of spazzy events, thus there are drop-ins from several Detroit legends as well as his guitar teacher, Joe Podorsik. Grade: B+ [street date: 6/30/09]

Wonderlick, Topless At The Arco Arena (Rock Ridge Records)
Semi-casual side business run by a couple of LA yuppies wistful for They Might Be Giants.  Once in a while this duo clocks in some writing and studio time, little and far between as it may be, since one fellow runs programming at the Rhapsody online music service and the other produces and directs TV shows; immediately a picture floats in my mind of Reluctant Adoptive Dad in the movie Juno, a little tinkering here and there with rock n roll dreams that won’t die no matter how dead they are.  But don’t mind me and my general apocalyptic worldview – these two did come up with the punkish theme song for the teevee show Here Come the Newlyweds (“This Song is a Commercial,” included here) as well as music for Chelsea Handler’s show.  Besides, most of the bands streaming away in the ether are only good for one song anyway, and they’d literally cut off a finger to get their sorry asses on a soundtrack, so it’s a little bourgeois to begrudge Wonderlick their connections and borderline joke-band aims (the cheesily vocodered “We Run the World” – along with much else here – is better than most of what Reel Big Fish have accomplished lately). Grade: B- [street date: 7/7/09]

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Outraged ranting, indie label release news and spaghetti sauce recipes are always welcome.  Email esaeger@cyberontix.com

Beware Fashionable Women, Beware Fashionable Women

One could believe that Beware Fashionable Women derived their moniker from their new surroundings in L.A. However, it is more likely testament to a quirky sense of humor that oozes from the self-titled debut. Diverging from the light-hearted lyrical fare however, is a staunch commitment to musicality and the myriad of genres at BFW have at their disposal. Think a punk nuance meets California surf rock interior nestled in a pop candy coating–like a Beach Boys/Weezer M&M.

The album opens to “Rock Bottom” replete with jangle surf rock guitar work and harmonized vocals which both seem to be set to the melody of “Helter Skelter.” In all the track is reminiscent of The Eels and Spacehog. The demure electrical strums of “Found” give way to dual guitar interplay over their ubiquitous melody with a clever outro time change. The track sounds like a B-side to Phish’s radio-friendly Hoist album. “I’ll Be the DJ” is earmarked with drone lyrical verses, weepy, effects-laden guitar work and a harmonized chorus. It has a Sunny Day Real Estate feel with Rivers Cuomo overtones.

The ten-track debut shows a versatility and vast array of influence. From one song to the next the feel changes while maintaining the foundations of melody, guitar-forward pop tunes. Radio-ready and approachable, Beware Fashionable Women is an earnest testament to multiple styles while showcasing the niche the quartet has carved out for themselves. Expect more pop goodness to come from these guys. I do.  

Review by Chris West

Rating:

The Dirty Sample, Beauty & Poison

Hand’Solo is a Toronto based independent record label that is often underrated, but it’s catalogue constantly  leaves you with your mouth agape.   Representing artists from Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Japan, “Beauty & Poison” features the crème of the crop of hip-hop today.
 
Write off whatever you thought rap was, and open your ear to this gem.  Featuring remixes from The Dirty Sample who masterfully brings new life to these previously mind-blowing tracks.  This shows the upper echelon of not only hip-hop but music in general.
 
Available free as a promotion for  The Dirty Sample’s 100% completely different  “Joshua’s Dreamixes”.  “Beauty and Poison”  features 18 remixes of songs by  Touch, More Or Les and Cadence Weapon.  With its masterful production and droll lyrics this album is sure to be an instant classic. 

1. Beauty and Poison intro
2. Born Again – Alter One (cuts by Cadilakid)
3. End Smartly – Wordburglar
4. Get Ripped & Try Dying – Max Prime (cuts by DJ Bizkid)
5. Think About These Things – Ill Seer ft Mandy Martens
6. The Blood Letting – Lexington + Whatevski (cuts by Shazbot)
7. The Dirtiest Sons of Bitches – NWO (cuts by Cadilakid)
8. Keeping It Real – Bobby Drake (cuts by Cadilakid)
9. Fresh! – Deezuz (cuts by Metawon)
10. Talk to the Hand (Solo) – More Or Les (cuts by DJ Wakcutt)
11. Captain Hipster – Id Obelus
12. Cocoon Into Nature – Selfhelp
13. Just A Ride – Xczircles
14. Hip Hop Head – Rhythmicru (cuts by Petey Punch)
15. Ropeladder – Nomar Slevik
16. The Uninvited Guest – Sankofa
17. Wookie Boots – Toolshed
18. Going Out On A Highnote – Addvice featuring Cadence Weapon, Touch, Stray, Chris Plus & Chazmo (cuts by Dorc)

Download Link:

SKOPE IT HERE!

Review By: Shawn Alexander Roy

Rating:

Iras, Samael Angel

Born in Africa and now living in Southern France, Iras is a true renaissance man.  Tired of playing politics with music business, he’s releasing his entire discography (currently “Samael Angel”)  through creative commons on June 25th.

His music weaves a story that is captivating and has a depth hardly ever reached in music before.  His music is hard to describe, it ranges from Horrorcore/ Nerdcore with a healthy dose of classical music to something that could be found on the Top 40 chart.

Full of allusions and references to everything from the Bible to Ancient history.  This concept album’s  learning curve  is easily shortened with the attached liner notes.  The true level of obsession that Iras’s music illustrates is mind boggling in its splendour.

Rapping in everything from English, French, Ewe, Latin and German “Samael Angel’ shows his musical diversity through musical vignettes that will be appreciated in repeat listening. I do admit that Iras’s rapping might not be for everyone.  Sometimes, it  has grammatical and orthographic mistakes and he raps through a heavy accent, but when you invest time in it you see the beauty in its imperfections.  As Iras states on his website “I, as an individual, don’t matter only my art does.”

Download links:

SKOPE IT HERE!

Review By: Shawn Alexander Roy

Rating:

Rachel Taylor Brown, Susan Storm’s Ugly Sister and Other Saints and Superheroes

Portland’s Rachel Taylor Brown has created an oddity of an album on her fourth release. Expertly entwining geekish novelty with theological/existential ponderings, Brown’s Susan Storm’s Ugly Sister and Other Saints and Superheroes explores and experiments with strange hybrids of both style and substance.
 
The album careens unpredictably from the minimalist folk-industrialism of the title track to grandiose polyphonic waltzes of “Ambush Bug/Reduviidae” to somber spectral ballads of “Teresa Benedicta Also Edith Stein”. And yet all these diverse elements cohere according to some alien dream logic. Brown simply drops the listener down the sonic rabbit hole without a second glance.
 
The title delivers everything it promises with tracks about Galactus the World Eater and St. Francis of Assisi going happily hand in hand. Brown builds a motif of angst and ennui by bouncing super villains and religious figures off of each other in equal parts. One moment you’re listening to a dissonant industrial ballad about the abandonment issues of Bruce Wayne’s bastard son Damian and the next you’re listening to a jaunty tune about St. Zoe being hung by her hair over a dung fire. In doing so, Brown treads a fine line between depth and gimmickry that threatens to rob the album of its seriousness. But it’s a balancing act she manages to keep on the right side of sincerity.
 
The magic doesn’t come all at once, however. It can be easy to find the album prematurely off-putting right from the repetitious melodies and droning vocals of the opening track. This is a CD that requires time and attention before finding your bearings in Brown’s fantasy world. In the end you’ll find that extra time and attention is well spent admission. Susan Storm’s Ugly Sister and Other Saints and Superheroes grows more rewarding the more you listen.

Review By: David Feltman

Rating:

Lloyd Dobler Effect, Lloyd Dobler Effect

With a name like Lloyd Dobler Effect, how can you go wrong? Back it up with some peppy indie-rock anthems, maybe a slow song or two and some clever referential humor occasionally nestled in the lyrics. Perfect, right? Well, I’ve got bad news for you. There’s not so much as a mention of kick boxing on this album.
 
As sugary and bland as a bowl of soggy cornflakes, DC band Lloyd Dobler Effect habitually squanders any shred of promise with some of the mildest song writing you’ll ever hear. Tracks like “Have Faith” and “Fingertips” are peppered with truly catchy hooks that are inevitably washed out with muzak rhythms. And the lyrics are just as lazy, such as the incessantly repeated lines of “My radio, radio, radio, oh, oh, oh no, no, no,” on the creatively titled “Radio”.
 
That’s not to say that the band isn’t talented. These guys can certainly operate their instruments and the vocals aren’t too shabby. But LDE simply never takes any risks with their sound. Every track on this album is very safe, very by-the-numbers and very boring as a result. LDE sounds like they wants to be the next Maroon 5, but somehow they end up sounding like Savage Garden instead.

There are scores of bands already on the market that have the same soft rock sound. The only thing that makes these guys stick out is the name – a name that is simply too cool for this band. In fact, it was the name that kept me rooting for the band throughout the album, hoping against hope that something worthwhile would eventually surface. And there are inspired moments, the occasional energetic blast of Latin beats, etc. that lead me to believe there’s still a chance LDE will come into their own. But whether or not that ever happens, I wouldn’t spend money on this CD.

Review By: David Feltman

Rating:

Wunderbugg, Transgradulate

Transgradulate is a made up term that roughly means “to graduate into a new phase of life with joy”.  The meaning definitely stacks up to the new record as these three musicians combine many different musical elements.  The overall sound is quite different yet very fresh.

The band is made up of Whidden Flores on keyboards & drum machines, Lorin Atzen on drum machines & FX and Ani Johnson on vocals.  Johnson recently graduated from Cornish College of Arts as she once sang with the Seattle Opera and even backed up Janet Jackson.  Flores, on the other hand, has been hittin’ those keys for 18 years and has even trained with Grammy artist, Julie Bonk.  Atzen is a pure wiz at the turntable creating such creative sounds/sound effects.

The music on Transgradulate definitely has a techno vibe, but with a danceable pop groove.  There are even elements of trance and electro-rock thanks to Whidden’s style of playing on the keyboard and drum machines.  Wunderbugg seem to have created a virtual world full of wonder & excitement.

One aspect that really floored me is that Wunderbugg took a techno, dance beat and added vocals to the mix that gave it that pop appeal.  Pushing the envelope within the realm of techno, electronic and DJ music is the obvious premise here.  I must say also that Ani Johnson’s vocals seem to add a nice layer and dimension to the overall picture.  Johnson’s singing ability is impressive contributing a wonderful pitch and melody to the final recording. 

My favorite element on the record is the mixing of so many diverse sounds.  The audio visual is quite immense with an array of unique sound effects.  You get a taste of a hypnotic/trippy state along with a robotic/space-like feel during certain tracks.  Overall, the drum machines hit hard and their presence on the record is overly plush.  In the end, I’m impressed with Wunderbugg’s original twisting of beats & music.  Music that you can dance to, groove to, think to and even sing to are all relevant here on Transgradulate.

For more on Wunderbugg and their latest release, Transgradulate, SKOPE out www.myspace.com/wunderbuggispimp.

Review By: Jimmy Rae

Rating:

Gilson, Lampiao

Whether you’re looking to entertain your guests for a dinner party or have a romantic evening with your significant other, Gilson Schachnik has you covered with Lampiao.  Gilson brings you the vibrant sounds from Brazil along with heavy doses of jazz, pop and even some funk.  Gilson provides elements from traditional Brazilian music such as: Bossa Nova and samba, but adds his own, personal twists to these numbers.  With Schachnik covering all the arrangements of each song, the end result is a fresh/modern take on the culture of Brazilian music.

Gilson plays piano on the record and in such a superb manner.  This renowned pianist has been playing since the young age of 11 and now he sounds like a pro at the keys.  Gilson’s piano playing skills are simply captivating in the sense that so much raw emotion, feeling and energy is filtered out to the listeners.  Gilson is able to set a mood or tone just by the way he hits those black and white keys.  It is worth mentioning that all the music created here on Lampiao is all for the heart & soul of his hometown, Sao Paulo, Brazil.  All the respect, admiration and inspiration Gilson has toward his city and its people are evident on this album.  Gilson seems to be taking his music and the music of Brazil to the next level.

This is actually a re-release of the same record, but now with new & original arrangements created by Gilson Schachnik.  Each song seems to have its own identity with moods playing a big part of the recording.  There are ten tracks on the record with a little slice of this and a little slice of that.

The title track “Lampiao” features a zesty sound with a funky bass line.  The piano playing is quaint yet truly energized.  The next installment, “Chega de Saudade” is much softer with more of an elegant touch overall.  Song four, “Samblues”, is one of my personal favorites on the album because of its overly cool/ jive-rated flow.  The alto sax part helps by keeping it all in check and sexy while the entire band really pushes this one hard.  “Ne Touches Pas A Mon Pote” offers up a fun-vibin’, dance-oriented beat that really steps and moves along with an enriching guitar solo.  I loved this number as well.  “Mr. D. P.” is full of spirit and spunk tailored as a tribute to one of Gilson’s teachers, jazz great-Danilo Perez.  Next up is “Juventude Transviada”, which has a romantic feel about it where you can picture oneself having a glass of wine to over a nice, candle-light dinner.  This song is for all you guys out there who claim to be romantics or maybe trying to earn some bonus points with that special someone.  Just slip this song in and see if some magic can happen.  The final cut, “Song to Become Famous at Berklee” is full of positive energy with a tremendous flurry of drumming toward the end. 

The record offers an easy-going flow with soothing melodies for the soul.  I can’t leave without mentioning the terrific backing band behind Gilson.  The guitar, sax and bass lines are all key components to the complete makeup of Lampiao.  I was highly impressed with the drum/percussion sections as they seemed to be the true driving force and really set the pace for the entire record.  Each musician really seemed to feed off of one another in such a wonderful fashion.  The final conclusion is that masterful artistry was at work here.

For more on Gilson Schachnik, his band and the new record, Lampiao, SKOPE out www.candidrecords.com.

Review By: Jimmy Rae

Rating:

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