November 2024
Pacific Jazz—ST 10, Blue Note Records—602448650498
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Blue Note’s Tone Poet series is in its fifth year, and producer Joe Harley is reaching deep into the label’s catalog to reissue some wonderful but often undervalued jazz recordings. In addition, the Tone Poet series continues to include jazz titles from other labels that have over the years become part of Blue Note’s holdings, including Pacific Jazz and United Artists.
October 2024
Sam First Records—SFR 006
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Earlier this year, on February 16, I followed a link to a live stream of a performance by alto saxophonist Devin Daniels at Sam First, a bar in Los Angeles that I wrote about that same month. Sam First sells tickets to its shows online. If you’re in Los Angeles, you can attend a performance at the bar for $25. If you’re somewhere else but want to see and hear the musicians, you can pay $10 for access to a live stream. Daniels did a two-night stand at Sam First, with shows on the 16th and 17th.
September 2024
Anti- Records 88009-1
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Singer-songwriter Katy Kirby’s debut solo album, Cool Dry Place (2021), was released on the independent label Keeled Scales in 2021. The album received warm reviews and made the end-of-year best-of lists of several magazines. Kirby moved to Anti- Records for Blue Raspberry, but she stayed with Alberto Sewald and Logan Chung, the two producers who worked on the first album. Cool Dry Place was a good showcase for Kirby’s songwriting talents, but her sophomore album brings her voice forward in the mix and contains a richer instrumental and sonic palette.
August 2024
Cuneiform Records Rune 530/531/532/533
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Since 1996, Cuneiform Records has released quite a few previously unavailable recordings by the English prog-rock band Soft Machine. Most of them have been live albums sourced from soundboard recordings, or from performances filmed for European television. Two years ago, Cuneiform released Facelift France & Holland, containing recordings of 1970 live shows by a short-lived quintet version of the band. Last year, the label unveiled The Dutch Lesson, a 1973 performance in Rotterdam by the group’s second quartet lineup.
July 2024
Polydor Records 5888429 (CD), 5885024 (LP)
Formats: CD and LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
English singer-songwriter Paul Weller turned 66 on May 25, 2024, the day Polydor released his 17th album. Weller began writing and recording the songs for 66 in 2021, during the COVID-19 lockdown, and collaborated with other songwriters on most of the album’s 12 tracks. He also pulled in a long and varied list of musicians to help with the sessions, which took place over a three-year period at his Black Barn Studios in Surrey, UK.
June 2024
Blue Note Records 00602445525539
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
One Deep River is Mark Knopfler’s tenth solo album and comes six years after his previous outing, Down the Road Wherever (2018). A promotional video for One Deep River captures the spirit of the LP. It shows Knopfler and his band seated in the studio, playing “Two Pairs of Hands” in a confident, relaxed manner. The song eases us into the album with flowing rhythm guitars, percussion, and solo guitar lines that are immediately recognizable as Knopfler’s.
May 2024
Blue Note Records 00602458167948 (CD), 00602458167962 (LP)
Format: CD and LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Charles Lloyd recorded Discovery!—his first album as a leader—in 1964, but he had been appearing as a sideman on drummer Chico Hamilton’s records since 1960. Since then, Lloyd has released more than 50 LPs as leader; his newest, The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow, is his 11th for Blue Note Records. The label released it in March, on Lloyd’s 86th birthday. Last year, he released three albums. Trios: Chapel, Trios: Ocean, and Trios: Sacred Thread each featured a different lineup of musicians. Lloyd’s creativity and vigor are such that these three discs contain no filler.
March 2024
Craft Recordings / Contemporary Records / Acoustic Sounds Series CR00706
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Jazz saxophonist Art Pepper’s recording and performing life was often interrupted by periods of incarceration for drug offences. Pepper was a heroin addict; he finished recording Smack Up in October 1960, and soon after was arrested for trying to score the drug. It was his third offense, so he was sentenced to 20 years at California’s notorious San Quentin prison. He would record one more session in November (Intensity, released in 1963) before starting his jail term. He was out within four years, but was in and out of prison for most of the ’60s for parole violations. He didn’t record again as a leader until 1975.
February 2024
Craft Recordings CR00683
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
In 1953, the original release of Jazz at Massey Hall on Debut Records listed Charlie Parker as “Charlie Chan.” Knowledgeable jazz fans probably knew that Parker’s common-law wife, Beverly Berg, was known as Chan Parker. They also might have recognized that the alto player pictured on the left side of the album cover was Parker, although the photo does not show his face. Parker was with another label and Debut could not release the album with his name listed on the cover.
October 2023
Reveal
Craft Recordings CR00548
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Accelerate
Craft Recordings CR00550
Format: LP
Musical Performance
Sound Quality
Overall Enjoyment
Drummer Bill Berry left R.E.M. in 1997, due to health issues. The group carried on as a trio for five more albums, bringing in other drummers for sessions and touring. Craft Recordings has reissued R.E.M.’s last four albums on vinyl, making them available in that format for the first time since their original release dates. I’ll be looking at the vinyl reissues of Reveal (originally released in 2001) and Accelerate (2008). Kevin Gray of Cohearent Audio cut the lacquers for the new pressings using Bob Ludwig’s digital masters, and the LPs were manufactured by Memphis Record Pressing.
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