Dan – Johnny Pacheco – “Guajira Camará” – So slow and restrained. So tense and visceral. I hit on this, despite the terrible album cover – it looks more like an ad for dance lessons with 2 silhouettes of dancers.
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and then blown away by this song. The mastery of slow tempos, the vocalist stretching the phrasing and the creation of palpable tension through this method is mesmerizing. It is so easy to rush and even more easy to over express, telling everyone about it, instead of letting them discover it. Discovery is a much more satisfying experience and one needs to hold back the story to develop the listeners interest. You can’t reveal the secrets, you need to cultivate the interest and let it bloom for the listener. This song has that quality and I could care less about not understanding the lyrics. I still feel like I know the intent.
Bart – Bart Miltenberger – “Shavkat” – More Bart promotions! Bart plays a tune from his new album, which is clearly a personal culmination of his unique relationship with composition, trumpet playing and more recently home studio recording. I teach a historical progression between the orchestrator/arranger evolving into the recording engineer/producer. Early recording was basically documentation until multiple tracks and layering could be achieved. With groups, particularly larger ones there were always people to organize, distribute and establish the parts to utilize the musicians and instrumental palate. They could be composers, or lyricists, too, but that was rarer, people usually stuck to their particular lanes. As technology evolved, that role could be achieved in the studio, and the engineer arranged the tracks and built the structure. Now you can do this in your home. Bart has been working on this project for a few years now and I’ll just say I’m jealous of the tools he has developed and this creation he has employed them with. No worries though, that’s my Brass Brother and now I can pick his brain to achieve my own goals.
Matt – Boyd Raeburn – “DALVATORE SALLY” – Pretty weird and an extension of the conversation Matt and I had a the other day. We were discussing Boyd and his off-beat career. There are a lot of band leaders and composers who sort of experimented with, or took inspiration from, Film Music and Mr. Raeburn was one. He had a silly side, but also the music was pretty serious, challenging material, this being pretty hip.
Erroll Garner – A live clip, we aren’t sure even which song is being played. Whichever song, Mr. Garner is playing so far back behind the beat that I may need to include it on the next Seshjawn! Maybe a theme of Matt’s selections is being surprisingly hip? Matt says, and people often agree, that Mr. Garner was somewhat corny or too Pop oriented to be Jazz cool, but this performance shows he was good at a variety of styles. Furthermore he played a little bit with Bird and basically popularized the modern Piano Trio of Piano, Bass & Drums. His humorous side, entertainer persona and cocktail piano vibe just has people fooled a lot of the time.
Travis – Horn related weirdness, sort of funky minimal. I think there is possibly some looping going on, based on the metric consistency. I like the composition and the horns more than the rhythm section’s doings. Magnetic Ghost Orchestra – “Toast to the Ghost” – Moritz Sembritzki – There is something sort of stiff in the rhythm that I don’t love, or maybe that the horns, having the time up front and really keeping it together, gives me a let down when the other instruments enter, a bad drop which doesn’t let the piece grow for me.
Nawi – Some moody French Folk guy? It sounds very American in vibe though, until the oboe and slashing guitar bursts in. The guitar explosions make me think it is a newer recording, though the oboe makes me think older. Yves Simon – “Raconte-toi” – The dissonant aspects impress me as being modern for its time. I’m a little surprised to hear that mixed with the rest of the song and I always love the singer-songwriters who experiment with odd inclusions and unusual studio twists. I’m not sure that performing live they would even try to reproduce those effects. I don’t think the Beatles did and I am often surprised at the dissonant cake they would serve their audience – I’m not even really talking about “Number 9”, but “Day in the Life” and other weird inclusions in Popular tunes that people just sing along with without regard for how out it is. They were influential in that regard and possibly Mr. Simon is here too.
Found Sounds 