Marcus Miller - Laid Back, album review

Laid Back as a Speeding Freight Train

My break and music-injection from marking this evening is the brilliant bassist Marcus Miller’s latest Laid Back where the live opening track Trip Trap is as far from laid back as a bass funk fest on a frenzied freight train can be with its stunning Miller lines and other accompaniments.

This is followed with an on-fire funked-up Que Sera Sera with Selah Sue on iconoclastic sassy vocal with this Doris Day classic that delights as much as it surprises after the album’s explosive instrumental opener.

And so it continues – majestic music from the premier bassist and his creativity in collecting such fine musicians around him as well as song selection, as in penultimate Keep ‘Em Runnin’ where vocal and bass merge beneath the actual vocal lines and their hip hop roots [and this song based around Earth Wind & Fire’s Runnin’], and in closer Preacher’s Kid written as a tribute to Miller’s recently passed father, where its beautiful opening chorus pans out to such joyous exclamatory saxophone play offs.

Space Music 25

Kamasi Washington - The Epic

The Curve

So working back after my immediate previous review of Washington's Heaven & Earth, this precursor is everything I found in that one, and reading today a review of H&E [if this isn't too convoluted], what I called 'filmscoreish' has been described as 'retro cinema', which I quite like and is probably more knowing, and what I found in The Epic were those angelic choruses that I also found in H&E which was described as 'celestial' which might be better too but we are clearly on the same page.

It is an epic listen but as powerful, probably not as varied/eclectic as H&E, but superb, and I now have to seek out Kendrick Lamar to continue on this learning curve.

Another brief one as I continue examining...

No Face Music 7

Kamasi Washington - Heaven & Earth, album review

Eclectic Journey

I am new and late to Kamasi Washington, and am enjoying the double album introduction of his latest and lauded Heaven and Earth.

It is eclectic and most listenable – I guess this latter meaning it has those pop sensibilities certain jazz purists might not like: there isn’t the complexity and dissonance and scratch and experimentation and so on of one solar system of jazz.

Washington is clearly an accomplished player, expressive in a forthright way rather than in subtleties – though perhaps I simply haven’t come across that yet. He is soulful, hip hop, orchestral and certainly filmscoreish, especially the rousing choric accompaniments to various songs like Street Fighter Mas.

He likes voice enhancers and alterers and all kinds of gimmicky sounds, and quite often threads these through standard jazz platforms, like Song for the Fallen which has just come out of some of those playful noises to cinematic mode as I listen, then returning to the sax melody like a Standard we should all know.

Graced with a host of great players, this is an expansive album of melodic-with-angles jazz that has clearly garnered a wide appeal and plaudits and those again might irk those who like it kept esoteric. I like a bit of esoterica. I like this, loads.

Ah, and there’s a gentler, subtler tone and gentility – Journey now playing with its sweet vocal [and there is much singing across all the songs] and the jazzy circus organ.

Into the Distance Music 77

John Etheridge at The Blue Vanguard Jazz Club, Exeter, 14th June, 2018

Sublime Guitar Wings

Could you see Jimi smiling last night at the end? I could, inside my head, and then mine as well, though I had smiled often throughout another fine evening of jazz at the Blue Vanguard, John Etheridge a delight as player and joker, and then the band who were, as I always say but will allow Etheridge’s words to encapsulate for this review, ‘great players all’. And JE should know, not that anyone couldn’t, hearing them this ‘great’ last night as well as time and time again. And I mean Jimi Hendrix as Etheridge finished his evening with a wonderful cover of Little Wing, with thanks to Billie Bottle for requesting in a shout-out from the sidelines near the end [Bottle playing with The Granite Band – Kate and Mike Westbrook – at the Dartmoor Resonance Music Festival on the 21^st June].

The night’s entertainment began with the 12 bar blues of Ornette Coleman’s Turnaround which Etheridge described as ‘our first number as a band’. Literally, though it didn’t show, superbly controlled as it was. Next was Ann Ronell’s Willow Weep for Me, with Etheridge controlling the feedback and Craig Milverton supplying a sweet piano solo. This was followed by Sonny Rollins’ St Thomas, ‘some of the same notes’ as in the previous song.

Throughout this and the night, Al Swainger was the still point of bass control, all grace and drive, and the Blue Vanguard Trio excelled again and also on the next slower and ‘sad old tune’, the Don Raye/Gene De Paul You Don’t Know What Love Is with a long opening guitar solo and a later Santana-esque layer.

The first of two outstanding funk numbers was Art Neville’s Cissy Strut made famous by The Meters. Coach York on drums and Etheridge ripped this one up with some hot dual rhythms, and Craig Milverton pumped out more funkfesting on his keys.

After the interval Etheridge and band played Charlie Mingus’ Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, the musical lament for, at that time, recently passed saxophonist Lester Young, and Etheridge invoked other artists including the great drummer John Hiseman who sadly passed on the 1^st June – I didn’t know.

The other funk gem of the night was John Scofield’s Do Like Eddie, written for the electrifying saxophonist Eddie Harris, and this had Coach on drumming fire again and Milverton pumped to funk heaven. Etheridge drove the melodic line with such sweet punch and later more of the same before bending notes and riffing in another electricity over the other punching beats of those drums.          

There was more of this excellence but my note-taking got lost in the lower lights of the room in that second set and demanding, happy distractions of the musical feast. As I’ve said, John Etheridge finished on Hendrix’s Little Wing, starting with slaps and plucks and note dips before revealing one of the sweetest melodies ever written and playing homage to this with such empathy and distinctive interpretation, entering into its soaring and still plaintive notes to dip and rise loudly and beautifully. Yes, I was smiling like a kid in the proverbial.   

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