“Club Noir” is a very successful and balanced Lounge CD: There is more passion Chill Out, Down Beat with a French flair, a harmonious blend of slow electronic music. 16 plays wisely pieces that develop a calm, gentle flow. Speed & direction remain similar and create a harmonic density....
A near perfect combination of funk, R&B, trip-hop and jazz, Slow Train Soul meshes the smooth, chocolaty vocals of singer Lady Z. with multi-instrumentalist Morten Varano’s remarkably varied sounds. Somewhat like Morcheeba but with a greater emphasis on the bluesy, cool voice of Lady Z., the duo has hit a home run with their debut. Too upbeat to be chillout but not frantic enough for the club crowd, they find the middle ground between the two. Yet the album works because the songs — all co-written by both members — are immediately accessible. This isn’t just background music for Sunday mornings. ...
After a seven-year gap between their first and second albums, Pink Martini have brought forth their third long-player just over two and a half years later. Based in Portland, Oregon, this dazzling 12-piece ensemble are led by pianist Thomas Lauderdale and fronted by vocalist China Forbes. Their rich musical journeys carry listeners everywhere from a ballroom in Havana to a cabaret in Paris. This set even includes a number in Japanese and another in Arabic. With their strings, horns, and sultry rhythms, Pink Martini find the common denominators in these musics from around the globe. ...
Italian producer Nicola Conte moves away from his trademark brand of cocktail-hour acid jazz on RITUALS in favor of a more organic, acoustic jazz sound. Featuring live instrumentation and vocalists, RITUALS oozes sophistication and class, with traces of Conte’s fascination with bossa nova and neo-soul woven carefully into the mix. With a clear debt to the blues-based jazz released on Blue Note in the 1960s, these tracks are both highbrow and cool-toned, proving Conte capable of taking his electronica influences down to the root in order to grow something new....
With his unmistakable sound-mix of Jazz- and Swing samples and electronic music, Parov Stelar has secured his own unique position in the world of music. His upcoming fourth album “Coco” is eagerly awaited. The double CD starts off where his successful LP’s “Rough Cuts”, “Seven And Storm” and “Shine” ended. On the other hand he is consequently developing his established jazzy sound, by adding new stylistic elements to his tunes. Also his dancefloor-productions, that up to now have only been published as singles, find a debut to a greater extent on his album. They meet with Stelar’s melancholic-melodious trademark-sound, which is well known from his earlier albums, but now is also spiced up with Hip-Hop beats and synth-pads. Parov Stelar manages to build bridges between his own worlds of sound with these extensive LP as well he as he does with listening- and dance-music in general. An electrifying album to fall for....
De Phazz is a downtempo jazz ensemble integrating modern turntablism and elements of soul, latin, trip hop and drum and bass into a lounge music sound. De Phazz is led by Pit Baumgartner, a German producer who changes his crew for every new album. Some of the more permanent members are Karl Frierson and Pat Appleton. Since the release of Detunized Gravity and Godsdog, De Phazz have appeared on the radar of listeners of equally innovative and sample-driven jazz by the likes of Amon Tobin and The Cinematic Orchestra. The band has released records on Mole Listening Pearls and Universal Jazz Germany along with single releases on Edel Records and United Recordings, and also remixes existing material....
Gotan Project’s new album Tango 3.0 fluidly steps back on the dance floor where their last album Lunatico left off. Group members Philippe Cohen Solal,Christoph Mueller, and Eduardo Makaroff have constructed yet another beautiful melange of traditional Argentinean tango, dub, jazz and electronics. Tango 3.0’s 11 tracks are at once seductive and propulsive. ...
The setting is a dirty old jazz club. It’s some ungodly hour of the night and a band is cranking out one last tune to a sparse crowd. The lead singer is hunched over the microphone with cigarette in hand. You open your eyes to find you’re listening to Be Yourself, the new album by singer Jerry Fish (aka Ger Whelan) and his loose collective of musicians called the Mudbug Club with their mixture of jazz and blues music with a little folk, rock and gospel thrown in for good measure. Years of traveling and taking a break from the music industry after breaking off from his previous band, An Emotional Fish, have done Jerry Fish some good and given him a few tales to tell through his music. It must be said that even the most hard-line anti-capitalist can forgive him for selling off the brilliant gem True Friends to Vodafone after hearing his smooth yet gravely voice croon over such beautiful lyrics. The whole affair is rounded off by the uplifting yet never preachy title track that should leave listeners with a big smile on their face and shouting for yet another encore....
