Bent Press

Various Artists - The Real Music Box: 25 Years of Rounder Records (1995) {9CD Set, Rounder Records ‎CDAN25}
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© 1995 Rounder Records | ‎CD AN 25
Blues / Country / Jazz / Folk / Soul / Funk / Bluegrass

Within the discount, ugly-duckling packaging of The Real Music Box: 25 Years of Rounder Records lie nine CD swans worth several hundred times their weight in superficial music-industry gold records. Since 1970, Massachusetts-based Rounder has been a stalwart sanctuary of various musics at the root of what has recently been labeled "Americana." The retrospective is segmented into four thematic two-disc sets, each offering a staggering 30 to 50 tracks where legendary names rub shoulders with bright young Rounder talent.

On his third solo effort, Eric Vloeimans employs a similar post-Miles Davis approach to the trumpet as Wynton Marsalis. Featuring pointillistic compositions accented by slippery diminished runs, Bitches and Fairy Tales is a nice drink of fuzzy, straight-ahead jazz with Vloeimans often adding a little avant-garde triple sec into the mix. While comparable to Marsalis in his use of operatic bent tones punctuated by the occasional growl, Vloeimans more often settles into his warm, foggy tone like another trumpeter who had an affinity for the Netherlands, Chet Baker. Backing Vloeimans on piano is the Bill Evans-influenced Brit John Taylor. Joey Baron on drums and Marc Johnson on bass round out the group.