Donald Byrd Places And Spaces

Reuniting with Larry Mizell, the man behind his last three LPs, Donald Byrd continues to explore contemporary soul, funk, and R&B with Places and Spaces. In fact, the record sounds more urban than its predecessor, which often played like a Hollywood version of the inner city. Keeping the Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and Sly Stone influences of Street Lady, Places and Spaces adds elements of Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Stevie Wonder, which immediately makes the album funkier and more soulful. Boasting sweeping string arrangements, sultry rhythm guitars, rubbery bass, murmuring flügelhorns, and punchy horn charts, the music falls halfway between the cinematic neo-funk of Street Lady and the proto-disco soul of Earth, Wind & Fire. Also, the title Places and Spaces does mean something – there are more open spaces within the music, which automatically makes it funkier. Of course, it also means that there isn't much of interest on Places and Spaces for jazz purists, but the album would appeal to most fans of Philly soul, lite funk, and proto-disco.

Reuniting with Larry Mizell, the man behind his last three LPs, Donald Byrd continues to explore contemporary soul, funk, and R&B with Places and Spaces. In fact, the record sounds more urban than its predecessor, which often played like a Hollywood version of the inner city. Keeping the Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield, and Sly Stone influences of Street Lady, Places and Spaces adds elements of Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Stevie Wonder, which immediately makes the album funkier and more soulful. Boasting sweeping string arrangements, sultry rhythm guitars, rubbery bass, murmuring flügelhorns, and punchy horn charts, the music falls halfway between the cinematic neo-funk of Street Lady and the proto-disco soul of Earth, Wind & Fire. Also, the title Places and Spaces does mean something – there are more open spaces within the music, which automatically makes it funkier. Of course, it also means that there isn't much of interest on Places and Spaces for jazz purists, but the album would appeal to most fans of Philly soul, lite funk, and proto-disco.

One of his last efforts with the Mizell production team was definitely not his most critically acclaimed, but Caricatures continued Byrd's commercial winning streak that started years previous with 1969's Kofi and such '70s Blue Note classics as Places and Spaces, Black Byrd, and Street Lady. His last release for the label was no exception to the formula set forth from the previously mentioned albums. One of Caricatures strongest features is the level of musicianship from start to finish. Byrd recruited some of the top '70s soul-jazz musicians, such as Gary Bartz, Alphonse Mouzon, David T Walker, and future '80s R&B hitmaker Patrice Rushen, to help complement the musicianship laid down by Byrd and the Mizell brothers…

Alphonse Mouzon, Ronnie Laws, Donal Byrd - Blue Note Live At The Roxy Vol. 1 (1976) {2012 Japanese BNLA Series TOCJ-50533}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 313 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 112 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 308 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24-bit remaster
© 1976, 2012 Blue Note / EMI Music Japan | TOCJ-50533
Jazz / Hard Bop / Post Bop / Soul Jazz / Jazz Funk

An overlooked gem from Blue Note – a special live performance that brings together some of the label's funkiest and most soulful artists of the 70s! The set's somewhat unusual for Blue Note at the time – especially given the label's increasingly studio-driven approach to jazz, with projects by the Mizell Brothers and others – yet given that bent, the whole thing's a great illustration of the vibrancy of all these artists always from the studio – playing live and extremely funky!

Jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd’s critically acclaimed career and life have assured the Detroit native his rightful place as one of the most respected musicians of the 20th century. Having successfully transitioned to Jazz Fusion in the 1970s under the guidance of the Mizell brothers, creating four albums on Blue Note records including the highly influential Places and Spaces, Byrd continued to explore the fertile possibilities of Fusion with four more albums recorded for Elektra Records between 1978 and 1982.

Carmen McRae, Earl Klugh, Blue Note All-Stars - Blue Note Live At The Roxy Vol. 2 (1976) {2012 Japanese BNLA Series TOCJ-50534}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 286 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 116 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 356 Mb | 5% repair rar | 24-bit remaster
© 1976, 2012 Blue Note / EMI Music Japan | TOCJ-50534
Jazz / Hard Bop / Post Bop / Soul Jazz / Jazz Funk

An overlooked gem from Blue Note – a special live performance that brings together some of the label's funkiest and most soulful artists of the 70s! The set's somewhat unusual for Blue Note at the time – especially given the label's increasingly studio-driven approach to jazz, with projects by the Mizell Brothers and others – yet given that bent, the whole thing's a great illustration of the vibrancy of all these artists always from the studio – playing live and extremely funky!

Group Theory: Black Music is a stunning new statement from South African drummer and composer Tumi Mogorosi. Standing in the lineage of South African greats such as Louis Moholo-Moholo, Makaya Ntshoko and Ayanda Sikade, Mogorosi is one of the foremost drummers working anywhere in the world, with a flexible, powerful style that brings a distinctive South African inflection to the polyrhythmic tradition of Elvin Jones, Max Roach and Art Blakey. Since his international debut on Jazzman Records in 2014 with Project ELO, Mogorosi has been in the vanguard of the South African creative music scene’s burgeoning outernational dimension, taking the drummer’s chair in both Shabaka Hutchings’ Shabaka and The Ancestors formation and with avant-garde noiseniks The Wretched.