Hasta Sin Bandera

It’s difficult to talk about Exotic Sin, the duo of Naima Karlsson and Kenichi Iwasa, without discussing Karlsson’s prestigious musical bloodline. Her father, Bruce Smith, drummed for The Pop Group, the Slits, and Public Image Ltd; her mother is Swedish singer Neneh Cherry. The spare and spontaneous music on their debut album, Customer’s Copy, on the other hand, draws upon the legacy of her grandparents, Don and Moki Cherry. Don Cherry first made his name in jazz circles alongside Ornette Coleman, but he soon struck out for a rapturous mixture well outside of the tradition. Combining free improvisation, folk, traditional music, and drone, Cherry and his wife pulled from all corners of the globe to make and live their art. That the duo first performed together at a performance celebrating the Cherrys’ unique amalgam of art and music is fitting.

"Despacito" has been a viral musical phenomenon that has not stopped playing across the world. Shortly after it's release, this contagious song set off unprecedented success: it was the first song sung in Spanish to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in more than 21 years; it also became the most watched video in YouTube's history, with more than three billion views; on Spotify, it has four million daily streams, and already has 1.2 billion streams since it came out.

The second entry in Gato Barbieri's series of Impulse albums dealing with Latin America picks up where the first one left off, and in its way, follows its format closely yet not without some key differences. Based on the critical reviews of Chapter One: Latin America, he was emboldened to take some new chances on this, Chapter Two: Hasta Siempre (which translates to "As to Always"). The album was recorded between Rio de Janeiro and Los Angeles with the set's final cut recorded in Buenos Aires, Barbieri's homeland.
The set kicks off with parts one and three of "Econtrol," a raucous, festive jam that marks the album's only real concession to American music because of an electric bassline by Los Angeles sessionman Jim Hughart…

Judas Priest's major-label debut Sin After Sin marks their only recording with then-teenage session drummer Simon Phillips, whose technical prowess helps push the band's burgeoning aggression into overdrive. For their part, K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton employ a great deal more of the driving, palm-muted power-chord picking that would provide the basic rhythmic foundation of all but the most extreme heavy metal from here on out. Sin After Sin finds Priest still experimenting with their range, and thus ends up as perhaps their most varied outing. Yet despite the undeniably tremendous peaks here, the overall package doesn't cohere quite as well as on Sad Wings of Destiny, simply because the heavy moments are so recognizable as the metal we know today that the detours stick out as greater interruptions of the album's flow.

With 1990's near-fatal boating accident now well behind him, Nestor Torres offered up this package of Latin-accented, hip-hop-tinged smooth jazz, assembling 11 tracks with several producers and production teams. In contrast to his previous album, My Latin Soul, a collection of Latin standards, most of the material here comes from Torres in league with his production staff. The two numbers that are not originals are "Contigo Apprendi," where Torres' flute dances particularly playfully at the close, and the Alejandro Sanz Latin hit "Regálame la Silla Donde Te Espere."