Porches Shirt

An album with the title Schlager and a cover which shows a tattoo on the lower lip from VANESSA MAI. Word and picture document from the first sight symbolically the border way of the artist who has defended herself since her career start as a solo singer to be put in a musical drawer and with it putatively only one confine creative space to have at disposal. This is no refusal to the genre which is 26-year-old anyway since her childhood quite near, it is rather a deliberate opening to the musical symbiosis. Differently, nowhere says VANESSA MAI, there are in the heads so deep ditches between the music directions, how in Germany.

Weather Report's ever-changing lineup shifts again, with the somewhat heavier funk-oriented Leon "Ndugu" Chancler dropping into the drummer's chair and Alyrio Lima taking over the percussion table. As a result, Tale Spinnin' has a weightier feel than Mysterious Traveller, while continuing the latter's explorations in Latin-spiced electric jazz/funk. Zawinul's pioneering interest in what we now call world music is more in evidence with the African percussion, wordless vocals, and sandy sound effects of "Badia," and his synthesizer sophistication is growing along with the available technology. Wayne Shorter's work on soprano sax is more animated than on the previous two albums and Alphonso Johnson puts his melodic bass more to the fore. While not quite as inventive as its two predecessors, this remains an absorbing extension of WR's mid-'70s direction.