Robert O. Self

Robert Glasper is a jazz pianist with a knack for mellow, harmonically complex compositions that also reveal a subtle hip-hop influence. Since debuting as a leader during the mid-2000s, the Houston native has been crucial to the enduring relevance of Blue Note Records, blurring genre distinctions and regularly topping Billboard's Jazz Albums chart with highly collaborative recordings such as the Grammy-winning Black Radio (2011) and Black Radio 2 (2013), as well as ArtScience (2016), all credited to the Robert Glasper Experiment. In addition to guiding projects such as the soundtrack for Miles Ahead (another Grammy winner) and R+R=Now's Collagically Speaking, Glasper has contributed to dozens of other albums, most notably Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. The mixtape Fuck Yo Feelings (2019) best exemplifies Glasper's obstinate resistance to expectations and devotion to spontaneous interplay.

This CD by American synthesis Robert Carty, independently published, is an excellent work in electronic music at the purest cosmic style. The ten themes included in the album have a floating, vertiginous, dreamlike quality, as if they were an unstoppable ascent towards the starry sky. Some passages have an overwhelming emotive nature, as in some part of transcendental purpose that incorporates human heartbeats thus punctuating its capacity to impress the listener.

After the success of Alexander's Feast, a setting of the much admired ode by John Dryden, it was wondered: would the result be greater still if Handel could be persuaded to set the words of a poet even greater than Dryden? Such were the thoughts of an important group of Handel's friends centred around the philosopher James Harris and including Charles Jennens (later the librettist of Messiah) and the Fourth Earl of Shaftesbury. It was under their influence that Handel came to set the poetry of John Milton, first in L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, and later in the oratorio Samson.

"SkyHearts" is described as "deep native earth space music". And this it is. The CD is laced with nature sounds, and Native American flute. It contains four specially good spacemusic explorations. Listen to them outside if you can, or while gazing out of the window, and let your mind float with the music toward the sky to cavort with the cloud spirits. This work springs from the heartland of America where Carty was born and lived for decades, and emerges from the soil and soul of its Native American heritage.

After Robert's successful debut "Harmonic Ascendant" in 1979, the follow-up "Floating Music" appeared in 1980. An album full of surprises. Here you can hear sounds from self-built synthesizers, or the classic electronic sounds of 1980, as you know them from Klaus Schulze. An exciting album with a deep atmosphere that carries you into bizarre dreamscapes. Occasional weird sounds dissolve into Schroeder-typical sequencer runs, sometimes you think you're walking alone in the dark and see lantern lights streaking past you again and again. Wonderful for dreaming. Floating Music is one of his best albums!