Doug Mcloud

Doug MacLeod is a unique, powerful guitarist with a rich and soulful voice, singing original songs based on his own life and experiences. His new album Exactly Like This is his third release with Reference Recordings. This is 'Genuine Original Acoustic Music' at its very best, in a richly detailed recording by Grammy-winning engineer Keith Johnson, made at Skywalker Sound in Marin County, CA. Doug MacLeod isn't just a blues guy, he's a singer/songwriter/storyteller and serious guitarist. He is one of the few modern artists doing all original material and traveling the country like a troubadour.

Saxophonist extraordinaire Doug Webb returns to the scene with a little help from a few of his “Fast Friends” on his eighth release for Posi-Tone. This hard hitting session features the inspired virtuosity of Michael Dease on trombone, the cool comping of Mitchel Forman on piano, the steady underpinning of Chris Colangelo on bass, and the bombastic metrics of Roy McCurdy on drums. Not one to be outdone, Webb continues to scintillate and astonish with his effortless mastery of the idiom and technical prowess on his instrument. With an amazing combination of talent, brilliant performances, and an exciting program of music, including several amazing new original compositions, Doug Webb’s latest record “Fast Friends“ is sure to bring bright moments to jazz fans everywhere.

The Black Jazz recordings of Doug Carn are always a revelation – some of the most powerful, progressive work on the American underground of the early 70s – music that got Carn into way more record collections than you might expect! The sound here is a perfect summation of Doug's early genius – his own work on organ and keyboards, never overdone and mixed perfectly with a righteous array of acoustic sounds from Rene McLean on alto and tenor and Olu Dara on trumpet – both players who soar to the skies on waves of energy begun by Carn!

"Doug Carn created a personalized strain of jazz music that expressed a loving hopefulness. He found a home at the Black Jazz label, where African-Americans called the shots and, of course, racial tension was nonexistent. Who was this 22-year-old whose first album, Infant Eyes, sold very well away from the machinations of the music industry? Once a child prodigy on piano and alto saxophone, Carn had attended Jacksonville University on a full music scholarship and afterwards performed on the Florida-Georgia roadhouse circuit with a band that mixed jazz, rock and R&B.

Doug MacLeod's dark singing and sparse guitar playing are a throwback to the country-blues artists of the 1930s, although his lyrics have more modern sensibilities. Much of this superior album is haunting and mildly disturbing, giving one the feeling that there is a great deal beneath the surface. It is the type of blues/folk recording worth experiencing several times, in contrast to those of recent times that express more obvious sentiments. Bassist Jeff Turmes is on just seven of the dozen songs (five of which also include drummer Stefev Mugalian); three of the remaining tunes are duets by MacLeod with percussionist Oliver Brown, and the two others are unaccompanied solo performances. Although the leader's guitar playing is impressive, it is his distinctive and very sincere voice on his dozen originals that sticks in one's mind.

In 2000, you would have been hard-pressed to find a more lowdown blues-oriented recording than singer/guitarist Doug MacLeod's Whose Truth, Whose Lies?, which should appeal to anyone who likes his/her blues dark, shadowy, and moody. This isn't an album that tries to win you over with slickness; whether MacLeod is going electric or acoustic, he obviously identifies with the simplicity and honesty that characterized the country blues artists of the '30s and '40s. Not that Whose Truth, Whose Lies? sounds like a recording from that time. MacLeod's lyrics obviously aren't pre-World War II lyrics, and he has been influenced by soul, rock, and folk as well as country and urban blues. Not everything on this superb album adheres to a 12-bar format, and some of the tunes fall into the folk category. But even when he is getting into a folk or R&B groove, MacLeod can always be counted on to provide a wealth of blues feeling. Whose Truth, Whose Lies? may not be the work of a purist, but it is certainly compelling.

From one perspective, Doug Webb's Bright Side is basically twelve tracks clothed in very recognizable forms a few varieties of soul-jazz, a couple of heartfelt ballads, a taut bossa nova, and an array of middling and up tempo straight ahead swingers. Although the material is thoroughly enjoyable, it's tempting to succumb to a nagging notion that its all been done countless times before, and then simply move on to a record by yet another brave soul planting his/her flag in the jazz tradition. Fortunately, what enables Bright Side to add up to something more than a competent, professionally executed jazz record, is a slew of highlights, bright moments, and outright cool stuff that populates every track.

Further distanced in time from John Coltrane's spiritual new-jazz and the influential second Miles Davis quintet, Doug Carn showed a close affinity with r&b when recording his fourth and final Black Jazz album Adam's Apple. Sharing his interest in r&b was a platoon of committed, resourceful jazz musicians including young star-in-the-making Ronnie Laws, who'd worked with Earth, Wind & Fire before that band's big commercial breakthrough. Of the others, ace guitarists Nathan Page and Calvin Keys had acquired intimacy with the soulful properties of African-American music of the time performing with the premier jazz organist Jimmy Smith.

Composer Doug Bielmeier’s fourth full length album places contemporary chamber music in a wider stylistic context that includes ambient and dance electronica. Drawing on his extensive activity as a recording engineer and producer, Music for Billionaires features chamber works performed by Hypercube and Unheard-of//Ensemble, two active New York based contemporary music groups, alongside five experimental electronic pieces. The diversity of styles puts each medium in relief against the other — the timbral vitality and individuated expressive world of mixed ensemble works versus the controlled sculpting that the electronic realm affords creators.

New album release today with Jorge Rossy, Doug Weiss & Bill McHenry. We recorded this music at Stureparken studio (Stockholm) during September last year. It’s a mix of my originals & standards from composers like: Antônio Carlos Jobim; Charlie Parker; John Coltrane; Jimmy Van Heusen; Wayne Shorter; Sammy Fain.