Ron Asmus

Canadian songwriting hero Ron Sexsmith comes back into our lives with a new album on Cooking Vinyl. Ron worked with producer Don Kerr to create this album; the two set up in Ron’s living room to record where Ron played all the instruments for the album, with the exception of the drums. The result is the songwriter’s most self-assured collection, still charmingly subtle yet increasingly full of musical vigor, as on Chateau Mermaid, an ode to his own Stratford Graceland, or the surprisingly hopeful Small Minded World in which Sexsmith croons, "Oh now don’t feel blue ‘cos they don’t get you, you’ll win this small minded world". This new zen can be heard from the first moments of Kinks-esque album opener, Spring of the Following Year, as the serene sound of birds situate the listener into Sexsmith’s state of grace.

Marin Marais published his last collection in 1725, eight years after the appearance of his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole . He was no longer playing in the Chambre du Roi by that time and had moved to a house in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau where he cultivated plants and flowers in his garden. He continued, however, to give lessons to people who wanted to improve their viol playing. The Cinquième Livre de Pièces de Viole reflects this image of a peaceful life; today we regard it as the final testament of a musician who was looking back upon his past years as their undisputed master — and which he remains today.

After establishing himself as a science fiction hero in Planet of the Apes, Charlton Heston went on to do a string of films in this vein. One of the most beloved of these films is The Omega Man, a post-apocalyptic adventure that featured Heston as a scientist battling a vengeful group of mutants as he searched for fellow survivors in the ruins of Los Angeles. One of the most distinctive elements of the film was its score, which was composed by sci-fi vet Ron Grainer (The Prisoner, Dr. Who) and combined traditional orchestral film score elements with strong elements of pop and light jazz. A great example of this style is the film's main theme, "The Omega Man": its first part layers lush strings and gently jazzy horns over a pop-inflected rhythm section and its second part allows a mournful, jazzy trumpet solo to take the fore over a backdrop of acoustic guitar and spacey electronic keyboards. The score also features a preponderance of exciting action cues, like "On the Tumbril" and "Surprise Party," which combine the regal horn arrangements of traditional film music with spacey synths and exciting rock-style drumming. Elsewhere, Grainer shows a gift for crafting easy listening-style melodies on lighter cuts like "Bad Medicine for Richie," which mixes a string-sweetened melody with acoustic guitar and a subtle rhythm section.

Ron Carter is one of the most recorded bassists in jazz. In his mid-seventies at the time of these sessions, he is very much still at the top of his game as he leads the first big-band date of his own, with potent arrangements by conductor Robert M. Freedman and including some of New York's busiest musicians, including Jerry Dodgion, Steve Wilson, Wayne Escoffery, and Scott Robinson in the woodwind section, brass players Steve Davis, Douglas Purviance, and Greg Gisbert, plus pianist Mulgrew Miller and drummer Lewis Nash, among others. Freedman's charts are short and sweet, all of them under five minutes, with much of the focus on imaginative writing and Carter's melodic bass central in the mix. The material spans from the 1920s to the present, played with imagination…

Current was an important album for the Dutchman. It came as a follow-up of some rather successful albums and can perhaps be regarded as a "warm-up" for his brilliant album Tainted Bare Skin from 1998. Now, again ten years later, "Current" has been carefully remastered by Ron and re-released on the Groove Unlimited label.
Current is a solo-album in the true sense of the word. Where on many other albums Ron is accompanied by guest-musicians, he works alone on "Current". The only exception are the drums on "Close Call" which are played by Harold van der Heijden. Two things play an important part on "Current". First of all, the sequences; they are beautifully crafted and long-stretched…

"By Popular Demand" is a CD of live performances by Ron Boots, Eric van der Heijden and friends. The friends are Gerald Vos, Harold van der Heijden, Ad van Gerwen, Bas Broekhuis, Ingrid Lohuis and Klaus Hoffman Hoock. Some of the selections feature Ron's penchant for live synth trios, others feature synth duets and percussion. The highlight is the cosmic and ethereal "Through Mental Doors." That piece features narration by Louise, Harold's masterful drumming, a synth trio of Ron, Eric and Ad and Ad and Ron on didjeridu! It is one of the wildest outer space rides imaginable! The massive soundscape is carried by some wild sci-fi manipulations and some overblown sequences. Ron's didg drone sets it up and a synth drone takes it home. The whole album sparkles with energy and giddy zeal.

Shortly after the excellent album “La Caída De Harmigón”, Ron Boots releases “Ante Oculos”. Ante Oculos is an expression from art. The biggest part of this album contains the music that “Big Ron” and his friends Eric van der Heijden (synthesizers), Harold van der Heijden (drums), Frank Dorittke (FD Project, guitar) and (new friend) Jamie O’Callaghan (electric violin and synthesizers) played at a concert in the planetarium of the German city Bochum. This music is somewhat more “spacey” than we are accustomed of by Ron. The theme of the album is 2012, the year we are living in and the year in which (according the Mayans and Nostradamus) the end of the world will come.
With “Ante Oculos” Ron proves that is also very well at home in spacemusic. The album asks for more concerts in a special place like a planetarium. Ron remains the best and most important electronic musician from the Netherlands.

”La Caída De Harmigón” draws upon inspiration Ron got from Ruins, which he calls “windows into histories”. It is a pure soloalbum by Ron. Only Harold van der Heijden gave him “drum support”.
Ron musically expresses the “windows into histories” in three long epic pieces. The album opens with the titletrack, which, in English, means “The Fall Of Concrete”. From the first moments, we hear music that is so typically for Boots: effective and great sequences that get richer and richer, fantastic atmospheric sounds and cleverly played solos. As we are accustomed from Ron, there is a certain line in his compositions: it is built up beautiful. Drums come and go and Mellotronchoirs fall in. A masterpiece…