The Affair

Parliament was one of the most accomplished and intelligent bands in music. With albums like Mothership Connection and The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, George Clinton's druggy and patently eccentric humor often obscured the enviable musicianship throughout. Motor Booty Affair is no doubt another classic album and the perfect follow-up to 1977's Funkentelechy Vs. the Placebo Syndrome. On Motor Booty Affair, Clinton decides to yuck it up more with a great underwater concept and a few of his stronger alter egos, including the rhythmically challenged Sir Nose D' Void of Funk and his friend Rumpofsteelskin.

After MJA's impressive first eponymous album, they return with an elegant second album on INFRACom! Bruno Hovart, the main brain behind the groove of MJA and the astonishing Mr Day, channelling his angelic voice and soulful phrases, remain together more than ever in complicity with the trumpet master Stephane Ronget and pianist Benjamin Devigne. Olivier Granget, tenor saxophone and the Real Fake MC also appears on it.
Light and subtle, MJA gives birth to a springtime jazz. Crystallized with the insets of Hard Bop, stirred with US soul, flirting with hip-hop, this project brings jazz back to the hip-shaking dancefloor (Escapism). Like in the 60's, when Cannonball "Buckshot LeFonque" Adderley liked to see jazz get down, get up and sweat. The "Affair" has always had this frightening effectiveness.

Recorded in 1971, The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse reads in many ways like a follow up to the 1967 epic Far East Suite. Compelling, cosmopolitan, and organic, this music comes from Ellington's sifting of travel experiences, and it sounds as if he is using his impressions of places and people rather than appropriations of "authentic" scales and rhythms. "Chinoiserie" is boisterous and fun, with long-tone horn peals forming the melodic cornerstone. Tenorman Harold Ashby takes his place blowing pure swing. "Afrique" is a percussion-based piece, with a liberal layering of the horn players' entrances creating strains that are at first incongruous, then tie briefly together toward the middle of the affair. Preceded by the more even-tempered melodic and rhythmic structures of "Acht" and "Gong," "Tang" takes the picture to the outer limits again with strident opening horn blasts that yield to staccato call-and-responses that chill to the bone…

In 1998, Anthony Gomes won the award for Best Unsigned Blues Band in a competition held at Buddy Guy’s Legends. Five years later, he was named Artist of the Year in Blues Wax’s annual readers’ poll. On his latest effort Music Is the Medicine, however, he strives for something greater. Not that Gomes completely forsakes the genre in which he garnered a cult following, but throughout the affair, he uses the blues more as the starting point rather than the focus for his journey.

After The Playground Tony did a couple more disks that are already offered here, so next in line is this one. It's goooooood.