The Mannish Boys lineup may change, but it is always one of the most solid bands ever put together and this incarceration is no different. Led by the Sugar Ray Rayford and Randy Chortkoff up front, with Kirk Fletcher and Frank Goldwasser as axe men, Willie J. Campbell on bass and Jimi Bott on drums, they are as solid a blues band as one can find anywhere. And then you add the likes of Candye Kane and Laura Chavez, Kim Wilson, Steve Freund, Kid Ramos, Mike Welch, Fred Kaplan and Bob Corritore (among others) and it becomes a blues extravaganza! Randy Chortkoff has steered this band and his label quite well, and this sixth CD for the ‘Boys remains centered in the blues and delivers a powerful punch. It’s stripped down some, but it works well, and maybe even better!
Aaron Copland did as much as anyone in establishing American concert music on the world stage, and his ballet scores proved to be among his most important and influential works. Grohg is the most ambitious example of his Parisian years, a precociously brilliant one-act ballet scored for full orchestra, inspired by the silent expressionist film Nosferatu. The first example of Copland’s new ‘Americanized’ music of the 1930s was Billy the Kid, based on the life of the 19th century outlaw and heard here in its full version. This was the first fully fledged American ballet in style and content: brassy, syncopated, filmic and richly folk-flavoured.
These two Bordeaux-born beatmakers mix electronic-infused hip-hop with the groove and melodies of 1930’s swing. Percussion solos played with scratches, beats, and melodies banged out on the MPC, everything is performed live, often incorporating guitars, brass sections, and drum sets. Currently the duo released their second album, ‘Running to the Moon’ in 2016, featuring the voices of Ua Tea, Blake Worrell, ASM among others.
Smokey Joe & The Kid present their first release LP “Nasty Tricks” on French record label Banzaï Lab. A dangerously efficient mix of hip hop, electro and old Swing, that even 2Pac and Al Capone couldn’t say no to… In this project, Smokey Joe and The Kid, transport us back in time gangsters run streets of 1930’s Chicago. After a 1st EP released in June 2012 and of which 2 tracks been on Beatport HipHop Top 100 during 3 months, the duet comes back in March 2013 to confirm that try with their 1st LP “Nasty Tricks”. Great collaborations enhance that first opus: Puppetmastaz, R-Wan (Java), Lateef the Truthspeaker, Nomadic Massive, Youthstar (Chinese Man), Random Recipe, Sugaray.
Ever since 2001's Songs from the West Coast, Elton John and his longtime collaborator, Bernie Taupin, have been deliberately and unapologetically chasing their glory days of the early '70s, but nowhere have they been as candid in evoking those memories as they are on 2006's The Captain & the Kid, the explicitly stated sequel to 1975's masterpiece Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy…
This album was unusual on several counts. For starters, it was a soundtrack (for Sam Peckinpah's movie of the same title), a first venture of its kind for Bob Dylan. For another, it was Dylan's first new LP in three years – he hadn't been heard from in any form other than the single "George Jackson," his appearance at the Bangladesh benefit concert in 1971, in all of that time…
On her most accessible album yet, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith draws out the organic qualities of her Buchla modular synth. But The Kid sparks a bodily pleasure alongside her music’s cerebral delights.