Category Archives: CD Reviews

CD Review: SoSaLa “1993” – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

SArtist: SoSaLa
Title: 1993
Formats: CD and digital
Cat.#: DBDCD003
Label: DooBeeDoo Rec
Genre: NO WAVE
Stream and purchase CD here: https://sosala.hearnow.com/1993

Album Review by Dawoud Kringle

Retrospectives are a double edged sword. They threaten to over-glorify a past that is gone and will never return. At the same time, they perform an essential service by providing something many people sorely lack: historical perspective (not to mention preserving music that needs to be preserved). Especially in a retrospective recording which looks back to a time when music was made at a special time and with special musicians.

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Review: Live Skull “Party Zero”…every punk is a legend!

“Getting in a room and being really noisy is just a natural response to what’s going on right now, because otherwise you’ll just go crazy. That gave Live Skull a reason to exist again.” – Mark C

Artist: Live Skull
Title: Party Zero
Formats: CD/LP/digital
Label: Bronson Records
Genre: No Wave, Experimental, Noise Rock, Alternative Rock
Stream and buy here: https://liveskull.bandcamp.com/album/party-zero

Review by Dawoud Kringle

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Fula Flute

LP + Digital Album Review: Sylvain Leroux “Qromatica” – the Evolution of the Fula Flute

Fula FluteArtist: Sylvain Leroux
Title: Qromatica
Formats: Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Labels: Fula Flute & Meta Dash
Genre: African Jazz
Release date: May 4, 2023
Buy and stream here: https://sylvainleroux.bandcamp.com/album/qromatica

Album Review by Dawoud Kringle

Sylvain Leroux is a unique musician. He devoted years to the study and mastery of the Fula flute, the traditional flute from Guinea, West Africa. He founded a music school, L’ecole Fula Flute; a music literacy project that teaches this endangered flute tradition. He is one of those people who successfully – and respectfully – adapts a foreign musical tradition, and then expands upon it.

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Voyagers

CD Review: VOYAGERS “Chasing Light”

Artist: VOYAGERS
Title: Chasing Light
Label: Lion Songs Rec
Music Genre: West African trad music

CD Review by Dawoud Kringle

MFM members are familiar with our brother Banning Eyre. (In July 2021, Eyre was the guest on an MFM webinar on bringing African music to the American music scene: https://musiciansformusicians.org/2021/07/report-mfm-zoom-webinar-5-with-banning-eyre/).

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Keyna Wilkins

CD Review: Keyna Wilkins and Jalal Mahamede “Set Me Free” – Musical improvisation to the poetry of a refugee in detention in Australia.

Keyna Wilkins & Jalal Mahamede Artist: Keyna Wilkins & Jalal Mahamede
Title: Set Me Free
Label: Artist release
Genre: Improvisation and spoken word
CD & Digital release:  November 2021

Review by Fiona Mactaggart

“I love my tears as much as my laughter. I need my tears as they ease my pain.”

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