Category Archives: CD Reviews

CD Review: A puzzling and intriguing challenge from an Egyptian cab driver in New Orleans inspires an impulse purchase of an alluring album in a used CD store. The album inspires a search for a difficult to find instrument, which in turn takes a jazz player to a radically different approach…Nashaz

Prunka_slantArtist: Nashaz
Title: Nashaz
Label: Ziryab Records
Genre:  hard driving grooves in 10/8 and 7/8 combine with moments of contemplative beauty that sound at once Arabic, and yet distinctly American
Release date: September 17, 2013
CD release concert: at Drom (NY), September 17, 2013

Review by Dawoud Kringle

In the realm of Persian / Arabic maqam, people like Rabih Abou-Khalil and Simon Shaheen kicked open a door that once open, will never close. I speak, of course, of the introduction of elements of jazz into maqam. Nashaz has taken up the gauntlet on this and run with it.

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CD Review: Holly Ann Cordero…”There is more to music than we hear everyday.”

28095_Screen shot 2013-07-01 at 12.42.25 AM_1372653909Artist: Holly Ann Cordero
Title: Truculently Audacious
Label: See The Sound Studios
Genre: jazz/classical

Review by Dawoud Kringle

“Born,” the first track on the CD opens with a synth pad over which Cordero’s vocals invoke a brooding minor melody; effectively ripping to pieces the preconception of this being your typical jazz recording.

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CD Review: “Dig In” to Some Tasty Comfort Food

a1796888558_2Artist: Comfort Food
Title: Dig It
Label: self released
Genre: experimental-funk-jazz-noise-progressive

CD Review by Matt Cole

Dig In is a recent EP by the Chicago bass and drums duo Comfort Food. The band consists of Daniel Wolff on bass and vocals, and Jake Marshall on drums. The group describes their sound as experimental noise jazz; Dig In also has funk, psychedelia, and blues as part of the recipe. Dig In is a promising appetizer from a young band, still a little raw around the edges, which will leave the listener hungry for more. (OK, enough with the food analogies…)

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