Category Archives: Reviews

Music & Video Review: Spaghetti Eastern Music Returns to Orbit with New Maxi-single “Blues for A Lost Cosmonaut”

Music & Video Review by Dawoud Kringle

Sal Cataldi's Spaghetti Eastern MusicSpaghetti Eastern Music, the ongoing project led by guitarist/ composer / improviser / producer / polymath / MFM member Sal Cataldi has done it again. This single, titled Blues for a Lost Cosmonaut, is an exploration of emotions evoked by a look back into the infancy of manned space flight.

Cataldi’s guitars glide and dance in and around the landscape he creates with his synthesizers. The piece has a dreamy rubato feel, combined with the haunted F minor tonality, well-balanced combination of timbres, melodic counterpoints, and motif invention. It is as beautiful as a well-tended garden, and as seductive as a courtesan in an opium den.

The video for Blues for a Lost Cosmonaut compliments the music beautifully. It shifts back and forth between a plethora of images from the late 50s – early 60s Soviet space program, fractal art, and clips from what is obviously an old Soviet era science fiction movie (nothing ages faster than science fiction!).

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CD Review: SoSaLa “Nu World Trashed”

Nu World Trashed: The New Release by SoSaLa

SoSaLaArtist: SoSaLa
Title: Nu World Trashed
Format: CD (limited edition of 300) ONLY! (Digital release will be February 2021)
Label: DooBeeDoo Rec
Genre: nu world trash/nu jazz/oriental/improv/contemporary

Buy here: https://sohrab.info/press-2/

CD Review by Dawoud Kringle

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CD Review: Glasgow’s Glasshopper “Fortune Rules”

Glasshopper Artist: Glasshopper
Title: Fortune Rules
Label: AMP Music and Records
Genre: Spiritual jazz/ jazz-rock from the UK
CD & Digital release: 30 November, 2020
Review by Fiona Mactaggart

As anyone who, at last month’s EFG London Jazz Festival experienced the thoughtful and candid, often filmic soundscapes of London-based band Glasshopper will testify, this 6-year-old band’s debut album Fortune Rules has been worth the wait.

Glasshopper. L-R: Jonathan Chung, Corrie Dick, James Kitchman. Photo credit: Marieke Macklon

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Digital Release Review: Shoshin Trio “The Shape of Emptiness Now”

“It’s quite impossible to listen to this music with any preconceived ideas of what music should be.” – Dawoud Kringle

Shoshin TrioArtist: Shoshin Trio
Title: The Shape of Emptiness Now
Label: self-produced
Genre: improv/free jazz/contemporary

Review by Dawoud Kringle

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