{"id":20495,"date":"2021-02-17T05:30:56","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T10:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=20495"},"modified":"2021-12-17T11:08:59","modified_gmt":"2021-12-17T16:08:59","slug":"hundred-word-reviews-february-2021-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/02\/17\/hundred-word-reviews-february-2021-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundred-word Reviews: February 2021, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

These five fall loosely \u2013 okay, sometimes very<\/i> loosely \u2013 into the progressive and jazz categories.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Mastelottos \u2013 <\/b>Too Much Happiness<\/b><\/i>
\nThough Robert Fripp\u2019s recent video series with pulchritudinous wife Toyah Willcox have shown that he, too has a sense of humor and a light touch, it\u2019s King Crimson\u2019s Pat Mastelotto who perhaps reigns supreme as King Crimson\u2019s most accessible musician. This collaborative effort with his spouse Deborah recasts Crim catalog classics into lushly romantic pieces. It\u2019s stunning just how well these songs \u2013 from throughout King Crimson\u2019s half-century-plus history \u2013 translate into this romantic pop idiom. If Crim played like this there might indeed \u2013 as Pat likes to kid on the square in saying \u2013 be a line at the ladies\u2019 rest room.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ed Palermo Big Band \u2013 <\/b>Great Un-American Songbook Vol. III<\/b><\/i>
\nIf you\u2019re in search of a handy example of a recording artist who fits the label eclectic<\/i>, your first stop could be Ed Palermo. His stock in trade is bringing together that which might not seem to belong together. He\u2019s been doing an ongoing big band series he calls The Great Un-American Songbook<\/i>, and it builds upon that concept. What he does is mash up stuff in ways you won\u2019t expect. Here he draws from the Beatles, Zappa, Thunderclap Newman, Procol Harum, Jethro Tull and Traffic. The combinations are witty, musically sophisticated, often unexpected, nearly always brilliant and unfailingly entertaining.<\/p>\n

\"\"Eternal Return \u2013 <\/b>Once Only<\/b><\/i>
\nEstonian guitarist Robert J\u00fcrjendal leads this progressive quintet that also includes former Porcupine Tree bassist Colin Edwin. The music has shades of ambient-leaning King Crimson; the floating, textural guitar work of Robert Fripp seems a likely influence. And the heady art rock leanings of bands like Japan seem to figure into the music as well. All tunes are group-composed, with lyrics by vocalist Paul Godwin. There\u2019s a meditative, contemplative air to the pieces, but there\u2019s plenty going on. A melancholy, occasionally vaguely sinister air pervades the music. Guest trumpeter Milad Khawam is at the alluring musical center of \u201cThe Void.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Noya Godwin J\u00fcrjendal \u2013 <\/b>Samliku<\/b><\/i>
\nGodwin and J\u00fcrjendal have been busy of late; in addition to their ambient five-piece group, they\u2019ve also teamed up with Portuguese keyboardist Miguel Noya. This, too, is nominally ambient, though somehow it\u2019s possessed of a more conventionally melodic character. In places, Samliku<\/i> reminds me of Lunatic Soul<\/a>. Samliku<\/i> also features more of what many listeners might consider \u201cprog\u201d elements, like complex yet catchy synthesizer solo lines, lush vocal harmonies and other qualities that connect it to early Genesis and the like. The extended, multi-part \u201cThe Big Slow\u201d is the album\u2019s centerpiece; it\u2019s full of grand majesty and subtlety in equal parts.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jonathan Kane and Dave Soldier \u2013 <\/b>February Meets Soldier String Quartet<\/b><\/i>
\nArt rock and blues rarely meet. And when they do, it\u2019s fair to expect the results to be gruesome; the aethetics of the two forms are viscerally different. Virtually in opposition, one might say. Yet this album suggests that need not always be the case. Wedding the insistent stomp of primitive blues to the hypnotic-by-definition character of trance music, the \u201csongs\u201d often don\u2019t go anyplace in a traditional sense; instead they pummel along, gathering up grit they capture from the landscape as they travel inexorably over it. If Philip Glass played blues with heavy backbeat, it might sound like this.<\/p>\n

More to come!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These five fall loosely \u2013 okay, sometimes very loosely \u2013 into the progressive and jazz categories. The Mastelottos \u2013 Too Much Happiness Though Robert Fripp\u2019s recent video series with pulchritudinous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20499,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,9,49,56,65],"tags":[4454,4452,4451,4453,4450,1652],"class_list":["post-20495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ambient","category-avant-garde","category-blues","category-new-release","category-prog","category-review","tag-dave-soldier","tag-ed-palermo-big-band","tag-eternal-return","tag-jonathan-kane","tag-noya-godwin-jurjendal","tag-pat-mastelotto","cat-5-id","cat-7-id","cat-9-id","cat-49-id","cat-56-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20495"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22197,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20495\/revisions\/22197"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}