{"id":30242,"date":"2025-11-11T05:30:01","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T10:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30242"},"modified":"2025-10-29T12:53:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T16:53:44","slug":"album-reviews-two-from-adrian-younge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/11\/album-reviews-two-from-adrian-younge\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Reviews: Two from Adrian Younge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrian Younge is truly a musical renaissance man for the 21st<\/sup> century. As prolific as he is creative, Young continues to turn out new material of the highest quality with astounding alacrity. This year alone, he embarked upon multiple high-profile endeavors. The first of those was Something About April III<\/em><\/a>, the concluding chapter of his trilogy of soundtracks for films that don\u2019t exist<\/a>. Younge then mounted a tour in support of that album, one in which he led the band, played bass and sang in Portuguese (a language he taught himself in preparation for making the album).<\/p>\n

Now \u2013 with the years headed toward its end \u2013 there are two new releases from Adrian Younge. Both are remarkable, both as standalone efforts and as more pieces of the puzzle that is Younge\u2019s larger body of work.<\/p>\n

\"\"Samantha e Adrian<\/i><\/b>
\nDespite its title and cover art, Samantha e Adrian<\/i> isn\u2019t a duets album. Here Younge is band leader, co-composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer and mixer. Though she\u2019s primarily known as an actor, Brazilian vocalist Samantha Schm\u00fctz co-wrote the album\u2019s nine tracks with Younge. Listeners who heard and appreciated Something About April III<\/i> will find the music on Samantha e Adrian warmly familiar; texturally, its primary difference is Schmutz\u2019s creamy yet assertive lead vocal on every track. Younge\u2019s music is as cinematic as ever, with plenty of retro flourishes \u2013 monophonic synthesizers, fizz and wah guitar, kinetic bass lines \u2013 to root the vibe in years gone by.<\/p>\n

As with the recent mind-movie soundtrack, nearly all of the lyrics are in Portuguese. By listeners who speak only English will still get the feel of the songs thanks to Younge\u2019s sultry melodies and flawless arrangements. Samantha e Adrian<\/i> even leans a bit toward sexy \u201870s disco with the album\u2019s sol English language track, \u201cMore Than Love.\u201d Everything about the tune is note-perfect in conjuring and sustaining that disco-era character. The string section is particularly tasty. Samantha e Adrian<\/i> is highly recommended for fans of bossa nova, deep groove soul and quality music in general.<\/p>\n

\"\"Jazz is Dead 24: Dom Salvador<\/i><\/strong>
\nThe title sets up what\u2019s on offer here: the 24th<\/sup> entry in the ongoing Jazz is Dead<\/i> series, a collaborative adventure led by Younge and A Tribe Called Quest\u2019s Ali Shaheed Muhammad. This time it\u2019s keyboardist Dom Salvador who\u2019s spotlighted, on eight cuts he co-composed with Younge and Muhammad. A leading light in Brazilian soul and samba funk, Salvador is a deeply soulful and expressive player.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also a fascinating singer. On \u201cOs Ancestrais\u201d he provides some mesmerizing vocalisms that (to this listener, anyway) connect his music with exotica of the Martin Denny variety. Elsewhere on the album Brazilian singers provide Portuguese vocals. The music is haunting, hypnotic and finely-tuned; Younge and his cohorts make it plain that they can craft a wonderful piece of music out of one chord (check out \u201cNao Podermos O Amar Para\u201d for proof).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a winningly organic character to this music, cut as it was without any digital gear in the mix. In fact, save for bits of electric guitar and electric piano, Jazz is Dead 24<\/i> is primarily an acoustic affair. And a fine one at that; also recommended in the strongest terms.<\/p>\n

Postscript<\/strong><\/em>: I should mention that Younge’s 2013 project with Ghostface Killah, 12 Reasons to Die<\/em><\/strong> is the subject of a chapter in my new book, What’s the Big Idea: 30 Great Concept Albums<\/em><\/a>. Adrian was kind enough to discuss the album at length with me, and our conversation forms the backbone of that chapter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adrian Younge is truly a musical renaissance man for the 21st century. As prolific as he is creative, Young continues to turn out new material of the highest quality with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30244,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,49,65,69],"tags":[3991,3992,5790,5789],"class_list":["post-30242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jazz","category-new-release","category-review","category-soul","tag-adrian-younge","tag-ali-shaheed-muhammad","tag-dom-salvador","tag-samantha-schmutz","cat-42-id","cat-49-id","cat-65-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30242","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=30242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30245,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30242\/revisions\/30245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}