instrumental Archive
10 Mar 2015
Album Review: Harvey Mandel — Snake Box
Meaning absolutely no disrespect to the artists to whom I refer, the music scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s was filled with what one might call second-string guitarists. […]
05 Feb 2015
Album Review: The Ben Webster Quintet — Soulville
The folks at Vinyl Me Please have struck gold once again. The mail-order subscription label has carved a unique niche in the music marketplace with its carefully-chosen and -curated monthly […]
29 Jan 2015
Hundred-word Reviews: January 2015, Part 4
There’s a never-ending stream of new music, so it’s time once again for some hundred-worders to work off some of my backlog. As always, these all deserve full reviews, but […]
28 Jan 2015
Hundred-word Reviews: January 2015, Part 3
There’s a never-ending stream of new music, so it’s time once again for some hundred-worders to work off some of my backlog. As always, these all deserve full reviews, but […]
24 Dec 2014
Best of 2014: Concerts
One of the many pleasures associated with living in the small mountain city of Asheville NC is access to great live music. I grew up in the 70s and 80s […]
17 Dec 2014
Album Review: Wadada Leo Smith et. al. — Red Hill
Lots of people I know – the ones who like jazz, anyway – tend to prefer Miles Davis‘ music best from the era around Birth of the Cool. Me, as […]
17 Dec 2014
Album Review: Interstatic — Arise
Jimmy Smith more or less invented the concept of organ trio. But it’s unlikely he had anything in mind like Interstatic. Imagine a bluesy, jazzy trio with Hammond, guitar and […]
17 Dec 2014
Album Review: Antoine Fafard — Ad Perpetuum
One doesn’t often think of melding progressive rock elements with jazz fusion; at least not if one wants to break even on an album release. But that’s the approach favored […]
17 Dec 2014
Album Review: Lucas Lee — Normalcy Bias
Some of those progressive drummers really get around; it seems as if Pat Mastelotto and Marco Minnemann are everywhere, and that they always involve themselves with fascinating projects. Pat’s the […]
15 Dec 2014
Album Review: Thom Douvan — Brother Brother
Thom Douvan – Brother Brother A (perhaps) surprising number of the Detroit players known as The Funk Brothers were actually white guys. One of ’em was guitarist Thom Douvan. In […]