VINYL OF THE MONTH
Ariel Sharratt & Matthias Kom Never Work (BB*Island) + Ella Ronen The Girl With No Skin (BB*Island)
Always looking dapper and always sounding cool, Barry Adamson is a man who nevertheless seems to be perpetually of another time. Giving off the vibes of a one-man Rat Pack with a dash of the legendary Lee Hazelwood, his music certainly doesn’t have much in common with mainstream tastes.
The previous solo piano solo album from Fred Hersch, one of the world’s great jazz pianists, was called Songs from Home, released on the New York indie jazz label Palmetto Records towards the end of 2020. Silent, Listening, released this month on ECM could not be more different in it moods and in its aims.
Record Store Day is tomorrow! At theartsdesk on Vinyl we’ve been sent a selection of exclusive RSD goodies. Check out the reviews, then check out your local record shop! See you amongst it.
THEARTSDESK ON VINYL’S CHOICE CUT OF RECORD STORE DAY APRIL 2024
The Near Jazz Experience featuring Mike Garson Character Actor EP (Sartorial)
As I sat down to write this review, the sun came out. It was a salutory reminder of the importance of context: where I’d previously thought “mmm, that’s pretty nice”, now it was more “mmmmmmm, that’s pretty niiiiiice!” That’s not just a suble distinction, either. It was a fundamental shift in how and where the music was hitting mentally, emotionally and physiologically.
Sam Taylor-Johnson has fashioned her biopic of Amy Winehouse with great care and affection, but sometimes, as she shows her subject discovering, love isn’t quite enough.
Gal Beckerman’s 2023 book The Quiet Before makes a plea that if ideas, revolutionary or otherwise, are to grow, there needs to be a retreat from “our current cacophony”. And if there is one artist who is truly living out that principle in his musical life, it is Shabaka. As he said to the audience at this year’s Winter Jazzfest in NYC: “Change is never easy.”
“The name of this group is Mayan Space Station.” In spite of the billing as The William Parker Trio, their bassist – coolly introducing himself as “William Parker, bass” – is firm about the designation under which the three musicians on stage are operating.
Dee C Lee was born Diane Sealy in London in 1961. She is best known for her 1985 hit “See the Day”, later covered by Girls Aloud, and for being in two of the Eighties' most notable pop acts, The Style Council and WHAM!. But she was also prolifically involved in multiple other musical projects, and now has a new album appearing, Just Something, her first in over 25 years.
Released yesterday to coincide with International Women’s Day, The Sisterhood will surely prove to be one of the brightest jewels in Sarah Jane Morris’s varicoloured discography.