A truly fantastic New Jersey reggae-rock project between two musically inclined brothers (Jeffrey and Jeremy King respectively), Shadows Of Our Souls put out this little gem of an EP, Sea Of Gold, on Soundcloud last year for any intrepid listener to experience. And if its of any indication, they're going to be a force to be reckoned with before a whole lot more time passes!
To elaborate, this set of tunes numbers seven, and even in that short space of music, its hard not to get taken in by their unique, laid back fusionized take on relaxation -- acoustic guitar idyllically riveting around some hip-hop texturing and the dazed, summery hip-hoppish banter and singing of the brothers themselves. 'The Crashing Tide' even featuring some nice, stoned out harmonizing that rises above some busy drum work and homegrown production. Incredibly promising stuff really, and yet another indication that some of the best stuff floating around there isn't being paraded around on Facebook giveaways or slick websites -- its the stuff being recorded by chill bros and thrown onto Soundcloud independently that the guys at the top need to be wary of...cause one day it'll rise up!
All that being said, anyone with a taste for something snazzy to smoke your next joint to would be wise to let Shadow Of Our Souls pay your browser (and your mind) a visit. Hell, you might even get hooked....you just never know!
Classy deep ambient record straight outta the synthesized, fantastical side of the mid 80's. Budd treads some interesting ground here, as if trying to one up both Brian Eno and David Sylvian simultaneously in a single fell swoop of the keyboard.
In other words, not a bad soundtrack to someone's hypothetical alternative take on Blade Runner. Makes for a helluva sleeping aid too!
This is a point of contention I suppose, but I personally consider this turn-of-the-decade album one of the best synth-pop excursions ever crafted and the magnum opus of the Boys from the land of ice and snow. Those gorgeous keyboard textures, dem early 90's beatz, all the slick orchestral flourishes on tracks such as 'My October Symphony'...its a stone cold classic, ladies and gents. Opening number 'Being Boring' features the ever popular Johnny Marr on guitar as well!
New Age chillzak to the extreme-o. Most of this bro's output is the stuff of dentist offices and message parlors, but this particular record tries a bit more on the composition front and thus comes rather recommended to the particularly laid back among you.
Japan's top smooth fusion commodity released this excellent set of cuts back in 2007, and its got the chops to make it the ideal entry point into their mindbogglingly large back catalog. It's got a bit of everything: breezy synthesizers, acoustic and shred-friendly electric guitar, all kinds of percussion and plenty of brass for the purists too. Lots of fun improv going on here...and there's even a catchy melody or two ('Flying Colors') to keep the more casual jazz fan interested.
Pretty high up there on the quality front as far as smooth/contemporary jazz is concerned, and an excellent addition to any cruise catering playlist you've got on hand!
One of the groovier contemporary jazz releases of the last decade and arguably POAD's best record from start to finish, Lovε's Silhouεttε is blessed in numerous ways: it has a punchy mix that gives an extra edge to the bass and keyboards and hooky songwriting that engages as opposed to not. On top of that, these guys had been together about twenty years or so by the time this record hit stores, and their chemistry is tighter than a fishing knot -- much to the benefit of the songs themselves.
Style-wise, arrangements fall somewhere between the Brazilian flourished Pat Metheny Group and the late 90's output of The Rippingtons as far as atmosphere is concerned. Cuts like the tempestuous 'Turnin' It Up', the nightwalking Bossa Nova groover 'Mystical Perception' and the spacey beat-laden 'Mission Possible' are prime time displays of excellence, about as good as mood music gets in this genre.
Contemporary jazz is a hard genre to get just right, but Lovε's Silhouεttε would be right at home on any decent chillout mix...and stands fairly strong on the whole as a record too.
Paul's first foray into contemporary jazz territory, and his first full-length collaboration with the very talented Helen Rogers at the mic too. Although later projects under this particular moniker are more textured in some ways, this is the record that defined contemporary jazz over the next two decades and set a high standard for others to aspire to. Highly recommended!
My favorite album from today's #1 contemporary electronic jazz producer. Features some absolutely killer vocal House cuts, but the instrumentals are in a dimension all their own as well.
Need I honestly embellish some bullshit reason for you to stick this methanized-or-mayhap-robotized pop classic somewhere in that unsightly wreck you call a collection? Really now? *laughs maniacally whilst not so subtly sneaking away to somewhere with better whiskey*.
Synths galore from every hipster's favorite 80's group...and it'll throck your socks off.
A couple of drinks by the harbor, watching tides roll through the sand. Or maybe its some lucid dream in motion, flowing like rain through a cloudborne subwoofer. D's first guest-populated collection is one helluva dope enclave as far as jazz-hop is concerned, bolstered by versers of smooth, well-tread pedigree like Cise Starr, Substantial and the elusive Funky DL. Furthermore, the samples are out of this world, as well as the production values. Just...dayum!
A label mate of the late and great Nujabes (Hydeout Records), Hide-san specializes in Worldly, percussive instrumental hip-hop which proves a bit more hypnotic than your typical Japanese jazz-hop excursion, particularly on some of the drive-friendly longer cuts like 'Bridge Of Sunshine'. Steller!
One of the best progressive rock bands on the planet today happen to be Australian, led by the charismatic, Gabrielesque tone of Mark Trueack, eclectic soundscaping (think the pop sensibility of The Alan Parsons Project colliding headlong with Rush) and, in the context of this particular album, a surprisingly literal take on the concept of an overly-artificed world that has alienated your average person due to excessive technological and multimedia innovations and associated baggage.
Fans of modern progressive rock with big ideas, assloads of sax and a surprisingly immersive sense of songwriting, the line starts here!
Led by the charismatic, 70's soul-inflected vocals of Peter Cox and fluid guitar work of Richard Drummie, progressive pop duo Go West were one of the more interesting acts to come out of the U.K. during the robotic mid 80's. Infectiously good and strangely compelling as far as atmosphere goes despite their overtly synthesized take on blue-eyed R&B meets New Wave romanticism, they had a couple of high charting hits via this fantastic debut before falling into obscurity until a few years later when their hit song 'The King Of Wishful Thinking' ended up on the Pretty Woman soundtrack, reinvigorating their prospects.
Although obviously dated in the production department, this synth-pop record is a real charmer from beginning to end, almost to the point where I'd call it a unsung classic.
Recommended to fans of: Level 42, It Bites, Johnny Hates Jazz, or Giraffe (late 80's band started by pop-maestro Kevin Gilbert).
Latest offering from Space Ambient's reigning, Grammy Award-winning queen, and it is indeed illustrious: a 72 minute long monolith of a composition better suited to dream therapy than active listening. In that sense, this is a great record right up there with the output of post 90's Robert Rich and Steve Roach: a massive, endlessly layered soundscape smorgasborg to ease the toils of your waking hours.
Modern contemporary jazz pop classic from Hungary, reposted in higher quality as requested!
This is a sublime little trio project that came out a couple of years ago, an almost Sinatrian take on the exotic cruise-friendly jazz-rock sound that The Rippingtons and Special EFX made famous back in the late 80's/early 90's. Led by the charismatically Brazilian-sounding voice of one Fanni Sarkozy and fleshed out through a variety of instrumentation, Natural Design is a striking array of lush ideas and catchy songwriting: a cool, candy-coated stab toward realms normally privy to the masterful hands of fellows such as Pat Metheny and Michael Franks.
Aficionados of jazz pop, bossa nova and all things chill....welcome home.
Around the time that psychedelia was falling out of sorts across the world, there was an emergent force out of the deep bayous of Louisiana who traveled north and west, perplexing the world wherever they went and leaving only mystery and awe upon disembarking from the latest wharfside gig. If The Beatles had changed the way the world saw music from the outside in only a few years before Flower Power met its demise, then this band was shifting new terrain from the inside out...crawling out and about dimensions alien to all but a receptive, whimsical minority.
Since 1969 and counting, an anonymous eyeball-donning outfit known as The Residents have been and still remain the greatest enigma in today's musical world, the godfathers of all that's strange and outside convention in the world of rock n' roll. Sixty-something albums, countless live recordings and many a world-tour later, we are living in the second decade of a new century, and these strange beings from a time before most of us were born continue to dazzle new generations unabated by changes in sonic fashion or whatever major labels decide is worth trending.
It stands to reason, then, that last year's Coochie Brake (the titular marshland where this band supposedly spent their youth) may be the first time any relatively normal music-faring individual has encountered this esoteric ensemble...and they couldn't have found a better starting point.
To elaborate, The Residents only create (basically) two kinds of albums: those which are satirical in nature and/or those which tell some kind of bizarre, sometimes unfathomable tale. Enthusiasts of this bunch will regale you with praise upon their 70's period, the decade where some of this group's unquestionable classic additions to the canons of avant-garde rock were unveiled and released (the ambient histrionics of Eskimo, the unsettling Not Available, the synth-haunted Fingerprince), all of which were concept albums. Coochie Brake continues that tradition via an untypically semi-autobiographical account of the band's beginnings in their swampy homeland.
And it's a hell of a trip, like a dream you were thoroughly immersed within before the waking world reeled you back into the open air of day-to-day sense & logic. Sludgy guitars straight out of the fevered murk, horns, glittering electronic landscapes that juxtapose and enhance the production, topped by menacing monologues echoing above the dim, rich mixture in...Spanish? Guttural mantras reverberate like flesh-formed didgeridoos, and it's all so deliciously voodoo and indifferent to anything the group has done before, much less what anyone else is doing musically at the moment.
It's weird to the point of obsession, and richer than anything this one-of-a-kind act has done in decades. You could die happy with just this on repeat, cycling unto eternity as vague aspirations disintegrate with dawn's untimely arrival at your windowsill.
The Sgt. Peppers of early acid house, and it's not too hard to understand why in retrospect. Highway blaster 'Pacific 202' features a ridiculous bassline set against a punchy horn refrain, singlehandedly establishing the basic feel for every Sonic The Hedgehog game OST that would define 90's gamer culture for years to come, while techno and the 21st century's obsession with 8-bit get a heavy dose of foreshadowing in rave friendly beat epics like 'Cobra Bora' and 'Sunrise'.
Whatever your retrospective impressions may be, it was albums like this that changed the musical landscape seemingly overnight in the year of our Lord of Ten, Nine and Eighty Nine, and everything you probably love as far as electronica still feels that shift today.
One of the most promising artists associated with Windham Hill Records, Jεff Ostεя is a fantastically forward thinking trumpeter and flugelhorn player who dabbles in deep electronic texturing and experimentation to give his horn-led compositions an almost supernatural edge that most traditional cats in the greater jazz stratosphere are missing out on.
On that note, his latest release Surrender was perhaps the best jazz-anything to come out last year, giving folks such as Nils Petter Molvaer and The Submotion Orchestra a real run for their money in sheer sumptuousness. Cruise-perfect cuts like the danceable 'The Theology Of Success', Trip-hop friendly title track and even 70's-feelin' fanfare of 'Essence Of Herb' turned my afternoon jog into a golden, harmonious dreamscape where shadows wither and writhe under still light. One can only imagine what something this killer could do for a mind at rest!
After singlehandedly redefining the violin for all jazz-fusion heads everywhere back in the 70's as part of Mahavishnu Orchestra and via some classic solo records of his own, Monsieur Ponτy steered his ship to new waters in the advent of the 80's, pushing the boundaries of just how far one could take experimental synth-violin in an era where, surprisingly....nobody had really tried yet.
The title track on this late-80's gem of his should be indicative enough at just how monstrously successful some of these experiments were, but I digress: if you be a'lookin' for smooth jazz that bores you out of your skull and doesn't hypnotize and amaze in equal measure, you are looking in the wrong freakin' place.
Vintage dub from a different time and place than today. John Peel was pretty nuts about this record, which doesn't surprise much: the beats and samples are chosen and contextualized to a peerless degree, unrivaled in the realms of 90's synthesisia until the arrival DJ Shadow and his ilk nearly half a decade down the line, with some of the downtempo cuts such as the sublime 'Out Of Heaven' and the cooly skitterish 'Cave Of Angels' coming off as downright prophetic in retrospect.
