WEEK IN RELEASES

11-03-09: From Brasil to Blaxploitation

By Rick Sawyer
November 3rd, 2009

Old and new favorites dominate this week’s new release round-up. Two smoking live sets from venerable figures in contemporary jazz offer the latest disproof of the music’s demise. A collection of soundtrack music from the 1970s challenges the myth of “blaxploitation,” and a pair of releases from young musicians in Brazil and Texas promises the world a bright and funky future.

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Brass Trax

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

By Rick Sawyer
October 29th, 2009

Robin D.G. Kelley’s massive new biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original is first and foremost a demystification of the composer’s life. Kelley, who holds a chair at the University of Southern California, spent 14 years researching the book, and it’s the most comprehensive biography yet of its subject.

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Brass Trax

The Action is Here! A Look at Rhino’s Latest Nuggets Triumph

By Rick Sawyer
October 18th, 2009

If the box set is about to die, at least it’s going out with a bang. Where the Action Is! is one of the best designed box sets in the history of the product.

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Brass Trax

The Sounds of Soft Machine

By Rick Sawyer
October 8th, 2009

Soft Machine was the product of the same remarkable cultural shift that gave us electric Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, the moment when the formalistic silos that held different genres of music suddenly collapsed and rock, jazz, blues, Indian music, and modern classical could mix with whatever happened to be on the turntable.

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Obituary

The World Mourns “La Negra”
Mercedes Sosa, 1935-2009

By Rick Sawyer
October 7th, 2009

Mercedes Sosa, an untiring voice for the dispossessed and the persecuted, a leftist in politics and spirit, and an enchanting contralto, died on Sunday. Sosa was one of Argentina’s best-known pop exports and one of the finest singers of her generation.

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Brass Trax

Cool Not To Be Cool: The Feelies Reissued

By Rick Sawyer
September 25th, 2009

Somewhere along the way the Feelies became obscure. Relegated to the pantheon of rock “influences,” bands who are known more for inspiring other, more famous bands than for their own work. It wasn’t always that way.

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Brass Trax

Brass Trax Essentials: Black Uhuru Sinsemilla

By Rick Sawyer
September 23rd, 2009

Roots reggae ground breakers Black Uhuru existed, in name at least, before Michael Rose joined, but it was Rose’s honeyed voice and lyrical deftness that would come to define the band.

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Brass Trax

Wilson Simonal’s Last Stand: Olhaí, Balândro…É Bufo No Birrolho Grinza!

By Rick Sawyer
September 16th, 2009

Olhaí, Balândro…É Bufo No Birrolho Grinza! might have been the last shimmer of Wilson Simonal’s brilliance before his artistic decline began to match the decline in his popularity.

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