Pages tagged “blue note”

• • Decrease
  • Reset
  • Increase
  resize
• print
• send

The Bird and The Bee: Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future

Having turned their...  read more

Various Artists: Droppin' Science: Greatest Samples from the Blue Note Lab

Untangled samples make for mellow delights Ironically, it probably would’ve been too expensive for legendary jazz imprint Blue Note to license the hip-hop tracks that sampled from its catalog. Still, for 13-song collection Droppin’ Science, it would have been nice, instructive and musicological to have the label’s late-’60s/early-’70s jazz-funk mellowness adjacent to the equally vintage hip-hop it mutated into via De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and others. Collected alone, one understands liner note writer ?uestlove’s classification of these un-samples as “the side of my pop’s record collection that I used to avoid like the plague,” especially given the...  read more

Lionel Loueke: Karibu

Afropop/jazz-fusion record is hit-and-missWest African guitarist Lionel Loueke’s Blue Note debut is a challenging and occasionally wondrous fusion of Afropop and knotty, dissonant jazz. Loueke has been an integral part of recent releases from trumpeter Roy Hargrove and legendary pianist Herbie Hancock (that’s him on Herbie’s recent Grammy winner/Joni Mitchell tribute River: The Joni Letters), and here Hancock and fellow Miles alum Wayne Shorter return the favor, playing on three of Karibu’s nine tracks. Those tracks are the highlights, since Loueke’s regular trio—featuring bassist Massimo Biolcati and drummer Ferenc Nemeth—fails to overcome Eli Wolf’s safe fuzak production. Loueke’s a major...  read more