A$AP Rocky Predictably Cocky, Snarky Puppy’s Ork Trip & More

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A$AP Rocky: At.Long.Last.A$AP (RCA) While I must confess a significant amount of current hip-hop escapes me, there are some things that leap out, if only because of odd title punctuation, opening album tracks that invoke the Holy Spirit, God & Co., album cover graphics that evoke Something Weird DVD intros, and guest “appearances” by Rod Stewart, Miguel and Mark Ronson. Yep, this is that kind of an album, and it’s highly listenable and all over the place, bordering on the surrealistic due to overuse of the “N” word and slice-of-life funnies like “L$D,” an updated version of the Pretty Things’ “£sd” for the better-dressed. Much of this album sounds extremely convincing, to its credit, and other parts of it sound like what fast-talking grownups used to do when you were two-years old and barely understood English. Ultimately I am most impressed that someone here sampled a 1968 track by Pittsburgh rockers the Jaggerz—whose claim to fame two years later was prescient hit “The Rapper”—and that this album evokes a deliciously bad trip one might take at an unpleasant nightclub yet, when all is said and done, ultimately emerge unscathed and irreparably tainted—but in a good way!—just 65 minutes later.


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Snarky Puppy & Metropole Orkest: Sylva (Impulse!) Momentum continues for the Grammy-winning, super-skilled jazzy ensemble Snarky Puppy, once of Denton, Texas, now clearly world citizens. Their latest album bears the distinguished Impulse! Records jazz imprint and features the Dutch Metropole Orkest, a 52-piece orchestra, some very compelling arrangements, and a bonus DVD to further shed light on this memorable collaboration. It’s all good, powerful stuff, precisely performed but never overplayed, merging the intricacies of fusion with the subtleties of 60 people playing simultaneously in front of a live audience.  As the 21st Century brings us more and more music that people might record in the privacy of their own bedrooms, albums like Sylva–which really doesn’t sound like much of anything we’ve ever heard–stand out more than ever. Recommended listening.


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Little Richard: Directly From My Heart (Best Of The Specialty & Vee-Jay Years) (Specialty) The time is right, now more than ever, to be divinely inspired by the pure genius of Little Richard, whose classic recordings from 1956-1965 are sampled here on three joyful compact discs, each of which burns with energetic soulfulness, raw sexuality, and inimitable fever. It’s just the right context to appreciate what sonic miracles the man himself—Richard Penniman—was able to fashion in less than a decade. With the well-known hits “Tutti Frutti,” “Lucille” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Long Tall Sally” came pounding arrangements, frenzied vocals, and singles—were they pop? R&B? Blues? Rock?—that, on a pure sonic level, have yet to be equaled by anybody ever. Everyone needs some Little Richard in their life, and this package is the right size, shape and sound. Solid notes by Billy Vera further seal the deal: You can do no wrong here.


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Yes: Progeny: Seven Shows From Seventy-Two (Rhino) Anyone who wonders what the big hubbub was about Brit art-rockers Yes in their early ‘70s heyday—or better yet, those who were actually there, loving what they heard and saw—should dig the fab excess represented here. Seven full-on shows by the dudes themselves at the early-‘70s peak, touring to promote Close To The Edge, what many consider their all-time classic album, with a crew including Jon Anderson, Steve Howe, Chris Squire, Rick Wakeman, and newcomer Alan White, who’d just come in to replace wandering drummer Bill Bruford. While there’s the natural repetition you’d expect from seven 1972 shows occurring nearly consecutively, there’s enough subtlety in both the improvisations and the recording quality (stunning, all things considered) to make this a worthwhile purchase of one of progressive rock’s very finest bands at their artistic pinnacle. To a select few, this is a big deal indeed.


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The Vaccines: English Graffiti (Columbia) Time has been kind to the Vaccines, those Brit rockers who’ve managed to strip down the bulk of rock ’n’ roll’s history into brief, concise, powerful bursts of energy that are catchy, appealing, and better than a whole lot of other stuff. This new set, their third album, was recorded in America, was produced by David Fridmann—the dude who’s made the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev, among many, sound dandier than most—and is divinely, repeatedly, and splendidly catchy. At the moment I am taken by “Minimal Affection,” but there are several equally fine tracks on English Graffiti, which the band themselves would likely point out. They told Britain’s NME the album was “genre defining”—and, in all candor, who would make such a claim if it weren’t completely true? Top notch, non-repetitive, melodic, beat-filled, and very good.


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Gary Peacock Trio: Now This (ECM) When it comes to piano trios, bassist Gary Peacock has been part of the very best: Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett and Paul Bley are among his most conspicuous former bandmates, and that’s about as good as it gets. But here in the modern day, as Peacock approaches his 80th birthday, the man presents a trio equally as respectable in 2015: With pianist Marc Copland and drummer Joey Baron, Peacock presents a flowing, melodic unit with every bit of the subtlety and intricacy you’d expect from a player of his pedigree. Running through some older compositions as well as some new material, the trio—recorded in Oslo last year—waste nary a note, play with near-telepathic expression, and with minimum fireworks have produced one of this year’s maximum pleasures.

 

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Ozric Tentacles: Technicians Of The Sacred (Madfish) It’s refreshing just how timely and now the music of Ozric Tentacles sounds in 2015, not least because the band has been around for eons (since 1983) and been part of a shifting terrain of movements or scenes that include the space-rock of Hawkwind, the world of Gong, the later jam band scene, the various Phish-types that came in that wake, the Orbs and so many other countless units that came to play five-hour sets and leave 30-CD box sets in their wake. Well, OK then. This is more of that, but happily, it does not evoke the past: It moves forward and it pulses and it evokes warm feelings and it seems strangely non-excessive and, counter-intuitively, minimal. It’s a very nice return to form and something you would likely enjoy were you to hear it. Why don’t you?


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Various Artists: Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued [Blu-Ray] (Eagle Rock) In some ways this may be the best way to enjoy the Lost On The River album, that T Bone Burnett-produced album featuring Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford ostensibly creating music for a batch of lyrics penned by Bob Dylan in 1967. A document of the making of the album, with a number of highly desirable full-performance bonus tracks—the set sounds superb, offers up some visual cues that makes later listening to Lost On The River more rewarding, and is a fascinating look at the inner workings of one of the year’s singularly strange but never less than fascinating musical projects.

 

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