Finally reissued on cd last year were these three albums by Miles Davis' funky ex-wife, who should be famous in her own right for the tough, heavy duty '70s funk she waxed on those records. Now they're available, briefly, as LPs once again, but we've only got a couple of each and don't think we'll be able to get more (they're limited or something), so you'd better hurry on down if you want to get down with Betty on vinyl.
Reissue of 1975's "Nasty Gal", Betty Davis' third album of sexy funk. This one is more of the same, maybe a little more "rock" than before. Slightly less essential than the others.
Finally reissued on cd last year were these three albums by Miles Davis' funky ex-wife, who should be famous in her own right for the tough, heavy duty '70s funk she waxed on those records. Now they're available, briefly, as LPs once again, but we've only got a couple of each and don't think we'll be able to get more (they're limited or something), so you'd better hurry on down if you want to get down with Betty on vinyl.
Her second album, "They Say I'm Different", continued Betty's Afrodelic party, with guests Buddy Miles and others, and made the list of "100 Records That Set The World On Fire" in The Wire magazine a few years back. And it features a song specifically about ex-husband Miles, "He Was A Big Freak"!
For all aficionados of the Funk, here's cause for celebration! The long-awaited cd reissues of these early '70s albums by Betty Davis, ex-wife of Miles (famously, the subject "They Say I'm Different"'s second track, "He Was A Big Freak")! Betty belts out her lowdown lyrics over some super heavy funk grooves, kinda like a rawer version of Lyn Collins backed not by the JBs but by the swampier P-Funk band. Betty doesn't hold back and her band does their best to match her attitude. Both records (her third, "Nasty Girl", still awaits reissue but should soon be making the scene) are the quote unquote bomb. The self-titled one is her 1973 debut, and features jams like "If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up" and "Game Is My Middle Name". Larry Graham's the bassist, and Neal Schon (!) appears on guitar. The follow-up, "They Say I'm Different", continued Betty's Afrodelic party, with guests Buddy Miles and others, and made the list of "100 Records That Set The World On Fire" in The Wire magazine a few years back. Tough, sexy funk classics unearthed, don't miss 'em!
Gorgeous collaboration between long time aQ fave Steve R. Smith (Thuja, Hala Strana, Ulaan Khol) and clarinetist Gareth Davis. The two got together last year and created this suite of impressionistic soundscapes, dark and dolorous, Smith creating heaving swells of reverb drenched soft sound, reminding us a bit of Scott Tuma, but adding layers of scrabble and scrape to the proceedings, all manner of texture to what might otherwise be soft minimal dronemusic. Instead, the sound is rough, and vibrant, alive and visceral. Davis doesn't play clarinet so much as coax some amazing sounds from it, sometimes it's a bit of hushed rumbling whir , other times it's thick feedback drenched layers of buzz, but it perfectly compliments Smith's atmospheric free folk shimmer and scrape.
Long expanses of minimal low end spread out serenely, a sun dappled drift, that seems surprisingly tranquil, but over that, Davis and Smith add more and more, never overwhelming, but creating the perfect balance of soft focus melody, and in-the-red droning smolder, the sounds shifts from deep and minimal, to dense and heavy and almost metallic, with the guitar and clarinet constantly woven together in woozy soft tangles of sound, that build and build but just as quickly seem to dissipate, drifting back into the warm whirling reverby drift underneath. So gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Screen printed on insanely thick cardstock, ultra heavy and handmade.
It seems Kranky has taken a break from their steady output of psychedelic pop to make room some cosmic minimalists. Which we're excited about considering how much we dug Gregg Kowalsky's Tape Chants (which we reviewed a few lists ago). This time Kranky delivers Mr. Davis's second effort on the Chicago based label, titled Mutually Arising. The aptly named disc is as minimal as it gets, two long form tracks, one 28 minutes and the other 20 minutes, of mind liquefying, analog synth hypnosis. Mr. Davis, who has been known to work with a variety of instruments and experiment with folk stylings in the past, has restrained himself to a Korg Mono/Poly synth, a Crumar Stratus synth, various effects pedals and a computer. Though a fairly amorphous figure in the experimental music community, having collaborated with the likes of Keith Fullerton Whitman and Sebastien Roux, it seems Davis has locked into some cosmic wavelength. Mutually Arising begins with a faint distant ring and builds into a tidal wave of shimmering bliss, offering up soaring, slow shifting chords and long form tones to create two beaming compositions of fluttering overtones and radiant textures. Having studied music at Chicago's De Paul university, it's no wonder Mr. Davis has taken a rather academic approach to Mutually Rising, a slight reach from his more organic compositions usually involving gongs, guitars or exotic reed instruments. What makes Mutually Arising so killer is the slow creeping subtly of small details that slowly evolve in and out of the analog hum, it's a gradual process like clouds shifting shape, distant buzz and hum, radiating overtones, the movement is there but incremental and delicate. A true gem of modern minimalist composition, a must have for drone heads and long time Kranky fans alike, highly recommended!
There's no difference for John Davis in the division of labor between sound and image. This Bay Area media-artist is a frequent collaborator with filmmakers and musicians, sometimes plying his craft as a sound designer to the films of Paul Clipson or Craig Baldwin. Othertimes, he's working with long-form dronesculptors like Jefre Cantu-Ledesma or Joshua Churchill, presenting his own impressionistic yet mechanical 8mm film projections. What becomes the mark of his strength as an artist is in how seamless these movements are between media. So when it comes to his own recorded work, the sounds are very much informed by the images he captures of transcendent glimpses of the California landscape (highways, sunsets, forests, deserts, etc.) with a mechanical time-stop / slow-motion jitteriness from one of his projections in a multi-beam configuration on the screen. Ask The Dust is his second major album following a handful of micro-edition cassettes, singles, and cd-rs. Davis' first high-profile release, Gold Hooped Nature, came by way the impeccable curators at Root Strata, and Students Of Decay is another well-suited home for Davis's meandering ambient drift and loose compositional tropes. Some of the melodic phrases that dot Ask The Dusk can be elegiac and refined through piano, field recordings, and guitar; and others can flare with a roman candle burst of Max/MSP granulation or a smoldering hot-wired signal concoction from Davis' modular synth arrays. But all of these fleck the undulating surfaces of his flotation tank ripples, echoes, and thrummings. Somewhere not all that far from Thuja's pine cone droning and Tarentel's thoroughly abstracted latter-day productions. Very nice work.
Another amazing piece of mysterious musical sound art from local sound sculptor and field recordist John Davis via the splendid Root Strata label, run by Tarentel's Jefre Cantu Ledesma. This 3", near 20 minute cd-r captures more of Davis' gorgeous and glacial looped soundscapes of scrape and creak and groan, deftly smoothed out into rich harmonious drones. The sound is definitely metallic, but like metal wrapped in gauzy grey clouds and held under water. A soft somnambulent drift, hovering somewhere between the dark drone of Coleclough and the fuzzy processed soundworlds of Christian Fennesz. Streaks of glistening shimmer reverberate and gently vibrate, the resulting hum is rife with muted overtones and muffled feedback, even occasional crackle give the pieces the effect of some unearthed sonic artifact. As always, totally captivating.
The packaging is very reminiscent of an old naturalist's display case, a small brown cardboard box, with a leaf and butterfly motif screened in green and metallic gold ink on the top (by local artist Chris Thorson). Inside a hand sewn, mini booklet, detailing the study of nature and the steps in getting your own recordings, and most impressive of all, nestled on a soft bed of billowy white cotton, an actual piezo contact microphone, which is a beautiful object on its own, but as the included note suggests, the mic may be used to make your own field recordings. Send them to Davis to be included in an online sound archive. Wow!
SUPER LIMITED. ONLY 50 COPIES WERE MADE, OF WHICH WE GOT ABOUT 30! SO ACT FAST!
The undulating drones and scraped loops which provide the backbone for the debut recording for San Francisco's John Davis could have easily been plucked from a Phill Niblock or Andrew Chalk composition; but in fact their origins lie in the interactive exhibitions found at the Exploratorium, SF's one of a kind museum of science, art, and human perception. If you've never had the opportunity to get to the Exploratorium, it's well worth the visit as there's tons of contraptions designed to illuminate, educate, and amaze. Armed with a mini-disc recorder, a good mic, and a willingness to explore, Davis captured many of plinks, plonks, and bongs from the Exploratorium's many exhibits that demonstrate any number of acoustic phemonena. He then ran these field recordings through a battery of Max/MSP patches to arrive at this spiralling cloud of pixelated smears, golden drones, and a variety of those aforementioned plinks, plonks, and bongs. Davis certainly draws from the aesthetics of Stephan Mathieu and Fennesz, adding a mechanical and metallic clamour into the mix.
Released on Tarentel's Root Strata label, this beautifully packaged cd-r is strictly limited to 50 copies, of which we only have a handful. You know what that means!
Northern Californian media artist John Davis is a bit of a renaissance man. Film, photography, and sound design all come together through looping systems that pile old means of construction on top of new ones, with all sorts of erasures and additive marks along the way. The results throughout all of his media can be strikingly beautiful, if idiosyncratic in the way the old becomes new and vice versa. Such has been evident on his musical output for Root Strata, Students Of Decay, and Digitalis; and it's certainly true for his cassette on Peasant Magik. The tape begins with a drone-field of pastoral impressionism that fits very nicely within the overarching aesthetic of Root Strata as something of a reclamation of rural psychedelia (a phrase coined by Flying Saucer Attack to describe their first album), yet Davis intervenes through small phrases of electronic plinks and strange field recordings buried behind the Chalk-ish guitar drones. He then moves onto a piece driven by ring modulated tone and motorized clatter that harkens to early electronic music experiments merged with the scrabblings Keith Rowe would sometimes offer by disrupting guitar pick-ups with other magnetics and motors. Elsewhere, Davis fuses a no-fi layering of mashed textures on par with any of the Richard Youngs albums of grit and shimmer crossed with the Jasper TX / Machinefabriek means of song deconstruction. Needless to say, there's a lot going on in each of the tracks that Davis provides, but it's not an overload that he's seeking rather a curiosity to explore as many possibilities while maintaining a hushed restraint. Limited to 100 copies.
We're not sure if this is the first proper full length from this local soundscaper / field recordist, but it's definitely the first one we've ever had. We raved about the last two Davis discs we carried, both cd-r's both now unfortunately out of print.
But this is an actual cd, so it should be around for a while, which is a very good thing, as it's just as fantastic as those long gone cd-r's, so hopefully this time a few more folks will get a chance to lay their ears on Davis' minimal loveliness.
And minimal and lovely is precisely what this is. In past reviews we've mentioned Niblock and Coleclough, and obviously those comparisons still apply, but the cool thing about Davis is that he is not nearly so precise. His sounds have grit and static, there is room sound, tape hiss, not to a distracting degree, but only in so much as it adds a bit of warmth and texture.
Davis' music, while deep and shimmery, mysterious and dark, is also natural, captured and created in its environment, not in some vacuum, so a nearly static drone is often peppered with bits of glitch, strange percussion, slivers of feedback. Sounds pulse and waver, drift and shift, often creating incidental rhythms. Those more rhythmic tracks are like some darker dronier pop ambient music, subtly throbbing beneath slow shifting layers of sound, not murky as much as washed out and soft around the edges.
A few tracks stick out here and there, like the warbly almost jazzy interlude "Half Consumed" with it haunting trumpet melody and strange backwards rhythm, but for the most part, The Gold Hooped Nature is simply another breathtaking collection of minimal dronemusic, from an unsung modern master.
Packaged in a beautiful silkscreened gold on white gatefold cardstock sleeve and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Never got enough of these to list, which is a bummer, cuz this super limited tape, from local dronelord Davis, is really fantastic. But at least this way, a few of you can get your mitts on this gem, two side long sprawls of dreamy minimal ambient shimmery drone music, one side, guitar, field recordings and electronics, the other side just accordion and electronics. All subtly shifting tones, and hushed clouds of reverberating chordal drift, all blurred and smeared into dreamy streaks of soft focus sound.
Packaged in a cool, screen printed oversized sleeve/envelope, with a printed insert. Already out of print, got 3 copies, and that's all we'll ever have....
A beautiful document from last year's On Land festival, the Root Strata curated gathering of artists and sound artists and musicians. This particular set featured gorgeous home solarized super-8 film shot by John Davis throughout Northern California, while Davis and Maxwell Croy, one half of the duo that runs Root Strata, created their own complimentary soundtrack, a soft hazy dronescape of bowed strings, layered vibrations and hushed, barely-there melodies.
The images are really quite evocative, all washed out and softly distorted, like home movies, they have that sort of faded memory feeling, images of a lost time, and the solarizing process only further enhances that element, the slow shifting landscapes peppered with solar flares, deep red glows, the colors super saturated, flowers become miniature suns, fields of grass look like stained glass, or fields of green stars, all manner of foliage becomes more about texture and color, just softly swaying stretches of hazy burnt out shades of soft white, deep yellow, warm browns...
And the music perfect suits the images, tranquil and impressionistic, long tones underpin soft shards of melody, like a muted raga, the buzz blurred and smoothed out into gauzy streaks of sound, a koto gives the music a distinctly Eastern vibe, the tones like swells on a sonic sea, meditative and mesmerizing.
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! Housed in a cool oversized hand silkscreened jacket, with a printed insert and a strange accordion like inner dvd-sleeve.
12" single by local chanteuse hand numbered to 100
First of all, this album is undeniably incredible. Secondly, if you don't already own this or the expensive Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, buy it. For yourself, for friends, for your stuffed animals, whatever. Make sure you have a copy around you at all times. This album, the object of cult-like fascination for decades, is now remastered and easily available once again.
Inspired by his own deep passion for the art of boxing, Miles created this soundtrack in 1970 for the documentary about legend-in-his-own-time boxer, Jack Johnson. A time change in the very first couple of measures hints that the two twenty-five minute tracks here were captured mid-jam. Musicians involved on these sessions also worked on Bitches Brew (1969) and include John McLaughlin and his soon-to-be fellow Mahavishnu Orchestra member Billy Cobham on, respectively, guitar and drums; electric bassist Michael Henderson; soprano saxist Steve Grossman; accidental walk-in Herbie Hancock on Farfisa organ; and, on the second track, "Yesternow," an uncredited Sonny Sharrock on additional electric guitar. Jimi Hendrix was also meant to be involved but sadly shuffled off his mortal coil prior to the session. Even without the Hendrix element, Tribute is by far the closest Davis ever really came to ROCK. Not your typical white pop-song/performance-driven rock of the time (for instance, The Who and other artists who joined Davis at the legendary Isle of Wight festival in 1970), but a deep, spacious jazz funk rock fusion that one would absorb introspectively rather than conjure up an immediate energized reaction. This "music" was way ahead of its time. Rock audiences of the time couldn't fully grasp Davis' electric direction here, and on the flip side, jazz audiences/critics blasted him for his deviances from classic (acoustic) jazz. It may sound a little gratuitous, but honestly it's as totally mind-blowing today as it must of been then, perhaps and hopefully now more welcomed by a broader audience. Again, we must insist you BUY THIS NOW. You will not regret it.
Recorded from 1970-74 and shamefully, until now, only available as imports, this album, along with 4 other albums from Miles' kozmik groove electric period, has been properly issued. Limited edition format (which probably means they'll be available in 2 months, a little cheaper and in jewel cases) features the original gatefold LP graphics, digipak & booklet with new essays, rare & previously unpublished photos. Stretched out experimentation, sometimes ferocious, always enlightening. With the talents of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira, Joe Zawinul, Ron Carter, etc.
Sprawling (over two cds, and four years of recording, '69 to '72) jazz fusion classic from Miles & Co. (McLaughlin, Hancock, Shorter, Corea, Holland, Foster, Maupin, DeJohnette...), now finally reissued (in remixed and remastered to boot) as a domestic double cd release. Includes, as bonus tracks, 43 minutes of additional music otherwise only available on the "Complete Bitches Brew" 4-cd box set.
Recorded from 1970-74 and shamefully, until now, only available as imports, this album, along with 4 other albums from Miles' kozmik groove electric period, has been properly issued. Limited edition format (which probably means they'll be available in 2 months, a little cheaper and in jewel cases) features the original gatefold LP graphics, digipak & booklet with new essays, rare & previously unpublished photos. Stretched out experimentation, sometimes ferocious, always enlightening. With the talents of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira, Joe Zawinul, Ron Carter, etc.
Awesome six cd collection of over six and a half hours of sessions from 1972-1975 including 12 unreleased tracks. Includes the entire On The Corner album with related sessions, as well as tracks from Big Fun, and Get Up With It. Players from these sessions include Reggie Lucas, Michael Henderson, Chick Corea, Mtume, Herbie Hancock,
Jack DeJohnette, Lonnie Liston Smith, the mysterious (and thought to be missing) guitarist Dave Creamer and many others. 120 page full color booklet with essays and rare photos, packaged in a metal box with a raised relief version of the classic cover. Mind-Blowing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Recorded from 1970-74 and shamefully, until now, only available as imports, this album, along with 4 other albums from Miles' kozmik groove electric period, has been properly issued. Stretched out experimentation, sometimes ferocious, always enlightening. With the talents of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira, Joe Zawinul, Ron Carter, etc.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Miles last studio album before his 1975-81 "retirement", yet another stone classic in the field of '70s freak fusion jazz funk. Possibly Windy's favorite Miles album ever, with the gorgeous half hour long "He Loved Him Madly," and the talents of Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, John McLaughlin Mtume, Airto, and so many more. If you get just one Davis album from this era of his career, this is the one to buy. Promise. Get up with it indeed--now's your chance as it's been remixed, remastered, and most importantly, reissued (domestically, rather than via Japan).
Recorded from 1970-74 and shamefully, until now, only available as imports, this album, along with 4 other albums from Miles' kozmik groove electric period, has been properly issued. Limited edition format (which probably means they'll be available in 2 months, a little cheaper and in jewel cases) features the original gatefold LP graphics, digipak & booklet with new essays, rare & previously unpublished photos. Stretched out experimentation, sometimes ferocious, always enlightening. With the talents of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira, Joe Zawinul, Ron Carter, etc.
Deadly cool, existential, and cruelly absurd, Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (aka Lift To The Scaffold, or Elevator To The Gallows) is one of those brilliantly black humored French noir films about an ingenious murder plan gone awry due to a random turn of events. Directed by Louis Malle and starring Jeanne Moreau, this 1958 crime thriller also featured a beautifully understated score by Miles Davis. Working with French musicians on bass, piano and tenor saxophone, along with ex-pat American drummer Kenny Clarke, Davis alternates between mostly somber processionals with a slow stalking bass and plaintive trumpet motifs, to occasionally a scurrying and frenetic bop pace depicting the seductively modern lifestyle of these carefree and careless criminals. Davis handles the noirish vibe perfectly, resonating deeply with the doom-laden mood but with a light yet foreboding touch that draws you in and entraps you long before you realize you're a goner. Very Recommended!!!!!!
Recorded a few months before the release of 1970's astonishing Bitches Brew, these nine tracks have never been previously released (so don't confuse this album with heavily-post-produced Live at the Fillmore -- this live material has not been messed with).
With Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Chick Corea (Fender Rhodes electric piano), Dave Holland (bass), Jack deJohnette (drums), Airto Moreira (percussion) -- this album documents the first official recording from this lineup, one of Davis' great sextets. Within days Shorter would leave the group to found Weather Report with Joe Zawinul.
Highly recommended! Comes with a cool psychedelic slipcase.
Recorded from 1970-74 and shamefully, until now, only available as imports, this album, along with 4 other albums from Miles' kozmik groove electric period, has been properly issued. Limited edition format (which probably means they'll be available in 2 months, a little cheaper and in jewel cases) features the original gatefold LP graphics, digipak & booklet with new essays, rare & previously unpublished photos. Stretched out experimentation, sometimes ferocious, always enlightening. With the talents of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Airto Moreira, Joe Zawinul, Ron Carter, etc.
Predating his improvised jazz/funk experimentation of the 1970s, these love ballads have finally been collected into one consistently pretty listen.
You know when you buy a present for your boyfriend (or girlfriend) and it's really so you can enjoy it yourself -- also fondly called Homer Simpson gifting? Well, I have to admit my own HSG guilt, the gift being this Miles Electric dvd. Honestly, I wasn't really sure what to expect. But man, am I glad I bought it for "our" enjoyment. It's an incredible look inside later period (electric) Miles Davis. With in-depth and well-edited interviews of his Isle Of Wight era musicians (Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea) as well as Carlos Santana, and others, this documentary explains how the Electric took shape in the eyes of Miles, in the studio (with Bitches Brew) and in juxtoposition to the acoustic jazz establishment from which Miles' electricity exploded to a seriously unprepared audience.
The unfolding dramatization culminates with the 1970 Isle Of Wight Festival performance by Miles and his septet before 600,000 festival-goers in its 38 minute entirety. Some extra talking head style interviews give further explanation of Miles at that time. The film itself could be critiqued at length, though its interviews render such a full story, there should be no doubt of this documentary's importance.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
This 1972 Miles Davis album stands as one of our favorites and one of the most played at AQ over the years. And for good reason, it seriously is one of the most gritty, dirty, funked out jazz records of all time. Influenced by his then wife, Betty Davis's vision of raw, nasty funk, this was Miles at his most forward thinking, inventive, deep hitting, psychedelic and purely bad ass!
Part of the concept of On The Corner, was to try to get black youth engaged and brought back into the world of jazz, as Davis saw that the jazz scene was getting so straight laced, watered down and stale. This album really served as his biggest 'fuck you' to the jazz establishment, all the squares that wanted him to just make pretty sounds with his trumpet and not rock the boat. But Davis was interested in much more then what jazz was traditionally considered to sound like, as this is an album equally influenced by psychedelic rock, true funk, and spiritual ritualistic music.
It's an album that has found such a devoted and diverse following. Hip-Hop heads and krautrock alike count On The Corner as sacrosanct! Distorted guitar, fucked up organs, these sounds laid the foundation for so much of our favorite music of the last several decades. While Bitches Brew, always gets the most attention, On The Corner might just be THEE one, and quite possibly one of the most brilliant and game changing albums of all time!
Four cds packaged in a stunning full color book, bound with blue metal, in a silky fabric covered box.
A "reconstruction and mix translation" by Laswell, long awaited and hotly debated...
From the same label that brought us the amazing reissue of Lloyd Miller's A Lifetime In Oriental Jazz comes another killer collection, this one from Nathan Davis, a frustratingly under appreciated musician in the US, whose records for the most part remain out of print, but who in Europe was quite a sensation, performing with Eric Dolphy, Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke, Johnny Griffin, Sonny Stitt and loads more. This relative obscurity was due in part to Davis' avoidance of the limelight, as well as his early flight to Europe. But he would later return to the US and become a pioneer in Jazz education.
This collection gathers up some of Davis' best tunes, sonically varied, from bop to modal, spiritual jazz, seventies funk, even some ethnic Turkish jazz (which will for sure appeal to fans of that Lloyd Miller), which makes sense as he would become a professor of Ethnomusicology. The first half of the record is totally classic sounding, inspired and emotional, with cool passages of dark mystery butted up against soaring ebullience, as the record progresses, the sounds become more exotic, "A5" is a brooding moody drifter, very haunting and mysterious, with a distinctly 'exotica' feel, "Mandingo's Pad" offers up some gorgeous flute, over languid piano and slippery bass, "Uschimaus" is another flute driven number that sounds like an abstract version of "My Favorite Things", all shuffle-y and serene, "Cecen Kizi" sounds like it could have been taken from a Sublime Frequencies collection, funky and soulful and very Eastern sounding, while "Atlanta Walk" sounds like the soundtrack to a chase scene in a seventies cop show, and the last few tracks follow a similar path, dark and smoldery and funky, barring the record closer, an alternate version of "A5" that's way more raw and dirty, and a bit more sweaty and sultry. Killer stuff for sure. And like the Lloyd Miller, and incredible booklet packed with tons of liner notes, about the tracks, and Davis' life, photos as well, all part of a fantastic, and long overdue introduction to this unsung jazz legend.
From the obi: "Based in San Francisco, Davka is an acoustic group at the forefront of the new Jewish Rennaissance. These three masterful musicians have been performing modern Jewish music together since 1992 and Judith, their latest release, features their flowing melodic compostitions and magical interplay in ten distinctive compostitions drawing upon Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditions, jazz, and classical chamber music. Beautiful, soulful music performed with astonishing technique and passion.
Veteran San Francisco klezmer/jazz outfit Davka are certainly a good choice to take on the task of providing a soundtrack to the 1920 silent film classic Der Golem. Davka violinist Daniel Hoffmann wrote the score and performs it along with Paul Hanson on bassoon and clarinet, Kevin Mummey on dumbeq and zarb and Moses Sedler on cello. It's 32 short tracks seamlessly stitched together, ranging from almost loungey, exotica flavored sketches to more creepy and melancholic evocations -- but you could easily listen to this without getting creeped out, it doesn't come across like a horror-film score, just well-played, Old World influenced chamber jazz full of life, definitely for fans of John Zorn's Masada in their Bar Kokhba mode.
