Jamie Kent - All American Mutt

Jamie Kent - All American Mutt 

URL: http://jamiekent.com/home 

The third album from Jamie Kent, All American Mutt, signals a new peak in Kent’s short career thus far. He has hacked out quite a trail for himself since his 2009 debut with the release Neoteny and the latest studio platter amply illustrates his development as a performer and songwriter. Kent has distilled his passions and aims down to their purest essence and possesses an unique style that spans virtually the entirety of American music instead of confining himself to some narrow artistic corner of the genre. Rock, country, funk, blues, and folk exist side by side here in often various permutations. David Brainard, a respected Grammy nominated producer, mans the boards for Kent and helps stage these songs in the best possible sonic light. Only one song out of the ten is not written by Kent alone. 

Such all encompassing efforts make for singular releases. “All American Mutt” is a bit of a cataloging song, but it chooses a varied target and basically turns this track in a sweeping melodic assessment of his own place in American life. Kent’s singing has a relaxed confidence you can discern from the first line and sometimes it seems like someone grinning from ear to ear, reveling a little in his own facility with the language and music. “Look Up” is the exact opposite as a composition. The opener never sounds cluttered, but this first ballad never risks cluttering for a single second of its duration. The song is able to breathe free and easy and it gives room for Kent’s voice to move around. His emotive skills are outstanding but never overdramatize the lyrical situation. He paints things with a broader brush on the unabashedly commercial “Last Call”, but it never gets painfully obvious. Following it with “Home Again” is a surprising move. The arrangement is pure yearning honkytonk that never lays possible affectations on too thick and emphasizes its melody.  

Fiddle, banjo, and mandolin form an unlikely instrumental trio to get “Be Your Man” over with the listeners thanks to its colorful and quirky sonic charm. Listeners will be able to hear the genuine relish that Kent takes in singing this song. The folk-influenced singer/songwriter balladry of “Safe” can scarcely be better conceived. The precise and often quite lyrical acoustic guitar matches itself up nicely against Kent’s voice and the spaciousness of the musical arrangement gives it a nicely dramatic quality. “Red Rover”, however, is the album’s best ballad. It proceeds slowly and with great patient while vocalists Kent and Michaela Anne focus on their phrasing with such success that their aesthetic beauty of their voices is easily a secondary concern. There’s a last jolt for listeners buried deep in the track list with “Sheila”. Huey Lewis and his horn section from backing band The News team up with Kent to unleash their gleeful ode to a bad news heartbreaker. It isn’t anything older music fans haven’t heard before, but Kent and his partners on the song pull it off with great panache. There’s something for any listener on All American Mutt. 

YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFsTZPzDrSZPXssFysbxdnQ

Scott Wigley

Alessandro Coli - I Betcha'

Alessandro Coli - I Betcha' 

URL: http://www.alessandrocoliofficial.com/

Alessandro Coli’s career path was forged early on and he is pursuing his dream with a singleness of purpose and the talent to back it up. The Italian born nineteen year old began his mainstream career with an appearance on the national Italian television show Io Canto and garnered a ton of attention from that appearance. He soon signed to Sony Music and released highly successful recordings in Italian and only made his American language debut with the early 2016 release of “Flames”. The first entry into English music proved to be quite successful and earned him a spot on the Billboard charts as well thanks to the efforts of collaborator and multi-platinum producer Chris “C-Rod” Rodriguez. His second single “I Betcha” builds on the success of that song and shows a demonstrable step forward in its clear sincerity and strong songwriting.

Bringing an entire genre’s game a full step up might seem like a fool’s errand. If so, thankfully no one told Alessandro Coli. This performer served notice that he intends to make it on a global scale and proved with the release of “Flames” that he will give the best possible effort to realize that dream. He succeeds spectacularly well here thanks to the strong confluence of every essential element – the electronic musical arrangement and his vocals share equal footing in the mix and renowned producer Chris Rodriguez is, undoubtedly, once again a major force in shaping the work like he was on Coli’s English language debut. It’s memorable to hear how the intensity of the music takes on a slow rise and Coli’s vocals joins in the ascension but uses great judgment in perfectly modulating his voice against the electronic instruments.

The synthesizers, bass pulse, and drums pop with immediacy and will undoubtedly sound massive piped through some massive speakers. Another of the song’s finest qualities is the slightly gritty edge in the mix, the spike in its punch, that strengthens the effect of the lyrics. Coli has a total vocal command and gives the song a hard nudge at key points that are particularly effective. The lyrics are surprisingly artful for the genre as well. There aren’t any unnecessary poetic flourishes, naturally, but Coli communicates his tale of woe with understated elegance that nevertheless retains a conversational tone.  

Alessandro Coli’s second effort into the American market sets him up as one of the major talents going forward in the dance music scene and his rise will only continue. “I Betcha” has some real sophistication in both the music and the lyrics and Coli gives it the final touch with a supreme vocal turn. It never tries to take over the performance and shows the instincts of a musician far older than his nineteen years. It’s rather thrilling to imagine where Coli can take this from here, but there’s no question he has yet to fully realize his considerable talents.   

SPOTIFY: https://play.spotify.com/album/1JwYPVh1YCMBpk6bIXUszi?play=true&utm_source=open.spotify.com&utm_medium=open 

William Elgin III

Phantom Phunk - Arboles Ossific

Phantom Phunk - Arboles Ossific 

URL: http://www.phantomphunk.com 

Phantom Phunk have landed on the national music scene with Arboles Ossific, a highly individual and willfully independent musical effort that challenges listener’s expectations while never failing to entertain those willing to stick with its numerous twists and turns. The band has only been together since 2014 when songwriters and longtime friends Sasha Cheine and Hector Alexander convened to flesh out songwriting ideas and decided to begin working on this project in earnest. They soon realized that their collaboration was blossoming to a point where recruiting sympathetic collaborators became a must and, after a brief search, rounded out the lineup with drummer Nick Emiliozzi and guitarist Juan Gonzalez. Their work writing and assembling this release has produced a wildly eclectic outing that takes on too much for its own good but, shockingly, never makes a single misstep.  

“Snowy in Florida” touches on the recent mass shooting in the Orlando area but never in a heavy-handed way. This is much more of an emotional reaction to the world we unfortunately inhabit today given shape in song and the highly musical cacophony of changes packed into a relatively small space never overwhelms the listener. They know how to alternate moods on this album and the second song “Sip of Wine” is proof. This is a dream-like and exquisitely woven piece relying much more on subtlety that instrumental prowess to deliver its romantic sentiments. The album’s first single, “The Unheard Spirit Symphony”, would have made an excellent album title and the track clearly is geared towards airplay without ever sounding overly calculated or dishonest. The uptempo rush of its charging rhythm section and guitar work perfectly matches Sasha Cheine’s vocals.

“Looping” has a slightly disjointed feel at first, but the song quickly makes its musical intentions clear and excels further on the back of another quality Cheine vocal. They once again show their skill at manipulating the audience’s attention with its follow up, “Brother’s Keeper”, which recalls the earlier track “Sip of Wine” with its invoking of a delicate mood, even if the mood here is considerably bleaker than before. They take another slightly surprising turn with the instrumental “Distant Kaleidoscopes” and it gives listeners an opportunity to hear their melodic talents in full view without the added distraction of vocals and lyrics. The second to last song on the album, and for all intents and purposes its climax, “Tommy’s Cosmic Avocado” is a long musical piece that moves through a variety of atmospheres and moods that never lose their coherence despite the long duration.  

Phantom Phunk seem to be bursting with ideas and energy and undoubtedly this supplies their debut with many of its surprises. This is relentlessly optimistic music in some ways. Phantom Phunk are clearly a collective of musicians who believe nothing is beyond their grasp and, even if some songs deal with heavier subject matter, they clearly position their songwriting as a strike back against settling for second best. This is a band that’s aiming for the highest peaks they can find. 

9 out of 10 stars. 

AMAZON:  https://www.amazon.com/Arboles-Ossific-Phantom-Phunk/dp/B01M4Q2TE0 

Dale Butcher

Project-TO - The White Side, The Black Side

Project-TO - The White Side, The Black Side
 

DISCOGS: https://www.discogs.com/Project-To-The-White-Side-The-Black-Side/master/1061342

The Italian based collective Project-TO, a trio whose membership includes producer Riccardo Mazza, keyboardist Carlo Bagini, and filmmaker Laura Pol, have released a debut album that will surely rank among the widest reaching expressions of techno music’s artistic potential we have yet heard. The White Side, The Black Side is a study in contrast, but it’s much more. It is almost a painterly exercise with sound as the trio recorded a dozen songs consciously divided into two groups of six – the white side and the black side. The white side features an inspired, yet arch-traditionalist approach to techno – the big beats, bright keyboard and synth textures, and incessant rhythms that never relent from first note to last. The black side, naturally, features these same elements only stripped down to their essentials and given a decidedly darker shade than heard on the white side. The experiment comes off flawlessly and results in one of the most substantial recording achievements of 2016.
 

The opener “I Hope” takes its title from a Hilary Clinton quote that finds its way into the mix as a spoken word sample. The use of such techniques gives the track a slight avant garde edge, but pretentiousness never weighs down any of the album’s twelve cuts. The fat beats, unlike the typical dry sound you customarily hear with this style of music, resound with warmth and presence while still pushing the song hard towards its inevitable conclusion. The black version of the track features a similar tempo, but the spoken word samples are much fewer and, when they arise, heavily distorted. The density of the white version gives way to a thicker, but much more spartan sound, reliant on fewer separate keyboard and synth lines. “Look Further” has a strong vocal presence, but it is heavily treated with electronics and fully integrated into the mix. The percussion presence in the song is as strong as ever, but keyboardist Carlo Bagini explores a much wider dynamic range here than heard on the earlier songs. The black version drops the vocal presence entirely and, instead, pursues a much more bare bones approach intent on creating atmosphere. It succeeds wildly.
 

The vocals return on the white side’s “Rebirth” and segue into some quasi-rock posturing interlaced, naturally, with the busy percussion, but the truly powerful element driving the track is Mazza’s and Bagini’s wise and knowing manipulation of dynamics. “Rebirth” snakes its way through a variety of astutely placed dramatic shifts. “Black Rebirth”, in contrast, maintains a much straighter line of attack – the manipulations heard on the white side are much fewer and, when they do happen, much more subtle. One doesn’t often attach the adjective “subtle” to a description of techno music, but Project-TO is not your typical practitioners of the style. The multimedia nature of this release and the obviously uncluttered creative vision of the songwriting and performances alike show the trio to be proudly standing on the cutting edge of the form. The White Side, The Black Side deserves your attention. 
 

9 out of 10 stars
 

MUSICALNEWS: http://www.musicalnews.com/articolo.php?codice=34268&sz=4

Scott Wigley

Saint Blasphemer - Simon Templar

URL: http://www.saintblasphemer.com/ 

Southern California is home to a lot of things and, unfortunately, has suffered from the ills of the same heroin epidemic that’s swept so many areas in the United States. Saint Blasphemer’s debut release Simon Templar is a five song EP that chronicles the lyrical and musical reactions to a plethora of deaths and destroyed lives resulting from this epidemic. Fronted by vocalist and lyricist Thomas Monroe, the band and singer alike create a cohesive vision of a modern American hell. The unsparing language and detail thankfully resist any glamorization of a subject that, frankly, possesses no glamour whatsoever,. John Castellon leads the way musically but he has two able partners in bassist Steve Shell and drummer Steve Ybarra. The production highlights their ability to combine pulverizing power with the ability to move with surprising fluidity and it isn’t every band, whatever style, able to pull it off. 

It kicks off at a high level of intensity and only occasionally lets up. “Nullify” is a particularly churning, tormented song, but Hudson’s lyrics don’t abandon hope entirely. There’s some fight buried beneath the withering depiction of a drug addict’s life and the music does a first class job of sonically embodying that lifestyle. Castellon’s six string work stands out in the song and it never runs on too long. “Simon Templar”, the title track, stretches out a little more in comparison but eschews the guitar theatrics heard in the first song. Despite the fact that the arrangements share similar tempos, it’s obvious that Saint Blasphemer is taking much more care here to invoke atmosphere. The lyrical content is full of imagery, but it is the storytelling aspect that leaps out most vividly. Hudson’s voice often interjects itself into the songwriting and does it again here.

 The third song “Scarecrow” is a much more tightly wound and focused than the preceding tracks, but it also plays more with light and shade. It has a more theatrical air than the earlier songs as well. The writing has painfully vivid detail and Monroe attacks the listener with often repellant imagery that brings home the reality of an addict’s use with more clarity than we’ve heard so far. Their experiments with different textures expand with the EP’s second to last song “A Perfect Rose”. The song’s imagery is somewhat familiar, particularly the rose, but his personality shapes the song in a much different direction than it might have otherwise followed. “Breaking Just to Bend” continues the EP’s tradition of lyrics with strongly physical imagery and the intelligence burning through the text and music alike cannot be denied. Simon Templar is a well constructed and written first release from a band of longtime music veterans who clearly share the same artistic vision. There are few debuts with such a well-rounded sense of completion. Southern California has produced a lot of quality music acts over the years and Saint Blasphemer is ready now to join that august company.  

9 out of 10 stars  

YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGRHaA35Ylw 

Scott Wigley

Sterling Witt – Satyagraha

URL: http://www.sterlingwitt.com/ 

Rock and roll hasn’t died by a long shot and one of its many cousins, punk rock music, has fertile ground in these modern times to make the same incendiary impression that has long defined the form. Classifying Sterling Witt, however, as a punk rocker alone is a grievous mistake. Much of this album has an almost singer/songwriter bent, albeit filtered through muscular guitar work and raw, open-wound production work, but these sonic elements never change the fact that much of Witt’s songwriting is engaged with complex themes and thorny philosophical issues that Witt admirably boils down to their essence. The thirteen songs on his fifth full length studio effort Satyagraha gain much from their presentation – the aforementioned production virtues and the physical music – but the burning heart of these songs is Witt’s actual voice and the imposingly intelligent lyrical content that is also brash, street smart, and unafraid. "Perception Deception” starts Satyagraha with an excellent illustration of the musical and lyric excellence dominating the release. It also introduces listeners to the album’s predominant theme of what exactly is truth and who do we hear it from in this modern life. Witt never frames things pretentiously. Instead, these tough subjects are explored with carefully chosen language that somehow manages to shrink their implications into a comprehensible and abbreviated form. “Who Do You Listen To?” continues the theme with an impressive musical performance that finds Witt and his two musical compatriots weaving their way through some challenging tempo changes that never leave them undone or unable to connect with the listener. Witt avoids a lot of the heavy-handedness so common to these sorts of lyrics from other writers – he has a point and makes it with little, if any, excess baggage.  

“Let Love Out” begins with great gentleness, befitting the song’s title, but soon segues into some more fire breathing guitar work that finds the melody quickly and never lets go. Witt is a master of juxtaposing his smart, sometimes denunciatory lyrical content with well-conceived melodies, but the contrast is flipped here with the positive message of the song strongly contrasting the gritty musical attack. On the other hands, “Just So You Know” is one of the angrier tracks on the album both musically and lyrically, but even when the songwriting mood darkens, melody remains the first priority. “Safe to Say” is, arguably, the purest punk moment on the album and easily the peak of Witt’s rage against the modern world, but his aim finds its target and, despite the short running time and fierce musical attack, this remains a coherent track from beginning to end.  

“I Love You More Every Day” is a fantastic power rock number with strong commercial attributes thanks to the ever-present melody and unity of its guitar work. Everything that goes on in these songs flows off of his guitar and never disappoints. There is a solid social and personal message in Satyagraha’s songs, but the musical content wins listeners over at every turn. If you are a fan of intelligent punk rock with balls to spare, this album won’t disappoint.  

9 out of 10 stars.

I-TUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/satyagraha/id1055698195 

David Shouse

TnT Music - Pieces

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/TolbertToz  

New York based songwriter Joy Tolbert and Pennsylvania resident Tim Toz have written more than a dozen songs since beginning their Internet collaboration. A chance encounter and mutual admiration formed on the Soundcloud website led to their earliest efforts and it quickly became apparent to both artists that they experienced an unique chemistry when working together that had no natural antecedent in their lives. The latest release from their partnership, “Pieces”, is distinctly modern, yet the most significant reason for its success is how artfully it obeys rock and roll’s expectations while still peppering the mix with added instrumental voices. While the songwriting embraces fundamentals and makes great use of them, Toz and Tolbert aren’t content produced canned, paint by numbers rock tracks. Instead, “Pieces” has hints of a higher sensibility noticeable in the mix. The production chores, largely handled by Toz, are discharged exceptionally well – “Pieces” never sounds anything less than outstanding. 

A swell of keyboards and voices in orchestrated harmony open the song before exploding in a full-born guitar fanfare. The sound is sleek and sharply defined. Toz plays with a great deal of lyricism and melody before the introduction ends and they move without a hiccup into the first verse. The blaring electric guitar work dissipates into jangling acoustic guitar, but the melody never disappears. Tolbert’s vocal melody is extraordinarily well suited for this work – her voice falls snugly between the spaces and rolls in lockstep with the playing. The lyrics, likewise, weave well around the musical content. There’s something in the arrangement that brilliantly mimics the rise and fall of human emotion and Tolbert zeros in that, particularly on the chorus. 

Her vocal performance is largely understated, but she unleashes the full force of her throat and lungs on the chorus and bridges. Even then, however, she never goes completely over the top – instead, she continues listening to the lyrics and attempts exactly matching her vocal to the drama inherent to the arrangement. She knows when to turn up the temperature and when to back off into a more nuanced approach. Songs like this can easily collapse into total melodrama, but mature songwriters and performers like Toz and Tolbert know exactly how to play such moments. As a result, one never experiences the feeling of being pandered to and finishes the song feeling fully satisfied.  

The musical and emotional fireworks conjured by TnT Music have tremendous commercial appeal, but they are likewise the result of artistic depth. There are superficial things galore to admire about this song, but its truest rewards come with multiple listens. There isn’t a single word or note out of place throughout. TnT Music shows, conclusively, that chemistry isn’t always about being in the same room together – creativity is no respecter of miles or postal code. They’ve captured something quite special with their teaming up and will likely continue to score big with future releases. 

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Pieces-TNT/dp/B01KVMTEC6 

Dale Butcher