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Friday, April 1, 2016
Kiran Arora - (2015) Embarrassment To The Sport CS
Destructive noise recalling mostly curdled milk, upsetting more sensitive stomachs. Kiran’s operations on a guitar stand apart from the more uninspired mass of ‘guitar noise’ available. The sounds instead say something like ‘you were never going to make the team to begin with’ or ‘fuck you.’ They constitute their own force like an all-too-usual heatwave. Nothing to be embarrassed about anyway. You’re getting better everyday.
Kiran Arora - (2015) Pain Empowerment CS
Useless cassette of ratchet feedback scrape and ragged foot dragged drones of warped steel and empty squall. Teetering between ear shreding screech and sizzle to undulating low end bends all subsiding to parkside serenity. los angeles artist Oxen affiliate.
Donny Hathaway - (1970) Everything Is Everything LP
Already a respected arranger and pianist who'd contributed to dozens of records (by artists ranging from the Impressions to Carla Thomas to Woody Herman), with this debut LP Donny Hathaway revealed yet another facet of his genius -- his smoky, pleading voice, one of the best to ever grace a soul record. Everything Is Everything sounded like nothing before it, based in smooth uptown soul but boasting a set of excellent, open-ended arrangements gained from Hathaway's background in classical and gospel music. (Before going to Howard University in 1964, his knowledge of popular music was practically non-existent.) After gaining a contract with Atco through King Curtis, Hathaway wrote and recorded during 1969 and 1970 with friends including drummer Ric Powell and guitarist Phil Upchurch, both of whom lent a grooving feel to the album that Hathaway may not have been able to summon on his own (check out Upchurch's unforgettable bassline on the opener, "Voices Inside (Everything Is Everything)"). All of the musical brilliance on display, though, is merely the framework for Hathaway's rich, emotive voice, testifying to the power of love and religion with few, if any, concessions to pop music. Like none other, he gets to the raw, churchy emotion underlying Ray Charles' "I Believe to My Soul" and Nina Simone's "To Be Young, Gifted and Black," the former with a call-and-response horn chart and his own glorious vocal, the latter with his own organ lines. "Thank You Master (For My Soul)" brings the Stax horns onto sanctified ground, while Hathaway praises God and sneaks in an excellent piano solo. Everything Is Everything was one of the first soul records to comment directly on an unstable period; "Tryin' Times" speaks to the importance of peace and community with an earthy groove, while the most familiar track here, a swinging jam known as "The Ghetto," places listeners right in the middle of urban America. Donny Hathaway's debut introduced a brilliant talent into the world of soul, one who promised to take R&B farther than it had been taken since Ray Charles debuted on Atlantic.
Donny Hathaway - (1972) Live LP
Donny Hathaway's 1972 Live album is one of the most glorious of his career, an uncomplicated, energetic set with a heavy focus on audience response as well as the potent jazz chops of his group. The results of shows recorded at the Troubadour in Hollywood and the Bitter End in New York, the record begins with Hathaway's version of the instant soul classic "What's Going On," Marvin Gaye's original not even a year old when Hathaway recorded this version. His own classic "The Ghetto" follows in short order, but stretches out past ten minutes with revelatory solos from Hathaway on electric piano. "Voices Inside (Everything Is Everything)" is another epic (14-minute) jam, with plenty of room for solos and some of the most sizzling bass work ever heard on record by Willie Weeks. Any new Donny Hathaway record worth its salt also has to include a radical cover, and Live obliges nicely with his deft, loping version of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy." The audience is as much a participant as the band here, immediately taking over with staccato handclaps to introduce "The Ghetto" and basically taking over the chorus on "You've Got a Friend." They also contribute some of the most frenzied screaming heard in response to any Chicago soul singer of the time (excepting only Jackie Wilson and Gene Chandler, of course). Hardly the obligatory live workout of most early-'70s concert LPs, Live solidified Hathaway's importance at the forefront of soul music.
Donny Hathaway - (1973) Extension Of A Man LP
Ranging from inner-city soul to orchestral grandeur to a bluesy ballad to easy-listening pleasantries, Extension of a Man was Donny Hathaway's most ambitious LP, the justly titled capstone to his phenomenal career. Coming, however, from one of soul music's most widely talented figures, this wasn't exactly a surprise; both of his previous studio full-lengths, Everything Is Everything and Donny Hathaway, treated soul as merely a starting point to express his multitude of ideas concerning music and arrangement, song and performance. On Extension of a Man, the ambition began and peaked with the opener, a six-minute orchestral piece titled "I Love the Lord; He Heard My Cry, Pts. 1-2." Arranged and orchestrated for 45 musicians by Hathaway himself, it applied the buoyant optimism of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue to a religious context, and segued smoothly into the transcendent "Someday We'll All Be Free," one of Hathaway's most beloved songs. The next two pieces, "Flying Easy" and "Valdez in the Country," were also Hathaway originals, first recorded during the late '60s as part of Chess studio groups; the first is a piece of pop-soul fluff lifted up by his superb reading, the second a smooth jazz-fusion jam with Hathaway illustrating on electric piano his excellent improv capabilities. "Love, Love, Love" and "Come Little Children" were the charting singles, the former a sublime love song heavily influenced by Marvin Gaye's What's Going On. Unfortunately, these disparate pieces, brilliant as they are, don't coalesce into a single work as well as on his masterpiece Everything Is Everything, but Hathaway never stops impressing with his conceptions of arrangement and performance. Crippled by depression, he would never release another solo album during the last five years of his life, though among the projects he'd hoped to record was the four-part concerto Life, to be performed by the Boston Pops Symphony Orchestra with him in the conductor's chair, and the score of an epic biblical film.
Donny Hathaway - (1980) In Performance LP
Though largely revered for his studio recordings, it was on-stage that Donny Hathaway truly became a giant diamond in a sea of gems. Much like his excellent 1972 Live recording and the stellar 2004 These Songs for You, Live!, In Performance features Hathaway taking his audience to church in a way that can only be described as unique, as he truly had an individual stage presence that few others could hope to rival. In Performance isn't necessarily better than those aforementioned excellent records, but it complements them extremely well, with gritty versions of "To Be Young, Gifted and Black" and "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" leading the charge. As usual, Hathaway's delivery is electric and as sincere as a soul artist could possibly get. In Performance's sole flaw is its length. When the audience applause from the finale, "Sack Full of Dreams," has faded, one is likely to find that the 40 minutes spent listening wasn't nearly enough -- a testament to how potent and powerful Hathaway was in his prime.
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