Really good record, growing on every listen.
HYPNOTIC BRASS ENSEMBLE - Book Of Sound
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With its cathedral-like, richly resonant acoustics, the new Hypnotic Brass Ensemble album Book Of Sound is a brilliant expression of this interplanetary principle. The album is by turns urgent and contemplative, funky and reflective, varied in its textures; but entirely of one piece. Underpinned by concepts of earth's place in the cosmos, held in place by meditation, swirling with notions of history, science, theology, ancestry, there is a rich conceptual brew here. The album rings with what back in the 1950s the jazz critic Whitney Balliet called "the sound of surprise". Book Of Sound makes you believe again in the validity of "spiritual jazz". Talking to Cid, one of the Ensemble's two trombonists, one phrase recurs: "back to the beginning". "We wanted to go back to the beginning, when we were kids, real young, and our father would wake us up at 5AM to practice for two hours before breakfast." One outcome -- initially unplanned but subsequently embraced -- is that unlike their two previous albums on Honest Jon's, this is an album without a drummer. "When we started, as Wolf Pack, just brothers on the street with our horns, there wasn't a kit in sight." Book Of Sound retains plenty of rhythmic heft, but the absence of a drummer opens up space for a notably varied instrumental palette. Acoustic guitar, piccolo, synthesizer, alto sax -- all have their place on the album. Most striking perhaps are the vocal lines that thread through the album and give it a palpable warmth. Sessions were recorded in Brooklyn and Chicago, and brilliantly mixed at Abel Garibaldi's studio in the Loop, and it's the Hypnotic's hometown that permeates. For Cid this is a deeply Chicago record: "It's got the vibe of the lake, the vibe of the prairies opening up to the west." It also has the vibe of those Sun Ra Arkestra albums recorded in Chicago in the 1950s, and -- of course -- the Phil Cohran albums from the 1960s. It's Phil Cohran (the father of all seven members of the Ensemble and their first teacher, and not just in music) who is the album's guiding spirit. For Cid it's a major regret that, in the months before their father's death early in 2017, Phil was not well enough to play on the album. But Book Of Sound is a magnificent testament to their Cohran legacy.
The Stallion - The Dark Side Of The Wall
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All hail the debut release from The Stallion! The Stallion is Ben Wallers and Alastair Mackinven of the Country Teasers. For two years they labored at the legendary Hit Factory recording studios in London as their schedule allowed. The project at hand was their long-planned / often-threatened The Dark Side Of The Wall—a song for song interpretation of Pink Floyd’s 1979 album The Wall. At long last In The Red is proud to unveil the results.
It should surprise no one familiar with Ben Wallers’s work or record collection that he would choose this particular album to honor. The Wall’s influence has been noticeable in his music before (see “Spiderman In The Flesh” from the Country Teasers’ Empire Strikes Back album). The man likes his Floyd—he even rates The Final Cut as “brilliant”.
It should also surprise no one that Roger Waters’s compositions from The Wall take a morbid and twisted turn in the hands of Wallers and Mackinven. What was already a fairly dark and bleak piece of work becomes much darker and bleaker here. It’s also longer. Pink Floyd’s original contained 26 songs spread across four sides of long playing vinyl which, by comparison, was the same number of tracks as Pink Floyd’s four previous studio albums combined. The Stallion’s take on these same 26 selections spans six sides of vinyl. Mackinven says, “it’s longer so it’s better, right?”
This is a beautiful piece of work both aurally and aesthetically. Packaged in a gorgeous heavy duty double gatefold, this limited edition triple-vinyl package won’t be around long.
