Tuesday 21 July 2009

Photos from Jazz a Vienne







more photos from this series here :

www.myspace.com/mirabelwhite


all pics (c)Mirabel White

Tuesday 14 July 2009

New Review of Bird Head Son by Cyclic Defrost


The first thing that hits you is the funk, the throbbing urban grooves, taut, almost militant 70’s funk that drifts into the stirring power of spiritual and free jazz, even Afrobeat or bizarrely enough Calypso music. And then we meet Anthony Joseph. He is a poet. But you wouldn’t know it. He comes across like a New Orleans preacher, loud, proud, rousing, over the sweat and the sin of the music. His delivery is somewhere between Martin Luther King Jnr and Jimi Hendrix, these incredibly vivid spiritual street stories that build and swell with the music. Make no mistake he’s not thumbing earnestly through a dog eared excercise book, he’ll wail and sing, writhe and live the music. These are songs, not poetry put to music, where the music can just flow on instrumentally for long periods before Joseph will pop up with his unique wordplays. Jospeh is Trinidadian, based England, he even lectures in creative writing there, though it’s his super cool 7 piece band with horns, hand drums, wah guitar, organs and shakers that really takes this out of the classroom. They’ve really transcended the spoken word medium here, creating the kind of obscure rare groove record that crate diggers would go mad for if it was made thirty five years ago, like it sounds like it should have.

Bob Baker Fish

Thursday 9 July 2009

Robberman!