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The Rhythm Junks in China!
Tomorrow the Belgian band The Rhythm Junks is leaving for a three week tour to China. On September 20th they will play in Shanghai at the JZ Festival, one of the main jazz festivals in China. On this festival they share the bill with Chinese bands as well as international artists like Incognito (UK), Eugene Hideaway Bridges (USA) and Gilles Peterson (UK). After Shanghai they will head for Hangzhou, Changsha and Guangzhou, all together about 3000 kilometres.
When the programmer of the famous JZ Club in Shanghai travelled to London to scout Sonny Rollins for the JZ Festival, he accidentally bumped into the latest Rhythm Junks album. Eventually it wasn't Sonny Rollins who got invited, but The Rhythm Junks. This year the third edition of the JZ Festival will take place and up to 20.000 visitors are expected.
BLOG:
You can follow the adventures of The Rhythm Junks in China on their blog therhythmjunks.blogspot.com.
20/09/2008 SHANGHAI (CN)
26/09/2008 HANGZHOU (CN)
28/09/2008 HANGZHOU (CN)
01/10/2008 CHANGSHA (CN)
02/10/2008 CHANGSHA (CN)
04/10/2008 GUANGZHOU (CN)
05/10/2008 GUANGZHOU (CN)
BB King - One Kind Favor
I haven't purchased a BB King record in years. I got tired of the sanitised sound, the "let's invite pop stars" thing and generally the lack of anything new or genuine in these releases. When I want to hear some hot BB King I listen to his 60s stuff like Live at the Regal. But when I read that T-Bone Burnett was producing this new album One Kind Favor, I thought I'd give it a chance. I don't regret it one bit!
One Kind Favor is undoubtedly BB's best album in the last 20 years or more. OK, so I just said I haven't listened to any of his recent releases. So let's just say that listening to this record feels like finding a BB I thought was lost forever.
First of all, the arrangements are superb. You can't quite say they sound dirty, that's not exactly the BB King franchise, but they don't have that mechanical cleanness that has marred his recent stuff, this crispy, radio-friendly thing that I find utterly boring. This record has guts. The double-bass sounds muted and a little imprecise, the drums are not too forward (despite the two drummers credited on each track), the horns aren't all-pervasive, they support the song rather than drown it. In other words, well-thought arrangements that aren't clinical.
And BB's having fun, and you can hear it. Sure he doesn't have the virtuosity of his 30s. But his guitar playing is from the heart on this record, he's not just playing on automatic. And his voice is still there, more gruff than way back, but warm and fat as ever. The choice of repertoire is good as well, with hard-hitting pieces not commonly associated with BB like How Many More Years, more soulful stuff like the superb Sitting on Top of the World and more generally covers from the jazzier side of blues.
This is a keeper. BB's still got it and that makes me glad.
Silence...
In music, silence is often under-appreciated, but I suspect you might not see it that way, so I wanted to apologise for my silence over the last month. There are many good (and some bad) reasons, but what it boils down to mostly is that for the first time this year I had the urge to take some holidays not only from my work obligations but from any kind of obligations. Including blogging.
Things that are coming in the next few weeks though are:
- a review of Greg Szlapcynski's Road Movie(s), out later this month
- a review of Gutpuppet 4 (at long last)
- the Moriarty podcast which has been in the works for way too long (and made me discover some unexpected field recording issues...)
So I guess it's welcome back to me and from me!
