One Pic / One Song

Radiohead — Idioteque

Julien Lourau

The Rise [French] [2002]

Julien Lourau is a French saxophonist. This is the album that got me into jazz.

I have to say that the album is not quite consistent. The first half is outstanding when the second one looses a bit of its energy and swing that I love in the first six tracks.

Overall, this album is a brilliant example of smooth jazz.

The Saloon (Life Is Just a Game)

Banksy

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Two Pics / Two Songs

Grateful Dead - The Music Never Stopped



Grateful Dead - Fire On The Mountain

Ernest Ranglin

Below The Baseline [1996] 320kbps

Having some free time, I thought I could give you guys another golden record.

This album is the quintessence of rock steady which is a music genre that was really popular in Jamaica starting in the late sixties. Successor to Jamaican ska and precursor of reggae.

Ernest Ranglin is a guitarist virtuoso. Get it, you won't regret it -

Satta Massagana

Ball Of Fire

Surfin'

Charles Mingus

AH UM (1959) 320kbps

Time has come to upload some jazz. Here is an artist that I particularly like and who initiated me to jazz. Ah Um is an easier album to listen to if you are not used to listen to jazz. Therefore I would advice you to start with this one.

On the other hand, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is composed of only 5 songs, or 5 compositions I should say, the last one being over 18 minutes long. It will require a couple listenings to fully appreciate it.

Sublime album.

At least three became instant classics, starting with the irrepressible spiritual exuberance of signature tune "Better Get It in Your Soul," taken in a hard-charging 6/8 and punctuated by joyous gospel shouts. "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a slow, graceful elegy for Lester Young, who died not long before the sessions. The sharply contrasting "Fables of Faubus" is a savage mockery of segregationist Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, portrayed musically as a bumbling vaudeville clown (the scathing lyrics, censored by skittish executives, can be heard on Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus ). The underrated "Boogie Stop Shuffle" is bursting with aggressive swing, and elsewhere there are tributes to Mingus' three most revered influences: "Open Letter to Duke" is a suite of three tunes; "Bird Calls" is inspired by Charlie Parker; and "Jelly Roll" is an idiosyncratic yet affectionate nod to jazz's first great composer, Jelly Roll Morton. It simply isn't possible to single out one Mingus album as definitive, but Mingus Ah Um comes the closest. -Steve Huey, allmusic.com

At least three became instant classics, starting with the irrepressible spiritual exuberance of signature tune "Better Get It in Your Soul," taken in a hard-charging 6/8 and punctuated by joyous gospel shouts. "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a slow, graceful elegy for Lester Young, who died not long before the sessions. The sharply contrasting "Fables of Faubus" is a savage mockery of segregationist Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, portrayed musically as a bumbling vaudeville clown (the scathing lyrics, censored by skittish executives, can be heard on Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus ). The underrated "Boogie Stop Shuffle" is bursting with aggressive swing, and elsewhere there are tributes to Mingus' three most revered influences: "Open Letter to Duke" is a suite of three tunes; "Bird Calls" is inspired by Charlie Parker; and "Jelly Roll" is an idiosyncratic yet affectionate nod to jazz's first great composer, Jelly Roll Morton. It simply isn't possible to single out one Mingus album as definitive, but Mingus Ah Um comes the closest.

-Steve Huey, allmusic.com

THE BLACK SAINT AND THE SINNER LADY (1963) 320kbps

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is one of the greatest achievements in orchestration by any composer in jazz history. Chales Mingus consciously designed the six-part ballet as his magnum opus, and -- implied in his famous inclusion of liner notes by his psychologist -- it's as much an examination of his own tortured psyche as it is a conceptual piece about love and struggle. It veers between so many emotions that it defies easy encapsulation; for that matter, it can be difficult just to assimilate in the first place. Yet the work soon reveals itself as a masterpiece of rich, multi-layered texture and swirling tonal colors, manipulated with a painter's attention to detail. There are a few stylistic reference points -- Ellington, the contemporary avant-garde, several flamenco guitar breaks -- but the totality is quite unlike what came before it. Mingus relies heavily on the timbral contrasts between expressively vocal-like muted brass, a rumbling mass of low voices (including tuba and baritone sax), and achingly lyrical upper woodwinds, highlighted by altoist Charlie Mariano.

Within that framework, Mingus plays shifting rhythms, moaning dissonances, and multiple lines off one another in the most complex, interlaced fashion he'd ever attempted. Mingus was sometimes pigeonholed as a firebrand, but the personal exorcism of Black Saint deserves the reputation -- one needn't be able to follow the story line to hear the suffering, mourning, frustration, and caged fury pouring out of the music. The 11-piece group rehearsed the original score during a Village Vanguard engagement, where Mingus allowed the players to mold the music further; in the studio, however, his exacting perfectionism made The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady the first jazz album to rely on overdubbing technology. The result is one of the high-water marks for avant-garde jazz in the '60s and arguably Mingus' most brilliant moment.
by Steve Huey, allmusic.com

Serge Gainsbourg

Histoire de Melody Nelson [1971] [French]

Masterpiece.

An essential album for Gainsbourg and for french music as well. This album has been extremely influential to British rockers in the seventies. Probably not the best introduction to Gainsbourg's world but this album remains his masterpiece.

" Histoire de Melody Nelson‘s mix of freewheeling guitar, funk style bass guitar, near spoken word vocal delivery, and lush, deep orchestral string and choral arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier who composed almost the entire music in collaboration with Gainsbourg for the album, have proven to be highly influential amongst later francophone and anglophone musical performers." - Wikipedia

You don't need to speak a word of French to understand Histoire de Melody Nelson -- one needs only to look at the front cover (with its nearly pornographic portrait of a half-naked nymphet clutching a rag doll) or hear the lechery virtually dripping from Serge Gainsbourg's sleazily seductive voice to realize that this is the record your mother always warned you about, a masterpiece of perversion and corruption. A concept record exploring the story of -- and Gainsbourg's lust for -- the titular teen heroine, Histoire de Melody Nelson is arguably his most coherent and perfectly realized studio album, with the lush arrangements which characterize the majority of his work often mixed here with funky rhythm lines which underscore the musky allure of the music. Perhaps best described as a dirty old bastard's attempt to make his own R&B love-man's record along the lines of a Let's Get It On (itself still two years away from release), it's by turns fascinating and repellent, hilarious and grim, but never dull -- which, in Gainsbourg's world, would be the ultimate (and quite possibly the only) sin.

-AMG

Ballade de Melody Nelson