Artists as disparate as Radiohead and Dilla don’t often have the mutual and well-deserved honor of sharing writing credits on the same album, let alone on a jazz piano trio release like In My Element. It's taken an adventurous and intuitive musician, 27-year-old pianist/composer Robert Glasper, to reinvent the Jazz tradition of reworking pop standards by using source material not from the first half of …
Having won the favor of indie and dance music critics alike, I’m going to have to coin a new genre just for The Bird And The Bee. Ready? Retro-futurama-faux-bubblegum-pop. Like it? I do, like totally. The Bird And The Bee’s self-titled debut sounds like Thom Yorke on massive doses of Prozac (and Progesterone) or maybe a Stereolab/Beach Boys collabo. Producer Greg Kurstin sprinkles happy bells, …
Without a commercial recording or even a live gig—at last count their newest song on Myspace has only logged seven plays, at least three of which I can personally take responsibility for—The Lions are newly signed to Ubiquity Records, have an album scheduled for release this year, and are packing Afro-Caribbean soul heat. The Lions is the latest project of Los Angeles-based trumpeter/arranger Todd Simon, …
