• Soul Jazz Tropicalia Rar Cover

Medeski, Scofield, Martin & Wood – Juice (2014)FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/88.2 kHz Time – 01:03:35 minutes 1,16 GB Genre: JazzStudio Master, Official Digital Download Source:HDTracks Digital Booklet, Front coverLabel: Indirecto RecordsWhen Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood joined forces again to record a new album, they sought common ground and inspiration in the intersection of improvisation and rhythms from the Afro-Latin diaspora. Their kinship both onstage and off has fostered an escalating degree of musical interplay, exquisitely captured on Juice – their third studio effort and fourth album overall.The third studio meeting in nearly 17 years between Medeski, Martin & Wood and guitarist John Scofield has no easy referent to their earlier recordings — purposely. This quartet sounds like a real band on Juice, which is a mixed blessing. The positive aspect is that this longtime collaboration creates near instinctive communication.

This is a much more inside date, though the rhythmic interplay between bassist Chris Wood and drummer Billy Martin is outstanding throughout. There are four covers from the 1960s scattered among the various originals; some work better than others. One is “Sham Time,” an Eddie Harris tune. The obvious inspiration, though, is Willie Bobo’s version from the 1968 album A New Dimension.

This quartet does it justice with spark, crackle, groove, and grease. The driving organ vamp on Scofield’s “New London” offers a British rave-up wedded to Brazilian funk and Latin boogaloo. The solos by the guitarist and John Medeski are lyrical, tight, and flow right out of one another. Martin’s “Louis the Shoplifter” is populated with killer interlocking salsa grooves between him and Medeski (who evokes Eddie Palmieri’s experimetnal side in his playing) amid knotty changes. Wood’s bassline develops along the drummer’s pumping, double-time snare and syncopated breaks. Scofield’s solo roils with serpentine post-bop shards.

“Juicy Lucy,” a group composition, finds Scofield taking “Louie Louie” as inspiration. Medeski builds on it with excellent montunos, contrasting mid-’60s Latin R&B with early rock & roll. The fingerpopping exchanges between Wood, Martin, and guest conguero Pedrito Martinez are nasty and tight. Wood’s “Helium” is the strangest, perhaps most compelling thing here, comprised of angular harmonies, arpeggiated, nearly fusion-esque statements from guitarist and pianist, and a whomping bassline. Martin’s forro-esque pulse — that borders on the martial — locks it down. The cultural baggage associated with the Doors’ “Light My Fire” is too great for even these musicians to transcend, and with a straight rock chart, it feels tossed off.

Conversely, the reading of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” at nearly 11 minutes, contains an imaginative arrangement that makes the listener almost forget the original. Martin’s and Wood’s slow, rocksteady reggae groove is downright steamy. Scofield works a spooky blues vamp that unwinds slowly into fragmented solos while Medeski gets swampy on the organ, stating the melody tersely with one hand, and improvising with the other. Finally, engineer Danny Bloom adds a remix with loads of reverb and echo, making it a tripped-out dubwise jam. The guitarist’s funky “Stovetop” is an excellent modernist revisioning of post-tropicalia samba jazz with all members finding plenty of room to move inside it, Martinez’s congas add fand heat. While Juice is mostly engaging and satisfying, the pervasive “let’s just see what happens” approach MSMW took here also has a downside: it delivers a self-contented vibe rather than one of discovery that their previous records revealed in spades.

–Thom Jurek, AllMusicFor over two decades, keyboardist John Medeski, percussionist Billy Martin and bassist Chris Wood’s abiding fascination with the endless possibilities of groove-based music has taken them from intimate jazz clubs to outdoor festival stages. Their eclectic efforts have included a number of high-profile collaborations; the most prolific and successful has been with esteemed guitarist John Scofield. Following the concert performances issued as In Case the World Changes Its Mind (Indirecto, 2011), Juice is their fourth album together since 1998’s pace setting A Go Go (Verve).Where their previous studio recording, Out Louder (Indirecto, 2006), emphasized collaboratively written pieces, this session focuses on individually penned numbers and a handful of choice covers, unified by a concentration on infectious Latin rhythms culled from the African diaspora. This song-oriented approach differs dramatically from the spontaneously conceived free-form structures of Woodstock Sessions, Vol. 2 (Woodstock Sessions, 2014), the trio’s dynamic live-in-the-studio experiment with another equally revered guitarist, Nels Cline.Juice opens with a buoyant rendition of Eddie Harris’ soul jazz classic “Sham Time,” establishing the date’s celebratory mood and sense of camaraderie from the start, fortified by Scofield’s bluesy lyricism, the shimmering warmth of Medeski’s vintage analog keyboards, Wood’s supple contributions and Martin’s shuffling backbeats. Reinforcing the set’s festive atmosphere, “Juicy Lucy” even borrows the iconic riff from “Louie Louie,” transposing the indelible theme into a slinky Afro-Cuban vamp bathed in a scrim of dancehall reverb.In addition to a half-dozen original compositions, ranging from the swinging “North London” to the introspective ballad “I Know You,” the record includes three covers of legendary classic rock tunes.

Although using post-war era pop songs as source material for jazz improvisation is hardly a novel concept, how creatively such warhorses are reinterpreted often determines their level of artistic merit.Recast as nostalgic Americana, Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin’” is given a mellow, gospel-inflected reading that sounds downright Frisellian. Their rhapsodic interpretation of The Doors’ “Light My Fire” on the other hand, builds from lite funk to an electrifying climax (courtesy of Scofield’s progressively heated fretwork), but it’s the psychedelic dub deconstruction of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” that is the most impressively reimagined of the three.Considering its winning combination of tuneful melodies, danceable rhythms and earthy textures, Juice is Medeski, Scofield, Martin & Wood’s most appealing, cohesive and consistently engaging release to date.

–Troy Collins, All About JazzTracklist:1 Sham Time 05:462 North London 06:363 Louis the Shoplifter 06:124 Juicy Lucy 07:075 I Know You 08:036 Helium 04:067 Light My Fire 05:378 Sunshine of Your Love 10:559 Stovetop 05:3210 The Times They Are A-Changin’ 03:41Personnel:John Medeski: keyboardsJohn Scofield: guitarBilly Martin: drums, cuica, talking drum, caxixi and guiroChris Wood: bassDownload:or.

In a genre of music dominated by sales of compilation records, The Best of Acid Jazz is one of those rare records that lives up to its title. For anyone new to the world of Acid Jazz (or unaware of exactly what 'Acid Jazz' means), this record provides a pleasant mix of sounds from various elements of the Acid Jazz scene. There is not a bad song to be heard. The tight sounds one should expect from a quality Acid Jazz issue are mixed here with powerfully soulful vocals to create classic sounds throughout this record.

Soul Jazz Tropicalia Rar Cover

If you are exploring Acid Jazz for the first time or simply want to expand your horizons, I cannot recommend better first step than The Best of Acid Jazz.