Modern electric jazz and the funky soul of the '60s fuse into a rollicking trip down memory lane on WHERE WE COME FROM. Vital Information, the long- lived pet project of leader and world-renown drummer Steve Smith, make a distinctive change from their usual format of hard-edged fusion on this, their eighth album. The emphasis here is on the soulful instrumental grooves of their youth, the music that originally enticed these world-class musicians to take up their instruments in the first place. From the influence of Jimmy Smith, the Meters and Tony Williams' Lifetime, Smith and company serve up a spicy gumbo of groovy tunes and have a grand old time in the process.
Cardboard sleeve (mini LP) reissue from Bill Evans featuring the high-fidelity SHM-CD format (compatible with standard CD players) and the latest 24bit/96kHz digital remastering. Part of a 5-album Bill Evans SHM-CD cardboard sleeve reissue series featuring albums "I Will Say Goodbye," "Alone (Again)," "Intuition," "Re: Person I Knew," and "Jazzhouse." After seven years of their close relationship in his trio, Bill Evans in 1974 finally realized his dream of recording a duo album with bassist Eddie Gomez. Intuition is that album. One of the most brilliant of the young bassists influenced by Scott LaFaro, Gomez continued development of the role of the bass in Evans's trio as a fully contributory voice, not just a member of the rhythm section.
Kenny Barron, the 72-year-old Philadelphia-born virtuoso, is the kind of jazz pianist whose resources are familiar and much-covered by mainstream swing players, but whose joyfully extravagant execution is a rarity today. That quality transforms this trio set from being a canter through a smooth-jazzy assortment of soft ballads, Latin smoochers and glossy swing. Barron has absorbed an encyclopaedia of jazz methods from a life on the road with legends such as Ella Fitzgerald and Stan Getz, and it pours out in these tracks. Magic Dance, with its glistening chords and Latin-jazz tick, sounds smooth at first but unleashes an impulsive torrent. Ballads such as In the Slow Lane display his impeccably light touch and Thelonious Monk’s Shuffle Boil isn’t Monkishly lateral but swings furiously.