New Albums - Page 137

Chicago bassist Pennal Johnson (PJ) combines jazz, funk, adult contemporary and rock and roll on his album, Cissy Strut. The bassist for The Chicago All-City Jazz Band from 1984-87, Johnson began playing bass at age 8. During his career, he has performed with artists like Andre and Sandra Crouch, Kurt Carr and Abraham Laboriel. Johnson is also working as part...

If you love the sound of the early days of The Replacements and feel like a vinyl record is the only way to hear the legendarily unruly rock group, a new four-album set has your name written on it: The Twin/Tone Years. The set includes the band’s first four records: Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash (1981), the...

Experimental/avant-garde bassist, producer, and composer Bill Laswell has released back-to-back albums as part of his M.O.D. Technologies’ Incunabula Digital Series. One album, On Brion Gysin, features the spoken word work of the late poet, photographer and filmmaker Ira Cohen, incorporated into Laswell’s music, in tribute to the work of the late artist and writer Gysin, who pioneered the cut-up writing...

Nearly two years after their first release, bassist MonoNeon and producer Kriswontwo have teamed up again as Weon to release Neon the Won. The experimental duo fuse stellar bass playing with ear bending soundscapes to create an album that transcends genre. This time around they invited several guest musicians, including David “Fuze” Fiuczynski, Jerome Flood, Lance Lucas, Amber Baker, and...

The late, great jazz bassist Charlie Haden and pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba have long been known for the work they did together. Although Haden died in July 2014, there’s still music to be hear from the pair via the album Tokyo Adagio, which captures the best of their 2005 performances at Blue Note Tokyo. The sound is classic. Just listen to...

Terri Lyne Carrington’s 2011 The Mosaic Project was an album with an all-female superstar lineup of musicians. Her latest, The Mosaic Project: Love and Soul, is another all-female affair. This time out, the Grammy-winning jazz drummer and composer (she’s known for her work with a slew of artists, including bassist Esperanza Spalding) the roster includes some impressive bassists: Meshell Ndegeocello,...

Emerging blues teen titans The Peterson Brothers have released their first, self-titled, album on Blue Point Records. The pair, who hail from near Austin, Texas, have been making a name for themselves on the blues circuit for five years, after really being discovered at Pinetop Perkins’ 97th birthday celebration at Antone’s in Austin. The younger brother, Alex, 16, plays a...

Punk/metal supergroup Teenage Time Killers, featuring Dave Grohl, bassist Nick Oliveri (former Queens of the Stone Age), Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, Corrosion of Conformity’s Reed Mullin, Jello Biafra of The Dead Kennedys, and more has come together to release Greatest Hits Vol. 1. Interestingly, Grohl handles bass duties on a large number of the 20 tracks on the band’s debut, Greatest...

Jazz bassist extraordinaire Buster Williams has joined with fellow jazz greats Gary Bartz, Larry Willis and Al Foster in the new group, Heads of State, which has released its first album, Search for Peace. While the band’s members have played in combination with each other in different configurations over the years, the quartet didn’t coalesce until they took the stage...

The last three releases of Led Zeppelin’s extensive, year-long deluxe reissue campaign have arrived. The album, represent the final trio of albums released by the band — Presence, In Through the Out Door and Coda. The albums, all featuring John Paul Jones on bass, have been remastered and augmented with rare additional material by the band’s guitarist and producer Jimmy...

Remastered vinyl editions of all of The Band’s studio albums, as well as the double live album Rock of Ages, are available as The Band: The Capitol Albums 1968-1977. The set was remastered from original analogue recordings at Capitol Mastering and pressed by Quality Record Pressings on 180-gram vinyl. All the records feature reproductions of the original album art. The...

Toronto-based contemporary jazz ensemble, The Brad Cheeseman Group, has released its self-titled debut album to acclaim from no less than bassist (and No Treble columnist) Damian Erskine. Erskine says the band, featuring Cheeseman on electric bass, offers “Fantastic music, expertly played and 100 percent devoid of ego-driven writing and playing.” The band, active since 2012, started gaining notoriety in 2013...