News - Page 261

Canadian solo bassist Luke Vajsar has released Hyenas, an album featuring his loop style playing as well as his abilities as a vocalist, guitarist and trombonist. His brother, Andrew, provides the percussion. Recorded and mixed at Toronto’s Skycrib Studios, the record incorporates Vajsar’s melodic playing with funk, soul, jazz, rock and psychedelia. Check out the album’s opening track, “The Stream”:...

Here’s something you didn’t see coming: bassist Victor Wooten is in a new progressive metal band called Octavision. The group was founded by guitarist Hovak Alaverdyan and also features keyboardists Steve Weingart and Ara Torosyan with Roman Lomtadze on drums. The band has only released a teaser for their first single entitled “Three Lives”. They describe the song as as...

A classic bass book is back in a revised edition. The Bass Book: A Complete Illustrated History of Bass Guitars, covers everything from the introduction of the electric bass guitar in the early 1950s up through today. Written by by music journalist Tony Bacon and UK bass retailer and distributor Barry Moorhouse, the book includes interviews with bass makers and...

Electronica/jam band Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9) has released The Universe Inside, which the band says reflects the messages of the golden records that traveled on NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions. According to the band, with Alana Rocklin on bass, the album is about identity “and the magical truth of who we are, where we’re going, and our...

A GoFundMe page has been set up for jazz bass legend George Mraz following serious medical issues. The 72-year old bassist, who has worked with everyone from Oscar Peterson to Chet Baker to Stephane Grapelli, was operated on this summer for his pancreas. Complications from the procedure have kept him in an extended hospital stay. “On July 8th George endured...

Experimental composer/bassist/producer Bill Laswell has reissued a work previously available only in a 100-CD limited edition at a show in honor of the late postmodern novelist William S. Burroughs. The piece, The Road to the Western Lands, pairs a recording of Burroughs reading from his book “The Western Lands” and Laswell’s music, which has been remastered and enhanced since the...

Folk rock icon David Crosby has announced a fall tour in support of his upcoming album, , and he’s hired a killer band to back him up. Joining “Croz” on the road will be Becca Stevens, Michelle Willis, and Snarky Puppy bassist Michael League, who also produced the album. “Michael and I write really well together,” Crosby said. “When we...

All the singles legendary New Orleans funk band The Meters ever made for the Josie, Reprise and Warner Bros. labels has been released on the two-CD set, A Message from The Meters: The Complete Josie, Reprise & Warner Bros. Singles, 1968-1977. The set includes every “A” and “B” side, meaning rare single and mono single mixes of some of the...

Metal band Helms Alee has released its fourth studio album, Stillicide. The trio of Ben Verellen (guitar, vocals), Dana James (bass, vocals), and Hozoji Margullis (drums, vocals) makes “smart, nerdy, weird music,” according to a Noisey/Vice song premiere note, which goes on to say, “but the strangest thing about it isn’t its quirky rhythms or offbeat approach—it’s that you could...

King Crimson’s Radical Action To Unseat The Hold Of Monkey Mind audio/video set is the band’s most fully realized version of its 2015 concert experience. The three-CD/one Blu-ray set from the band, with the inimitable Tony Levin on bass, has a “virtual studio album effect,” on the CDs, with no audience sound between songs. It also features a Blu-ray disc...

Minimalistic, experimental French jazz-pop lounge duo What a Day has released a new EP, Specimen. In keeping with the duo’s established style, the music is primarily defined by Jonathan Joly‘s double bass, singer Léah Gracie’s vocals and more quotidian sounds, like adding machine keys being depressed. Check out the whole EP at SoundCloud. Here’s the track, “Open Space”:

The genesis of bassist/multi-instrumentalist Evan Marien’s new EP comes from a slightly unusual place. The instrumental electronic hip hop record, simply titled EP1, is inspired by 8-bit Nintendo music, according to the website for Marien, whose work is regularly featured in No Treble. EP1 is available at Bandcamp. Preview EP1: EP1 by EMAR EP1 Track List: Knives Dungeon Lines Decode...