JOVM celebrates what would have been Miles Davis’ 94th birthday.
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New Audio: DJ Almighty Teams Up with DMA for a Breezy and Infectious New Single
DJ Almighty is a Ivory Coast-born, Paris-based producer and sound engineer, who has spent the past 17 years spinning at clubs around the world, developing a unique experience at the club — the videomix, an audiovisual experience. He also streams broadcast of his videomixes on an ADSL hookup that can be heard in 70 countries across the world.
Adding to a growing profile, the Ivorian-born, French-based producer and sound engineer has released a handful of attention-grabbing compilations through labels like Wagram Music, Musicat, and Oubo Music. Back in 2018, DJ Almighty signed with Universal Records Africa for a series of collaborations with internationally-based Afrobeat and Afropop artists from France and Francophone countries.
Earlier this year, the Ivorian-born, French-based producer and sound engineer launched a new collaborative concept: 7 tracks that features emerging artists ranging in songs ranging from Afrobeat to Afropop. “Catch Your Vibe,” is a breezy and infectious mesh of dancehall, roots reggae and Afropop centered around a looping and shimmering guitar line, shuffling riddims and irie vibes paired with upstart DMA’s coquettish vocals. The end result is a pan African track that’s summery and manages to be both club and lounge friendly.
Throwback: RIP Jimmy Cobb
Growing up, jazz was a formative part of my childhood. John Coltrane was God and Miles Davis was Jesus. Hallowed be thy names! Hallelujah and amen, forever and ever!
Copious amounts of ink — both real and virtual — have been spilled writing about Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, the recording sessions that birthed it and the musicians, who recorded it, which included John Coltrane (tenor sax), Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Bill Evans (piano), Wynton Kelly(piano), Paul Chambers (bass), Jimmy Cobb (drums) and of course, Miles Davis (trumpet). Personally, Kind of Blue is a quintessential New York album: if you ever get a chance, play the album while walking down a lengthy stretch of Fifth Avenue on a drizzly Spring afternoon. Trust me, it works.
I was heartbroken to hear that Jimmy Cobb, the last living link to Kind of Blue died yesterday and I wanted to pay a tribute to Cobb and the rest of the legendary musicians, who recorded such a gorgeous and meaningful album. I stumbled across this rare bit of live footage of Miles and the crew performing Kind of Blue album track “So What?” live. Check it out. And if you’re somehow unfamiliar with the album, go to Spotify and spend an afternoon with it.
Andries is an emerging Oak View, CA-based electronic music artist, electronic music producer and sound designer for film and television. The Oak View-based artist and sound designer began making music while studying Media Arts at Chico State University. Initially starting out by making hip-hop beats, he eventually veered out towards more progressive electronic productions, inspired by Bonobo, Air, and Amon Tobin.
Upon graduation, Andries spent some time in Tokyo, gravitating towards sound design in TV and film. He’s spent the past decade working as a sound effects editor for a number of shows, including Den of Thieves, Up in the Air, Lost in Space and a growing list of others. His music was sidelined for much of that decade, as he focused his energy on his profession; however, interestingly enough, his experience as a sound effects engineer has become an important part of his approach to arranging and mixing his own original work, work that has been influenced by Dan Deacon, Flying Lotus, Lindstrøm, Boards of Canada, Jean-Michael Jarre, and video game music of the ’80s and ’90s.
The Oak View-based electronic music artist, producer and sound designer’s latest single “Bird of Paradise” balances a cinematic sweep with a club friendly thump in an ambitious yet incredibly accessible fashion. Centered around an expansive song structure featuring shifting moods and textures, the song is held together by layers of shimmering synth arpeggios, a soaring hook and a motorik-like groove, the song sonically speaking recall a synthesis of John Carpenter soundtracks, Kraftwerk, and Between Two Selves-era Octo Octa — but with an almost painterly attention to gradation and shading.
Zaac Pick is a Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada-born, Vancouver-based singer/songwriter and guitarist. Relocating to Vancouver in the early ’00s, Pick quickly immersed himself in the region’s indie-folk music community as a guitarist and songwriting member of Doubting Paris. After the band was dropped from their American label, Pick decided it was time to venture out on his own, eventually releasing a string of attention-grabbing EPs an an LP which received radio airplay on the CBC and helped built up enough of a profile to land opening slots for The Civil Wars, Noah Gundersen and Bahamas, helped him earn several regional songwriting nominations and awards, as prominent appearances for his work on major network television shows.
Slated for a June 26, 2020 release, Pick’s forthcoming full-length effort Passages reportedly finds the Medicine Hat-born, Vancouver-based singer/songwriting leaving behind the folk simplicity for a sweeping and cinematic sound featuring dance floor friendly rhythms, pulsing guitars, soaring strings and arpeggiating synths but while juxtaposed with his warmly reassuring vocals and thoughtful songwriting tackling heavy subject matter. In the case of Passages, the album’s material thematically focuses on learning to embrace the beauty of life’s liminal states with the album exploring the ambiguities and complexities of desire, masculinity, mental health, disillusionment and finding strength.
Although most of Passages‘ material was written fairly quickly, the recording process initially proved to test Pick’s resolve: three months of unfruitful recording sessions nearly derailed the project. Feeling as though he were floundering, Pick abandoned those early sessions and started over with a new producer Jonathan Anderson, at his Protection Island Studio in rural Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. With Anderson’s guidance, Pick returned the album’s songs to their essence — and the album was recorded with newfound confidence in an inspired burst over a few weeks. Passages also features contributions from some of Vancouver’s finest singer/songwriters and players, including Jordan Klassen, Tourist Company‘s Taylor Swindells, Bre McDaniel, Copilots and Fond of Tigers‘ Skye Brooks and string arrangements by Dear Rouge‘s and Holy Hum‘s sibling duo Brian and Caleb Chan.
Passages’ first single, “Atmosphere” is a slick and seamless synthesis of earnest and deeply personal lyricism, cinematic and 80s inspired soundscapes and soaring hooks paired with what may be some of Pick’s most ambitious and adventurous songwriting.
“‘Atmosphere’,” as Pick explains in press notes “is about loving someone despite the flaws or hardships you face together, and the tension between knowing and mystery in long-term relationships.” Pick notes that “‘Atmosphere acknowledges the space in between, how it expands and contracts, blurring and coming into focus over time. The distance that can grow between two people, that still allows for the desire or willingness to cross it and reconnect. The song started out as a scrap of a melody in a voice memo, and the lyrics came together from some disparate places — a Jeff Wall photograph, an Esther Perel podcast, some therapy.”
New Video: Montreal’s Alex Nicol Releases a Dream-like Visual for Shimmering “Trust”
Alex Nicol is a rising Montreal-based singer/songwriter, who has spent the pervious five years playing in a number of different projects, including Hoan, an act that released their critically applauded EP Modern Phase in 2017. Nicols stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with the release of his full-length debut All For Nada, which was released through Michel Records and Anniversary Records earlier this year.
“Trust,” All For Nada’s latest single is a slow-burning and gauzy dream of a song, centered around Nicol’s plaintive falsetto, shimmering guitars, a supple bass line and a soaring hook. And while to my ears, the song brings Canadian blogosphere darlings Loving to mind, the song as Nicol explains in press notes “is about whatever meaning the listener finds in it. For me, it’s about doing laundry (appreciating mundane tasks), honouring old traditions, striving to be a more ecological person, the realities of climate change on everyday life. . . ”
Directed by Paz Ramirez, the recently released video for “Trust” is an equally dream-like visual in which laundry hanging on a line appears in random locations in Montreal, including a Metro stop, a local bar, someone’s incredibly verdant backyard, an underground pedestrian walkway that I’ve actually walked through on a cold and windy November evening, before eventually winding up in Nicol’s empty studio. The video ends with a fully clothed Nicol, walking out of the apartment. “We decided to roll with the idea that hanging dirty laundry exposes one’s ‘weaknesses’ in public,” Nicol says. “In this sense, dirty laundry is a synonym for our secrets, eccentricities, unique quirks – basically the basket of features that come to define each individual, in private and in public. I like to think that our socially mandated ‘weaknesses’ are actually our strengths. In trusting each other to share bits of ourselves, life becomes more relatable, more invigorating.”
New Audio: Scrachattic’s Old School Hip-Hop Influenced Take on Trip Hop
Scratchattic is a Lille, France-based trip-hop/hip-hop duo — Davio, a beatmaker, who loves trip hop and dub mixing techniques and DJ Sharky, who is a hip hop head, with a strong focus on classic turntablism, scratching and old school beats — that can trace its origins back to 2017, when the duo started the project in an attic-based studio, where the French duo spent their time experimenting and crafting a sound that’s inspired by Ninja Tune Records, Amon Tobin, High Tone, Mad Professor and The Herbaliser among others.
2018 was a big year for the French trip hop duo: they participated in that year’s Tour de Chauffe, eventually winning the competition. They built up on a rapidly growing national profile with the release of their debut EP Gears in Motion, which they supported with nearly two years of touring, including 50 dates with artists like Dope D.O.D., Reverie, Al’Tarba, Senbeï, Hugo Kat, Guts or Inch and others.
The duo released their latest effort The Wild Scope EP earlier this month, and the EP’s latest single “Strange World” is a swaggering bit of trip hop that prominently features boom bap beats, some furious scratching, atmospheric electronics and chopped up vocal samples too create an ambitious tweeter and woofer rocking, Golden Era hip-hop-inspired take on trip hop that sounds like a synthesis of Massive Attack with DJ Premier — with a strong focus on creating blissed out, meditative vibes.
