World Rhythms

For Vinyl’s latest release, the San Francisco funk veterans allowed acclaimed producing team The Rondo Brothers free reign over old master tapes from their “Flea Market” sessions. In doing so Fogshack Music Volume 1 was created.

Each New Day, Sim Redmond Band's fifth disc is a joyful celebration to the optimistic sprit of life.

This is honestly one of my favorite new cds. It's one of those that I just can't help popping it in the CD player if I come across it in my stash. It is just non-stop good songs and lives up to its name. I, myself, am surprised to be in love with such an album containing 12 songs, none of which max 5 minutes. But, it's true. I'm addicted to putting it on and dancing around my house or car.

Driving on my way to work this afternoon, the sun is finally shining, and my ride is going to be accompanied by the funky jazz-rock influenced grooves of Garaj Mahal. The first track, "The Shadow," would alone be worth the price of this album, for it takes you on an over 9-minute journey.

The San Francisco septet comes roaring out of the gates with their first new studio album since 2003’s “Downstream.” The sound, as it were, is full, rich and a heck of a lot tighter than any other recording including the live masterpiece from 2004, “Live at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival”—a series of songs that would have placed most any band on a cozy cushion for quite some time, but not New Monsoon. The eleven tracks on “The Sound” crackle with diamond-edged hard rock that is equal parts 70s thunder and 21st Century power jam. “Journeyman” opens the heart of their old sound and exposes a band ready to move forward. “The Sound” has Jeff Miller writing a very political song about the media onslaught that surrounds us day in and day out—trading on civil liberties today, hoping for tomorrow’s national security; meanwhile, someone has to turn off those darn TVs.

The goal of any good music film is to show what it was like to be at the venue when sparks flew from the stage, not necessarily the truth of the moments captured but the essence of the event that transpired. Most celluloid sequences just don’t get the job done—cutaway shots to insignificant visual images, show-offy camera angles that disrupt the flow of the music, short-changed artists with solos edited and brutal slices that choose not to expose the skinned-knee portions of any really good musical set.

About midway through “Skin,” I felt like I was in some deep forest out in the middle of nowhere – lost and directionless but not really caring as long as I could lay under the tall trees and listen to the sound magic being projected all around. Speakers on branches on giant bark monoliths? Actually, I was in that environment in a way. “Forest” is track six on an eleven track World Percussion masterwork that keeps the listener transfixed under an intoxicating spell.