Shards is a oneness of performance and transformation, transformation as performance. As Jason Moran and Marcus Gilmore play, BlankFor. Ms records micro fragments of time and sends them back to his collaborators sped up, slowed down, reversed, broken into ever tinier grains of data and smeared into a sparkling blur. Moran and Gilmore receive glimpses into their immediate past, or even further back in time, like they're playing into a broken mirror - not just cracked in it's visual plane, but in the sense of it's shards shattering time and light, showing them past and future. Transparent Vinyl

Shards is a oneness of performance and transformation, transformation as performance. As Jason Moran and Marcus Gilmore play, BlankFor. Ms records micro fragments of time and sends them back to his collaborators sped up, slowed down, reversed, broken into ever tinier grains of data and smeared into a sparkling blur. Moran and Gilmore receive glimpses into their immediate past, or even further back in time, like they're playing into a broken mirror - not just cracked in it's visual plane, but in the sense of it's shards shattering time and light, showing them past and future.

BlankFor. Ms/Jason Moran & Marcus Gilmore / Digital meets analogue. This unusual trio album combines electronic musician and tape loop specialist BlankFor. Ms with MacArthur fellow pianist Jason Moran and the wizardry of drummer Marcus Gilmore. The electronics interact with the piano and drums in real time, by spontaneously recording loops grabbed on the fly and re-infusing the sonic planes with various effects, resulting in sounds and energies rarely heard before. Transparent 180g Heavy Vinyl 2xLP

Silver Rain, released in 2005, was named after a poem by Langston Hughes. The album features contributions from Eric Clapton, Macy Gray, Lalah Hathaway, Gerald Albright, Kirk Whalum, and others. Renowned bassist, producer and songwriter, Marcus was also a frequent collaborator with Luther Vandross; he and Luther met while working as backing musicians for Roberta Flack. TRACK LISTING: INTRODUCTION / BRUCE LEE / LA VILLETTE / BEHIND THE SMILE / FRANKENSTEIN / MOONLIGHT SONATA / BOOGIE ON REGGAE WOMAN / PARIS (INTERLUDE) / SILVER RAIN / MAKE UP YOUR MIND / GIRLS AND BOYS / SOPHISTICATED LADY / POWER OF SOUL /AFTERWORD (OUTRO) / IF ONLY FOR ONE NIGHT.

SOMM Recordings continues its acclaimed championing of neglected British composers with Dame Ethel Smyth: Songs and Ballads – 17 vocal works with piano and chamber orchestra accompaniment composed between 1886 and 1913. Contralto Lucy Stevens has a long relationship with Smyth, portraying the composer, political activist and writer in her widely admired stage show Ethel Smyth: Grasp the Nettle. She is joined by her long-time stage companion, pianist Elizabeth Marcus, and Odaline de la Martinez conducting the Berkeley Ensemble. All four are making their debuts on SOMM. Published in 1886 and receiving their first recordings in English are the five Op.3 Songs and Ballads. Dedicated to Livia Frege, the singer to whom Mendelsohn and Schumann dedicated some of their finest songs, they blend images of the natural world with themes of lost love to reveal Smyth as a songwriter of already considerable gifts. Dedicated to Smyth’s mother and exploring themes of motherhood while shot through with images drawn from troublesome dreams, the five Op.4 Lieder, settings of German texts, exalt in an emotional palette that ranges from tenderness to trenchant emotion. Three Songs from 1913, composed during the period of Smyth’s suffragette activity – which saw her jailed for two months for throwing a stone through a cabinet minister’s window – deftly combine the political and personal. With lyrics by the suffragist Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, Possession is dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst, On the Road: a marching tune to Pankhurst’s daughter, Christabel. The Clown sets a text by Maurice Baring, whose biography Smyth wrote in 1938. Written for voice and chamber orchestra, the Four Songs from 1908 boast exquisite orchestrations that revel in Smyth’s associations with artistic circles in France and were hailed by Debussy as “tout à fait remarquables”. Stevens, who devised the album’s programme, Martinez and Christopher Wiley provide informative booklet notes.

Vinyl LP pressing in gatefold jacket. 2018 release from the bass great. Marcus Miller brings the influence of modern urban music to his trademark sound on his highly-anticipated, genre-defying album Laid Black. Miller recorded most of the nine tracks on Laid Black with his band in a New York studio and also recruited guest artists Trombone Shorty, Kirk Whalum, Take Six, Jonathan Butler, and Belgian singer Selah Sue. Of his band, Miller says: "My guys are incredibly talented. They play everything from bebop to hip-hop. All of the special guests I called have the same vision about jazz, which made it possible to create this mix of music. Oh and if you like bass, there's plenty of serious bass work on this album too!"

With RENAISSANCE, Marcus Miller surveys the landscape of not just music but society as a whole. In the same profound way that anointed gospel-soul singer Sam Cooke prophesized 50 years before in 1963, Miller feels that a change is coming. And just as with TUTU, he is ahead of the storm with RENAISSANCE, fortified by a team of hungry young players. Miller is creating the soundtrack for this musical, cultural and spiritual revolution.

This recording, explain the liner notes, attempts to give the listener an authentic version of what the 13th-century listener heard in a church when this anonymous play was performed, and it succeeds with panache. The combination of Gregorian chant, declamations, and vocal solos, accompanied by lute and instrumental solos, is performed by the Mittelalter-Ensemble der Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with great fervor.
What is especially unexpected and exciting to the listener is that the songs are punctuated by exclamations, cries, and laughter. For example, "Lazarus, amicus noster dormit" starts out with a solo melody on a shawm (or a similar wind instrument), which is then picked up vocally in a repetitive, almost magical fashion, with an echo-laden crescendo. The overlay of sound is mysterious and very evocative. After a soft baritone solo, the melody is recapitulated. Then there is a sudden shriek--it is quite dramatic--and the number finishes. At this point it would have been wonderful to have a libretto of sorts to be able to follow the words closely.
This artistic reconstruction of the Carmina Burana makes more serious chant music available to the listener.