LITE - Phantasia (2008)

Shit, this album is amazing. Seriously one of the smoothest and most perfect math-rock albums I've ever heard, from the Japanese band LITE.  Just listen and be amazed. That is all I can say.

Genres: Math rock, instrumental rock, progressive rock

1. "Ef" - 4:12
2. "Contra" - 3:45
3. "Infinite Mirror" - 4:39
4. "Shinkai" - 5:23
5. "Black and White" - 4:14
6. "Interlude" - 1:35
7. "Ghost Dance" - 4:31
8. "Solitude" - 5:49
9. "Phantasia" - 5:08
10. "Fade" - 5:26
11. "Sequel to the Letter" - 2:59

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Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man In Babylon (2002)

So I just got back from a quick trip in Maine, during which I listened to an intense amount of lounge music. Lounge music, typically, is an easy-listening light-style of music merging together different styles of downtempo and trip-hop electronica and is usually a very calming, chill type of music that is literally perfect to just play at a lounge, as the name implies. In the case of Thievery Corporation, extreme dub, jazz, and world music influences are portrayed. In fact, nearly all of their songs include a chill electronic beat over a dubby bassline and someone singing in some exotic middle-eastern language. 

The Richest Man In Babylon, keeping the downtempo aesthetic that all of this band's albums consist of, mixes many different styles in an audacious fashion, including a huge variety of diverse influences. With their typical dub and jazz influences, many flavors of dance music, rap, reggae, and specifically Indian music are boldly yet smoothly combined. This album truly treads the line between acoustic and electronic music, beautifully mixing together elements of echoing synth lines, heavy dub-bass, compressed beats and acoustic instrumentation. And what's really special about this album is, by the time you've reached the end, it feels as if you've just taken a beautiful, yet mellow trip through half the world, each song on the album, however vaguely, including elements of various diverse types of world music, including vocals on several tracks ranging from English to Spanish to French to Persian. This album is really quite a treasure, I highly recommend you to just grab a coffee, find a comfortable seat, and just play this album through and relax.

Genres: Lounge, electronica, downtempo, trip-hop, dub, reggae, dance music, hip-hop, world music, jazz

1. "Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes" - 4:10
2. "Facing East" - 3:44
3. "The Outernationalist" - 3:330
4. "Interlude" - 1:21
5. "Omid (Hope)" - 3:48
6. "All That We Perceieve" - 3:46
7. "Un Simple Histoire (A Simple History)" - 3:36
8. "Meu Destino (My Destiny)" - 3:30
9. "Exilo (Exile)" - 3:03
10. "From Creation" - 4:20
11. "The Richest Man In Babylon" - 3:50
12. "Liberation Front" - 5:04
13. "The State of the Union" - 4:29
14. "Until the Morning" - 3:57
15. "Resolution" - 4:47

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Guru - Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1

Hey everyone, I know it's been a LONG time since I last posted, but this was mostly due to extreme laziness as well as 5 weeks on vacation. Anyhow, I have TONS of music ready to be posted so I will try my best to post as much as possible without getting too lazy.  While I was on vacation, I gained an extreme passion for hip-hop, so expect much more hip-hop on this blog in the future.

This album by Guru of the hip-hop duo Gang Starr is a great introduction to hip-hop for jazz fans as volume 1 of a series of albums he made called Jazzmatazz, a series of albums based on an experimental fusion of jazz and hip-hop, including a live jazz band playing in the background and usually an MC rapping over it. This CD also features the famous, and one of my favorite saxophonists of all time, Branford Marsalis ripping track #4, Transit Ride. The catchy and lively hip-hop beats over chill, sharp jazz improvisations and intriguing lyrics rapped by Guru really work together to create a very attractive sound that I promise you, hip-hop fan or not, you will enjoy.

Genres: Hip-hop, jazz rap, jazz

1. "Introduction" - 1:20
2. "Loungin'" - 4:40
3. "When You're Near" - 4:03
4. "Transit Ride" - 3:58
5. "No Time to Play" - 4:54
6. "Down the Backstreets" - 4:48
7. "Respectful Dedications" - 0:54
8. "Take a Look (At Yourself)" - 3:59
9. "Trust Me" - 4:38
10. "Slicker Than Most" - 2:38
11. "Le Bien, Le Mal" - 3:22
12. "Sights In the City" - 5:11

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