First album from the band "Fal Frett" - you may have seen their second album at The Growing Binlast month.
Big thanks to Orangefunk for ripping and donating this album, and please give him some thanks in the comments!
Looked for some history on this album and found some in a Googlebooks excerpt from Brenda F Berrian's book "Awakening Spaces : French Caribbean Popular Song, Music and Culture". Successfully grabbed the text with free OCR software and here we are :
"One of the most talented families on the contemporary Martinician musical arena is the Barnards. The grandfather, Armand, was a violinist, and his sons Gaëtan and Parfait continued the tradition : the former was another violinist and the latter, a keyboard player.
Raised in a household where music totally surrounded them, it was only natural for Parfait's sons Alex, Jacky and Nicol to love playing instruments. Alex, the oldest and a bass player, is the only full-time musician among the brothers since he quit his job at the Hopital de la Meynard. He studied with Edmond Michalon and, as a bass player, joined the jeunesse Etudiante Catholique (Catholic student youth group), to which other aspiring musicians belonged, such as the pianist Paulo Rosine and the flutist Serge Lossen. In 1969, he joined the Merry Lads, which evolved into Malavoi, and he continues to play with the band today. Furthermore, between the two disbandments of Malavoi in the 1970s, Alex took the opportunity to go on tour in Canada with Marius Cultier. The multiple instrumentalist Jacky, born four years after Alex, commenced playing the piano at age eleven. In 1970, he passed his baccalaureate and left to study law in Paris at the Faculty of Assas. While there he began to perform at Caribbean venues and worked in the recording studios. ln 1975, he returned to Martinique where he played the piano and keyboard in piano bars, especially at the Inn of Monsieur Duban in the town of Riviere Salée. Nicol, the youngest of the three, born in 1956, familiarized himself with several instruments, but at age fourteen, he seriously studied the bongos and other percussion with Colette Frantz and eventually with Henri Guédon. Since then Nicol has become known as an accomplished percussionist. In 1969, Nicol participated in a jazz concert with his brothers at the Cercle Martiniquais. Afterward, he left to study in Paris, where he became a member of Guédon’s newly composed Cosmos Zouk. At age nineteen in 1976, he returned to Martinique and agreed with his brothers, Jacky Alpha, and Bid Monville to create Fal Frett. In 1976, Fanny Augiac proposed that Fal Frett should make its debut before the public at the Centre Martiniquais d’Action Culturelle (CMAC). The band’s first concert repertoire was taken from its first record Fal Frett, which was released by Jacky Nayaradou’s 3A Productions. Afterward, Ralph Thamar and Robin Vautor joined the band, with Jacky Bernard functioning as the leader on the second album In the Wake of the Sunshine. Jacky was responsible for organizing the program so that the music in each set followed harmonic key changes. In general, what makes Fal Frett stand out is the band's distinctive sound, which some call jazz fusion. This is in reference to the band’s incorporation of traditional Martinican musical themes and an extension of them along more jazzy lines."
Fal Frett apparently means "the action of being overcome, gripped or stunned by something".
Fal Frett – Fal Frett LP 3A [3A 0093] (1976)
Bass - Alex Bernard
Drums - Jacky Alpha
Rhodes - Jacky Bernard
Percussions - Nicol Bernard
Saxophones, Composer - Bid Monville
Tracks 1-5 composed by Jacky Bernard
Track 6 by Bid Monville
In 2000 I went to Tokyo for the first time, and immediately injured my knee. I hobbled around the city on crutches immersing myself in the amazing range of jazz, funk and soul. It wasn't just the hidden, special 2nd hand vinyl stores that blew me away - even Tower Records had the largest jazz collection I'd ever seen; with racks and racks of Japan-only CD releases of USA albums that could only be found on expensive, scratchy vinyl in their home country.
I'd finally found somewhere that had a large population of people who loved the same music as I do, and even today, my DJ partner and some of my closest music buddies at home are Japanese.
However, at the time I knew nothing of Japanese jazz - it's only in the decade since then that my blog brothers have introduced me to Japanese music of the 1970s, music that soaked up electric Miles and electric Herbie in the jazz diaspora, and that even today continues to develop its idiosyncratic permutations through people like DJ Mitsu, Gagle, Sleep Walker and others. There's far too much beautiful music to fit onto one compilation, so expect more.
This is dedicated to my blogger friends, past and present, who've introduced me to this music and taken me on the type of journey that I hope you experience as well.
Thanks to El Goog Ja, Reza, Greg, Bacoso, Ish, Katonah, Taro Nombei, Vesper, Hoochie, Wara Katsu and many more .....
This is a mix I made for a friend's radio show a few weeks back - some new soul, some old funk and some 90s hip hop - plenty of rhodes, natch :) Hope you enjoy!
"Grand Roque" - Maurice Vander - excerpt "The Investigator" - Brian Bennett - excerpt "Beverley Hills" - Steve Gray - excerpt "Base Line" - Syd Dale - excerpt
Time for a post! This is a sequel to my 2010 "Library Rhodes" compilation which people seemed to enjoy. So once again, here's another electric piano journey through the library production music archives from the 1970s, drawing on labels like KPM, Bruton, Amphonic, Montparnasse, Bosworth, Impulse, Major, and Themes International.
Some copshow, some vibes, some jazz and some funk for the holidays ....
Link is in the comments, hope you enjoy this one.
Covers are higher quality in the download.
Here's a tracklist -
01 the fat man - syd dale
02 number one spy - syd dale
03 leisure - jeremy lubbock
04 beverley hills - steve gray
05 on the scent - james clarke
06 the investigator - brian bennett
07 night raider - vic flick
08 second cut - james clarke
09 papillion rouge - paolo zavallone
10 basse duettino - raymond Guilot
11 hocus pokus - walter murphy
12 don’t be cool jacky giordano
13 high checker - scope
14 stadio - the swingers
15 grand roque - maurice vander
16 e.s.b. - frank ricotti
17 fresh appeal - brian bennett
18 the open road - duncan lamont
19 exotica - ole jensen & his music
20 walkabout - david lindup
21 cross rolls - janko nilovic
22 award for achievement 3 - tony kinsey
23 drama montage - brian bennett
24 stop gap - dave gold
25 base line - syd dale
26 turbulence - wally asp
27 waiting game - james clarke
28 storytime - clive hicks
I always wonder at public grief for the deaths of those we have never met, but some people work their way into our hearts, and so their deaths feel personal.
R.I.P. Gil. Thankyou for the wonderful, intimate show you performed in early 1999 at the Bottom Line in New York.
Fantastic latin-jazz-funk album recorded in Lima, Peru in 1976, starring leader/saxaphonist/flautist Nilo Espinosa, formerly of Bossa 70, and also featuring keyboardist Miguel "Chino" Figueroa, a member of renowned latin-funk band Black Sugar.
A killer set from start to finish, starting off with the classic jazz-funker 'Reflexiones', and featuring giant covers of "Black Angel" (a Freddie Hubbard tune penned by Kenny Barron); John Handy's funk tune "Hard Work", and the Blackbyrd's track "Summer Love"(written by Allan Barnes).
The vinyl of this goes for way-too-big bucks, and the CD reissue has been deleted, so I've put the album together by combining relevant parts of an Espinosa CD compilation with a tracked-down missing track "Siempre" - so you can all hear the whole wonderful thing in either WAV or 320 mp3 (apart from 'Siempre', which is at 212kbps) - so check the comments for links and say hi .
TRACKLIST
01. Reflexiones (Figueroa) 02. Looking for a Blues 03. Summer Love (Allan Curtis Barnes) 04. Black Angel (Kenny Barron) 05. Siempre 06. Somos Nada 07. Hard Work (John Handy)
MUSICIANS
Nilo Espinosa: Saxophone [Tenor, Alto, Soprano], Flute Pancho Saenz: Trumpet, Flugelhorn Miguel "Chino" Figueroa: Electric piano, Clavinet, Mellotron Richie Zellon: Electric Guitar Oscar Stagnaro: Electric Bass Ramon Stagnaro: Electric Guitar Andres Silva: Drums Jorge Montero: Guitar Mauro Silva : Congas Ary Quispe : trombone PRODUCTION DETAILS Recorded in Lima, Peru 1976. MAG Records N. 2535
This is my own mix/mash of the vocal from Marvin Gaye's"Sexual Healing" with "Dark Keys" by the Jazz Liberatorz, with some additional editing work. "Sexual Healing" was never one of my favourite Marvin songs due to the original 80s instrumentation - so I replaced it :)
Edit : Thanks to Gilles Peterson for spinning this on Worldwide, and to all the other DJs who've subsequently picked it up for their mixes.
Feel free to publish on your blogs, but a link back would be nice! Hope you enjoy it, please leave a comment.
