Happy Abandon - Facepaint - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This is the inaugural in a new annual Sharp Nine series that captures the best young jazz musicians coming out of the New York City scene. The highlight of this CD is trumpet phenom Jeremy Delt, whose Freddie Hubbard-like chops are causing a stir around the Big Apple.

Phases is an ambient chamber music album which bridges improvised music with electronic production. Kenny Warren's trumpet and Dave Devine's guitar tracks were processed with effects, samplers and modular synths by Michael Bailey, in turn creating new layers to improvise over, offering fresh avenues for the musicians to build transcendent soundscapes of texture and timbre that are at times warm and pastoral, other times eerie and disorienting, resulting in a spacious and sublime record.

Selected as one of Rolling Stone magazine's 50 greatest progressive rock albums of all time, Happy the Man's self-titled debut, released in 1977 on Arista Records, is one of the most fully realized progressive rock albums ever recorded on American soil. It was neither a direct response to it's British forebears nor an attempt to fit within the evolving commercial American landscape. Instead, it was something rarer a singular work of progressive music that existed entirely on it's own terms. Though they wouldn't know it at the time, 'Happy the Man' also became the bar against which nearly all American prog rock would be measured in the decades that followed. Their sound wasn't just symphonic-it was cinematic, sophisticated, and distinctly American, weaving jazz fusion and impressionistic harmony into prog rock's DNA. Eschewing mythic storytelling and grandiose concepts, their primarily instrumental music instead unfolded like a rich tapestry of harmonies and interwoven melodies, shifting with the same organic unpredictability as a jazz improvisation yet executed with the precision of a chamber ensemble. The music was both cerebral and joyous, technically demanding yet full of human warmth. With a line-up of Stanley Whitaker (Guitars, Vocals), Kit Watkins (Keyboards), Frank Wyatt (Sax, Flute, Keyboards), Rick Kennell (Bass) and Mike Beck (Drums), the band recorded their first album under the production supervision of Ken Scott (who had worked with Supertramp and David Bowie). Happy the Man celebrates the reclamation of their rights to their classic Arista albums with a new band-approved remasters by Ray Staff. Features a 28-page booklet with a new 6000-word liner notes essay by Syd Schwartz.