Stone Foundation - Is Love Enough - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Two CDs. 2020 . Is Love Enough? is the band's sixth studio album and was recorded at Paul Weller's Black Barn Studios in Surrey and produced by Stone Foundation's founding members Neil Jones and Neil Sheasby. It continues their fruitful collaboration with Paul Weller who produced 2017's Street Rituals and played on 2018's Everybody Anyone. Paul contributes lead vocals to 'Deeper Love' and also prominent backing vocals on 'Picture A Life'. He also joins the band and plays guitar on three other tracks ('Af-Ri-Ka', 'Help Me', 'Love's Interlude (II)'). Stone Foundation are renowned for their collaborative approach and this time is no exception. Legendary actor Peter Capaldi provides a spoken word coda to the album, reading words by Vincent Van Gogh written about love. Additionally, two rising stars of the soul scene feature on the record. Durand Jones joins for a lead vocal on 'Hold On To Love' and Laville sings lead on 'The Light In Us'.

Conceived at the heel of Italy's boot-shaped peninsula in Apulia, Patrick Belaga's Blutt makes music for the unruly imagination. The title is an old German word for 'naked', 'bare', but it can also mean 'blood' when spelt blut. Take away another letter and it makes 'butt'. None of these definitions and adaptations were what prompted the classically-trained composer and cellist to name his second album with a word simulating the sound of a punctured artery. That came later. Blutt's nine woozy compositions are inspired by a contemplative road trip with a friend, and the mysterious muffled music heard from an unidentified source. It was a combination of jazz and classical music that haunted Belaga's wanderings through the Byzantine town Gallipoli, and soon infected his dreams of long-gone civilizations. This record is it's outcome, where organic instrumentals and electronic production merge into a sound that's both contemporary and ancient. Samples of mewing incantations and tape hiss sway atop the waltzing thud of piano chords on InchSighInch. Composite layers of Belaga's cello play in downcast harmony on InchRustInch. There's a wistful sense for the romantic, in the eerie rhythm of a piece like InchMomentumInch. The quarter tones of an Eastern European and Middle Eastern folk scale probe a profound melancholy via Kai Knight's violin. It's notes are haunted by a field recording of running water on InchUnsoftInch, echoes of panpipes and a Jew's harp on opener InchLiltInch. As a consummate composer and performer known for his work with artists Wu Tsang, boychild, Josh Johnson and Asma Maroof, Belaga's Blutt is itself marked by flawless collaborations. Vocalist and instrumentalist Jazmin Romero sings and composes the surreal melodies of InchGrey EyeInch. Multidisciplinary dance artist and producer Riley Watts contributes to the muted, motorik movement of InchThe Tunnel is

The New York violin virtuoso Mark Feldman presents a new solo album, a portrait of the artist now, some twenty-six years after his first solo album. Sounding Point contains six of his own compositions as well as one piece each by Sylvie Courvoisier and Ornette Coleman. Coleman's 1987 Peace Warriors is one of three pieces in which Feldman skillfully employs overdubs. The American jazz critic Kevin Whitehead writes in the liner notes InchIn my 30+ years following violinist Mark Feldman, no record I know shows him off better than Sounding Point. He's made much great music in groups, but solo play gives him maximum elbow room, fully exposing the richness of his sound, his distinct personal voice, and his sensitivity to sonic texture and pacing, all at the service of musical storytelling. Take for example the shortest piece here, the improvised InchRebound.Inch He starts with a simple gesture, the bow's horsehairs bouncing lightly on the strings, a gesture he periodically returns to (and ends with), between scenic flights high notes and trills, bracing close-interval wailing on adjacent strings, a burst of percussive pizzicato, falling glissandi, whispered notes barely bowed... Fancy stuff. Yet those expansions and contractions, and the contrasting dynamics, sound natural as breathing.Inch