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Matteo Grilli's reviews tagged jazz

Showing 19 reviews
  • 4/5 stars

    Maybe Flying Lotus isn't a hot upstart anymore and his music has kind of lost the disruptive punch or the rougher edge it once had but has gained a lot of balance and polish. He has never sounded more in control to me, this ep shouldn't be overlooked.

    Favorite track: Let Me Cook ft Dawn Richard

  • 3.5/5 stars

    Really cool keyboard driven progressive jazz tracks. Tight grooves and interesting sounds. It's really great how all 'cool new jazz' or however you wanna call it gets regularly featured in publications, streaming apps and record stores these days. Maybe it's just here to stay forever or maybe one day something else becomes the thing du jour and we will forget how great we had it for a while

  • 4.5/5 stars

    I just love her so much. Endlessness feels like a natural evolution of her work on space 1.8, here there's just a bit more to dig into. More lush orchestration, more jazzy drumming, more virtuoso performances, a whole universe of different influences somehow made to fit inside the grooves of a single record.

    The synth arpeggios bubbling throughout are a personal standout for me but everything sounds great here. Space 1.8 sounded more hazy and ambient and was the perfect soundtrack for the period of my life when I stumbled into it, I hope this accompanies me through this new season as well.

  • 4/5 stars

    probably my favorite band at the moment. I keep going back and forth on this but I think I loved their last album slightly more, still this is rock solid stuff.

    Their tracks sound like bursting at the seams from all the awesome ideas stuffed into them. Nai Palm’s excellent vocal melodies keep the lid firmly on top and everybody else locked in.

  • 5/5 stars

    Their blend of classic golden age rap and r&b feels perfectly tailored for my taste so maybe I’m not super objective about it but to me this sounds genuinely incredible. Their previous collaborations were already good but this is more refined. The production is elegant and expansive and Paak lets it shine by picking his spots perfectly.

  • 4.5/5 stars

    Masterful album, covering an expansive territory from jazz to deep ambient synth but still painting a cohesive picture. Love pretty much everything about this from the great cover art to the beautiful harp tones throughout.

  • 4/5 stars

    Very interesting bit of library music, originally released on the Colorsound label. Lots of high energy tracks, ranging from funk and rhythm and blues to more manic, weird psych jazzy tension numbers.

    A really cool blend of different textures and colors. Originally intended to be used alongside scenes of factory work and assembly lines the music here feels not so much as high tech and clean but rather frantic and quite alienating.

    Great album and great piece of social commentary as well.

  • 4.5/5 stars

    Sometimes I think it's kind of annoying that an ever growing chunk of all the stuff that gets released on vinyl today is reissues but then again I get to buy a pristine, perfect sounding copy of an album from 1967 that's still one of the best ever recorded and plays smoothly and perfectly from beginning to end.

    warm, soothing, beautiful and melancholic, evoking a powerful feeling of nostalgia.

  • 4/5 stars

    This record is definitely too cool for me. A series of detailed and rich jazz covers of very interesting tracks. It feels like a lot of thought went into this work, from the players involved to the mixing to the sequencing of the tracks. The beginning is very atmospheric and deep and then slowly the tempo picks up until we get to the cover of Roni Size's Brown Paper Bag and then the Flying Lotus track Do The Astral Plane which are pure dancefloor bangers.

  • 4/5 stars

    was reminded of this because the song "Street Fighter Mas" is used in the opening credits of the apple tv show "Sugar".

    An excellent album that expertly weaves strong solo performances from Kamasi and a lot of other strong players into a tapestry of expansive orchestral tones. Really high level stuff.

    "Street Fighter Mas" is probably one of the most millenial-coded artistic achievements. A song that blends Jazz, Funk, Hip Hop and a cinematic theme which seems lifted straight out of Morricone dedicated to a beloved early nineties capcom fighting game. There's probably some parallels in the finger dexterity and improvisation skills needed to play high level Street Fighter that Jazz musicians can appreciate and respect. Textbook case of Game… More

  • 5/5 stars

    I just love this record so much, I don't really have a lot to say. I remember when it came out many people in my 'bubble' seemed disappointed by it, probably expected something else but I honestly have been completely floored by the first listen. It's a small world that I love to inhabit. It's an incredibly well crafted record that has attention for the smallest details and never loses sight of the bigger picture.

    A perfect album.