Archived Magazine May 2015

MAY 2015 ISSUE

A sneaky peek of just some of what is in the May 2015 issue – OUT NOW!

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Ntjam Rosie

It’s almost two years ago that Rotterdam-based artist Ntjam Rosie came to town for a one-off live show and to promote her third studio album, At The Back Of Beyond. Telling us then of her development as a guitar-based singer-songwriter whose secret penchant for indie-pop had brought added new colours to her familiar jazz-world-soul musical palette, she gave the impression of a musician with both an independent mind and a drive to push her art relentlessly forward. Her fourth set, the recently issued The One, is further proof…

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Fashawn

“I’m the most reluctant artist you’ll ever meet,” sighs Fashawn. The Fresno, California rapper has the track record to prove this isn’t just some false act of modesty. It’s been some six years between his first album Boy Meets World and second album proper The Ecology. There have been mixtapes and collaborations in between, but it’s still an impressive lay-off period by anyone’s standards.

Fashawn is an artist who runs on inspiration. He doesn’t find it easy to record for recording’s sake. When he takes Echoes’ call, he’s in the studio, though explains he hasn’t been there for a while.

“When I’m in the mood to work, there’s nothing that can get in my way,” he says. “But if I’m not inspired, if I find I have nothing to say, I get into a mood sometimes and that is a big part of why this album took so long to make. [I’ll be] not wanting to go to the studio, not wanting to do interviews, not wanting to be in the light.”…

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Alborosie & King Jammy

It was always a strange feeling, visiting studios in Jamaica and realising that most young engineers had barely heard of famous predecessors like King Tubby and Prince Jammy, who popularised dub music throughout the mid-to-late seventies. That wasn’t true in Europe, where dub proved so influential it can legitimately claim to have helped shape the world of popular music. Somewhere along the line – just like with ska – it seemed Jamaica had become disconnected from its own history and the island’s musical legacy had passed into the hands of people from overseas…

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Avishai Cohen

Boys become men. Students become teachers. Accompanists become bandleaders. It has always been thus in jazz and Israeli double bassist/composer Avishai Cohen simply confirms the pattern. Those with good memories will remember him as a ‘yoot’ displaying a quite precocious talent back in the late ‘90s when a member of both Chick Corea’s trio and sextet Origin. Now it is 44-year-old Cohen who plays Corea to 27-year-old pianist Nitai Hershkovitt and 28-year-old drummer Daniel Dor, the two fresh-faced tyros in his own trio. Things have come full circle.

Crucially, the blend of generations produces sterling results on their new album From Darkness, where experience and youth are engaged in a hearty push and pull of energies. The youngers are not there just to make the elder look good. Cohen is happy to say he needs their input.

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