Nicola Conte & Gianluca Petrella
African Spirits / Tribes - Fred P. Interpretations

** Available exclusively at The Pusher **Favorite Recordings presents a reissue of Lucas Arruda's first album, Sambadi.Lucas Arruda’s born in 1983, in a Brazilian state called Espírito Santo, near Rio de Janeiro. Coming from a musical family (his dad and older brother are musicians) he started playing and listening to music very young. At the age of 13, he was also playing professionally already.After studying electric guitar and playing in various bands, Lucas passion quickly turned into Rhodes and keyboards, expanding his musical range of skills. At the same time he started a project called Du Black, with his older brother Thiago, quickly receiving various local support from people like Ed Motta, William Magalhães (Banda Black Rio), Robert Lamm (Chicago) or Hyldon (Brazilian soul legend).From the growing notoriety obtained, the band began to work with various other artists and singers such as Tamy Macedo, or Bossa Nova’s legend, Leila Pinheiro, leading Lucas to build a recording studio with Thiago in 2011. Now 2 years after he launched this home-studio, here comes “Sambadi”, first solo album by Lucas Arruda!On this recording he also started to team up with Fabricio di Monaco (Modo Solar), who clearly became a fundamental piece, as Lucas relates: “Fabricio introduced me to Pascal Rioux at Favorite Recordings, as they released his EP few years ago. He’s a brilliant musician and a great human being.”In Lucas’ words, Sambadi is highly inspired by Rio de Janeiro. As for the musical side, the album almost sounds like a tribute to his longtime heroes like Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Marcos Valle, Azymuth, or Robson Jorge & Lincoln Olivetti. And Lucas also humbly concludes: “I really hope to honor all the guys who influenced me.”

Keep It Simple!That's what Tony Allen told me, whether on stage, in the recording studio or when we were working together on the album "The Source"(Blue Note 2017) in my studio. Obviously, if he repeated it at will, it's because it's so difficult, to express the essential, not to scatter, over-play, over-arrange. So natural for him, so constraining for others! For years he pushed us, the members of his group to develop our projects. I had something in mind, necessarily with him, unfortunately his unexpected demise decided otherwise.It took a moment to accept his departure, to accept being a voice, to find a new path. The desire to continue the work started together, that of mixing styles, sounds to appropriate them and create new, authentic. The desire also to meet new people, another energy.After composing music for this project, I asked my friend Ben Rubin, musician and producer to help me record it. I found in NYC what I was looking for, a sense of urgency, that of doing, generous and committed musicians. I knew Jason Lindner, a musician that I have been following for a long time and he was the first person I thought of for pianos and synthesizers. He has this ability to find new and powerful sounds, with a direct and unadorned playing. For the drums, I didn't especially thought about a musician whose playing could come close or far to Tony's. Ben suggested Josh Dion to me, I've been following him since his "Paris Monster" project, I love his ability to make his drums sound like a new instrument by playing the bass synth with his right hand, that forces him to keep it simple! He also plays 2 tracks in drum/synth mode on the album. I'm also happy that he agreed to sing a song on this album.So we recorded at the Figure8 recording studio in Brooklyn, Eli Crews providing the sound recording, we decided with Ben to create a powerful and assumed sound from the take. Many biases on the tones, whether on the drums and the keyboards. Back in my studio in Paris, I continued to search, to dig while recording additional saxophones, percussions and keyboards.I met Tchad Blake during a week-long mixing seminar. His work on the album on is radical.Keep it simple?Difficult but I try to remain so on all the phases of evolution of this project, from writing to production, in the improvisation parts. Where I feel it the most is in the immediate joy of playing with Jason and Josh, of tweaking a few sounds in my studio to create the unexpected, surprise in the structures, authenticity. Simple as the desire to go towards something essential, to seek oneself, to find oneself, to doubt but also to invent oneself.

Word of advice to funk lovers; there is not a minute to lose. Get on board of the Big Hustle’s spaceship. Before we take off, let's do a little history. The band was founded in 2014 by bass player and composer Sébastien Levanneur and its aim is to bring together 70's old school funk with the hippest actual sound laced with influences spanning from Steely Dan and Headhunters, to Snarky Puppy and Soulive. With mighty horn players, a rock and funky rhythm section, the Big Hustle's music has a very large variety of soundscapes.The first destination takes us to the Washington, D.C. area with “Turn Up”. The groove is clearly go-go music flavored with the trademark sound of cowbells and of course it reminds us of Zapp by the use of the talk box on lead vocals, performed here by Saad El Garrab. And don't miss out Shaun Martin (Snarky Puppy, Erykah Badu, Kirk Franklin amongst others) as a very special guest performing the talk box solo! Second stop is “A Curse, A Blessing”. It’s an instrumental very much in the Freddie Hubbard vein during his CTI years. The last leg of the A side ends with an instrumental interlude titled “Flying Donut”. Double tribute to Jay Dee and Flying Lotus, the music is a simple hip hop loop based on samples. The B side takes us back into the past with two brilliant covers, involving Rod Temperton the late great British songwriter who scored some of Michael Jackson's biggest hits. Now the idea for this B side is to do the opposite approach from the A side. Taking 70's and 80's original music and make them travel into time to 2018. We first land with a Heatwave song named “The Star Of A Story” from their 1976 Central Heating album. Track 2 is a Herbie Hancock song named “Gettin' To The Good Part” from his 1982 Lite Me Up LP. This Time Traveler EP journey ends with an interlude. Called “Gimme Dat”, the song deals with the need of new music, new sound.Again, this blend of deep rooted funk laced with a contemporary edge is to be consumed without moderation. And do not forget that E.P. also stands for extended pleasure.

Gentle waves lap the soft white sand. The limitless ocean fills the view as the sun slowly sinks below the horizon. As the day ends in blue and orange tones, the heat begins to subside, a sure sign that the slow evening migration from the beach will soon begin. A pleasant, yet formidable music comes from the radio tuned into a frequency transmitted from Paris. Maybe it was written and recorded in the 70s, or maybe it has simply soaked in that aesthetic all the way down to the pauses. It doesn't really matter. Delving deep to explore the roots of Brazil’s musical tradition, the Camarão Orkestra has tapped into Candomblé and its rhythms. Born on the drums of enslaved Africans in a ritual that invokes numerous deities, they lay the foundation for this new album, Nação África.The eleven musicians, guided by Amanda Roldan’s silky voice and guest appearance by Anthony Joseph (“Canto De Bahia”), explore and embrace the murmuring polyrhythm of Brazilian percussion instruments, vibrating berimbau and squeaking cuícas, pouring their tightly-wound funk bass into the groove and letting their jazz fly free, together and solo.The seven nonchalant tracks get your hips swaying, whether you’re in a comfortable armchair or surrounded by other dancers. They take your mind far away, on a journey paved by analog synths with Fender Rhodes crystals to the horizon where the sun’s last glimmer has finally faded away. The brass section’s shiny bells, valves and keys reflect the images and ambiance of the soft Brazilian night air.

After two years and a half, Pietro Santangelo (formerly Nu Genea sax player) and his PS5 ensemble are back to Hyperjazz Records with a brand new album: Echologia.'Echologia' draws inspiration from the idea of natural biodiversity as an expression of contamination, coexistence and balance. In the same way as the biological agents contribute to the life of a certain ecosystem, seemingly distant musical languages act as elements of balance in a fertile and blooming musical system. Multiculturalism becomes coexistence. As in the previous 'Unconscious Collective' (Hyperjazz, 2021), suggestive saxophones textures interwine on a solid rhythmic equilibrium and move naturally along an imaginary line highlighting the ancestral connection between Africa and Mediterranean Sea. On the background, the tribute to the earlier Jamaican dub masters with a strong use of vintage echoes in the mixing phase.Album cover by Sabrina Cirillo is inspired by the myth of the nymph Echo, the Oread condemned by Juno to be able to express herself by repeating only the last words of theinterlocutor, who died of pain due to the impossibility of communicating her love to Narcissus.