Word: sonics
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...many jazz musicians found themselves marginalized by rock and soul. Then in 1970 Miles Davis received the first gold record of his life, for Bitches Brew, a sonic eye opener that experimented with electric instruments and rock and funk rhythms--a strange, primal, remarkable album. Soon, however, a whole generation of musicians was squandering its talents on increasingly vapid (though profitable) jazz-rock hybrids that came to be called fusion. Known today as smooth jazz, or as "that crap they play when Regis and Kathie Lee go to commercial," fusion continues to thrive; it even has its own Billboard chart...
...tinged metal band is silly, swaggering and obnoxious--and those are its virtues. Korn's music isn't subtle: the volume on each song, just as in This Is Spinal Tap, is usually turned up to 11, and too many of the songs are simply numbing sonic assaults. But a few tracks grind along successfully, most notably Children of the Korn, in which rapper Ice Cube makes an engaging appearance. And the band's goofy audacity and Zeitgeist-savvy sense of humor are, at points, captivating. It's hard to completely dislike a CD that makes references to both...
...given phenomenon. Neo-soul is the best name to call the latest emerging genre. Simply defined, neo-soul describes artists--like song-stylist Erykah Badu--who combine a palpable respect for and understanding of the classic soul of the '60s and '70s with a healthy appetite for '90s sonic experimentation and boundary crossing. Neo-soul artists tend to create music that's a good deal more real, a good deal more edgy than the packaged pop of, say, teen-oriented groups like the Spice Girls and Cleopatra. And they tend to write lyrics that are more oblique and yet more...
Fusion and "smooth" jazz certainly haven't burnished strings' reputation. But with the music's more ambitious players looking for ways to broaden jazz's sonic palette after a decade dominated by neotraditionalism, strings are back (the hipster vogue for lounge music probably hasn't hurt). The boomlet began with last year's McCoy Tyner recording of Burt Bacharach tunes--an appropriate enough context--and continues with new albums by Wynton Marsalis and the 29-year-old Puerto Rican-born tenor saxophonist David Sanchez, both on Columbia. Marsalis' record, The Midnight Blues: Standard Time Vol. 5, is his first standards...
...received mixed reviews for his new book, A Crackup at the Race Riots. On the wholesome-to-jaded spectrum of American artistic endeavor, his work is as far from Culkin's as one could go. But he may have persuaded the young millionaire to appear in a video for Sonic Youth. The deal ain't over until Kim Gordon sings, but it could mark Culkin's first step into adult roles. Or at least keep his agent happy...