I have a review of If By Yes’ Salt on Sea Glass up today at Blurt.
If By Yes, the collaboration between one-woman vocal orchestra Petra Haden and Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda, sounds on the surface like bright, dreamy pop. Put on the headphones, though, and complexities emerge in unexpected chord changes, non-standard rhythms and richly layered points and counterpoints. Haden's soft, naturally sweet voice is, by turns, as accessible as radio pop, as sensually shaded as vocal jazz, as intricately arranged as doo wop, and as wild and unearthly strange as alternative vocalizers like Jarboe. She flits through Honda's subtle concoctions of funk, jazz, Latin, pop and rock like a songbird through a tropical forest, a flash of color in a steamy profusion of musical life.
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Showing posts with label Yuka Honda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yuka Honda. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Watt and friends
Mike Watt has an album out with kind of an all-star back-up band – Nels Cline to start, but also Yuka Honda and Dougie Bowne. It’s called Floored by Four, and I have a review of it up at Dusted today.
Floored By Four is a one-off collaboration between a quartet of musicians, each with at least one foot in conventional rock, the other in more experimental jazz and improv. Mike Watt, who started the project, splits his time between playing bass for The Stooges and Porno for Pyros on the mainstream side, while also working with people like Elliott Sharp and Nels Cline. The latter, too, has a rock day job with Wilco, in addition to more eccentric outlets via his own solo work, the Nels Cline Singers and numerous jazz and improv collaborations. Yuka Honda made her name in Cibo Matto, but also partners with Boredoms percussionist Yoshimi Pe-Wei and has three records on Tzadzik. She used to be married to Dougie Bowne, the Lounge Lizards drummer, who has himself collaborated with John Cale, Arto Lindsay and many others. Now Honda is engaged to Nels Cline. It’s an interesting collection of talents, to say the least, and connected to one another with varying degrees of history, mutual understanding and past collaboration.
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At Summerstage last summer…
Floored By Four is a one-off collaboration between a quartet of musicians, each with at least one foot in conventional rock, the other in more experimental jazz and improv. Mike Watt, who started the project, splits his time between playing bass for The Stooges and Porno for Pyros on the mainstream side, while also working with people like Elliott Sharp and Nels Cline. The latter, too, has a rock day job with Wilco, in addition to more eccentric outlets via his own solo work, the Nels Cline Singers and numerous jazz and improv collaborations. Yuka Honda made her name in Cibo Matto, but also partners with Boredoms percussionist Yoshimi Pe-Wei and has three records on Tzadzik. She used to be married to Dougie Bowne, the Lounge Lizards drummer, who has himself collaborated with John Cale, Arto Lindsay and many others. Now Honda is engaged to Nels Cline. It’s an interesting collection of talents, to say the least, and connected to one another with varying degrees of history, mutual understanding and past collaboration.
More
At Summerstage last summer…
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