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STILL STICKY
A Hammond B-3 organ. A Fender Rhodes. A vibraphone. A flute. A piano. A ton of drums. And beats. And beats. And more beats.
That's what defines Still Sticky, the latest from bassist/producer Alan Goldsher, which will be available April 10, 2020 via all major digital music platforms. But unlike Goldsher's four previous Gold Note Records projects, this one features a band.
Sort of.
"My other albums were sound collages," Alan explains, "but here, I opted for sonic unity. Each tune features a vibraphonist, an organist, a bassist, and a drummer, with a flute and a piano making cameos. Granted, I created all the sounds myself, but my goodness, it sounds like a legit group."
Still Sticky fits under Alan's jazztronica umbrella, but it's funkier and more soulful than its predecessors. Goldsher says, "The organ/vibes frontline makes it sound like it's right out of 1973," Goldsher says, "but the beats are pure here and now."
The album features five original tunes, among them "Ayers It Out," Alan's dedication to jazz/soul vibraphone legend Roy Ayers. "That is one greasy song," Alan smiles. "Straight up grease." With a stick-in-your-head melody and a pounding piano solo, "Ayers It Out" will fit on the radio, in a club, or at a lounge.
Of the four cover songs, Alan's take on the Knack's "My Sharona" is the goofiest. "It's a fast-as-hell drum-and-bass groove, and I still can't figure out how I managed to keep up with the tempo."
Still Sticky comes on the heels of Big Al Bassman Funks Up the Jazz Classics, an album that garnered over 10,000 Spotify streams and a feature in Jazz Times magazine.
For more information, write info@goldnoterecords.com.
BIG AL BASSMAN FUNKS UP
THE JAZZ CLASSICS
"This project is the culmination. This is what I've been working towards. This is the album that is me ."
So says Alan Goldsher, bassist and producer best known for his work with Digable Planets, Janet Jackson and Cypress Hill. The project of which Goldsher speaks is Big Al Bassman Funks Up the Jazz Classics , a one-of-a-kind, genre-bending tour de force that blends jazz with drum-and-bass, hip-hop, techno, chillout, lounge and ambient.
A collection of jazz standards spun through an EDM blender, Goldsher reboots the music of, among others, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, George Benson, Chuck Mangione, and Gil Scott-Heron in a manner that will appeal to jazz radio, club deejays, and forward-thinking followers of such jazz-tweakers as Snarky Puppy, Robert Glasper and Kamasai Washington.
For more information, write info@GoldNoteRecords.com.
96 B.P.M.
Chicago-based bassist/producer Alan Goldsher (Digable Planets, Janet Jackson, Cypress Hill) follows up his debut albums The Pocket and The Other Pocket with 96 B.P.M., a ten-tune set of original instrumental compositions that again demonstrate his fascination with stylistic diversity. On Goldsher’s club-centric, radio-ready sophomore outing, he embraces jazz, electronica, funk, rock, lounge, industrial, hip-hop, world music, and soul, yet the entire collection comes off as an utterly singular entity.
“I’d compare it to a book of short stories with one overriding theme,” explains Goldsher, the author of the 2010 bestselling novel Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion. “Each track is an individualistic tale unto itself, but all ten tunes are part of a greater whole.”
The album holds together wonderfully, due in part the tempo after which it’s named. “To me, 96 beats per minute is modern music’s greatest groove,” Goldsher says, “and I felt an entire album at that tempo would be mindblowing. I fell in love with that tempo in the early-1990s thanks to A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory. Most of the tunes on that classic are at or around 96 B.P.M., and it’s just about the grooviest record ever.”
Rather than attempt to replicate a Quest-like rap vibe, Goldsher set out to demonstrate how much diversity one tempo could produce. To that end, the album features just one hip-hop-esque tune, “One More Time,” a funky throwback featuring several of rap’s greatest bass lines. “You’ll hear a Quest line, a Beastie Boys line, a Dr. Dre line, and a bunch more,” Goldsher says. “Sonically, they sound more or less like the original recordings, but there are exactly zero music samples. It’s all me.”
In general, 96 B.P.M. is mellower than its predecessors The Pocket and The Other Pocket — for instance, the Fender Rhodes-driven “Natty’s Other Idea,” the chillout jam “Baby Bass,” and the evocative four-on-the-floor groover “1992” all have the potential to become late-night favorites — yet the album has its fair share of volume.
Alan’s love of jazz is another one of the project’s threads. The album kicks off with the two jazziest compositions of the record, “Sunny Bird” and “Sticky.” Of the first tune, Goldsher says, “This version of ‘Sunny Bird’ swings harder than the original recording from The Pocket. It’s beboppier and quieter than the first version, but equally intense.” As for “Sticky,” Goldsher had a specific goal in mind: “I’m obsessed with 1970s soul-jazz—Cannonball Adderley, Donald Byrd, George Benson, most of the CTI Records catalog—and this was my attempt to replicate and update.”
For more information, write info@GoldNoteRecords.com.
Are they electronica? Jazz? Funk? Lounge? EDM? Who the hell knows, but whatever you call them, Alan Goldsher’s debut albums are straight-up, flat-out, undeniably in the pocket.
On The Pocket and The Other Pocket, the bassist/producer delivers 30 tunes filled with mix-and-match grooves, the primary commonality being that every composition, every measure, every note is a component of a sick beat, whether that beat is old school hip-hop, dirty dubstep, warp speed drum & bass, or greasy soul/jazz.
Highlights from The Pocket include the fusion-y, funked-up title cut, the rock-tinged "Z's Jam," and the dubstep-disco tribute to President Barack Obama, "Strawberry Letter 44."
The Other Pocket features the trip-hop jam "D-Minor: The Saddest of All Keys," the Drake-inspired "Red Sauce," and the style-shifting "Spanish Inquisition 2: Electric Boogaloo."
In addition to the 24 original compositions, Alan drops six covers, rebooting jazz, funk, and hip-hop classics by the likes of A Tribe Called Quest, Roy Ayers, Weather Report, and Freddie Hubbard.
As Alan explains, the albums are a two-headed monster. “I put the harder-edged tunes on The Pocket and the more ethereal songs on The Other Pocket, but I view the albums as a single entity with two distinct sub-entities. Think of them as fraternal twins."
For more information, write info@GoldNoteRecords.com.