Marcus Miller Renaissance
Released : 28 May 2012
Label: Dreyfus
Format : [email protected]
This is bass-guitar star Marcus Miller's UK-tour repertoire of April 2012, plus a few bonuses, including the finely spun vocals of young New Yorker Gretchen Parlato and the rasping ones of Dr John on two tracks. For jazz-funk fans, it's paradise – Miller's arrangements have the clamouring horn parts, snappy basslines, raw guitar fills and whipcrack backbeats of this style meshing like a racing engine, and, of course, there are plenty of jawdropping bass solos. Creative obliqueness (of the kind Miller brought to Miles Davis's Tutu and Amandla albums in the 1980s) isn't always apparent. The assertive foregrounding of the bass guitar doesn't exactly enhance the potentially mysterious Brazilian feature Setembro, with its vocals by Parlato and Ruben Blades, and horn-punching groovers such as Cee Tee Eye veer to the formulaic. But the exhilaratingly funky Detroit, the lyrical (and Tutu/Amandla-related) Redemption, or the Headhunters-like Slippin' into Darkness confirm Miller's mastery of his particular world. Solos from Lincoln Centre trumpeter Sean Jones and excellent regular saxophonist Alex Han spark fireworks, sly quotes from Dizzy Gillespie and Bob Marley classics add spice, and there's a poetic solo-bass finale on I'll Be There.
Tracklist :
1. Detroit 5:46
2. Redemption 6:09
3. February 4:15
4. Slippin' Into Darkness 9:17
5. Setembro (Brazilian Wedding Song) [feat. Gretchen Parlato & Rubén Blades] 6:39
6. Jekyll & Hyde 6:30
7. Interlude: Nocturnal Mist 1:16
8. Revelation 4:46
9. Mr. Clean 5:01
10. Gorée (Go-ray)
11. Cee-Tee-Eye 7:39
12. Tightrope (feat. Dr. John) 5:46
13. I'll Be There 3:48
