Best Comic of the Week:
Resident Alien: Your Ride’s Here #4 – Harry knows he’s got to get out of town in a hurry, because he’s sure he’s been discovered (Harry is an alien who has been living as a human doctor), but first he has to help find the little girl who was just kidnapped from her mother’s wedding. I love how Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse have expanded this book way beyond Harry’s story, making the cast a true ensemble. I know this is the last story arc for this series, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all ends, but I also know that I’m really going to miss this book.
22 January 2021
The space where jazz, R&B, and hip-hop converge no longer seems like it should be described as some kind of “fusion”, where one type of music gives way to or shares space with another. It is one unified space today, of course, and it’s easy to see that these intersections always were one space, whether defined by Ray Charles, Miles Davis, or Kendrick Lamar.
R+R=Now is a group convened by an artist who is native to that space: pianist Robert Glasper. Shortly after the group’s studio album,
Collagically Speaking, released in 2018, Glasper got a four-week stint at New York’s Blue Note, during which he played with all his various ensembles and collaborators. The “Reflect and Respond Now” band got a stint and transformed their studio tracks into a deeper extended live groove session spacey and languid, hip and atmospheric.
Robert Glasper’s R+R=NOW project issues new live album
By Adam Feibel Todd Cooper
In October of 2018, Robert Glasper settled into a month-long residency at the Blue Note jazz club in New York an experience to which, at this point, he’s likely very eager to return.
In the meantime, the pianist and his new collective R+R=NOW have shared a live album recorded that month, just after the group released their debut album
Collagically Speaking via Blue Note.
Led by Glasper on keys, the highly regarded, genre-bending band features the formidable talents of Terrace Martin on synthesizer, vocoder, and alto saxophone; Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah on trumpet; Derrick Hodge on bass; Taylor McFerrin on synthesizer; and Justin Tyson on drums.
Embed iframe src https://www.npr.org/player/embed/965903895/967241551 width 100% height 290 frameborder 0 scrolling no title NPR embedded audio player Pink Sweat$. His debut full-length,
Pink Planet, is on our shortlist of the best new albums out on Feb. 12. Jimmy Fontaine/Courtesy of the artist
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Tyron, the sophomore full-length from English rapper slowthai, is a multidimensional, brilliantly nuanced journey through a world of fantastically warped sound. It s both menacing and delicate, with as much glowering swagger as there is tenderness and love. We open this week s show with a quick sampling across the album and dig into some of its multilayered themes on identity and more.