Kamasi Washington: Heaven & Earth (22 June 2018)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Moth, Apr 9, 2018.

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  1. Margrave

    Margrave I'll Give It 5

    Location:
    Down by the sea.
    My vinyl set has just arrived.:righton:
     
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  2. pghmusiclover

    pghmusiclover Senior Member

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  3. golobali

    golobali Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    The "hidden" record is a nice idea but the execution is bad. The perforation is quite strong so it's a pain in the a** to open it carefully, vinyl is not stored in a sleeve so you have the whole paper residue from perforation opening on it and my copy is full of scuffs on the B-side, maybe it has been put too early in the sleeve. If the scuffs are audible (I'm quite sure they are) I will ask the label for a replacement copy because the other records look great. I just don't know when I will listen to the complete album as long there are three football games a day ;-)
     
  4. Andrew Mickunas

    Andrew Mickunas Forum Resident

    How does it sound apart from the 5th scuffed record?
     
  5. lucan_g

    lucan_g Forum Resident

    Hoping for a better pressing than the prior album....
     
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  6. amoergosum

    amoergosum Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    Kamasi Washington - Heaven And Earth
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    DR Peak RMS Filename
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    DR7 -0.03 dB -9.23 dB 01 - Fists of Fury.mp3
    DR6 -0.06 dB -8.64 dB 02 - Can You Hear Him.mp3
    DR7 -0.17 dB -9.23 dB 03 - Hub-Tones.mp3
    DR8 -0.05 dB -10.01 dB 04 - Connections.mp3
    DR9 -0.22 dB -11.31 dB 05 - Tiffakonkae.mp3
    DR8 -0.16 dB -10.18 dB 06 - The Invincible Youth.mp3
    DR8 -0.20 dB -10.65 dB 07 - Testify.mp3
    DR7 -0.13 dB -9.31 dB 08 - One of One.mp3
    DR8 -0.14 dB -11.69 dB 09 - The Space Travelers Lullaby.mp3
    DR7 -0.04 dB -9.41 dB 10 - Vi Lua Vi Sol.mp3
    DR6 -0.11 dB -8.95 dB 11 - Street Fighter Mas.mp3
    DR8 -0.21 dB -11.69 dB 12 - Song For The Fallen.mp3
    DR10 -0.19 dB -12.91 dB 13 - Journey.mp3
    DR7 -0.14 dB -8.71 dB 14 - The Psalmnist.mp3
    DR9 -0.26 dB -10.95 dB 15 - Show Us The Way.mp3
    DR7 -0.08 dB -9.80 dB 16 - Will You Sing.mp3
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Number of files: 16
    Official DR value: DR8
     
  7. amoergosum

    amoergosum Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
  8. englishbob

    englishbob has left the SH Forums...19/05/2023

    Location:
    Kent, England
    Mines just arrived and I've been sitting here for 20 minutes trying to work out how to open the Disc 5 seal!

    Will have chance to play it later

    I've just spent £43 on an album without a download code :realmad:
     
  9. englishbob

    englishbob has left the SH Forums...19/05/2023

    Location:
    Kent, England
    I'm in, opened it one end with a paperclip, something small and sharp, then very carefully used a pair of very sharp scissors to get in, very slowly.

    As mentioned above, the 5th disc doesn't come in a sleeve, but has a single-page insert with it telling you what the tracks are. A bit mark/scratch on the last track on this 5th disc, looks like someone packing it got a bit impatient, and I can't blame him. A good idea this, just a bit of a hatchet really in this perforation malarkey!

    Out of interest, is this a first for a vinyl edition. A hidden disc inside the packaging?
     
  10. Greenalishi

    Greenalishi Birds Aren’t Real

    Location:
    San Francisco
    How is the music? Good?
     
  11. Sydster

    Sydster Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    Nope. Umphrey’s McGee did it earlier in the year with ‘It’s Not Us’, hiding a picture sleeve 45 within the wall of their deluxe package. Bit easier to get that one out though:
     
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  12. englishbob

    englishbob has left the SH Forums...19/05/2023

    Location:
    Kent, England
    Only just made it through the first two discs, if you liked The Epic then this is surely your thing. Its very solo's orientated currently, or at least the EARTH album is.

    My personal preference with some of this style of music is to have a little bit of atmosphere and dynamics about it, so hopefull HEAVEN gives that.

    If I am honest, and this is true of The Epic for me, I'm not overly mad on the vocal tracks, and the choir get used quite a lot so far, a sound I'm not keen on personally. Only so many tracks you can listen to a lot of aaahhhhs
     
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  13. Greenalishi

    Greenalishi Birds Aren’t Real

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Thanks. englishbob. I appreciate his bent and perspective and pushing it all. He and a few other young jazz guys right now just seem so adventurous to me. Like a movement. I dig it. But, not sure i dig all the music out of them. I'm gonna get it and just judge for myself. Thank you.
     
  14. Greenalishi

    Greenalishi Birds Aren’t Real

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Just got this in an email,

    AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek [-]
    Kamasi Washington arrived on the international jazz scene from Los Angeles with a bang after the release of 2015's three-disc, three-hour The Epic. While he'd been around for a decade, playing withSnoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar -- whose To Pimp a Butterfly he arranged and played on -- the mammoth project turned him into jazz's perceived savior almost overnight. But he understood his own mission remarkably well and has remained undaunted by the hype. His second, double-length long-player Heaven and Earth was announced via tweet: "The Earth side…represents the world as I see it outwardly, the world that I am part of. The Heaven side…represents the world as I see it inwardly, the world that is a part of me." Washington reassembled his Next Step band -- which includes bassistsMiles Mosely and Stephen "Thundercat" Bruner, drummers Ronald Bruner, Jr. and Tony Austin, trombonist Ryan Porter, pianist Cameron Graves, keyboardist Brandon Coleman, and vocalist Patrice Quinn -- supplemented by a jazz orchestra, West Coast Get Down, a symphony orchestra, and choir.



    Heaven and Earth is a major dose of Afro-Futurism. Earth opens with a killer cover of the theme fromBruce Lee's Fist of Fury, retitled in plural here. Quinn and Dwight Trible duet on lead vocals backed by a soaring, sweeping choir atop a cooking Latin jazz groove complete with montunos from Graves and a raw-boned solo from Washington (who is on fire throughout). The other cover is a funky take on Freddie Hubbard's "Hub-Tones," with layers of propulsive Latin rhythms. Dontae Winslow's jagged trumpet solo cuts across the mix before Washington's tenor answers. Of the originals, "Connections" is a space jazz embrace of hard bop and 20th century West Coast jazz, with great solos from Porter and Winslow, while "Testify" owes as much to Caribbean grooves and soul as jazz. Heaven commences with the spectral "The Space Traveler's Lullaby," with its gorgeous warm brass and reeds, swelling symphony strings, and soaring wordless chorus sounds like the Gil Evans and Sun Ra orchestras playing together. "Vi Lua Vi Sol" features a vocoder vocal from Coleman, with Porter blowing fills and a beefy solo, swooping synth lines atop Afrobeat drumming, and a popping upright bassline. The breaks and future funk of "Street Fighter Mas" owes equally to Miles Davis, Lamar, and Earth Wind and Fire as the choir extrapolates on the harmonics before Washington's skittering R&B-drenched solo. "Song for the Fallen" weds angular avant-jazz and future funk to wiry fusion and a multivalent rhythmic attack -- with the choir adding a celestial bent. Heaven and Earth is more a refinement of the ideas expressed on The Epic than an entirely new paradigm. There is less wandering, more focus, more inquiry and directed movement, as well as an abundance of colorful tonal and harmonic contrasts. More than anything else, it establishesWashington as a composer and arranger of dizzying potential and still underscores his twin rep as a soloist and jazz conceptualist. [The CD version contains a third, hidden bonus disc in the middle panel (it has to be slit open) containing three more originals -- "The Secret of Jinsinson," "My Family," and "Agents of Multiverse," plus covers of Carole King's "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" and Stan Vincent's "Ooh Child."]
     
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  15. englishbob

    englishbob has left the SH Forums...19/05/2023

    Location:
    Kent, England
    I'm onto track 3 of the Heaven set, this is more my groove! (although the choir is still there). Laid back, a bit different (Vi Lua Vi Sol was great), so far digging it over Earth.

    Still can't believe there is no download code with this, for the money
     
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  16. zither

    zither Lodger

    Location:
    UK
    Finally got into the secret compartment to access the third disc, using a sharp implement. If you thought getting the LP's out of 'The Epic' slipcase was tricky, please be warned - this has taken things to a whole new level. Regardless of this minor obstacle, I think having a brand new triple album from Kamasi is going to restore my faith in modern music.
     
  17. GuidedByJonO)))

    GuidedByJonO))) Forum Resident

    Location:
    Evanston
    Any of you with the CD version figured out how the heck you get that one out? I can feel it in there, but I'm baffled at how to get it out without ripping the packaging apart.
     
  18. Tony L

    Tony L Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    I used a good sharp knife and very slowly and carefully worked across the top edge one perforation at a time. I did a neat job so it hardly looks like its been opened and the CD and insert were unmarked. Playing it right now as it happens. It is an excellent album for sure!
     
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  19. bodine

    bodine Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington DC
    Not everything works, but surely this is the grandest, ethereal, crazy-assed jazz since Pharoah Sanders’ head-exploding 1960s and 1970s LPs.

    And a note of praise for the Pharoah himself, who’s still going strong even if he’s lost a step or two. If you have the chance to hear him live, don’t hesitate. I’ve seen him 8 times in the last decade and each show was an event.
     
  20. Ironclaw

    Ironclaw Forum Resident

    Location:
    Colorado
    Don’t listen to it, bruh. Jazz doesn’t need a revival. Everything can drop off the mainstream commercial consciousness for all I care, music is about the individual artist and the individual listener — doesn’t require a scene. The jazz clubs and whatnot were cool, but we don’t need people to dance all tutti frutti in jazz clubs for the genre to persist. Now, if you’re a swing dancer, that’s a different conversation.
     
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  21. ianuaditis

    ianuaditis Matthew 21:17

    Location:
    Long River Place
    Wow, that is a strong recommendation. I wasn't sure I was interested in this, but maybe I ought to be.
     
  22. JimmyS

    JimmyS Forum Resident

    Location:
    Michigan
    How is the pressing quality for the US version? Sadly, it was pressed at Rainbo and I’m hesitant to open it up.
     
  23. Jerry James

    Jerry James Rorum Fesident

    I'm only 2 LP's in, but so far so good. I was initially disappointed when I saw that awful S-xxxxxxx in the deadwax (a knee-jerk reaction by now) for such a lavish presentation and highly-anticipated release, and I still have the other 3 to listen to, but no defects yet. Not the quietest of vinyl in the lead-in to the tracks; but no ticks, pops or non-fill in the music where it counts.
     
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  24. mwheelerk

    mwheelerk Sorry, I can't talk now, I'm listening to music...

    Location:
    Gilbert Arizona
    I have to say at first listen I'm disappointed. A little too much angelic choir voices and chamber music or orchestra backing
     
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  25. Margrave

    Margrave I'll Give It 5

    Location:
    Down by the sea.
    I had fun getting the secret 5th LP that's not in a inner sleeve out.
    This is one of the most stupid designed album covers ever.
    Also no quality inner sleeves.
    Why couldn't they put all five records in a nice box ?
    Giving it a early morning spin now with a double espresso.
     
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