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Karma

Price: £10.00
12.64 USD 11.69 EUR 91.38 CNY
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★★★★★ Voted Best Album 2012
Product ID STS015
Date Added
01/08/2014

BEST ALBUM - SCOTTISH JAZZ AWARDS 2012

10 Full Tracks On A Physical CD
Catalogue No: STS015

designed by JOHN HAXBY

TOMMY SMITH - Tenor & Soprano Saxophones, Shakuhatchi, Synth
STEVE HAMILTON - Piano, Synth, Tamborine
KEVIN GLASGOW - Electric Bass
ALYN COSKSER - Drums

1. Cause and Effect....
2. Land of Heroes ......
3. Good Deed...........
4. Body or Soul.........
5. Tomorrow.............
6. Karma...................
7. Star.......................
8. Projection..............
9. Sun........................
10. Who Are You?.....

publisher
Smythe Music Productions, MCPS & PRS
engineer Stuart Hamilton, Castle Sound Studios, Pentcaitland, Scotland 5th August 2010
mixed and mastered Jan Erik Konshaug, Rainbow Studios, Oslo, Norway 16th & 17th Dec 2010
photography Colin Robertson and Gildas Bocl?

BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE ★★★★★
“His tone is tungsten-tough or tender and nostalgic, his improvisations stimulating and affecting.”

SCOTSMAN ★★★★★
“His toughest and most creative quartet yet.”

IRISH TIMES ★★★★★
“Smith’s tenor is now the uniquely personal voice of a great player”

JAZZWISE ★★★★
“It is quite possibly his finest recording yet.”

GUARDIAN ★★★★
“A rare splicing of rich-toned, pipe-like themes, fiercely guttural up-tempo tenor improv, Arabic and Irish music.

MOJO ★★★★
“Scottish saxophonist/composer’s 24th album, one of his best.”

 

Album Review: Tommy Smith, KARMA
by Barry Witherden | BBC Music Magazine
PERFORMANCE: ★★★★★ SOUND: ★★★★★

Although my copy went AWOL many years ago, I retain a soft spot for Smith’s debut album. Cut when he was 15, it suggested a slow motion Albert Ayler, marking him out from the crowd. After studying at Berklee he seemed to move into the post-Brecker mainstream, but in recent years his output (as composer, arranger and facilitator as well as performer) has impressed with its quality, quantity and variety.

Publicity highlights the influence of genres like metal, and Smith calls this his ‘grunge band’, but in essence it is pukka jazz, with such influences well-absorbed and balanced by echoes of Garbarek and various folk traditions: though superbly recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studios, Smith evokes Scottish lochs rather than Norwegian fjords. Depending on the mood of the composition, his tone is tungsten-tough or tender and nostalgic, his improvisations stimulating, exciting and affecting. Hamilton, Glasgow and Cosker are superb throughout.

http://www.classical-music.com/review/karma

Album Review: Tommy Smith, KARMA ★★★★★
by Kenny Mathieson | The Scotsman
published Friday 25 March 2011

Tommy Smith has explored many directions over the years, and Karma adds another to that list with a shift into a more groove- and rock-based idiom. The band made their debut in a superb concert at last year's Edinburgh Jazz Festival, and this disc, recorded the following day, bears out the powerful impression the music made that night.


Smith's saxophone playing bristles with invention and a majestic sonority, both in the up-tempo workouts and the more folk-influenced ballads, with their keening, Garbarek-like sound. Alyn Cosker's powerful but subtle drumming is the perfect driver for this kind of project, and is ably supported by Kevin Glasgow's virtuoso electric bass playing. Pianist Steve Hamilton both solos and accompanies to great effect in a band that is fulfilling my post-concert prediction that it may prove to be his toughest and most creative quartet yet.


http://www.scotsman.com/news/album-review-tommy-smith-karma-1-1545544

“Visceral precision and imaginative interplay”

Album Review: Tommy Smith, KARMA ★★★★★
by Ray Comiskey | The Irish Times
published 6 June 2011

Tommy Smith’s new quartet includes pianist/keyboardist Steve Hamilton and drummer Alyn Cosker off his 2005 Forbidden Fruit album, but this no less brilliant successor is very different. New is Kevin Glasgow on six-string electric bass, and the lingua franca has become an amalgam of Scottish, Irish and Arab folk elements spiced with funk, fusion and heavy metal. In lesser hands this could have been an exercise in multicultural retro-ish virtuosity, but the conceptual clarity binding these disparate ingredients together is Smith’s, whose tenor (he also plays soprano, shakuhachi and synth) is now the uniquely personal voice of a great player. He shines in a superb band that takes the music’s odd metres, rhythm shifts, convoluted lines and uptempo unison playing with staggering aplomb and a visceral precision and imaginative interplay that sweeps all before it.

http://www.tommy-smith.co.uk/ts/news/visceral-precision-and-imaginative-interplay/

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2011/0610/1224298660990.html

 

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