Because of just how rare it seems to be for me, I’m always somewhat excited to get a project from an act which just so happens to be a fully functioning unit in one way or another. Be it a situation such as a Ward 21, who can both produce and voice its own work or even someone like a Tuff Lion or Batch who can voice, produce and play the instruments for everything they release and are seemingly held only to the standards of themselves (they both even have their own labels) and to whatever time constraints they may have. Still, I might say that, at least in theory, I do take a very special interest anytime I come across a new(er) (to me at least) fully functioning band, as within the scope of Reggae music, it’s not something which is all that common actually. On top of that, the SOUND a band (particularly one of great skill) can generate is very impressive. I’ll be the last person you’ll ever hear complain about ‘Artist A’ voicing in the studio over the ‘Random Riddim 1000’, but the simple thought alone of a group of musicians going into the studio to record a Reggae album is, in and of itself, a very impressive one to me. In Reggae, certainly the history of the music is such where a functioning band is something which is plentiful, however, these days it seems as if the concept is one which (like unfortunately several others) has found its home outside of Jamaica largely and most times I run into a new band it’s the case there, as it is here. Earlier this year I dealt with somewhat of a similar situation with Bouddha Sticks & Jah Pearl on their album Motherland and that was a very pleasant surprise and, in retrospect, the sound was very nice as well as the band in that case, Bouddha Sticks, apparently had accumulated a ton of experience playing for various artists throughout Europe, but even that wasn’t exactly what I mean as they, to my knowledge, utilize a variety of vocalists. You can’t very well say the same thing, however, about a band who might just go down as one of the greatest ‘finds’ in the brief history of this blog, the Ayaaso Band. This band seems to have a very set and solidified arrangement with a specific lead singer and band mates who all serve their purposes within the group and do so strongly. On top of that, as you might imagine looking at the cover, there is apparently a TON of experience within these musicians and experience as musicians and people in general within the ‘industry’ of making music as well. And I was so intrigued by reading through their bio as well - Of the various courses taken by each member to arrive at Ayaaso, because this somewhat random, but very much tied together group of people have so wonderfully come together to make these powerful vibes.
Most powerful about what you’ll hear from Ayaaso Band is . . . Well . . . Most powerful is what you’ll actually HEAR! As I said, the experience of the band is very vast, however, to my research, they haven’t been together a great deal of time and thus what we find ourselves examining today is actually the band’s very first album as a unit, Brighter Day. The release comes via their very own label and reaches the world digitally through the good graces of the wonderful boys and girls of Zojak Worldwide. I have been rather quietly (but very often as my constant readers may have noticed) trumpeting the splendours of both the band and this wonderful album since I got my hands on it a few months back and I have been doing so due to “what you’ll actually HEAR” because the vibes on this album, almost certain to be lost to the attentions of most fans, are just SO NICE and so well done that I simply felt compelled to do by best to make sure the masses (who give a damn about what I have to say) were aware of its existence. I don’t know a great deal of Ayaaso Band, even still, but it appears to be fronted by a Jamaican vocalist, Bill Bojangles, who himself has also released an album, A Little Light (which you can also grab up digitally via Zojak Worldwide), and is full of largely Jamaican players of instruments - Asante Blue (that is a COOL name), Fes Williams, Steady Demming (a drummer, I think, who is apparently Kittitian and another COOL name) and Bunny Cunningham - all of whom have a variety of history and experience in the business and have seemingly been driven together to form this wonderful collective of experience musicians making predominately Roots Reggae music with a very old school ‘tinge’ to the vibes, unsurprisingly. What was surprising, however, was the level of PROFESSIONALISM which just comes through in this music. Besides the tunes the colours and the musical messages themselves (which, obviously, I’m get into in just a second), you just have a FEEL for the class with which this material was done. Whether or not they actually spent a great deal of money or time in it is another story, but for a group which reportedly didn’t come together until as recently as 2003, what you hear on Brighter Day DEFINITELY denotes individuals who know what they’re doing with their chosen instruments. Bill Bojangles (certainly going to get a lot of the attention here), is also a very nice singer. His voice is somewhat ’airy’ (that’s just something I’ve yet to master properly describing at this point) (still working on it) and it has this nice ’loud’ effect when it needs to. But his voice is also very rich and somewhat emotional and, at least to my opinion, it is the type of voice which so nicely vibes with musical direction of the vibes of Ayaaso Band. The lyrics are also very nice and typically (on the album), Ayaaso Band makes music with strong social messages, but they do so from a spiritual platform, so what you get is this very nice mix of the spiritual and the tangible, which I LOVE! On the album Ayaaso definitely puts their finest foot forward, the question now becomes whether or not the masses are listening. Are you?
The Ayaaso Band incorporates a few remakes in through the album (almost certainly more than I realize). Certainly that’s not something which is my favourite practise, however, in the case of this release, I don’t find that it detracts from the vibes at all (as it usually does) and, at least to what I can tell, when you do encounter a remake, it’s pretty much an ‘upgrade’. That being said, I don’t know if the biblical ‘Blessed Is The Man’, which begins the Ayaaso Band’s debut album Brighter Day, is a direct remake or not, but in either case it is VERY powerful and an immediate attention getter to say the least. The very Dennis Brown-esque tune comes across much like a prayer before the rest of the set flows in and it does so wonderfully help to set the stage for the forthcoming brilliant vibes. I was sure the second tune, the very nice [By the Time I Get To] ‘Phoenix’ was a remake and it is (although I had to look it up to confirm) and an excellent choice (I believe Glen Campbell originated the tune). The song’s lyrics aren’t necessarily so, but the vibes definitely have more of a mellow and even melancholy type of an effect to them and it’s just a very captivating tune in my opinion. Again, I’m not so sure whether or not ‘Welcome To New York’ is a remake (and this’ll be the final time I’ll wonder about such a thing openly in this review), but it doesn’t matter here either. While not being one of my favourite selections on Brighter Day, the tune clearly has a very high level of craft and is one of the best SOUNDING tunes on the album altogether. The New York based Ayaaso Band apparently wanted to throw something in for it’s adopted home and I’d be willing to bet that this one shines ‘brightest’ in a live performance type of situation.
When you get near the middle of Brighter Day and continuing through the latter stages of the album, it REALLY begins to get very interesting. That stretch, in my opinion, begins at track #5 with the album’s finest effort, the delightful ‘Golden Sun’. TEARS! There’re technically ‘better’ tunes on the album, but none BRIGHTER. This tune just makes the listener feel good and from a skillful aspect, although not the greatest (and that’s not saying much), it’s still very high and absolutely sparkling at the same time. A tune carrying a similar message - Seeking comfort within the might of His Imperial Majesty - and coming soon thereafter is another biblical effort, ‘Praising The Father’. This tune has somewhat of a spoken word vibes to it (Bojangles actually sounds a little like Big Youth at times on the tune), along with the sweet singing and it is a downright DYNAMIC tune. Still, not the best and certainly not the one which is going to immediately strike anyone who just may be skimming through Brighter Day, but definitely the most interesting in this stretch of songs is the HUGE ‘Crush Pepper’. The tune is an upful and stepping tune and it’s the type of tune I would have criticized Ayaaso for not having here, given their skillset - It’s an instrumental. There’re no sustained lyrics in the tune and it just goes heavily into providing a sweet vibes and that’s exactly what it does (I particular like roughly halfway through where the various instruments begin to take their solos). It’s not to be missed by the more mature listener at all. And just to finish up on the first half of the album - Check the remade ‘Make It With You’, which sounds absolutely EXCELLENT and it’s probably the type of tune you’ll want to spin more than once to REALLY get its fullness. And there’s also what is, essentially, an antiviolence track in ‘Cool Off’. This tune kind of thrives on its minimalist appeal. While the lyrics are certainly very important, the tune itself is very streamlined to a core sound (BEATING one-drop) which adds to the vibes in my opinion and also gives a bit of ‘dramatic’ sound as well.
The second half Brighter Day definitely maintains the lofty status set by the first and, at least to my opinion, it surpasses it in terms of the lyrical content. Such a tune is ‘Stormy Weather’, which I’m pretty sure has a different lead vocalist than Bill Bojangles. The tune finds an individual going through tough times and doing the best he can to ‘keep his head above water’. Certainly it’s a tune many people can relate to and it’s actually a little depressing because it never kind of presents that musical ‘out’, it kind of stays on that harsh course, much like life itself. And then there’s ‘Come Home’ . . . As I said, there’re tunes on Brighter Day which are technically of a higher caliber than my favourite tune here, ‘Golden Sun’ and this tune is clearly one of them (as are two I’m going to tell you about in a second). ‘Come Home’ is a track which you almost are sure that you know what it’s about, given the fact that it’s on a Roots Reggae album - Repatriation - and you’re right in that assumption, but it’s so much more. “Rastafari sit upon his throne yeah . . . Telling us to come home”, the tune says, suggesting more than a physical repatriation to Afrika, but a full on SPIRITUAL repatriation to His Imperial Majesty and DEFINITELY Ayaaso catches a HUGE vibes when they take that route instead of that which was most expected. The title track for the album is probably one of my least favourite actually (I find myself saying that more and more these days), but it’s not at all a ‘bad’ track. It actually takes the chorus from an older sounding R&B tune I believe and it transfers and applies well, as does the message, I would have just liked for this tune to be even MORE upful, the most joyous and jovial on the album named after it, but like I said, the tune itself isn’t at all bad. ‘Living In Babylon’ is another of the class of the album and it’s probably the one which I’ve listened to here more than any other actually. To my opinion, the core message of the tune is FREEDOM. It doesn’t go towards ‘Come Home’ in the literal sense, but it seems to be very similar as it speaks towards mentally and spiritually achieving a disconnect from babylon and a corrupt system and of course that is accomplished through the will of His Majesty. It’s really a very interesting tune and even though you may not need to here it dozens of times (like I have), certainly you should hear it at least once. Next is a tune which is arguably just as strong and just as strong as any other on the entire album, the LOVELY ‘Marcus Garvey’. “Teach Marcus Garvey to the youth dem again. Teach Marcus Garvey to our enemies and friends” is the hook of the tune (which also has a different lead singer seemingly) and I didn’t take that (ONLY) to be literal, but also figuratively in the sense of infusing more and more of the teachings of The Most Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey in everyday life. And of course you can go through with that in the schooling sense with the notebook and textbook (and the tune actually mentions “school”), but you can also materialize it with ACTIONS, which is far more difficult, but perhaps ultimately far more significant as well. HUGE song.
The final two selections on Brighter Day, ‘Sunshine’ and ‘Troubled Times’ standout, ostensibly, for having some of the greatest music on the entire album and certainly the messages are fitting and crucial as well. In the case of the former, the guitar which starts it off is divine (and somewhat Marley-ish in my opinion) and the message there is kind of different because it seems to be actively SEEKING some type of inspiration within itself. It certainly isn’t as bleak as ‘Stormy Weather’, but it is a pretty melancholy tune, although I do find myself feeling quite good because of it, for some reason. And finally ‘Troubled Times’ has a melody which many may find familiar at times and it, in full, is absolutely BEAUTIFUL! This song, in retrospect, may just be my second favourite on the album (and again, it’s a situation where I acknowledge that there’re ‘fuller’ tunes on the album), because of the vibes it generates. And so interesting and so WONDERFUL is the fact that the very last lyrics we hear uttered on the album are, “Jah will bless you. Jah will bless you on your way”. What a perfect way to the end the album on such a nice sentiment (particularly after the opening tune whose prevailing sentiment is “does he meditate day and night“, well if you do then “Jah will bless you on your way”).
Overall, it’s not too surprising that I can’t find much in the way of discussion or publicity surrounding Ayaaso Band’s Brighter Day album and while that isn’t a shock, definitely don’t take the lack of info surrounding this release to be related to its quality. CLEARLY it isn’t. I’m not going to attempt to apply some incredibly lofty status to the album (at least not more than I already have), but you should well know that this is QUALITY material here. It’s definitely aimed towards more of the mature listener (if this is going to be the first Reggae album you EVER buy. . . Nope) and maybe even someone who comes from a Jazz background or someone who just really enjoys excellent musicianship in general (all you guys who always talk about loving live instrumentation on your tunes) and definitely the Dub crowd as well. For me as I said, I just always find it so interesting when you can take a full on BAND and they can make Reggae music at a very high level. I certainly have my favourites at doing just that and if sometime in the next few years or so Ayaaso Band should offer up more magic like what is to be found on Brighter Day, they’ll definitely find themselves on that list as well. Excellently done.
Rated 4.75/5
Ayaaso Roots/Zojak Worldwide
2010
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