![]() Where prior albums strivedtowards music’s polyglot edges, such inquiries now sound likebeloved intimacies. Yet there’s afreshness to A La Sala’s instrumental interactivity, less concernedwith getting further out than going deeper in, a profound desire tocelebrate the world’s external wonders. A cascade of crispmelodies emanates from Marko’s reverb-heavy electric, dancinggently around Laura Lee’s minimalist almost-dub bass triangles,while DJ’s drums serve as the tightened-up pocket and unwaveringdance-floor on which all this movement takes place. The trio’s collective musical DNA, the years spent constructing itin Houston’s local-meets-global cultural stew, ensures the bandcontinues to sound like no one but itself. A LaSala scales Khruangbin down to scale up, a creative strategy withthe future in mind. It’s a window onto the bounties powering Khruangbin’svision, a reimagining and refueling for the long haul ahead. It’s a gorgeously airy record completed only in the companyof the group’s longtime engineer Steve Christensen, with minimaloverdubs. and guitarist Mark “Marko” Speer approach music.If 2020’s Mordechai, the last studio LP Khruangbin made withoutcollaborators, was a party record that enhanced the band’s musicalreputation far and wide, then A La Sala is the measured morningafter. It continues the mystery and sanctitythat is the key to how bassist Laura Lee Ochoa, drummer Donald“DJ” Johnson, Jr. Khruangbin’s fourth studio album, A La Sala (“To the Room” inSpanish), is an exercise in returning in order to go further, anddoing so on your own terms. Williams plays a variety of percussion on the freely improvised "Memory" which features Herbie Hancock on piano and Bobby Hutcherson on vibraphone, and lays out entirely on the ruminative piano-bass duet "Barb's Song to the Wizard" performed by Hancock and Ron Carter which closes the album. ![]() Side 2 opens with the jaunty "Tomorrow Afternoon" featuring Williams, Rivers, and Peacock. Side 1 presents the expansive two movement suite "2 Pieces of One" with the drummer joined by tenor saxophonist Sam Rivers and bassists Gary Peacock and Richard Davis. Williams had no intention of playing it safe on his maiden voyage as a leader and set forth to document his uncompromising expression on this program of innovative original compositions. The precocious and prodigious drummer and composer Tony Williams had already joined the Miles Davis Quintet and participated in numerous landmark Blue Note recordings including Herbie Hancock Empyrean Isles, Eric Dolphy Out To Lunch, Andrew Hill Point Of Departure, Jackie McLean One Step Beyond, and Grachan Moncur III Evolution by the time he recorded his own adventurous debut album Life Time in August 1964, when he was still just 18 years old. Mojo reports, “The spirit of those parties infused the album’s DNA. While making Ohio Players, a title inspired by the legendary Dayton, OH funk band of the same name, The Black Keys were also DJing dance parties in cities around the world that they called “record hangs,” spinning 45s from their own eclectic and growing collections. “And something that most bands 20 years into their career don’t make, which is an approachable, fun record that is also cool.” “What we wanted to accomplish with this record was make something that was fun,” Patrick Carney says. “It's never taken us this long to make an album. ![]() “We'd never worked harder to make a record,” Dan Auerbach says. (Cartwright and Petraglia are back for Ohio Players too.) A rapid-fire follow-up of new originals, 2022’s Dropout Boogie, featured the duo working with outside writers for the first time: Greg Cartwright of Memphis rockers Reigning Sound and Angelo Petraglia, who has worked with Kings of Leon and the teenage Taylor Swift. Ohio Players is The Black Keys’ fourth album in five years, a momentum with a simple explanation, Auerbach says: “We never stopped recording.” There was his and Carney’s reunion, after a five-year hiatus, on 2019’s "Let’s Rock”, then the 2021 blast of Mississippi-hill-country covers, Delta Kream.
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