Life is complicated and busy. Did you notice? Keeping up with the music, movies and books that fed your youthful imagination and conversations is harder than ever, but even more important. Here's the good news: there's never been more great new stuff. The challenge is to find it.

So here are my highly opinionated views on sounds, sights and words that will help you keep it fresh and real, and links to the veins where the richest motherlodes can be found.

Feed your head.
- JumpingFlashJack

Friday, January 3, 2014

New year, new music - NoW's Feeling Good

As the year starts with the snow swirling, I can't get enough of a 2013 disk that came to me via WSJ critic Jim Fusilli's year end column (he's a very reliable guide, but that's a subject for another post).

The album is Feeling Good by the West Yorkshire trip-hop team, Nightmares on Wax. Built around DJ George Evelyn, NoW is now in most ways a performing band but with the roots of its mixmaster boss.  Evelyn has a deep feel for the soul sounds he was raised on: Mayfield, Marley and Motown all show through.  His pedigree as a producer includes work with De La Soul in the early aughts. 

Can I find superlatives enough?  No, I cannot.  Feeling Good is the equal of the best work of Massive Attack and Groove Armada, steeped in dub and reggae, classic soul and ambient sounds.  The other night at my house, it had the whole room quietly pulsing -- twenty-somethings to fifty-somethings --and no one said, "Can you turn this down?"  

CHECK THIS OUT:   NoW kicking "Be, I Do" and then think, "Gee, if every track is as good as this this, shouldn't Feeling Good be playing in my ears/car/party right now?"


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