Thom Rotella - How My Heart Beats (1996)

  • 16 Jul, 09:13
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Artist:
Title: How My Heart Beats
Year Of Release: 1996
Label: Positive Music
Genre: Smooth Jazz
Quality: FLAC (tracks)
Total Time: 48:50 min
Total Size: 333 MB
WebSite:

Tracklist:

01. How My Heart Beats
02. What About Us?
03. Pappa Shuffle
04. Talk 2 Me
05. Free At Last
06. Fire And Rain
07. No
08. Don'tchou Worry
09. Baka
10. Code Blu (Prayer For Peace)

Personnel:

Thom Rotella (guitar, keyboards, synthesizer, percussion programming);
Johnny Britt (vocals, trumpet);
Jim Studer (vocals, piano, keyboards, synthesizer, percussion);
Joe Turano, Portia Griffin, Tierney Sutton, Vann Johnson, Oz Fox (vocals);
Ralph Rickert (trumpet, flugelhorn);
Chris Rhyne (piano, Fender Rhodes piano, synthesizer);
Larry Cohn (synthesizer);
Land Richards, Tom Walsh (drums);
Arno Lucas, Scott Breadman (percussion).

It's always encouraging to find a musician using his downtime wisely. And judging from the fanciful string spins on How My Heart Beats, it seems that AWOL guitarist Thom Rotella has spent his six years of label limbo mastering a cool, hip-hop-meets-fusion-meets-traditional sound that rings fresh. In addition to perfecting a whimsical series of twists on the ultra-cool Metheny-Montgomery-Benson classroom procedure, he surrounds his incisive melodies with an inventive mix of machine- and live-generated percussion sounds. Think Marc Antoine's urban gypsy ideas, with a little more history and focus on the electric. As if he needed more texturing and influences in the mix, Rotella pays homage to blues with the help of Larry Cohn's keyboards, and even a bit of Miles with the help of Ralf Rickert's muted trumpet innuendos. A lesser artist might get lost behind this wall of picture-perfect melodies (including a take on James Taylor's mellow rockfest "Fire and Rain") and production values, but Rotella makes sure that we're screaming for even more guitarisma by the end. ~ Jonathan Widran

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