Double-bass is often considered as a rhythm section instrument, but there are a few stellar artists who have brought it at the forefront. NHOP is one of them, Renaud Garcia-Fons is another. Garcia-Fons' music stems from jazz aesthetics and European musical roots. Arcoluz is a live recording that pushes this melange far far out and is just a sonic marvel.

First of all, understand that Garcia-Fons has got it all, from deep groove to deeply moving lyricism (often with the bow), from stunning melodic precision to deep grumbling tension. He is also an amazing composer, often drawn towards orientalism in textures and mood. The fact that he is backed here by Kiko Ruiz on the spanish guitar and Negrito Transante on percussions reinforces that drive to the South, way beyond the Iberic peninsula.

There are moments of intense romantic tension on this live recording, in particular the intro to Dias. There are also pulsating moments of world groove like Berimbass (stunning double bass intro...) or Gitanet. The longer pieces like Anda Loco are more structured and have distinct movements and moods. But it's a record that has both an amazing consistency and a great variety of atmospheres.

As an added bonus to this wealth of great world jazz music, the package is CD+DVD with the full concert on DVD. It's really worth watching, not only to feel proximity to the music but to see Garcia-Fons' amazing techniques in emulating other instrument's idiosyncrasies. The way he slaps his bow on the strings while playing pizzicatis to create these short bursts is nothing short of astounding...

Last Sunday I went over to London specifically to see Bela Fleck & the Flecktones. The original Flecktones, that is. Not that I have anything against Jeff Coffin, on the contrary, but chances are we're not going to see the original band with Howard Levy much more often so I thought this was something I could've missed.

The concert was at the Barbican, and it was a double bill with the Chick Corea Trio (turned out to be a triple bill, but more about this later). It was a great concert. Unsurprisingly, they played mostly if not exclusively stuff from the first three albums (Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, UFO TOFU and Flight of the Cosmic Hippo). I hoped there would be maybe a couple of new compositions, but I imagine if there had been they would have said so!

The highlights for me were Mars Needs Women (see the video below) in which Howard's playing (especially on the slow section at the beginning) was stellar and The Sinister Minister which is just such a catchy tune it's impossible not to love it.

Anyway, great stuff although Victor's bass was a little muddy in the mix, but that might have been due to where I was seated. Howard was imperial, both in his playing and his attitude, which was fun to observe. But I guess the musician who impressed me the most was, strangely enough, Bela Fleck himself. Strangely, because while I have admired him as a player more or less ever since I know him, his jazz chops were never as apparent to me as they were there. This was particularly evident for the two pieces during which he and Chick Corea played together (and played each other). That's when you realise that no matter what inversion or weird substitute chord progression Chick was coming up with, Bela was matching and then some.

Yes, you read that right. Chick Corea joined the Flecktones at the end of their set for one tune (can't quite remember which). And then Chick's Trio, their guest tenor sax and the four Flecktones all came on stage for Spain at the end of the trio's set. That could have been a muddy nightmare with two bassists and two drummers (of sorts) on stage, but it was wonderfully played in successive duet highlights: first Howard and the sax guy (whose name I didn't get) played each other, then Chick and Bela, then Victor and Stanley Jordan (that was something!) then Futureman and Lenny White.

Chick's Trio itself was a much more in-depth jazz experience, and I must admit that they lost me at times. I enjoyed the pieces that had a strong structure, either an intricate theme or successive chord sequences, but the more "free" stuff that they did was just too out for me. Spain was the only recogniseable Chick Corea theme for me, and they ended on it, but there were a couple more I wish I could have identified.

After close to two hours of stellar music, me and my pal Marcus are ready to leave the venue and that's when we find that the French Orchestre National de Jazz is about to play their Around Robert Wyatt in the lobby, free attendance. So we stayed for that too. I loved it, and will no doubt get hold of the record. It's powerful music, very progressive in feel, and the arrangements don't really sound like habitual big band stuff. The fact that the vocal tracts are pre-recorded is weird, but I guess you get over that quickly.

Anyway, as a coda to this whole review, it turns out I got to see the Flecktones again just a few days later. I headed out to DC for a short work-related trip and my good friend Dave tells me they're playing Bethesda (just outside DC) on Wednesday night. And that he secured some seats! We couldn't stay for the whole concert due to obligations in the morning, but it was great to see them stretch out some more (in London, they had a band following and guess there were more constrained...)

Both venues had heavy photo and video enforcement, but I managed to shoot the following before I was told I wasn't supposed to:

I have to be fair, by the early 2000s, I'd more or less given up on contemporary blues. The obsession with flashy guitar works, never-ending solos and "always-loud" arrangements (if you can call them that...) to the detriment of powerful lyrics and sparse instrumentation had eroded my patience and faith in blues. With a few select exceptions (some of which will appear in this Best of 00s series), I stopped looking for new blues and focused on other genres where I found more exciting stuff.

Then I stumbled upon Michael Powers. I can't even remember how or why, maybe it was the compelling cover of Onyx Root or a quick snippet heard at a listening booth in a record store (remember those?) Anyway, I got the album and I didn't regret that purchase for an instant. From the first seconds of Succesful Son, that acoustic intro with the unprocessed drum backing and the electricity creeping in gradually, I knew that this was the guy to save contemporary blues.

I always thought that finding that fine line between positioning yourself as part of a traditions as rich as blues and finding your own voice at the same time was one of the hardest things for an artist to do. It's not enough to love this music with all your heart, and sadly the blues sections of record stores are filled with records of artists who have nothing to say. Who don't get it. Powers gets it and then some.

From deep slow blues like I Can't Quit You Baby to revisited classics like Baby's Got a Train or the brave (and successful) soul-wrenching version of Leonard Cohen's Bird on a Wire, this record has gotten it all. Michael Powers clearly has influences, but they are blended into his own thing. This is what blues should be about: not flashy, not demonstrative but rather vibrant through sparseness and depth.

There's a specificity about South African jazz that I always find hard to describe, but exists nonetheless. The harmonies are unlike those of American or French jazz, and even when the line-up of musicians is no different than what you would find in a NYC jazz club on a Friday evening, it sounds South African. This was what originally attracted me to Zim Ngqawana's Vadzimu. At the time I only knew of Hugh Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim. Zim Ngqawana was a revelation.

First of all, Vadzimu is what the prog rockers would call a concept album. It tells of the plight of the South African nation through four stages: Satire, Diaspora, Liberation Suite and Nocturnes. All the pieces segue into each other, there's a continuity and even some recursiveness and cross-referencing in the melodies. In addition, there are a lot of vocal numbers, which - even though I don't understand the lyrics - help take in what remains a fairly complex music.

Ngqawana is primarily a sax and flute player, but he touches on many other instruments in this record (including a smidgeon of diatonic harmonica). His playing is fairly advanced and he can easily jump from a great lyricism (as on the early part of Amagoduka Part 3) to wild and free abandon as on the end of Kubi. As a consequence of the variety of themes explored on the record, there's a great variety in styles as well, and not much in common between the latin tinged Mozambique and the alternatively melancholy and angry Unamaqhinga Na.

This wonderful album is maybe not the easiest way to discover South African Jazz, but it's guaranteed to bring something to jazz fans who would maybe find the works of a Masekela a little too mainstream. This is a deep piece of work, and comes highly recommended!

Take a great dollop of groove jazz, add some nasty funky horns and a mean pair of guitars and what you get is Lettuce. As I understand it most members of Lettuce have "main gigs" on the side, I wish this was their main gig. Funk is alive, and Lettuce is (one of its) name(s)!

As you slap Live in Tokyo in your CD player, you are first subjected to a fuzz guitar laden intro, a really short piece where the horns come in quick and make you want to clap your hands and stomp your feet, as the saying goes. The ingredients are all in place, but this is just a very short appetiser. After a little over a minute, the pièce de résistence starts for good.

Nyack is the name of the track. It starts with a long-drawn drum pattern, the kind of stuff you might hear the Dirty Dozen Brass Band do at the beginning of their shows, when the band sets up. Soon though, the whole band jumps in. It's horn laden, but it's not those deep growly horns that I so enjoy in brass bands. It's a higher pitched, brighter horn section, very different but just as efficient. Guitar, horns and organ build up intensity to the first solos. The patterns repeat with each solo until you reach the middle of the 11mn track. Then it feels for a second like it's finished, but out of the depths, the funky guitar builds it up again and then you go into guitars showtime. Nyack never really lets you breathe, and it's just as well!

The whole concert is funky as all hell, with highlights like Flu the Coop, a fairly dark bass driven funk and The Dump, a slighly more mellow number with the horns shining really bright. This is driven music that will get your blood flowing and your legs pumping. Don't miss out!

Umphrey's McGee is an odd and yet evident band when you think about it. Odd because they mix so many different influences that you would think the end results would not, could not work. Evident because they manage to make music that is eminently non-commercial and at the same time eminently catchy. To a certain extent, they break the jam rock mold by playing a music that is much more built and layered than what most jam bands do. At the same time they know and love improvisation, and they're extremely talented musicians one and all.

Of course, Jam Bands can only be really experienced live, and the fans would suggest that the next best thing is a live recording. While this is true in many ways, I also find that you enjoy the lives all the more when you know the original studios versions and while I haven't seen Umphrey's McGee live yet and Mantis is too recent for live versions of these songs to be available other than through bootlegs, I do think that songs as intricate as those on Mantis require familiarity to be really enjoyed in the looser context of a concert.

Anyway, Mantis is a gem. With the exception of the very beatles-y opener Made to Measure which I find a little too pop sounding, the rest is a mix of intricately written pieces that oscillate between moments of dreamy darkness and intensely furious passages. Case in point, Turn & Run which starts with a quiet acoustic guitar strumming and ends up in an eruption of heavy soloing that many metal fans would instantly adopt. The title track Mantis reminds us that Umphrey's McGee are jam rockers who always had a soft spot for prog. Cemetary Walk is a gloriously dark song with intense and cool lyrics.

Is this rock? Yes, in many ways. Is it pop? Not in the strictest definition, but it's very pop sounding at times. Is it jammy? As much as a studio recording can be, I guess. Is it good? HELL YES!

John Butler is a miraculous blend of Ben Harper (for the slide playing, only better) and Jack Johnson (for the singing and laid-back-ness) with a heavy dollop of acoustic rock gutso thrown into the mix. His playing is sick, especially when he starts cranking up the effects on his acoustic guitar, but his songwriting is even better. Sunrise over Sea is the album where everything he'd been doing in the past coalesced into a coherent whole. And it's a blast.

Treat Yo Mama opens the record. The title might suggest this is a song about respect for one's mother, but it's actually Butler's ecological anthem and it sets the tone for this record. Songs like Company Sin and to a certain extent Damned to Hell circle around the same topics (via uranium mines and capitalism). But Butler is not a preacher. His songs all tell stories, and these can be very personal and very deep as desmontrated in the stunningly beautiful Peaches & Cream, a song about the birth of his daughter. 

What I absolutely love about this record is the dynamic range of what is after all only an acoustic trio. Drummer Michael Barker is a master of polyrhythms, Shannon Brichall's acoustic bass can sound sweet and lovely and it can sound heavy and mean. Most of all, this band understands and perfectly uses the concept of buildup. The album closer Sometimes is a perfect example. It starts extremely soft for the first 4 minutes and then suddenly shifts and turns mean. Gradually it then builds in intensity until it ends up loud and mean after 10 minutes of awesome!

I already waxed lyrical on this one in the past, but it is a must have!

From the first few seconds of opener Where Green is Blue you're straight in the mood with this record. It's heavy, it's greasy, it takes you in surprising directions. Quite often organist Wayne Peet will lay down what seems like a classic bluesy line, and when the melody comes on, you're suddenly thrown off track. I love these kinds of surprises. The band can also swing with the best of 'em as evidenced on Major Bash.

B3 organist Wayne Peet is really a cornerstone of this album, capable of summoning the greasy spirit of Jimmy Smith and taking out for stroll way outside of Smith's habitual paths. But it's mostly Bill's own playing that shines. His off-kilter soloing is delightful, always fresh and surprising. Whether he's making his harmonica scream on Loco's Motion Cocoa or vamping with odd blocked intervals on Smiley's Dilemna, it's all stuff you've never heard, and it sounds great!

Le Tango des Gens is Sanseverino's first album and - while I really like everything he's done since - it remains to my ears the freshest and most interesting. Sanseverino had this genius idea of writing modern and slightly surreal lyrics over what is essentially a gypsy jazz combo, and it sounds amazing. It's fun, it's driven, it's got one foot firmly set in French music tradition and the other in 21st century popular culture. In other words, it's amazing.

The song that made him famous is Les Embouteillages, an accordeon laden fast swing about traffic jams in Paris. The album is full of gems though. Frida is a completely strange and hilarious song with a driven pompe backing. The songwriting is reminiscent of Nougaro or Lapoite's word playing. It features this strangely prophetic line:

Trouver à fifils un logement, un emploi au gouvernement / On n'a pas le temps de s'occuper de ça quand on s'endort sur les Bancs du Sénat (Find a flat for sonny, a position in government / There's no time to work on that when you fall asleep on the Senate benches)

This album is just full of good songs. André tells the story of a sad guy who is "dressed like Santana" and has no friends, Maigrir is a pure delirium around trying to get thin, La Mer is an eco-song about the coastal pollution, Les Films de Guerre is a really funny riff on US War Movies...

The key question here, I guess, is whether speaking French is necessary to enjoy Le Tango des Gens. I'll be honest, it helps, but the music is infectious and I think it can also be enjoyed just like any world music album by a non-French speaking audience.

It was the odd blend of blues, rock and hip-hop that put G. Love on the map in the 90s and got me hooked. G. Love is a great singer/songwriter and laid-back guitar player but the backbone of this band is Special Sauce, aka. Jimi "Jazz" Prescott on double-bass and Jeff "Houseman" Clemens on drums. Although this release is under G's name only, the jazz chops of his two sidemen ensure that the music never gets boring or repetitive.

And yet, there were a few weak albums in the early 00s, and The Hustle is (to these ears) the album that marks G. Love finding his way again. The laid-back is still in there, but the rawness of his early releases is back, as demonstrated by the heavy opening number Astronaut. Over the years, G. Love added some country influences to the mix as well, which blend surprisingly well with the groovy instrumentations of Jimi and Jeff.

This is a great introduction to the world of G. Love. It has the right mix of serious-ish numbers and fun poppy tracks. It's not as mainstream and well polished as subsequent albums will become and (to my ears) is the last really solid G. Love release. Songs such as the Fishing Song, Back of the Bus or even the saucy Booty Call are fun and groovy. Others, like The Hustle or Sunshine are more melancholy. It's a coherent listen that will often have you tapping your feet.

A great album overall, fun and musically interesting at the same time; pop but not so much that it loses its edge.