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Monkey House
Pop Jazz / Smooth Jazz
Format:
CD
Sophisticated musicianship, imaginative lyrics, and a flair for melody are signatures of the sound of Monkey House, a sound that has earned the group serious critical acclaim, peer respect, and a steadily expanding international following.
Those characteristics are again evident on Friday. It is the fifth full-length release from the L.A./Toronto combo that has just celebrated the notable milestone of 25 years of playing together. That rare longevity has resulted in an invaluable empathy in the musical interactions of the core members: singer/songwriter/keyboardist Don Breithaupt, drummer Mark Kelso, bassist Pat Kilbride, and guitarist Justin Abedin. Also contributing prominently to Friday is the elite Toronto horn section of William Sperandei, Vern Dorge, John Johnson, William Carn and Tony Carlucci, as well as percussionist Art Avalos.
Adding to the comfort level in the studio for the recording of Friday was the return of the team of co-producer Peter Cardinali and engineer John ‘Beetle’ Bailey, reprising their roles from previous Monkey House records. Cardinali also plays bass on four tracks.
All but two of the tracks on Friday are solo Don Breithaupt compositions. One of them, "Book Of Liars", is a cover of a song by Steely Dan's Walter Becker. "As a lifelong Steely Dan fan, Walter's death hit me hard," says Don. "I thought it'd be a nice gesture to do one of his."
This generous 12-song collection sounds cohesive, while possessing enough musical twists and turns to keep things interesting. Don terms Friday "an album that may be more rhythmically-based than any of the previous ones. For the last album [2016's Left], I made a concerted effort to write each song at the piano. With this one, I was often looping rhythms and playing along with grooves, even on the first day of writing. When you have a rhythm going, it gives everything momentum.”
“A couple of songs here show more of an ’80s influence from bands like The Police and XTC. It still sounds like Monkey House, but it’s fun to stir in a couple of extra ingredients each time and see how they mix in. If you’re thinking of Friday on a compass, it has moved a few degrees towards R&B, soul and blues as opposed to some songs on earlier albums that were more poppy or Beatles-derived.”
As has become the norm on Monkey House records, Friday features some notable guests. Guitarist Drew Zingg (Boz Scaggs) and trumpeter Michael Leonhart (Steely Dan) have guested on previous albums and make tasteful contributions here, as does François D’Amours (Gino Vannelli), and Snarky Puppy guitarist Mark Lettieri. Ground Up artist Lucy Woodward (Rod Stewart) adds background vocals throughout, while famed vocal quartet The Manhattan Transfer add their magic to the choruses of “The Jazz Life.” It’s hard to mistake the sound of those four incredible voices together.”
One song sure to provoke discussion is “10,000 Hours," described by Don as “a winking spoof” of Malcolm Gladwell's famed maxim. “You have to do the right stuff, not just put in the time,” he stresses. The tune features both funk and Latin feels, with Lettieri soloing in both styles.
Don notes, “I have a tradition of having at least one poppy, quirky, outlier track on an album. This time, it’s ‘(I Wanna Ride) Shotgun,’ which is designed to be fun and funky and stick in people's heads.” It’s a tune as warm and breezy as a Malibu drive in a vintage convertible.
Reference Sound Edition
Pop International
Format:
Mastertape 38 cm/s
Welcome to the world of impeccable sound, the “IN-AKUSTIK REFERENCE SOUND EDITION”.
This Mastertape Selection from in-akustik has been assembled with a love of musical detail.
RESO Mastering, the high definition mastering procedure, provides significant acoustic improvements in transparency, dynamics, bass reproduction and depth differentiation. The music is gaining more atmosphere and emotion.
The transfer to „Master Selection“ tapes „Recording The Masters SM 468“ is done by calibrated and professionally maintained studio tape machines Studer A 80 (38 cm/sec) and Telefunken M 15/21 (19 cm/sec) directly from the original master. Each tape is produced directly and without any detour.
Haute couture for the ears, real master quality.
Variants from €29.99*
Reference Sound Edition
Pop International
Format:
HQCD
Welcome to the world of impeccable sound, the IN-AKUSTIK REFERENCE SOUND EDITION.
This remarkable sound carrier from in-akustik has been assembled with a love of musical detail. 16 tracks featuring Great Cover Versions are forming a seamless and exceptional sound and listening experience.
Listen to marvelous versions of well-known songs and hits like Hey Joe, Vincent, One, Wicked Game, Nothing Else Matters, Because You Loved Me, or probably the best cover version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, sung by Jeff Buckley a.o.
RESO Mastering, the high definition mastering procedure, provides significant acoustic improvements in transparency, dynamics, bass reproduction and depth differentiation. The music is gaining more atmosphere and emotion.
To best transmit this musical experience, a HQCD (HiQualityCD) is used as sound carrier. Utilization of higher-quality polycarbonate in addition of adaptation of silver alloy as the reflective layer, Compact Disc with superior sound quality is realized. HQCDs are fully compatible with all standard CD players.
The package consists of a complex media book. The 8-page booklet includes a description to each of the tracks.
Monkey House
Pop Jazz / Smooth Jazz
Format:
CD
The world has changed a lot since 1992, when Don Breithaupt first collected an album’s worth of his irresistibly hooky and jazzy pop songs and formed Monkey House. Since then, the talented and prolific Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, composer, arranger, and producer has stamped the band’s Kurt Vonnegut-inspired moniker on five albums of original material, including Headquarters (2012), Left (2016) and Friday (2019), the latter a blazing tour de force which topped the iTunes jazz chart and went to #11 on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Albums chart.
Now, to mark their 30th anniversary, Monkey House presents their most accomplished and exciting set yet, Remember The Audio, on which Breithaupt is joined by his A-List wrecking crew of Mark Kelso on drums, Pat Kilbride on bass, Justin Abedin on guitar, and guests including trumpeters Randy Brecker, Guido Basso and Michael Leonhart (Steely Dan), guitarist Drew Zingg (Boz Scaggs), and singers Lucy Woodward (Snarky Puppy) and David Blamires (Pat Metheny). After years of fluid lineups, Breithaupt says he had an epiphany back in 2011 while rounding up the usual suspects to make Headquarters: “Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if this coalesced into a steady band?”
Breithaupt got more than just a band: Monkey House is a crack team of virtuosos playing in sync and in service to his instantly hummable songs. Like the last three Monkey House albums, Remember The Audio was produced by Peter Cardinali and Breithaupt.
Breithaupt had already written most of the music on Remember The Audio pre-COVID, but he figures “at least half of the lyrics were written in the spring of 2020, after the world shut down.”
“I’ll cop to the end-times theme,” says Breithaupt over Zoom from his Santa Monica studio. “Will the last one out of L.A. kill the light, etc. The music isn’t downbeat at all, but under the shiny surface and the hooks… That’s why Mose Allison’s ‘Ever Since The World Ended’ fit right in. I thought it would be a good coda for the album because it’s fatalistic, but it’s also really funny and not too heavy.”
Monkey House make pop for people who aren’t afraid of jazz, and vice-versa. Remember The Audio is sophisticated pop for now people, and a new high-water mark in Monkey House’s musical journey.