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Total time 59:28
Drummer Simon Phillips is a musically split personality. On one side he is one of the most popular rock and pop drummers, winning the readers polls of every drum magazine year after year and a member of the group "Toto" . But then there is his dark side - as one of the leading jazz composers and drummers worldwide, who has charted on the jazz charts in most countries with his jazzrock-albums "Symbiosis" and "Another Lifetime". In the Netherlands he even reached the Top-100 of the album sales charts with his jazz album and his jazzrock shows are usually sold out with 600 to 1.200 visitors.
While his first jazz albums were combinations of jazz and rock in the tradition of John McLaughlin's „Mahavishnu Orchestra", the new album "Vantage Point" is his first "real" acoustic jazz album. The idea grew in the cooperation with his longterm sideman, pianist and keyboarder Jeff Babko, who is also one of Los Angeles leading jazz musicians. Originally this "straight ahead" jazz group was just a relaxing fun-show to play more challening music in between regular concerts in 1999, but it became ever more popular in the live clubs. This led to the decision to finally record a real jazz album with the group and their original new jazz songs.
The music combines influences from the bigband-swing area with horn-section playing from the „Cool-Jazz" period and subtle elements from the various styles that Simon has worked in.
Sound and instrumentation are directly taken from the classic 50s sound - with trumpet and saxophone forming a basic horn section. The musicians are among the best players of the US-scene - Walt Fowler on trumpet and fluegelhorn as well as Brandon Fields on saxophones are already respected names even with traditionalist audiences and journalists.
As usual with Simon Phillips albums, he can be recognized by his distinct style, but never puts himself above the music itself and always leaves a lot of space for his excellent musicians. Great examples are Jeff Babkos solo on the title track or Walt Fowler's solo on "New Blooded". The uptempo-song „Bewilderment" reminds of the car-chases of the "Serie Noir" movies of the fifties, which of course were orchestrated by Miles Davis and his contemporaries in exactly this style. Here and in the other songs the music tells stories of modern city life, to which it is easy to imagine your own "Film Noir".
This album also marksthe return of Simon Phillips as a recording engineer. Working as an assistant of Mike Oldfield (many years ago)and for several others, he learned the craft from the best. "Vantage Point" was mixed by Simon himself with a very purist setup and using audiophle equipment and working with 24-Bit Audio digitiser, making the album ready for future audiophile formats.
(excerpt - you can find more details in the album booklet):
Some of the Mikrophones - Shure ksm32 (piano and bass), AKG C414 (trumpet), Shure Beta 52 (bass drum)
Preamps - Focusrite, Grace and api
A/D converters - Apogee AD8000 (24-Bit), Recording media: Tascam DA-88 to Pro Tools ...
Cover design by Marc Comes (CHBP)
Recorded late 1999 by Simon Phillips,mixed and mastered 2000, c 2000 Alex Merck Music
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