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Cassandra Wilson AFTER THE BEGINNING AGAIN JMT Edition No 919 058-2 This record was originally released in Japan in 1992, this edition was released last year in Germany.

 

1. There She Goes
2. Round Midnight
3. Yazoo Moon
4. Sweet Black Night
5. My Corner of the Sky
6. Baubles Bangles and Beads
7. Redbone
8. Summer Wind

Cassandra Wilson - Vocals
James Weidman - Piano, Synth.
Kevin Bruce Harris - Electric Bass
Mark Johnson - Drums, Percussion.
Jeff Haynes - Percussion

This is a curious CD, even though Cassandra Wilson was involved together with Joseph Marciano in the mixing, a lot of the voice is lost in the general cacophony of the backing group. We can only assume that that is how Ms. Wilson likes it, but it sounds strange to me, but then everything on the CD sounds strange to me. Even Round Midnight, Thelonious Monk’s jazz classic is barely recognisable. Only on Baubles does the voice dominate, at least it gives a brief opportunity to hear what a great voice Cassandra Wilson has.

Here we have a group of very talented musicians and a vocalist of great renown, producing a record collectively, whose main objective seems to me to change the whole order of things for better or worse and for me it is mostly worse. Even the sleeve note, which is largely uninformative and looks like a piece of newspaper someone has scribbled on is weird. There are three photographs which could be of anybody and in one case anything.

These people are having the record purchaser on, I only hope that this isn’t the first record that anyone who thinks they might like jazz gets for Christmas!

Don Mather

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