Customer Reviews

Daily Lama

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Reviewer: Esther Garcia from London
I would hardly classify De Phazz latest CD as electric jazz. It is very far away from the innovative and sublime Godsdog. In Daily Lama De Phazz seems to be looking more at Pop music and Brazilian rythms than at those electronic rythms and mixes that made them famous. Songs look more conventional that anything else.
As a De Phazz fan I have to say that I like the Album. It is
good, but it is not what I expected (something like Godsdog). So just be aware of it: a good CD but nothing new.

One of these things is JUST like the other!
If you like the retro-vocal melancholy, jazzy, cafeteria-style, insular-yet-panoramic, lush, smoky-lounge, orchestral, strange, ecstatic, DJ-scratchy, sublime, sampled and genre-bending compostions of Art of Noise, The Matthew Herbert Big Band, Enzso, Funki Porcini, Yello, Caleb's Cosmosis, Hugh Marsh, Future Sound of London, United Future Organization or Bowery Electric, then you will love this.

It gets 4/5 because their previous CD, "Death By Chocolate" is slightly better. Start there!

'NUFF SAID.

De-Phazz is a revolving cast of singers and performers around German jazz/electronica producer Pit Baumgartner. For more than 10 years, De-Phazz has released an interesting and unique blend of jazz, German cabaret music, electronica, hip hop, reggae/dancehall and r'n'b. Baumgartner changes his lineup between albums, and there are very few singers who stay for more than a record or two. The music is sung mostly in English, but there are songs in German and French, too. Everything has a delightfully old-school, continental European touch: a 40s-style cabaret tune here, a 50s Brazilian-inflected German Schlager there. But there's also some seriously funky, and not-German-at-all soul here: a track like `True North' shows off Baumgartner's production chops - chops that could grace any contemporary `big' r'n'b artist's album. The path he chooses, though, is quirkier than that. And it's a very likable quirkiness, one I find myself returning to time and again. The sound is cultured and aware of the world's musics in a way that British or American electronica isn't. And that makes this first-grade pop music that doesn't become dated.

I'm really not one to write reviews, but I paid 24 usd for this item and it was very weak. The earlier stuff they did was pretty good, some electronic,some lounge, still others dub. This album is run of the mill hotel lounge music(but not a cool hotel, just an generic expensive one). I am a lounge/downtempo/house dj that has worked with this genre for close to ten years. This just didn't do anything for me. The song "Atomic Cocktail" is the only thing that remotely had any interest for me. One out of twenty tracks is not a good cd.

For his fourth full-length as De-Phazz, Pit Baumgartner doesn't stray too far from his tried-and-true method: some slouchy rhythms, some jazz trumpets (courtesy Otto Engelhardt), some bluesy vocals and maybe some dub effects. Except that on DAILY LAMA, the method is starting to show signs of fatigue. Barbara Lahr lends some laconic melancholy to "What's Behind," which is a nice departure from the peppiness elsewhere. There are a few moments of head-scratchingly odd lyrics, like on "Atomic Cocktail" or "Nightmare" or the quasi-religious "True North." There might just be a bit too much smoothness on this album, which keeps it from really standing out. The delicacy of "Try" does add a nice touch -- a hint of vulnerability -- as does the blues-sampling break-fest of "Down the Railroad." Lahr returns for a slide guitar-tinged "Word in a Rhyme," which shows how things can go right.

Just discovered De Phazz and have purchased all their CD's. Music is an interesting mix of instrumental, amazing voices, somewhat jazz, electric, motown..Absolutely amazing.

Simply a great cd!every song is intresting,a great mix of jazz,dub,and electronics.The production is superb.I just loved the others De Phazz cd but this is really better-quality.

This is one of the best CDs I have bought in the last 2 years- Each single song is great. I highly recommend it.