So, it's not that complicated: a large extended group of friends are afforded the opportunity to go creatively buck-wild. Between late nights, jokes, smokes and reverberating bass lines, a vague, nebulous common ground is found. Plans and connections are made, and many of these people find themselves in recording studios together the day after these notoriously fun evenings. There is no script, just the extremely fertile creative imaginations of seasoned and somewhat eccentric musicians. How else to explain moments like Wax Poetic's "No Escape" or I Led Three Lives' "Fight Back Jack" found on this CD? Or Forró In The Dark's now-legendary Brazilian funky country hoedown vibes? There is no recipe for this stuff, it just...IS.
Calibro 35 felt the vibe from all the way over in Italy, and their spy-noir-soundtrack-spaghetti-funk fits the Nublu ethos like a glove, just like how Otto's surreal Rio-by-way-of-Brazil's-Northeast experimental-pop approach seems to have also been created within the walls of 62 Avenue C. Mikkel Hess' oft-surreal Hess Is More project is a high-concept proposition, and yet produces some of the most potentially commercial tracks, as their two here attest. 3 Na Massa is yet more proof of the close connection between the Nublu family and the Brazil's less-obvious musical corners. Needless to say, though, that it's difficult to imagine much of this music coming together and coalescing anywhere other than New York City (and Nublu has contributed a great deal to help NYC continue to be The City That Never Sleeps). The Nublu Orchestra, the pet project/labor of love of Nublu's late, great Godfather Butch Morris, proves as much with "Sketches Of NYC." Fearless leader and main conceptualist Ilhan Ersahin contributes a characteristically open-ended trio of tracks from his Turk-esque projects Istanbul Sessions and Wonderland, as well as his psychedelic jam in Afternoon in Rio. The compilation ends with a Love Trio which has been under the Nublu vaults until now. Ultimately, for people who spend their nights immersed in the boho-progressive-musical ideal that made New York what it's supposed to be, the denizens of Nublu and their friends have a pretty admirable work ethic.
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