- snarky puppy: empire central
(2022, 2cd, --, ground up music)
According to my list, "Empire Central" is album number 17 for Snarky Puppy.
Recorded live with a small audience featuring three guitarists, four keyboardists, two brass and two reed players, a violinist, multiple percussionists and drummers and band leader Michael League on bass.
Recorded live with a small audience featuring three guitarists, four keyboardists, two brass and two reed players, a violinist, multiple percussionists and drummers and band leader Michael League on bass.
Michael League adds:
Empire Central doubles down on Snarky Puppy’s distinctly Southwestern influences, like the blues, hard rock, classic soul, modern gospel, percolating funk, new tech, ever-misunderstood “fusion” and jazz, without sounding derivative. Rather, it conjures from them music that’s fresh and original. League asked his confreres to compose in homage to the town they consider their common ground, and artists from it who’ve changed music history, “especially Black music history,” he asserts (that honor roll includes Erykah Badu, Kirk Franklin, Roy Hargrove, also touching on St. Vincent, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Buddy Miles). Eleven of the bandmates, as well as Michael himself, contributed tunes which were developed and refined over two weeks of rehearsals.
“Snarky Puppy has always been a band that prioritizes the sound of the music,” he says. “On this record there was some collaboration in the writing process but when a song goes to the band and the players start making suggestions or changing things our collective feeling really comes through. The songs ended up being a lot more direct and funkier than those on our previous records. I think it reflects the many moods of the city’s scene.”
“Snarky Puppy has always been a band that prioritizes the sound of the music,” he says. “On this record there was some collaboration in the writing process but when a song goes to the band and the players start making suggestions or changing things our collective feeling really comes through. The songs ended up being a lot more direct and funkier than those on our previous records. I think it reflects the many moods of the city’s scene.”
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