Artist: Mike Di Lorenzo
Title: Urbanized
Genre: Jazz-Fusion
Label: Keep The Groove
Website
Mike Di Lorenzo plays the ivory keys with the passion and grace of modern day jazz magic man. He lets his fingers do the walking and all the talking on a beautiful instrumental recording called Urbanized. The title turns out to be appropriate. The artist explores the dynamics of modern day urban living through twelve fantastic trips down the jazz highway. It is a multitude of styles mixed together that would find a home in any jazz nightclub, city street corner or your own living room. A culturally diverse endeavor such as this takes a little bit of nearly every sub genre in jazz to bring to a boil a literal stew of sounds.
On the remake of Stevie Wonder’s “Too High” there is man adding his “Yeah” overtones here and there, sounding like Isaac Hayes, with that deep throaty male moxie kind of style, which adds to the funky workout. That is the only cover that Di Lorenzo pulls out of his never-ending bag of musical tricks. He is a stalwart composer and musician, an enviable position for anyone to be sitting in with the high-level of competition found with independent releases. Unlike the majors, the indie realm is a level playing field that is determined by an artist’s ability to combine their musical skills with marketing shrewdness, and finding the right combination of all of the above to make it all happen. Sometimes great recordings such as this go unnoticed. I for one do not want to see that happen. This CD is a solid representation of jazz-fusion that demands your attention. Every track offers the listener a different mood to free fall into, to feel enveloped by its ambiance. Personally, that is all I want to do is escape into another world while taking in an aural excursion. This album allowed me to feel many different emotions and it gave me a shot of positive energy as well.
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