San Gabriel 7 & Femi Knight – Red Dress – CD Review
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Plastic – CD
Surface noise: N/A
Dynamic Range: 5-
Stereo Imaging: 5-
Image depth/perspective:4+
Overall frequency response: 5-
Please see here for my comments on reviewing albums.
Track List:
- I’m Going Home Tonight
- Give A Little
- West Indian Brown
- When A Woman’s Had Enough (live at Cal Tech Jazz Festival)
- New Tomorrow
- The Next Big Thing
- Stranger
- Never Make Your Move Too Soon (live at Cal Tech Jazz Festival)
- The Next Big Thing (Radio Edit)
This album was recorded at Tritone Recording Studios, Glendale CA. It was engineered, mixed and mastered by Talley Sherwood the studios owner.
The San Gabriel 7 were formed in 2006 and have been performing in and around Southern California and throughout the country since. They are an instrumental Progressive Funk band and have been making a real name for themselves in the jazz world for the last decade. Red Dress features Femi Knight whose talents extend to songwriter, keyboardist and voice over work. She has collaborated with many well known musical artists and is best known for her long association with Sergio Mendes.
The San Gabriel Seven also own JRL SGS Publishing.
This is the San Gabriel 7’s 10th album. Available September 11th.
I rarely ‘gush’ over a recording. BUT, for a 16 bit 44.1KHz LPCM CD, this is truly a superb recording and mix with excellent dynamics and instrumental and vocal performances. If it was released on 45RPM vinyl, mastered and pressed by some of the great masters like Bernie Grundman, Pallas and Mobile Fidelity, I am sure it would rival some of my best Sheffield Lab recordings. And as for being musically tight with no poor entrances, fluffs, dropped or bum notes, including excellent vocal integration, this is right out there at the front.
Plastic still has that noise floor advantage over vinyl and as soon as I heard the first few bars of track one I knew this was going to be a terrific recording and mix with good dynamics. Tracks faded up and out with no discernible changes to the noise floor with imaging that was very good and consistently remained mostly between my speakers, rarely appearing to come directly from either speaker. It provided acceptable depth, but the instruments showed little vertical separation, mostly remaining in the same horizontal plane and height between the speakers.
Femis’ voice reminded me of Thelma Houston – I’ve Got The Music In Me – Sheffield Lab 2, having buckets of presence, power and punch. Her voice was absolutely natural, having perfect annunciation, with no undue emphasis to any part of her vocal range. Her miking rarely accentuating any sibilance. Turning my lights off, and with no visual distractions, Femis’ presence was positively palpable, standing just in front of my center speaker with the entire band laid out behind her and the backing vocals to her left and right.
Musicianship and vocals were first rate providing an astonishgly tight, very enjoyable and entertaining musical performance. Stereo imaging was rock solid with just a touch a reverb being added to Femi Knights’ vocals that you occasionally heard tail out. The instrumental solos for the sax, trumpet, piano, electric guitar and electric bass all sounding very natural, tight, clean and open.
Depth of image was reasonable with the kit sitting well behind Femi. The horn section was nicely spread across the image behind her but in front of the kit. The electric guitar appearing from both the left and right hand speakers while the electric piano was mostly just behind and to the left of Femi. Sax, and other solos being mostly centered and brought to the front of the mix.
The bands’ backing was wide open with plenty of instrumental detail, punch and refinement. The entire horn section exhibiting a clean bright edge with a natural unforced sound having excellent detail and transparency. Kit, acoustic piano and brass sections all providing a realistic representation of the instruments acoustical sounds, with the electric piano sounding just like a Fender Rhodes. The electric bass, was tight and extended with plenty of body, being well integrated with the kick drums’ punch that showed the occasional beater sound. The whole kit was neatly tucked behind Femi with a tight clean kick drum, and a punchy snare and toms, both with short well damped decays. The cymbals and hi-hat were well detailed with no signs of ‘edginess’. Congas were crisp and clean with a quick decay. Percussive instruments like chimes, triangle, cow bell and vibra slap, all providing good detail, and sounding clean and natural.
General levels of reverb were quite low and short filling out the sound stage and creating an uncluttered atmosphere. Interestingly the two live tracks, T4 and T8, sounding remarkably acoustically similar to the studio recordings. Instrumental solos and breaks abounded on almost every track; with the sax shining on tracks T2, T3, T6, T8 and T9, guitar on T1, T6, T7 and T8, trumpet on T5, almost too many to list.
This album really hits my jazz happy spot! Great vocals, great dynamics and a terrific Progressive Funk band with tight horns, a killer rhythm section and great arrangements.
Recommended tracks, all of them. They are all very well recorded and performed, providing accomplished vocal performances with many of the tracks having excellent sax, guitar, trumpet, bass and piano solos and breaks.
If you like progressive funk jazz with great vocals, this is the album for you. Very highly recommended! Now that’s jazz!
Purchase directly from the SG7 store here.
The San Gabriel 7 is available from Amazon, Amazon Music, iTunes and Spotify.
See my other Mouthpiece Music jazz reviews here.
See here for my introduction to Mouthpiece Music.
Playback note: Reviewed using my Denon DBP A100 over Denon Link 3. Speakers; a stereo pair of Genelec 1038’s and four SVS subs.
Disclosure: This CD was provided by Mouthpiece Music for my review. No financial compensation was provided.
