Stanton Moore Trio

Stanton Moore Trio - Emphasis! On Parenthesis - 2008 - Telarc

A brilliant rhythmic jazz recording that blends jazz, funk, R&B, pop, hard rock and a lot more. There is plenty of experimentation and exploration on this album, but it always holds your attention, and improves with repeated listening. Check out his 2002 "Flyin' the Koop" album. Very enjoyable jazz with a New Orleans flavour.

TRACKS

(Late Night At The) Maple Leaf
(Proper) Gander
Wissions (Of Vu)
(Sifting Through The) African Diaspora
Over (Compensatin')
(Smell My) Special Ingredients
(I Have) Super Strength
(Who Ate The) Layer Cake?
Thanks! (Again)
(Put On Your) Big People Shoes
(Here Comes) The Brown Police

BAND

Stanton Moore (drums)
Robert Walter (Hammond B3, piano, toy piano, clavinet)
Will Bernard (guitar)

REVIEWS

New Orleans native Stanton Moore [ tickets ] likes to wear a lot of hats. When not funking things up with Galactic or Garage a Trois, he sits in with everybody from Corrosion of Conformity, to the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, to Street Sweeper (featuring Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and The Coup's Boots Riley). So, when the drummer decides to do a solo album, the results are always interesting. "Emphasis! (On Parenthesis)" is the follow-up to 2006's "III," and reunites Moore with guitarist Will Bernard and keyboardist Robert Walter--and nobody else. The stripped-down lineup gives everybody room to spice up the jams, with inspired results. "(Late Night at the) Maple Leaf" is loosely based on an improvisation that Moore shared with Walter and bassist George Porter at the New Orleans club of same name, and it's obvious within the first eight bars that there is a deeper level of comfort amongst the keyboard-guitar-drums trio. All three take turns dancing around the form: Walter is playful, Bernard is swinging in a rockabilly-on-'roids style, and Moore's phrasings are crisp and commanding. Just when you've been suckered into relaxing to the funk feel, at 5:28, the group goes into shuffle mode, then hops back to funk for the finish. A terrific tone-setter for the album. It's not a one-trick pony, though. "(Proper) Gander" has a Zeppelin "Kashmir"-heavy groove, "Thanks! (Again)" has a tight James Brown funk feel, and the urban "Wissions (of Vu)," with Walter's toy piano, is begging to be sampled for a hip-hop track. To wit: the tune was actually composed from a trio improvisation while wearing headphones and listening to a favorite track by Wu Tang Clan. Talk about reverse engineering. The bottom line is the three mesh in a rootsy way that can't be denied, and fans of organ-driven funk and R&B will get a kick out of this. © Don Zulaica , LiveDaily Contributor, © 1998 - 2006 LiveDaily.com. All rights reserved. www.livedaily.com/news/14062.html

New Orleans born and raised drummer Stanton Moore, who has a Bachelor’s degree in Music and Business from Loyola University, has been making music almost non-stop since he graduated. Before working as a single artist Moore spent time on the road with the “steam-roller” funk band Galactic. Recently he’s worked with guitarist Charlie Hunter, among others. On his newest Telarc release, featuring a trio with Will Bernard on guitar and Robert Walter on Hammond B-3 and other keyboards, Moore brings his rock and New Orleans beats to the festivities in creating a disc that shows why Modern Drummer magazine thinks so highly of the young tubs master. The opener, “(Late Night At The) Maple Leaf” combines a lilting second-line feel with a hip swing concept to create the perfect party track. “Wissions (Of Vu)” has a heavy back-beat guitar-oriented slant that incorporates some delightful toy piano stylings by Walter that let you know it’s not only Wendy Mae Chambers who has ability on the more-difficult-than-one-can-imagine-at-first-glance instrument. Throughout the disc Moore’s percussion work is always front and center; there is no doubt this is a drummer led band. On “(Smell My) Special Ingredients” the riff based keyboard melody is delightfully enhanced by guitar fills and some really tight New Orleans second-line boogie from Moore. Even though there’s a keyboard solo you almost don’t care, Moore’s playing is so infectious it’s all you really pay attention to. “(Who Ate The) Layer Cake?” is progressive rock influenced all the way, yet when the tune breaks down there’s that incessantly hard-driving New Orleans sound again making its way to the fore. He may try to get away from it at times, but Moore is a Cajun percussionist through and through. If there’s a problem with the disc it’s that Moore’s so exciting to listen to his band mates get neglected; it’s not that they’re not fine musicians, because they are, it’s just that Moore is the heart and soul of the gathering. If you’re in a bar and this band is playing then you need to go, immediately, but how this group would transfer to the concert situation is up in the air. Percussion enthusiasts should not miss they disc; Moore is the real deal. ©1997 - 2008. All Rights Reserved. jazzreview.com® / jazzpreview.com®

Drummer Stanton Moore Emphasizes His Trio on New Recording
Stanton Moore has proven many times over that he’ll try just about anything. As the co-founder of the “steamroller funk” band Galactic, a recurring member of the tongue-in-cheek avant-funk ensemble known as Garage a Trois, engineer of a rapidly accelerating solo career, and session player for artists as diverse as Irma Thomas, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Corrosion of Conformity and Street Sweeper (a forthcoming project with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Boots Riley of The Coup), this drum virtuoso from the bent-but-unbroken music mecca known as New Orleans maintains a rhythmic arsenal that embraces jazz, funk, R&B, pop, hard rock and so much more.When Moore joined the Telarc roster with the September 2006 release of III – his third solo recording – he brought with him some high-caliber session players, including keyboardist Robert Walter and guitarist Will Bernard. At the time, Moore and company were a loosely knit collective – each writing his own songs, each getting a feel for the others’ musical sensibilities. But in the year-and-a-half since III, after settling into a comfortable groove amid scores of live gigs and exploratory forays, Moore, Walter and Bernard have become something more than just a random mix of musicians. Emphasis (on parenthesis), the followup to III, features this same threesome in a much different creative place. It’s clear from the eleven tracks that the trio has achieved a level of cohesion and confidence that no longer requires assistance from any other session guests. “In the past year, I started to think, ‘Well, we’re really developing some momentum, and we’re seeing more and more people coming to our shows,’” Moore explains. “So when it came time to do another record, I had already known for a while that I wanted to build on the momentum of this band – three musicians who were becoming a unit unto themselves – and I wanted to get a little more adventurous with the music itself.” The quirky album title stems from Moore’s recurring habit of slipping parenthetical phrases into just about every song he writes. “When we were working on the last Galactic record, the guys were commenting on how I tend to do that,” he recalls. “When you’re writing instrumental music, I think it helps to add a little something to get the song and its title to stick in listeners minds.” Emphasis (on parenthesis) is full of songs that stick. The set opens with the highly expressive “(late night at the) Maple Leaf,” a tune loosely based on an instrumental improvisation that emerged during a gig that Moore and Walter played with bassist George Porter at the famed New Orleans club. “Robert remembered some of the stuff that we improvised – in particular, some of the chord structures that George was messing with at the time. Over time, Robert and I fleshed it out into more of a song.” Tracks like “(proper) Gander” and “(who ate the) Layer Cake?” are more riff-based and driving. “Those songs come from a heavier groove,” says Moore. “We all listen to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, so tunes like these lean more toward our riff-rock roots.” “Wissions (of Vu)” came about as the result of an interesting composing process. Moore and his trio donned headphones in the studio and improvised to the sounds of a favorite track by Wu Tang Clan. “The idea was to come up with parts to a song that would be assembled later,” says Moore. “Once I was in the mix-down process, I just stripped away the track we were all listening to and started pulling out the parts that each of us played that I liked. Then I composed all the pieces into an actual song.” “(I have) Super Strength” was built around the exuberant exclamation of Walter’s four-year-old son. “While Robert was demo-ing some ideas, his son was running around the house like a superhero,” Moore explains. “He kept yelling, ‘I have super strength!’ It made it on the tape, and we all thought it sounded pretty funny. I had Robert loop his son’s voice, and then we improvised against that.” This sense of experimentation and exploration has always been the cornerstone of Moore’s music, no matter who he’s playing with or in what context. But Emphasis (on parenthesis) never loses its connection to its basic three-man core. “With this record, I went into the process with a lot more experience, and also with a lot more confidence,” he says. “By just having these three guys in the studio, we could really do whatever we wanted. We could play things with loops in it, we could play things that were in 5/4, we could improvise, whatever. But the thread that holds the entire album together is the fact that it’s the same three guys on every track…It’s just a matter of what’s coming out of us at that point in time. It’s a very natural, organic process.” © 2007 Concord Music Group, Inc. unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved www.concordmusicgroup.com/albums/83681/

Drummer, composer and bandleader Stanton Moore has a well-deserved reputation for diversity. Besides being a founding member of New Orleans powerhouse jazz-funkmaster Galactic, he's played with Corrosion of Conformity, jammed with other traditional New Orleans R&B and jazz groups, and issued three fine albums as leader. On Emphasis! On Parenthesis, Moore is playing with guitarist Will Bernard and keyboardist Robert Walter, a pair of top-flight collaborators he's worked with in various settings in the past -- in particular on his third album simply called III. Of course the trio isn't new to Moore by any stretch. He also records with Skerik and guitarist Charlie Hunter under the Garage a Trois moniker. The album's 11 tracks all contain titles with parenthetical statements -- it is an acknowledgement of the gentle ribbing from his Galactic bandmates that he slips parentheses into the name of almost every tune he writes. In some ways the music reflects this; each of these tunes has extensions in it, where the riff or groove starts and gets grafted onto continually with other musical statements, transforming the original vamp, groove, or riff into a more complex and varied composition. This is possible because of the incredible balance in this group. The trio setting doesn't provide the same problems as a quartet or quintet, but it also doesn't provide the safety net. Certainly Moore's breakbeat crazy, full-force kit work is up in the mix as it should be for such a rhythmically complex groove record. He's certainly the bandleader and he composed the tunes, but this isn't a showcase for his drumming. Bernard and Walter are stellar partners. Bernard is one of the most well-respected guitarists among musicians, but he's a low profile cat who is almost unknown to all guitar freaks. Walter's profile is lower still. It makes them perfect for a date like this where everybody shines all the time. Take the funky New Orleans strut-funk that is "(Late Night at The) Maple Leaf." The cut was developed from Moore's basslines out of a jam he and Walter played with Meters' bassist George Porter. Some chunky yet slinky B-3 chords by Walter dictate its opening groove, followed by funky guitar chords in backbeat driven by a 5/8 stuttering break tempo set by Moore. It is reminiscent of the Meters but layers interlocking step grooves into odd codas, middle fours, and turnarounds. A boogie-woogie piano is layered on top of a bassline played by Walter on the clavinet and morphs itself into a smoking bluesy solo (made up almost entirely of chord runs) before Bernard moves his knotty, jazzed-up guitar lines dead center for a break. "(Proper) Gander" is almost pure voodoo funk propelled by nasty chords and tom-tom rim shots that get turned into a drunken swaggering steamy groove by Bernard's twinned guitar lines. Spy flick funk is what drives "(Wissions Of) Vu," propelled by a clavinet à la Herbie Hancock's Headhunters and an off-kilter toy piano. Bernard plays his best John Barry styled-film guitar line, and Moore makes the whole thing choogle. The most overtly jazz thing here is the following fourth cut "(Sifting Through The) African Diaspora." There are some jagged hard bop lines juxtaposed against funky breaks, fluid harmonic shifts and changes, and some stellar organ and guitar work moving tonal palettes through a rainbow of shades and colors. Working through a series of stretched minors and sevenths, this cut never loses its swing even at its most start-and-stop, and then slips into serious John Patton murk terrain, digging through the blues and groove bags before moving out towards somewhere on the frontier. It's one of the finest things here and easily the most adventurous, going through so many shapes and shifts and turns that it's difficult to even remember where it began. Another standout is the choppy, late-night soulful "(Smell My) Special Ingredients," that slips Fela styled Afro-funk backbeats and rock dynamics à la the Jeff Beck Group into its construction. Despite this amalgam of styles and tonal colors, it swings like mad. "(Put On Your) Big People Shoes" is pure whomp funky! The snare shuffle here is pure rim-shot tough, and the blues angler in the 12-bar set-up is deceptive in the way it stretches time via Walter's gradations in the chord changes. In a little over 45 minutes, the listener is taken on a ride that's full of thrills and musical adventure to be sure, but more than this, it's a jag of pure pleasure that you can dance and fingerpop to. If you are still sitting on your behind (or aren't at least moving some part of your body in time), you are simply dead. Emphasis! On Parenthesis is another big winner in Moore's stellar catalog. © Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

BIO (Wikipedia)

Stanton Moore is a New Orleans style drummer raised in Metairie, Louisiana. Most widely known as a founding member of Galactic, Moore has also pursued a solo recording career (beginning with his 1998 debut All Kooked Out!) and recorded with bands as diverse as jazz-funk keyboardist Robert Walter and heavy metal act Corrosion of Conformity. He also travels internationally to teach New Orleans drumming, writes a regular column for drumming magazines, and releases instructional books and videos. As of 2006 some of Moore's recent projects include the Stanton Moore Trio, Garage A Trois and the Midnite Disturbers. Moore performs with his Stanton Moore Trio including a variety of local and visiting musicians in New Orleans. His trio has toured nationally with keyboardist Robert Walter and guitarist Will Bernard. Walter and Bernard are the credited musicians on Moore's two most recent solo albums. Moore continues to perform with his co-founded Garage A Trois with Skerik and Mike Dillon. Marco Benevento joined Garage a Trois in 2007. Moore organized the all-star brass band Midnite Disturbers with drummer Kevin O'Day. The Midnite Disrurbers are Troy Andrews and Jamelle Williams on trumpets, Big Sam and Mark Mullins on trombones, Ben Ellman and Skerik on saxophones, Jeffery Hills on sousaphone and Kevin O’Day and Moore on drums. The Midnite Disturbers have also been joined by Alcedrick Todd on trumpet. Other ongoing collaborations include bands such as Dragon Smoke and MG5. Dragon Smoke features Eric Lindell, Robert Mercurio, Ivan Neville and Stanton Moore. MG5 (formerly Frequinox) features Robert Walter, Robert Mercurio, Will Bernard, Donald Harrison, Jeff Coffin and Stanton Moore. Since Hurricane Katrina Moore has helped start and participates in the Tipitina's Foundation workshop for students, providing young people an opportunity to learn, play and perform with professional musicians. Recently, Moore has collaborated with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine and Boots Riley of the Coup on a new project under the name "Street Sweeper" which is scheduled to be released this spring. Moore released Emphasis! (On Parenthesis) on Telarc April 2008 as Stanton Moore Trio. The trio consists of long time associates Robert Walter and Will Bernard.