Moses Blue

The Thing Is

The first studio recording in eight years from the newly re-formed band, MOSES BLUE (formerly “Bangaroo”). Del and David de Andrade lead an all-star band consisting of Fred Cash Jr. on bass, Kevin Johnson on Drums, Gary Fritz on percussion and David Schumacher on saxes and flute. Sitting in with the band are Jay Collins (saxes), Johnny Grubb (acoustic bass) and vocalists: Amy Helm, Chris McNulty and Kathleen Riggs. “The Thing Is” was recorded and mixed by Don Sternecker at Mix-O-Lydian studios on a beautiful farm in Lafayette, NJ and mastered by Doug Sax at The Mastering Lab in Ojai, California.

The street date for “The Thing Is” is 8/8/08 and it will be available in the U.S., Italy, Brazil and China. You can get “The Thing Is” online at the following e-outlets: Napster, Rhapsody, BuyMusic, Tradebit and CD Baby. You can download “The Things Is” on iTunes on 7/1/08.

...but the CD really sounds best (simple physics!) And you can buy it directly from Moses Blue right here.

“The Thing Is” Review by LA2DAY’s Dobe Ku

MOSES BLUE: The Thing Is is the latest album from singer/songwriter/player-of-many-instruments and producer Greg ‘Del’ D’Alessandro.

Del has been crafting music since banging away on a kid-sized drum kit in his family’s basement, back when that subterranean area, installed with a saggy couch and ping pong table, was called the rec room.

Since then he’s made about a half dozen albums that express international world beat rhythm, jazz, and funk. And since northern New Jersey roots mean New York City roots, with car rides into the city from high school and beyond, we find influences of Latin, the Beats, experimental, and the scene below 14th Street back when there was one. And out of this, Del’s work has continually evolved, since, as a musical artist and not ‘merely’ a musician, his work is the direct expression, body and soul, of his life.

And this brings us to Moses Blue: The Thing Is, a departure from Del’s earlier work. Or rather, the evolution of a soul who wakes up and rubs the apple pie of the American dream from his eyes and realizes the dream was just that.

He sings either solo, or with female vocal, but it is the feeling that is just him, alone, his voice an instrument of memory, loss, time gone. It’s a rarified space he has carved, a high-altitude sheerness, minus the fog, stripped of phony atmospheres. Because where does life deposit you after years of trying to harness it? At the feet – of yourself.

Del’s oeuvre is hard to pin down, which is why he occasionally devises genres to describe his work such as ‘Ethno-Jelly-Funkadelic’.

For one, his vocals are untraditional, like Roy Orbison, not in tone but in the ability of that instrument to express poignancies of meaning beyond its range.

It is the voice, at times, of a troubadour balladist, as in “Ravello”, out of the tradition of Leonard Cohen, but unlike Cohen, this is a loss-informed sincerity, a cry to return to one of the most beautifully decayed places on earth, romance itself, hovering on a cliff above the Amalfi Coast. His vocals occasionally hit a gravelly bottom, as in parts of “Loving You”, and with him, we drag across this known-to-all terrain of just how far below-the-beyond lost love can take us.

Then there is oddly, a quality of the Christian soldier, in style, in songs such as “If I Should die.” Female vocals wail a tonal cry behind this marching beat, life’s march, with pleas to ‘bless my soul.’

“High Heeled Woman of New York” playfully honors the enigmatic quality of the power of women, sluicing sidewalks of the world’s most powerful city of sex, influence and money. It is sung from the view of an outsider, early-man, who might as well be looking at the moon.

But is it all about the hard losses of love and life? Del’s lyrics, though of lament, pleas for protection, co-source from an inner joy, playfulness, that find surface, irrepressibly.

It is telling that his song “Miss You Bad” is the album’s most naturally joyful – written in honor and tribute for an exuberant, life-loving friend, and guitar-player, whose life was taken much too early. Here, we see an artist at full maturity in his work, creating an album that does not refuse to be pop, but simply chooses to use it when the form calls for it. And it shows us that a life, after enough years on earth to be informed by loss, is still something to sing about. And that art is not just ‘mere’ self-expression for this musical artist, but a gift, a glorious sharing of his spirit.

Dobe Ku, Editor of Aesthetics-at-Large, LA2DAY.com rae@LA2DAY.com

This Is That

“This Is That” is a compilation of songs recorded by Moses Blue (and its forebearers) between 1995-2005.

The record has an “ethno-funky-del-o-jelly-beat.” Featured world-class musicians: Elliott Randall, Jean-Paul Bourelly, Rob Bargad, Carolyn Leonhart, Amy Helm, David Spinoza, Lincoln Goines, Angel Fernandez, Toby Williams, Justin Tracy, Clark Gayton, Pete Belasco, Robby Ameen and Robert Rodriquez.

New York City music critic Larry Birnbaum describes the record:

“it’s a multi-ethnic ensemble led by songwriter, producer, and vocalist Del, who hosts a conscious dance party that throws down a positive attitude. They update the P-Funk groove with salsa, reggae and hip-hop rhythms.

Available October 1st, 2008.