Album Review: D/Will- Reset

I had the pleasure of attending a small listening party for D/Will's Reset album last month.  I'd delayed reviewing the masterful recording partly because its unconventional nature makes it difficult to analyze.

Only after enduring a new release that's likely to be my least favorite Kansas City album of 2014 did I begin to fully appreciate the subtle brilliance of Reset.

Rather than being obsessed by the shallow topics of marijuana and rap status that consume many of his contemporaries, D/Will engages in a profound examination of spirituality.  Kanye West may be the only hip-hop artist to address the topic of salvation with as much finesse as D/Will.  Yet characterizing Reset as a Christian album wouldn't be accurate.

Reset is a bold reckoning of what it means to reside in America.

D/Will isn't a great rapper but he's an excellent producer.  The surprising array of sounds on Reset enhances the project's cultivated message.  "Meeting With God" relects the album's intent.


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Here's my review of T-Pain's woefully under-attended concert at Crossroads KC.

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I reviewed Nickel Creek's concert at the Uptown Theater.

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I contributed a Local Listen segment about the Phantastics to KCUR's Up To Date.

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Radkey was featured in USA Today.

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Mac Lethal has, as they say, found his lane.  Here's his new Mozart rap.

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John Blake has died.  I bought the violinist's album Twinkling of an Eye as a new release in 1985. 

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Jean Redpath has died.  (Via BGO.)

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The band name and album title of the National Jazz Trio of Scotland's Standards, Vol. III are amusingly misleading.  Bill Wells' project is RIYL: Belle and Sebastian, nuance, Robert Wyatt.  "Surprising Word" isn't the best track on the album, but the video is solid.

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The Messenger's Illusory Blues is RIYL: Kansas, 1975, Renaissance.  Here's the video for “Somniloquist”.

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Action Bronson is hilarious.

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I'm not convinced that Benjamin Booker is all that.  The self-titled album of the current media darling is RIYL: Kings of Leon, NPR, the Black Keys.

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Rittz owns it.

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Bless their metallic hearts.  The current lineup of the stalwart thrash band Overkill sounds better than ever on White Devil Armory, the New Jersey band's seventeenth studio album.  Here's the video for "Armorist".

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The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra's OverTime: Music of Bob Brookmeyer is worthwhile.

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My latest obsession: the music of the Lebanese singer Fairuz.

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"I don't know how you can sit there and listen to that mess."  That's what a member of my compound told me as I was ingesting Wiring, a new all-star jazz collaboration.  RIYL: Vijay Iyer, annoying others, Reggie Workman.

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I spent the remainder of the day cowering under my desk in a fetal position after I watched the videos for Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" and Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" back-to-back last week.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)