Noah Sparkes on Muck Rack

Noah Sparkes

(He/Him)
United Kingdom
As seen in: Juno Daily, Yahoo Entertainment, Flipboard, uDiscoverMusic, PopMatters, Film Inquiry, Canadian Dimension, Treble Zine, Jazzwise, GIGsoup, We Plug Good Music
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'Transversal Do Tempo': Elis Regina's Revelatory Live Album

'Transversal Do Tempo': Elis Regina's Revelatory Live Album

uDiscoverMusic — The course of Brazilian popular music in the latter half of the 20th century can be broadly split into two major overlapping currents. From the late 50s, bossa nova became the dominant genre, fronted by artists like João Gilberto and Nara Leão.
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Dusted Down: Love - Forever Changes | Juno Daily

Dusted Down: Love - Forever Changes | Juno Daily

Juno Daily — By the summer of 1967, the US counterculture was in full swing. The anti-Vietnam War movement was gaining traction across the States. The "summer of love" had taken root in San Francisco, bringing vast amounts of people to the neighbourhood of Haight-Ashbury.
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'Gal Costa': A Landmark Album Of Brazilian Tropicalia

'Gal Costa': A Landmark Album Of Brazilian Tropicalia

uDiscoverMusic — Following a US-backed military coup in 1964, many young artists in Brazil - disillusioned with the apolitical nature of bossa nova - searched for a music that would speak to their contemporary world. By the late 60s, a group would answer the call through a movement known as Tropicália.
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Dusted Down: John Lee Hooker | Juno Daily

Dusted Down: John Lee Hooker | Juno Daily

Juno Daily — In the humid, rural environs of Mississippi, at some point between 1912 and 1923, John Lee Hooker was born to a sharecropper and Baptist preacher named William and a woman named Minnie (the most-cited birthdate is 1917 near Clarksdale, Mississippi).
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Tom Skinner: Voices of Bishara

Tom Skinner: Voices of Bishara

Treble Magazine — In a 1980 interview with the late jazz cellist Abdul Wadud, speaking on his pioneering use of the cello, Wadud declared the following: “I hope there will be more who take [the cello] further and do more things, because the instrument needs it. As it is, the people who are out there playing don’t get the recognition they deserve.” The title of Tom Skinner’s debut record is a nod to Wadud’s rare 1978 album, By Myself (privately pressed by Wadud’s label, Bisharra), and dutifully fulfills the cellist’s wish.
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London Film Festival 2022: UTAMA - Film Inquiry

London Film Festival 2022: UTAMA - Film Inquiry

Film Inquiry — One of the many great injustices of the climate crisis is the disproportionate effects that will be inflicted on the people that contributed least to it. Unlike populations in the most aggressively polluting nations, the effect of warming on already dry climates is not a distant eventuality but a current, pressing issue.
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London Film Festival 2022: TRIANGLE OF SADNESS - Film Inquiry

London Film Festival 2022: TRIANGLE OF SADNESS - Film Inquiry

Film Inquiry — There is a clear absurdity at the heart of modern capitalism. With an increasingly baffling level of inequality, a growing inevitability of ecological collapse, and a simultaneous embrace of mindless excess from the top 1%, it's hard not to feel powerless, confused and enraged by the status quo.
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Sun Ra Arkestra: Living Sky

Sun Ra Arkestra: Living Sky

Treble Magazine — Saxophonist, composer, and leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Marshall Allen is now 98 years old. Nearly 30 years after Sun Ra’s death in 1993, Allen continues to bear Sun Ra’s legendary afro-futurist jazz legacy with astonishing liveliness. Released by Omni Sound, Living Sky is a work that feels like a loving ode to all that made Sun Ra’s music so special. We have the old-timey feel of Sun Ra’s big-band roots, touches of avant-garde, free instrumentation, a hypnotic spiritualism, and more broadly, a sound that feels infectiously alive.
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'Clube Da Esquina': Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges's Masterpiece

'Clube Da Esquina': Milton Nascimento & Lô Borges's Masterpiece

uDiscoverMusic — The cover of 1972's perfectly encapsulates the music and the context that surrounds it. In the photograph, two young boys perch by the side of a dusty Brazilian road, both staring into the camera with differing expressions. Above this image of rustic innocence, a barbed wire ominously hangs.
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Dusted Down - Wilco | Juno Daily

Dusted Down - Wilco | Juno Daily

Juno Daily — Following the release of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in 2001, the music press proclaimed the album to be the Americana equivalent of Radiohead's Kid A. Indeed, both albums were greeted by concern regarding their commercial appeal.
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Makaya McCraven: In These Times

Makaya McCraven: In These Times

Treble Magazine — To listen to much contemporary jazz is to hear a confluence of different musics and cultures, all gathered under one tenuous and progressively broad banner. In recent years, we have heard the serene, subtly electronic ambience of Pharoah Sanders and Nala Sinephro’s latest work; the looping, minimalist guitar of Jeff Parker; the cultural melange of London‘s jazz scene. It’s safe to say that to a mid-20th century jazz purist, this music would fall well outside their definition.
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Capturing Modernity: The Challenge of Portraying the Contemporary World | The Film Magazine

Capturing Modernity: The Challenge of Portraying the Contemporary World | The Film Magazine

The Film Magazine — There is an observable trend within modern filmmaking that becomes clearer with each passing year. With few exceptions, our biggest, critically-acclaimed directors have been engaged in a hasty retreat from the difficult act of portraying modern life.
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WPGM Reviews: All Points East Festival 2022

WPGM Reviews: All Points East Festival 2022

We Plug Good Music — Over the span of two weekends in August, the reliably great All Points East Festival returns to Victoria Park in terrific style. With ideal weather, great organisation and a line-up with something for everyone, All Points East 2022 is another reminder of the best that the festival format has to offer.
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Live Review: The South African Jazz Songbook (BBC Proms)

Live Review: The South African Jazz Songbook (BBC Proms)

Jazzwise — The Metropole Orkest's recent performance of classic South African jazz provokes some interesting questions about setting, format, and the knotty dynamics of reinterpretation. Hosted at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms, the arrangement and orchestration - for the most part by South African composer Marcus Wyatt - is fitting considering the historically classical emphasis of the Proms but no less surprising given the nature of the original recordings.
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Dusted Down - Afro Psych (Journeys Into Psychedelic Africa 1972 - 1977) | Juno Dai...

Dusted Down - Afro Psych (Journeys Into Psychedelic Africa 1972 - 1977) | Juno Dai...

Juno Daily — In Lagos, 1972, in the offices of Decca West Africa (DWA), an aspirational sales manager named Dave Bennett doodled a logo for a prospective record company. At the time – before the popularisation and commercialisation of what was labelled “world music” – most foreign-owned record companies operating in Africa were focusing almost exclusively on the importation of Western popular music, leaving local West African musicians with few clear avenues for mass distribution.
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Ten Great Albums Inspired by John Coltrane's A Love Supreme | Juno Daily

Ten Great Albums Inspired by John Coltrane's A Love Supreme | Juno Daily

Juno Daily — From hip-hop to illbient, we trace Coltrane's huge musical footprint from 1965 By 1965, John Coltrane had mastered many of jazz's movements. As accompanist, Coltrane had worked with bebop greats like Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie . With his second release, , he crafted a classic of the hard bop era.
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Dusted Down - Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru | Juno Daily

Dusted Down - Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru | Juno Daily

Juno Daily — Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru's music is a fascinating amalgam of different influences. But in order to see how these beautiful compositions came to be, it's worth briefly exploring the storied life of the Ethiopian nun, exile, composer, and pianist.
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Dusted Down - Sonny Clark | Juno Daily

Dusted Down - Sonny Clark | Juno Daily

Juno Daily — 1957 was a big year for Blue Note Records. On top of releasing John Coltrane's first major solo outing, Blue Train, the label released around 47 recordings - an impressive feat considering it was managed for the most part by just two men.
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Dusted Down - Jiro Inagaki and Soul Media | Juno Daily

Dusted Down - Jiro Inagaki and Soul Media | Juno Daily

Juno Daily — There is strikingly little written about the creators of 1975's . Jiro Inagaki and his band's legacy remains almost entirely musical, free from the extraneous personal details that cloud many a great jazz player's coverage.
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Tumi Mogorosi - Group Theory: Black Music

Tumi Mogorosi - Group Theory: Black Music

Treble Magazine — Jazz and gospel are close relatives. From the mid-19th century to the early-20th century, each developed from a blend of influences with one forebear in common: the spiritual. Ironically, given this shared lineage and many players’ upbringings in the Black church, few major jazz artists have wholeheartedly embraced the aesthetic capacity and expressive power of that central facet of gospel: the choir.
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Mankunku Quartet’s Yakhal’ Inkomo was a landmark album for South African jazz

Mankunku Quartet’s Yakhal’ Inkomo was a landmark album for South African jazz

Treble Magazine — A retrospective on Winston "Mankunku" Ngozi's landmark album, "Yakhal' Inkomo".
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ELUCID: I Told Bessie

ELUCID: I Told Bessie

Treble Magazine — Elucid has had a busy few years. Since 2018, the prolific New York rapper has released an excellent record as one half of Nostrum Grocers, three albums with the always brilliant Armand Hammer—most recently 2021’s Alchemist-produced Haram—a few solo projects, and collaborations with artists like The Lasso, and Von Pea. I Told Bessie is another in a long list of records from a rapper committed to an uncompromising sonic and lyrical exploration.
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Nduduzo Makhathini: In the Spirit of Ntu

Nduduzo Makhathini: In the Spirit of Ntu

Treble Magazine — Nduduzo Makhathini is an artist with a deep commitment to a sonic exploration of ancestry, the past, and a kind of spiritual conversation across temporal boundaries. Some of his previous albums have explicitly described this intention: 2020’s Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworld and 2015’s Listening to the Ground.
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Sharon Van Etten: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong

Sharon Van Etten: We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong

Treble Magazine — Musicians tend to make a kind of sacrifice in the course of expanding their music to bigger, more dramatic heights. As with all art forms, in reaching for an epic scale, artists may lose the grounded intimacy that they have developed with their audiences. Attempts to convey enormous emotional power can be received as strangely ineffective or cold. This can be especially pronounced when an artist transitions from making stripped-back indie-folk to making stadium-filling, synth-oriented rock.
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