James Newton Howard as known to many as a great musician, composer and arranger. This album are from Sheffield Lab recording during 1983 when Yamaha developed new series of digital synthesizer DX7, DX9 & GS1 and has given James Newton Howard (JNH), David Paich and Steve Pocarro to compose and demonstrate new music on these equipments. David and Steve are band member from TOTO, the band which has recorded many hit songs in their era such as Africa, Rosanna, I'll be over you, Pamela etc.
The album has been recorded at MGM studio in California with under supervision of Sheffield Lab chief engineer, Steve Haselton. The full album consist of 9 track and it was recorded live direct to disk, the best way to get the most, faithful of sound in recording. There is no cutting of master lacquer disc in this process and no tape recorder too. The cutter hit the disk, thumbs up from recording engineer and all recorded directly from the session.
In this album if you familiar with musical instruments or even better if you can play drums, piano or synthesizer, you will be delighted when listen to this music. Bear in mind there is no guitar in this album, it just drums, percussion and synthesizers. But make no mistake, by far this is the best live recorded album and most highly rated album in Sheffield lab history and It is in my top 10 favorite album too.
The drums played by Jeff Pocarro are truly remarkable. It was tight, explosive drumming on all over the tracks. The cymbals, floor tom, kick bass are all realistic, and the snares sound will hit you right on your face on certain attack.
The drums played by Jeff Pocarro are truly remarkable. It was tight, explosive drumming on all over the tracks. The cymbals, floor tom, kick bass are all realistic, and the snares sound will hit you right on your face on certain attack.
The Bass works are all from synthesizers and it sounded so good. Three musicians involved in the synthesizer section alone, they are JNH, David Paich and Steve Pocarro. Joe Pocarro was on percussion.
This is a highly sought after album and one of my reference album of all time.
