Jeannine Cullen is the intoxicating, poetic vocalist du jour.  After repeated listens to the jazzy demo of this recent SUNY New Paltz graduate, I'm wanting to hear more from this smoky, 20-something voice.  Cullen could be Fiona Apple colliding with Billie Holiday, and it's evident that she's got some schooling behind those well-developed vocal chords.  Nonetheless, as writer and producer of these fresh tunes, she puts her versatility on the table and unveils the funkiest, edgiest and grooviest of the genre.  Tossing local guitarist Mark Dzuiba and drummer Andrew Greeney into her innovative mix, along with several other competent players, Cullen's harvest is a remarkable and substantial one for an artist of her tender years.

This demo showcases an elastic, picturesque voice, and I'm sold.  However, this melodic 8-song EP clocks in at only 37 minutes, which is excruciatingly short.  But since Cullen's just moved to and performs regularly in Manhattan, she's bound to surprise us before too long with a recording that is deserving of her, not the other way around.

-Sharon Nichols

Though her life's journey began in Big Indian, Lhasa spent a number of her formative years in a converted school bus traveling with her family all across the US and Mexico.  Her father loved the classics of music; her mother, the exotics.  This disparate confluence of musicality is what makes Lhasa's own artistry so beguiling.

Lhasa's sophomore release, The Living Road, weaves all of her ancestral influences into a glorious musical tapestry of original compositions which she offers in Spanish, English, and French with equipoise and aplomb.  The breathy sultriness of her voice intimates a temptress is among us.  The haunting Eastern instrumentation does little to dissuade that thought.

Listen to a track such as "J'Arrive A La Ville" and you can't help but imagine Lhasa gracing the stage of a smoky, dimly lit nightclub in Paris.  On the very next selection, however, your mind will easily see her strolling the dusty streets of a Mexican village.  Skip down to "Small Song" and you'll find her in the Mississippi Delta with a traditional blues-, night chain gang-infused arrangement done with a terribly interesting twist.  On The Living Road, Lhasa dares to go wherever the rhythms lead, taking the listener along for each magnificent, melodic adventure.  http://nettwerk-america.com

-Kelly McCartney

What comes to mind when you think about the electric bass guitar?  Perhaps the snaky funk of Tony Levin, or the liquid jazz acrobatics of Jaco Pastorius?  Probably not the ambient melting of otherworldly soundscapes by Scott Petito-celestial, pastoral meditations produced solely from bass guitar on his newest recording, Sbass (pronounced "space").

What a gem of a record.  Here's an artist in this been-there-done-that-heard-it-all-seen-it-all world who has reinvented the sonic landscape with an instrument that's been with us for over 50 years.  Petito, an accomplished virtuoso musician, composer, and Grammy-nominated producer, displays an incredible understanding of space (no pun intended), breath and color that makes this album  a stellar ambient recording.  The inherent earthiness of the bass instruments, long reverb times and digital looping devices make for a supremely sensuous atmospheric journey.  If anyone ever asked me what the cosmic womb sounded like, I'd put on Scott Petito's Sbass and tell them to just close their eyes.

-Kevin Bartlett