Joseph Malik Diverse Part 2

• Joseph Malik – Malcolm X Strings
• Joseph Malik – Love Bound
• Joseph Malik – But I'm Lost Not Found
• Joseph Malik – Inside In, Outside Out
• Joseph Malik – Mixed Combination
• Joseph Malik – Vanguard
• Joseph Malik – Country Yard
• Joseph Malik – Intermission
• Joseph Malik – Take A Left
• Joseph Malik – Lost Not Found (Resprise)
• Joseph Malik – Awakening
• Joseph Malik – Basquiat

• 1. Malcolm X Strings
• 2. Love Bound
• 3. But I'm Lost Not Found
• 4. Inside In, Outside Out
• 5. Mixed Combination
• 6. Vanguard
• 7. Country Yard
• 8. Intermission
• 9. Take A Left
• 10. Lost Not Found (Resprise)
• 11. Awakening
• 12. Basquiat

Throughout the album you will be rooted in the present tense but you will hear sounds that take you back through the rich history of black music. The first track to be taken from the LP for the debut vinyl 45, 'Take A Left , produced by Malik and Sound Signals, begins with a blues harmonica that conjures the memory of Sonny Boy Williamson. As the track expands it initially becomes plantation gospel, joined by brass and then on the back of a nagging beat it morphs into a full-blown modern soul song. 'Country Yard' is a pleading rural blues song about Sunday and selling your soul, which riffs on the mythology of Robert Johnson and soul sold to the Devil. Two of the album's tribute tracks are deeply immersed in black history. 'Malcolm X Strings' is a gentle and insinuating piece of orchestral soul, which seems to soar above Harlem, rising at the East Winds loft on 125th Street where the Last Poets launched their revolutionary poetry and eventually fading over the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was shot by conspirators. 'Basquiat' is a more recent tribute, remembering the life and death of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat the graffiti artist turned post-modern genius. It is through Basquiat's life that we return to Joseph Malik, a young man who refuses to be contained by expectation and, like Basquiat, lists the New York underground of Lou Reed, Velvet Underground and new wave innovators Talking Heads among his many influences.
But enough of history - this is an album very much about now and the way black music can descant on the past and yet embrace endless innovation. In the spirit of the old sixties DJs that were the ghetto mavens of their ear - "Cut the chatter, check out the platter."