".An intriguingly beautiful and rhythmically riveting collection of tunes recorded live in the studio, Hanrahan's mood driven music includes an intoxicating brew of Afro-Cuban pulsings, funk grooves, and jazz passion with his crafted lyrics, which are at turns introspective, discursive and sensual."
- Dan Oullette, Downbeat

"An atmosphere at once dark, edgy and seductive."
-Josef Woodward, Jazz Times

KIP HANRAHAN
EXOTICA

JACK BRUCE, KIP HANRAHAN, DON PULLEN, ROBBIE AMEEN, ALFREDO TRIFF, LEO NOCENTELLI, JT LEWIS, DAVID SANCHEZ, RALPH PETERSON JR., ANTHONY CARILLO, RICHIE FLORES, MILTON CARDONA, LUCY PENABAZ, ANDY GONZALEZ, MARIO RIVIERA

You Can Tell A Guy By His Anger;
The Last Song;
As In Angola (Red Star In The Morning Sky);
Red Star;
You Can Tell Someone Who'll Never Fullfill Their Potential By The Way They Measure The Evening;
What We Learned That Night In Vera Cruz And How We Applied It;
G-d Is Great;
As In The Bronx (You Can Tell Where Someone Comes From By What they Laugh At);
You Can Tell A Moment Of Clarity By The Digital Trace It Leaves;
As In The Red Morning;
The Last Song On The Album
—sound-bites are underlined—

Produced by Kip Hanrahan
Recorded February to May 1992
US release: March 1993
Cover art Ritchard Rodriguez
AMCL 1027

"Jack Bruce [here] is tackling material as challenging and new for the 1990s as psychedelic bluesy rock was to the 1960s.  ...The songs are dense, compact and rhythmically urgent ruminations on political meaning in a world where socialism has collapsed but freedom has not been forthcoming...  Helping out in a brilliant manner is Don Pullen, the jazz pianist whose ability to be melodically sensitive while he furiously pounds the keys is rivaled only by McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor... Jack's voice here is a wonderfully melodic instrument.   You don't here enough of him these days."
-Steven Rosen, The Denver Post

"Don Pullen and his B3 figure prominently on the challenging, complex and convention-shattering Exotica...  Exotica keeps the clave, or heartbeat of Afro-Caribbean music, and employs to the fullest the protean talents of Pullen, bass guitarist/vocalist Jack Bruce, guitarist Leo Nocentilli (ex-Meters) and trap drummer Robby Ameen.  Ameen, in particular, is astonishing on Exotica...  Hanrahan's recordings, while immensely edifying and enjoyable to attentive listeners, defy easy analysis in so short a space.  I strongly suggest you get Exotica..."
-Gene Kalbacher

".Kip the wizard...  10 years and 9 projects later, Kip's ideas and brilliance is still there... You can call this rhythmic avant garde ... Exotica is a pulsating, emotional highlight..."
-Neue Westfallshe (Germany)

...Our poet of the darkness that resembles intoxication,  Hanrahan gives us a bitter and sensual meditation on political deception and sexual passion - or is it sexual deception and political passion?  Bruce, in one of his deepest, darkest performances on record, gives both subjects the same sensual treatment.  He whispers seductive empty promises of a workers  paradise on The Last Song.  Then on G-d is Great, is breathlessly, almost devotionally, sexual.  ...The album is almost a concerto for Pullen's mercurial blues-to-free jazz pianistics and spontaneous two-fisted keyboard, orchestrations.  ...Hanrahan's compositions ...bring us close to the passions that inspire music in the first place."
- Ed Hazell, Providence Phoenix

back to top