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LP
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DC 510LP
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"Avant songstress Azita has returned... Year is undoubtedly the most varied collection Azita's yet carved her name into, sweetly played with flexion and understatement through and through by Azita and the boys: Sam Wagster on guitar, Toby Summerfield on bass and Adam Vida on drums.. In thirty-plus minutes, the arrangements swerve from song to song: stomping power guitar rock, smoothly sanguine piano balladary, jangling pop, a witchy acapella moment and -- yes! -- a multisection dub reggae/musique concrete epic! Awesome -- somewhere Annette Peacock is smiling. Or Catherine Ribeiro. Or both! We can all get along, can't we? An arc is suggested from the beginning to end of Year; among the themes, the lyrics are looking at possibilities and probabilities, tall tales that balloon upwards to absurd heights."
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LP+CD
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DC 491LP
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"Disturbing the Air is a record of new songs from Azita, featuring piano and vocals. For these songs, only the piano proved delicate and flexible enough to hold Azita as she sang of unsaid moments, testing the words she heard that no one else dared to say. Even with a minimal palette, these performances are a brooding, commanding lot. Disturbing the Air considers the darkness that comes over a relationship in imbalance; vacated by one party, leaving the other in a faded, ghostly state. For Azita, this is a state of non-being. It means matching oneself to the void, a terrifying encounter. For we who listen, it means that we compare this album to no other -- not even records that share its piano-and-vocal arrangement. Disturbing the Air is an expression; a singular statement, made more of necessity than desire. This album comes with a CD of the music enclosed."
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CD
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DC 368CD
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"How Will You? is halls and mirrors of sound and voice, sour and sweet, sense and nonsense, implying and pointing the way, crushing to crescendo before starting again in a different way, in another song. Each successive stroke eventually paints a portrait, but something is missing. There's a space for you there. How Will You? isn't complete until you enter the room. You listening completes the picture. Throughout How Will You? Azita speaks personally, as people do -- seemingly simple, but just as you think you've got her pegged, a lyrical phrase takes off and a lovely melodic twist turns you back into the maze. As the album spins on, you're tangled in her private code, receiving stories in delusively linear fashion. The song is over and you're left with wild beauty, wry humor, florid sounds and the sting of urgently intoned words. You've never heard personal-sounding music like this presented with such persistent opacity. Azita is kind of one of a kind. How Will You? is a collection of songs that range from sun-bright and poppy to deep-focus, torrential. Azita stuck to straight-ahead voicings in her chords to bring heaviness to the sound, working with bassist Matt Lux and drummer John Herndon to arrange her songs with the strength of a rock and roll band throughout the album. The arrangements were augmented with her own guitar playing, as well as Sam Wagster's supernatural pedal steel parts and Emmett Kelly's classic guitar licks. Even in the midst of raging and stomping, the effect, as stated above, is painterly. How Will You? is compelling pop music, approaching in fun, with beats, and then sinking deep and growing within you."
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LP
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DC 368LP
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CD
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DC 306CD
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"A short and sweet CDEP release from Azita. Presented with lyrics written by Chicago playwright Brian Torrey Scott for his play of the same name, Azita composed music for five separate pieces, coming up with a variety of moods over five songs that range from lilting and melodic to rock hard."
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CD
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DC 239CD
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"On her debut LP/CD entitled Enantiodromia, what Azita's got is a handful of original piano-based tunes, almost all of them featuring vocals, melodies, lyrics and all the things that most of us out here in the mainstream regard as elements of that popular music form known as 'songs.' And the playing on these songs is tight. Latter day rhythm heroes John McEntire (drums) and Matt Lux (bass) get together in a lightning quick rhythm section that will have you recall sleek, funky constructs from days of yore. They're topped with a bit of pure, clean guitar obbligato from Jeff Parker and some classic cornet playing from Rob Mazurek. If only Becker and Fagan had heard these guys! Long known for her idiosyncratic visions as leader of the Scissor Girls and Bride of No No, Azita steps out from the rock and non-rock of those groups and into a whole new thing."
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