Tag Archives: Nicolay

Zo! On the New Nicolay Album ‘City Lights Vol. 2: Shibuya’

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Earlier today, the press release for Nicolay’s new album City Lights Vol. 2: Shibuya was made public, which included the tracklisting and cover artwork. I appear on two of the joints with keyboard solos (“Crossing” and “Wake Up In Another Life”)… Check the write-up….

 

Nicolay – City Lights Vol. 2: Shibuya (09.15.09)

 

Shibuya is the new project from the creative mind of NICOLAY, better known as one half of THE FOREIGN EXCHANGE. The group (which includes rapper/singer Phonte) and their sophomore album Leave It All Behind (TFE/Hard Boiled; Oct. 2008), continues to gain momentum as the duo and their extended family of singers and musicians are currently touring the United States and Canada. Nicolay and Phonte’s countless performances together have added a new level of sophistication to their musical output, resulting in what they consider to be one of their most ambitious projects yet. 

The idea for Shibuya, the second installment in Nicolay’s City Lights series, was conceived after Nicolay’s first visit to Tokyo in November 2006. The experience proved to be life changing for Nicolay, who has studied Japanese culture for most of his adult life. “This amazing place and all of its sounds and colors immediately filled up my senses,” he says. “I felt reinvigorated.” 

Once back home, he started to write and record music with a new-found sense of freedom, laying the groundwork for the albums Time:Line and Leave It All Behind as well a third album; a deeply personal homage to the Tokyo district of Shibuya that illustrates both the grandeur of Japan’s age-old heritage (“Meiji Shrine, “Rain In Ueno Park”, “The Inner Garden”) as well as the hectic city life of one of the world’s busiest metropolitan areas (“Crossing”, “Satellite”, “Bullet Train”). Where City Lights Volume 1 was primarily instrumental, on Shibuya the instrumental pieces are book-ended by several vocal songs written by Phonte and performed by Durham, North Carolina vocalist CARLITTA DURAND, who previously collaborated with Phonte on LITTLE BROTHER’s Getback album (ABB 2007). Also appearing is Foreign Exchange liveband-mate ZO!, who adds his virtuoso keyboard solos to two songs. 

“It truly is like stepping into a different world”, says Nicolay about his trip to the city. “What fascinated me most about Shibuya was the co-existence of ‘old’ and ‘new’ in seemingly perfect harmony. The most advanced technologies and innovations exist next to traditions that are rooted in thousands of years of civilization.” The album’s musical foundation mirrors this hybrid of different ages, combining influences from ’70s jazz, rock and fusion with broken beat, downtempo and electronica to form the lush, genre-bending sound that has become Nicolay’s trademark.


Tracklisting

01 Lose Your Way feat. Carlitta Durand
02 Shibuya Station
03 Crossing
04 Rain In Ueno Park
05 Satellite
06 Saturday Night feat. Carlitta Durand
07 A Ride Under The Neon Moon
08 Omotesando
09 Meiji Shrine
10 Shadow Dancing
11 The Inner Garden
12 Bullet Train
13 Wake Up In Another Life
14 Departure
15 Shibuya Epilogue feat. Carlitta Durand

Questlove Talks About the “Purple Flip” joint…

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As y’all may know from the last post, the brotha Ahmir Thompson a/k/a Questlove, the drummer from the Legendary Roots Crew programmed the drums on the “Purple Flip” joint that was leaked yesterday. Well here is what he had to say about the song itself…

Questlove/The Foreign Exchange/Zo!/Carlitta Durand EXCLUSIVE!

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Let’s get down to business immediately… I want to drop something new on y’all today. The night before our vacation to Bermuda a couple weeks ago, Phonte hit me up at about 1am and passed me this joint to play on. He was telling me that Questlove had flipped Prince’s “Take Me With You” and that he and Carlitta Durand also did their own take on the lyrics…. Dope. I sent my parts back, Nicolay finished it up while we were gone and now we have a 5-person collaborative effort in tribute to the living legend himself….

PURPLE FLIP [right click and save to download MP3 file]


Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson– Drums, Samples

Nicolay– Fender Rhodes, acoustic piano

Zo!– Moog synth, additional rhodes

Phonte and Carlitta Durand– Vocals

This is the first in a series of random goodies that we will be periodically dropping off in your mailboxes. (Who loves ya, baby?)

We recorded this over a month ago specifically for a ?uestlove tribute party dedicated to The Purple One himself. Other than passing it off to a few DJ friends who vowed to keep it on some secret squirrel, “bet you aint up on THIS!” status, no one has ever heard it. In the wake of the incredible loss we suffered on June 25 however, this joint took on somewhat of a deeper meaning.

We decided to share it with our fans not only as a token of appreciation, but also as a way of paying respect to one of our last living musical geniuses.

Let’s not wait until tragedy strikes before we show love and gratitude to our heroes, people. Give them their flowers while they live.

This one’s for you, Mr. Nelson. You are loved and appreciated.

Enjoy!

One Love,

‘Tay and Nic

Enjoy this one!…

The Foreign Exchange in Detroit – 06.04.09

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I’ll be honest, I was really looking forward to going back home for the second time in a matter of about 10 days to play a show with Foreign Exchange. Ever since we started playing together in November, I have been asked in just about EVERY city we have played in, “When are y’all playing in the D?” With the way things have been looking economically here recently, I had absolutely NO answer for that question. Well, we finally got a show back home at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History – which, until recently I had no idea that they even held performances there. 

Anyway, me, Omar and Biscuit arrived in Detroit in the morning and I drove them up to the house. It was already weird to see my D.C. kats in my hometown, much less kickin it at the house. Then, I took them to The Original House of Pancakes over on 10 mile in Southfield. We HAD to head to the hotel after that because the ‘itis began to show itself as the fellas were in the car OUTTA THERE. I had enough time to sneak in a workout before heading to soundcheck. 

Overall, the show went well. Kats who came out, came OUT and seemed to really be into the show. I saw a few familiar faces… not as many as I thought would show up so it was actually good to play in front of a new crowd. My family was in there sitting front row and enjoying every bit of the show, I’m glad they enjoyed themselves. Of course I never have enough time to catch up with everyone when I go home, I don’t care how long I’m there for. I did get to kick it w/KT, Malik Alston, DJ Sicari, K-Fresh, tREBLEFREE, Alex Rogers, Roxstar, and my man Tate McBroom. See y’all again when I go back…

The Music That 2008 Will Bring…

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*comes up for air*

Gather ’round y’all, gather ’round….

First, I am currently finishing up the Zo! & Tigallo Love the 80’s! EP with my brotha in music, Phonte. This is something that came about through our mutual respect for each other’s talents……and quite simply because both of us are music fanatics. For example, “Africa” was born out of a conversation we had at the end of ’06 that we had going back and forth about our favorite 70’s and 80’s joints. Next thing you know….here comes “Take On Me”. With “Steppin’ Out” already completed, gears shifted like, we need to make this an official joint. Since then, three more have been done….won’t tell y’all which three joints we picked out yet though… Look for this one to drop somewhere between February and December of ’08………………..haha

The third album that I have begun production on is yet another collaboration EP with extremely talented Detroit emcee Asylum 7. We have been working together on different things since we met back in 2004 (“Listen Up”, and the “Observe Remix” which appeared on A7’s Brown Study EP). This was another case of dope chemistry and respect for one another’s work ethic. We’re about 7 tracks deep into it and still pushing…

You will also see production on one joint that features YahZarah from the upcoming The Foriegn Exchange album Leave It All Behind. And just yesterday I laid some keys on a joint by my man Kev Brown for his new album. And there’s more…but all of it hasn’t been finalized, so I don’t want to have to retract statements and everything. lol My goal for the year (as it is every year) is to continuously hit ch’all with good, consistent music. Let’s have fun this year…I’m looking forward to it.

Did I also mention that I’m working on another solo LP too?…Just thought I would throw that in there…………………

Thanks for listening…
Zo