[TR24][OF] Gérald Toto (Gerald Toto) - Sway - 2018 (vocal jazz, world music, No Format!)

#777Вокалист, композитор и мультиинструменталист Джеральд Тото (род. 1967, Сен-Клу, Франция) – коренной парижанин, родители которого, правда, родом с Антильских островов. На музыкальной сцене он наиболее известен по проекту Toto Bona Lokua, в котором кроме самого Тото приняли участие Ришар Бона из Камеруна и Локуа Канза из Конго. На авторитетном лейбле Nø Førmat! трио выпустило два, удачных во всех отношениях альбома Toto Bona Lokua (2005) и Bondeko (2017), с промоцией которых музыканты выступили на самых крупных джазовых фестивалях планеты. Кроме того, Джеральд Тото участвовал в записи альбома Bande à Part (2006) популярного французского коллектива Nouvelle Vague. Как сольный музыкант Джеральд Тото выпустил четыре альбома: Les Premiers Jours (1998, Warner), Kitchenette (2006, V2music), Spring Fruits (2011, Mercoeur Music) и Sway (2018, Nø Førmat!).

#777Gerald Toto (born 1967, Saint-Cloud, France) is a French lyricist, composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist and artistic director. Part of the underground scene in the middle of the 1990s, he chose a new direction by becoming the artistic director and composer of the first album of the well known Faudel (writing songs such as "Tellement je t'aime") On the heels of the commercial success Gerald Toto released his first album, Les Premiers Jours (Warner, 1998), a mix between cashew music and the music of Daniel Lanois. Then came Middle Eastern electro with the band Smadj and the vocal improvisations of "Toto Bona Lokua" with Richard Bona and Lokua Kanza (No Format!, 2004). In 2006 Toto came back with a new album, Kitchenette (V2music). He also contributed to Nouvelle Vague's album Bande à Part (Peacefrog, 2006), for which he did the covers "Don't Go" and "Heart of Glass". His third album, Spring Fruits, with English lyrics, was released in 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Toto

Gérald Toto: Sway — darkly tropical
Gently unspooling mood music from a versatile French musician
David Honigmann OCTOBER 26, 2018
The last we heard from Gérald Toto was on last year’s Toto Bona Lokua album, Bondeko, where he teamed up with the Cameroonian bassist Richard Bona and the Congolese guitarist Lokua Kanza, reigniting the magic of their first album as a trio back in 2004. Born in France to parents from the Antilles, Toto has had a busy career. He sang with Nouvelle Vague, reinterpreting New Wave hits from “Heart Of Glass” to “Don’t Go” to “Relax” as helium-light bossa nova. He wrote songs for the rai star Faudel. He made Mahgrebi electro with Smadj.
His new solo album Sway is short (barely 36 minutes), and entirely performed by Toto himself. The acoustic guitar, percussion and voice are recognisably part of the same sound world as Bondeko. “Alger 69” is a piece of mood music on guitar and bass, unspooling slow Arabesques. Many of the songs with vocals are wordless vocalisations, much like the invented language of the trio album. So “Day By Day”, for example, starts with fragmentary syllables that sound like words (“freedom”... “always on fire”...) but soon becomes pure scat singing, the guitar providing counterpoint. The catchiest melody, “My Girlfriend”, repeats the title phrase over sung broken chords as the guitars dance and glitter. Doo-wop backing vocals arranged into a virtual choir run through “Umbaka”, giving it a lush, febrile setting. The title track buzzes with darkly tropical shakers.
Even where the songs have lyrics, they are impressionistic. So “Away Alive”, its words by the Australian-based singer Jule Japhet, moves from images of loneliness (“feeling slightly empty now your dreams have gone”) to empowerment (“be mindful now you’re strong”) without ever passing through an actual narrative, though the percussive plucked notes give it a feeling of movement. The gentle reggae of “You Got Me” perks up the repetitive list of the words (“you got my eyes/you got me at hello/you got my happiness/you’ve got my soul”). Over the barest backing Alice Orpheus’s words for “Let It Blow” emerge in a whisper: “Breathe the air and let your mind wander”. Only the fidgety backing of “It’s A Love Pain” disturbs the mood. “It’s a love pain in your mind”, repeats Toto over and over, “it’s a love pain in your soul” — all reinforced by angular guitar.
https://www.ft.com/content/888c9a08-d3b7-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5