A note to my ears: Cristian Amigo is your friend. This New York-based composer / guitarist cooks up various and sundry sounds into a tasty sonic stew, then hands you the ladle. Kingdom of Jones’ ingredients range unpredictably and wildly from course to course: Big beat, deep-bassed, head-nodding grooves dolloped with melodic keyboards. Sparse piano plonks. Acoustic guitar skitter. Spare and stately chimes. Intricate, melodic acoustic guitar pickin’, grinnin’ and a-stummin.’ Soda can tapping. Layers of acoustic guitar tapping and scraping. Scratching feedback. Pinging synths. Solo, soulful, dissonant, electric fuzz guitar. Bongos with field recordings. Spinning bike spokes with sparse keyboard tinkle. Stick tapping with bird chirps and loose string flutter. Singing bowls, and last but not least, a little bit of sweet human singing sprinkled in a couple o’ spots in near the end. And the whole shebang is slathered in gallons of reverb, which gives it such a nice, atmospheric vibe. This album is one popular / avant-garde crossover that provides non-stop listening pleasure. I highly recommend it.

Label: Innova Catalog Number: 671 Format: CD Packaging: Jewel case Tracks: 13 Total Time: 66:27 Country: United States Released: 2007 More: All About Jazz, Big As Records, BMI, Last.FM, MySpace, Official, Smug Mug, The Tank

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