''Rux Revue'' is the debut album by

Carl Hancock Rux Carl Hancock Rux () is an American poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, recording artist, journalist, curator and conceptual installation artist working in text, dance, ritualized performance, audio, video, and photography. Described in the NY T ...

, released by Sony 550 Music which operated through

Sony Music Sony Music Entertainment (SME), also known as simply Sony Music, is an American multinational music company. Being owned by the parent conglomerate Sony Group Corporation, it is part of the Sony Music Group, which is owned by Sony Entertainmen ...

's Epic Records division. The album was produced in Los Angeles by the

Dust Brothers The Dust Brothers are a pair of songwriters and producers consisting of E.Z. Mike (Michael Simpson) and King Gizmo ( John King). They are famous for the sample-based music they produced in the 1980s and 1990s, and specifically for their work o ...

, featuring drummers

Joey Waronker Jon Joseph Waronker (born May 20, 1969) is an American drummer and music producer. He is best known as a regular drummer of both Beck and R.E.M., and as member of the experimental rock bands Atoms for Peace and Ultraísta. Background Waronker ...

(formerly of

R.E.M. R.E.M. was an American rock band from Athens, Georgia, formed in 1980 by drummer Bill Berry, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and lead vocalist Michael Stipe, who were students at the University of Georgia. One of the first alternat ...

) and

James Gadson James Gadson ( James Edward Gadson; born June 17, 1939) is an American drummer and session musician. Beginning his career in the late 1960s, Gadson has since become one of the most-recorded drummers in the history of R&B. He is also a singer and ...

, bassists

Atom Ellis Atom Ellis (born April 8, 1966) is a bass guitarist from San Francisco, California. Atom was a founding member of the Thrash Funk band Psychefunkapus from 1986 to 1992 and a member of the San Francisco band Dieselhed from 1993 to 2000. During ...

(of

Link Wray Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr. (May 2, 1929 – November 5, 2005) was an American guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist who became popular in the late 1950s. ''Rolling Stone'' placed Wray at No. 45 of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. In 2013 ...

/The New Cars) and

Carol Kaye Carol Kaye (née Smith, born March 24, 1935) is an American musician. She is one of the most prolific recorded bass guitarists in rock and pop music, playing on an estimated 10,000 recordings in a career spanning over 50 years. Kaye began play ...

, keyboardist James Hall, bass guitarist

Wah-Wah Watson Melvin M. Ragin (December 8, 1950 – October 24, 2018), known professionally as "Wah Wah Watson", was an American guitarist who was a member of The Funk Brothers, the studio band for Motown Records. Career A native of Richmond, Virginia, Melvin ...

and additional keyboard, Keyboard, Piano and Melodica by

Money Mark Mark Ramos Nishita (born February 10, 1960), known professionally as Money Mark, is an American producer and musician, best known for his collaborations with the Beastie Boys from 1992 until 2011. Early life Born in Detroit to a Japanese-Hawai ...

. The album mixes soul, gospel, blues, rock, classical and hip-hop into a collage of machine samples, drum machines, live instrumentation and sound effects, incorporating a

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message (" the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words a ...

influenced

Sprechgesang (, "spoken singing") and (, "spoken voice") are expressionist vocal techniques between singing and speaking. Though sometimes used interchangeably, ''Sprechgesang'' is directly related to the operatic ''recitative'' manner of singing (in which ...

and

Vocalese Vocalese is a style of jazz singing in which words are added to an instrumental soloist's improvisation. Definition Vocalese uses recognizable lyrics that are sung to pre-existing instrumental solos, as opposed to scat singing, which uses nonsen ...

style reliant upon African American alliteration, consonance and assonance while abstaining from the common techniques of poetic monologue popular in spoken word and slam poetry.

Critical reception

Rux's album was critically acclaimed. PEOPLE Magazine described the cd as "Merging poetry, hip hop and ambient beats with old-time R&B, this debut album is hypnotic, intense and thought-provoking." POP MATTERS praised Rux's cd, calling it "fully realized effort to present poetry as musical theater. It’s similar in this vein to Charles Mingus’ A Modern Symposium of Jazz and Poetry and The Clown, or Wynton Marsalis’ Blue Interlude and The Majesty of the Blues, or Stevie Wonder’s Living for the City. Backed by a live band and singers, Rux’s sound encompasses rock, blues, jazz, funk, and hip-hop, the words allowed the most fruitful representation in sound. His voice is a rich baritone; he sometimes shouts, sometimes croons, sometimes whispers. At all times he is insistent, a quality we have come to recognize as the hallmark of a performance poet. His work grapples with recalling his past and creating out of it a self-consciousness that is productive, rather than self-pitying. The production quality is excellent, a testament to both the producers (among them Toshi Reagon) and to Rux’s command over his material and his relationship with his band." SPIN Magazine commended Rux by citing "No poet signed to a major label has ever sounded as comfortable with a band as...Carl Hancock Rux" and PLAYBOY magazine HighBeam
/ref> stated "There isn't a more beautifully written set of lyrics around than on Rux Revue (Sony), the debut album by Carl Hancock Rux. Rux is a poet. But he's also interested in his musical accompaniment, and while his deep voice will recall Gil Scott-Heron, that isn't his only reference point...."

Track listing

Personnel

*Carl Hancock Rux (Composer, Primary Artist) *Fred Davis (Legal) *Mio Vukovic (A&R) *Steve Cohen (Management) *

(Producer) *Tom Rothrock (Producer) *Rob Schnapff (Producer) *Toshi Reagon (Producer) *Robert William Burke (Drums) *Freddie Cash Bass (Electric) *Marcelle Davies-Lashley (Background Vocals) *Helga Davis (Background/Guest Lead Vocals) *

(Bass) *Jason Finkleman (Berimbau, Percussion) *James Gadson (drums) *

(bass) *James Hall (Bass, Guitar) *Wah-Wah Watson (bass guitarist) *Annie King (Trumpet) *John King (Bass, Programming) *Ric Mandell (Piano) *Clinton McKinnon (Saxophone) *Money Mark (Clavinet, Guitar) *John Nau (Keyboards) *Alejandro Rosso (Bass, Organ, Piano) *Tom Rothrock (Bass, Drums, Keyboards, Programming) *C.H. Rux (Background Vocals, Programming) *Jeff Termus (Bass) *Joey Waronker (Drums)

References

External links

Rux Revue
at

Discogs Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the la ...

{{Authority control 1999 debut albums Carl Hancock Rux albums Sony Music albums Albums produced by the Dust Brothers