Poetic musical fusion finds a way the Douglas Jay Jaffe Project’s new four track EP, entitled: ANGLES, with three outstanding female vocal fronted and one male vocal fronted piece to put the icing on the proverbial cake Jaffe baked up along with producer extraordinaire, Craig Brandwein of Center Sound Productions. And this is a prolific Emmy-nominated producer with a lot of projects involving what seems to be an endless crop of singers and musicians from the south at his disposal, so collaborating is where it’s at for this songwriter and producer combined with a host of others between the band and gifted singers.
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/douglasrayjaffeproject/
Each track on ANGLES features a different singer, and they all bring the business to Jaffe’s often surrealist storytelling, which begins with “Paychecks And Daydreams” and vocalist Drey Arnold, one of the four singers to be featured on the EP, which I am new to, but couldn’t welcome their voices more. It doesn’t seem to matter how these songs are arranged if you don’t follow the lyrics of Jaffe, but if you’re into the words as much as the music, you’ll appreciate the way the ANGLES tracks are arranged and this sets the tone right up for what’s to come.
Mollie Flotemersch arrives on the second number “Brooklyn Eyes” with an instantly likeable and uber commanding voice that flows from one end of the spectrum to the other, with a haunting whisp that never quits as it fades softly fades away. It’s just so easy to notice how good this singer is, and just as importantly serves Jaffe’s song with flying colors. It cannot be denied that all the featured vocalists on the ANGLES album are highly trained professionals, especially when you consider they didn’t write the words but still sing the songs as if they were their own compositions.
SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/7aDizTgCOjNOVEPNt79YVF
The ANGLES album takes on more shapes and sizes with the inclusion of Natalie Kasper singing “To Pass” which adds a tasty southern twist in the tale, taking the journey a step beyond the thread and bringing it back in one sweet little number to go with the rest of the lyrical atmosphere. The voice of Kasper can carry across mountains as it is, but the song calls for exactly what she brings to it. This is a thing of beauty and Kasper is just one reason why, as Jaffe wrote himself a song of epic proportions.
While the previous numbers have everything going for them and then some, Jaffe changes the vibe on the final number with singer Bob Schnider bringing “Today’s Forecast… Anything Goes” to the table with Alice In Wonderland and Peter Pan. This is a number that stands on its own two feet along with the three female led numbers, not to be mistaken for table scraps in the process. And it just goes to show Douglas Ray Jaffe knows how to write a familiar tune and put the right voices to it on ANGLES, which are sure to make standards of his own project’s doing.
Rachel Townsend