Richie Cole & The Alto Madness Orchestra
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Jazz Excursion

Hoo boy, this one’s a real doozy. For a release by a musician described as an “international star” in the liner notes, the cover design here is spectacularly amateurish. From cheap, tacky, oversized fonts on the front cover to ugly, pixelated text set against a purple-to-blue faded background on the back cover, one has to wonder where standards of respect are going. This kind of thing is OK for someone getting their feet wet with a computer while helping out the neighbor’s kid’s band. But this is a guy who has been carrying his bebop torch for more than 30 years we’re talking about, and he’s reduced to this? This is a joke, right?

But oh, it gets worse. Alto madness. I think of that phrase, and I think of horns battling each other to be heard like an angry mob. But alas, there’s no shouting cacophony to be heard here. No, this isn’t ‘alto madness’ – it’s carefully controlled, precisely arranged big band charts playing ordinary-sounding compositions in a fairly non-exciting way.
`Ugly cover art, a misleading band name, and music that can’t cut past the let-down of its presentation – we couldn’t be told more plainly to "pass on this one."--Michael Fortes