Bulletin Board Archive

Topic: Do You Smell Smoke (It's Miles Bonny's New Album)

1. Jan 25, 2007 06:49pm by NRG - livin the art that is life ! www.64111clinic.com fam www.nrginmotion.com massage www.myspace.com/nrginmotion world community Location: havenhouse KCK/ 64111 Clinic 4 Life
   http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/entertainment/16535485.htm New solo album fires it up by mixing beats, jazz and hip-hop for an individual sound. By TIMOTHY FINN The Kansas City Star Relaxing at home on his porch swing, Miles Bonny plays his trumpet. “It’s the most honest thing I can do,” he says. “So much of (life) hip-hop is prerecorded, and the rapping is like talking.” DJ Miles Bonny prepared for a gig recently at the Hangout, 3611 Broadway. The next Feel Sexy night there is scheduled for Feb. 17. “Smell Smoke” is Bonny’s new solo album. “He uses samples of stuff people normally don’t use, like lounge jazz, and then flips it and makes it sound cool.” JOE GOOD ABOUT MILES BONNY To fully appreciate the music on “Smell Smoke,” the new solo album from Miles Bonny, it helps to understand the man who created it. And to appreciate the music that lives in the mind, heart and soul of Miles Bonny, you must go back to his boyhood, to his father, to the trumpet, to jazz. “I was influenced a lot by my dad and his interest in some really obscure music,” Bonny said recently. “We didn’t have cable TV until I was 13, so I listened to the radio, a lot, usually to whatever he was listening to. “When I helped him in his woodshop, he’d be listening to NPR or WBGO, the local jazz station. That’s where I first heard Clifford Brown and the song ‘Tiny Capers.’ ” His father, Francis Bonny, is a woodworker on the side, by day; by night, he is a professional trumpet player based in Teaneck, N.J., where Miles spent most of his boyhood. Since the late 1980s, Francis Bonny has played trumpet in “Phantom of the Opera,” the longest-running show on Broadway. He regularly invited his only son into his music world, bringing him to rehearsals and performances, introducing him to legends like Tito Puente and giving him rare opportunities that resonated with his son. “I remember during a performance of ‘The Nutcracker,’ ” Bonny said, “I got to sit with the orchestra, and the guy on percussion let me hit the tambourine during the live performance.” (And his dad isn’t the only music luminary in the family: Miles’ grandmother, Helen Lindquist Bonny, is a renowned music therapist and founder of the Bonny Institute.) By the time he’d entered grade school, Miles Bonny was playing the trumpet, though it wasn’t necessarily his favorite instrument. “I played it from grade school through high school,” he said. “I was in jazz band, orchestra, marching band. I wanted to play drums, but they wouldn’t let me switch.” That’s because he was so good at trumpet. In August 1999 Bonny enrolled at the University of Kansas to study music and carry on the family tradition. In Hashinger Hall, the arts dorm at KU, he made friends with musicians who were hip-hop fans doing intriguing things with turntables and keyboards and samplers — making beats and crafting rhymes. That’s where he befriended local music stalwarts such as Andrew Conner and Richard Gintow (who would later form Ghosty) and beatmakers-rappers like Nezbeat and Joe Good. “I remember Andrew showing me a CD from his band in South Dakota,” Bonny said, “I was like, ‘Whoa, you got your own CD?’ ” And something clicked. During his first semester at KU, he got an offer to enroll in the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He turned it down. “It just didn’t make sense at the time,” he said. Bonny eventually withdrew from music scholarship (his degrees are in American Studies and African-American Studies), but he never left his trumpet behind. You can hear his horn throughout “Smell Smoke” in cuts like “Sing Your Song,” a trippy jazz ballad with piano, bass, brushed drums and Bonny on vocals and that trumpet, an accent that renders an extra, irresistible flair. That song illustrates the diversity of his influences, which begin with trumpeters like Clifford Brown and Roy Hargrove and include everyone from Sting, Jamiroquai, Ben Folds Five and Gil Scott-Heron to albums like Donald Fagen’s “Nightfly” and D’Angelo’s “Voodoo.” “That was big for me,” he said. “When I figured out how Roy Hargrove did the trumpets on that, I was like, ‘Man, I want to be involved in something like that. These are my people.’ ” To Bonny’s friends and collaborators, “Smell Smoke” was something of a revelation coming from a guy who was best known for creating exotic or eccentric beats for rappers to rhyme over. “It’s exciting, it’s different,” said Marcus Johnson (aka Smoov Confusion), a rapper-singer in the hip-hop troupe the Soul Servers. “It’s very soulful, but it’s still hip-hop. It’s not an everyday sound.” “I think a lot of people were surprised to hear Miles by himself,” said Joe Good, Bonny’s collaborator in the hip-hop duo SoundsGood. “The record is amazing, but it also turned out exactly the way I thought it would. Miles always had it in him to be a solo artist. He can do so many things. And ‘Smell Smoke’ completely represents who he is. It’s honest, it’s not contrived.” In SoundsGood, Bonny composed the beats that Joe Good rapped over. In 2005 the duo released its second full-length CD, “Biscuits & Gravy,” a dynamic hip-hop album that shivers and rings with obscure elements of jazz, soul and R&B. “He wanted to be as non-hip-hop as he could get,” Joe Good said, “without going completely outside the boundaries. He uses samples of stuff people normally don’t use, like lounge jazz, and then flips it and makes it sound cool.” Last year Scratch magazine dissected some of Bonny’s beat work, revealing fresh traits and strokes that go back to Bonny’s music foundations: “The free-wheeling ‘Voices’ is an uptempo number littered with crisp horns and crisp drum programming. The untitled last track samples trumpeter Booker Little for some retro Buckshot Lefonque type flavor.” As his reputation as an A-list beatmaker flourished, Bonny developed an itch to express himself lyrically and vocally, though not without respect for both. “It’s easier to make beats than to write lyrics,” Bonny said. “If you write like Joe Good or I do, it’s even harder because we don’t talk a lot of nonsense or trash, so you’ve got to have something to say.” As good as it is, Bonny considers “Smell Smoke” something of a stopgap. He’s more excited about the follow-up, “Incense & Wine,” which will feature him singing his own songs over beats composed by a collaborator in the U.K. “They don’t sound like my beats,” he said. “They’re all live with lots of keyboards mixed with live drums and horn lines.” They sound so unlike his beats, he said, that he figured the transition from SoundsGood to “Incense” would be too abrupt. So he revived some of his own tracks and used them to make “Smoke.” “It’s really not a ‘debut’ album because I didn’t really put ‘debut album’ effort into it,” he said. “It’s not that I didn’t try. It’s exactly what I want it to be. ‘Incense’ — that’s going to be it.” It will be one of a few big moments in his near future. Bonny and his new bride, Jesse, are expecting their first child soon. In addition to his writing and composing responsibilities, he has a few regular DJ gigs around town, including a brand-new one at America’s Pub in Westport. Bonny’s next live show is Sunday at the Peanut, Ninth and Broadway, where he DJs upstairs as part of “Hip Hop and Hot Wings.” He calls it a casual deal, where you can sit and chill and listen to him play a variety of genres and styles, from old-school R&B to new Thom Yorke and Fiona Apple. Once in a while he’ll stop the recorded music and produce a little live jazz from his trumpet. “People seem to enjoy it,” he said. “It’s the most honest thing I can do. So much of hip-hop is prerecorded, and the rapping is like talking. “Yeah, it definitely represents my dad. But also, playing trumpet is the most honest thing I can do. You can’t play trumpet and not be sincere.”
2. Jan 28, 2007 09:22am by Dropjaw - Dropjaw http://www.hiphophobo.com http://www.myspace.com/Dropjaw http://www.myspace.com/deadrepublic I'm on facebook as well, and my name is Kory Andrew Pedersen if you wanna be web homies. Location: Manhattan, KS
   I'm glad I read that. I wish I could read like little biographies of everyone on here.
3. Jan 28, 2007 03:36pm by Admin Location: KS
   Hey Miles, Congrats on getting on the front page of Thursday's KC Star and the cover of Preview. Hard work does pay off! I also hope to see more of y'all on covers in the upcoming months and years. Keep on working and supporting each other and I'm sure it will keep happening.
4. Jan 28, 2007 05:43pm by NRG - livin the art that is life ! www.64111clinic.com fam www.nrginmotion.com massage www.myspace.com/nrginmotion world community Location: havenhouse KCK/ 64111 Clinic 4 Life
   [quote:9191a74dfb="Dropjaw"]I'm glad I read that. I wish I could read like little biographies of everyone on here.[/quote:9191a74dfb] you maybe could if I posted a series of questions on there and folks copied and answered and then posted them back questions and answers you could interview yourself in a way. just a thought
5. Jan 30, 2007 06:54am by Dropjaw - Dropjaw http://www.hiphophobo.com http://www.myspace.com/Dropjaw http://www.myspace.com/deadrepublic I'm on facebook as well, and my name is Kory Andrew Pedersen if you wanna be web homies. Location: Manhattan, KS
   I would fill out the interview questionaire if you posted it, and I would read other people's.
6. Jan 30, 2007 07:51am by sixer
   [quote:a44565e55f="Dropjaw"]I would fill out the interview questionaire if you posted it, and I would read other people's.[/quote:a44565e55f]