Featured Artist: Mary Kastle

CD Title: Another Swing

Year: 2008

Record Label: Starbird Records

Style: Various Jazz Styles

Review:

Canadian-born vocalist/keyboardist Mary Kastle is one truly refreshing artist.  Her knack for integrating pop, reggae, jazz, and other exotic forms of music into her repertoire makes her material the consummate melting pot of sound and culture.  The blend comes across as oh-so-natural, as though she created a genre all her own and is quite comfortable in its skin.  Her sterling, soothing vocals and clever compositions also serve as two of the main ingredients in this delectable mix. Admittedly, I fell instantly in love with her style, albeit only demonstrated on this abbreviated 4-song suite (her full-length debut is in the making, I understand).  She released an earlier EP last year entitled Fresh Air. 

From the opening notes of  “Perfect All the Time” to the final notes of “Fresh Air,” Kastle takes one slowly, delicately, along with her on a melody-rich trip to a land fantastic, completely enveloped by abundantly sweet sounds and warm colors.  The only disservice here is that this vocal “find” has restricted her tours to Canada, thereby depriving deserving fans elsewhere of her quality musicianship.  We certainly look forward to that changing (she has indicated that she will tour “extensively” throughout North America and Europe in support of her forthcoming full-length debut).

The melodies here are so intoxicatingly sweet--like an exotic age-old fine wine—that I found myself irritated that the tunes were over so quickly and that I had to constantly replay them to keep that “fix” going.  Ah, so incredibly teasing is this EP.

Tracks: Perfect All the Time, Secret Garden, Down the Wire, Fresh Air

Artist's Website: http://www.marykastle.com

Reviewed by: Ronald Jackson

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