The ratings of SADE albums seem to go a slight downfall, ie. the debut Diamond Life (1984) is the highest rated, and each later album scores a bit lower than the preceding one. Sade's biggest hits -- 'Smooth Operator', 'Your Love is King' etc -- indeed came early in the career. Love Deluxe is the band's fourth album. I deliberately speak of the British band, even though Sade can also refer to the gorgeous, Nigerian-born singer Sade Adu, as it undoubtedly does in the wide public. But practically it was a group effort. The songs were mainly composed together by Adu, saxophonist-guitarist Stuart Matthewman, keyboardist Andrew Hale and, to a lesser degree, bassist Paul Spencer Denman.

While the third album Stronger Than Pride (1988) had a bit more edge, Love Deluxe returns to the soft and sensitive coolness, and does it very pleasantly in my opinion. The opener 'No Ordinary Love' was the lead single released one month prior the album. I love its hypnotic and slightly melancholic atmosphere.

Sonically, songs such as 'Feel the Pain' and 'I Couldn't Love You More' come a bit closer to the bulk of r'n'b balladry, with a sticky beat I've never enjoyed. But Sade Adu's lovely voice easily lifts anything above the rest of the genre. The slow, spatial and dreamy 'Like a Tattoo' arrives just in time. Shivers!

The bright-toned 'Kiss of Life', the third single, is an enjoyable, solid Sade number. 'Cherish the Day' is again of the more average r'n'b stuff and continues on the thoroughly familiar path. The slow-tempo Adu-Hale composition 'Pearls' features an orchestral arrangement and is among the highligths. 'Bullet Proof Soul' has nice piano and rather cheesy sax. Instrumental (!) closing track 'Mermaid' paints an exotic, oceanic view.

This album may not quite be on the high level of the two first albums but is nevertheless essential for any fan who wants some more of the ear-candy.

American cellist and composer DAVID DARLING (1941-2021) came into my radar as a collaborator of Norwegian pianist and composer Ketil Björnstad on his ECM albums The Sea (1995) and The Sea II (1998), alongside guitarist Terje Rypdal and drummer Jon Christensen. The spatially impressionistic and melancholic instrumental music on those albums made a deep impression on me in the late 90's, and if I remember right, soon afterwards I also found this solo album of Darling from the library. Otherwise his output is not familiar to me.

This aptly titled album indeed has almost a "sacred" feel of introspection. Released on the New Age label Hearts Of Space, it is a wholeheartedly NewAgey collaboration between Darling on cello, piano and other miscallenous instruments plus wordless voice, and the engineer/producer Mickey Houlihan who added some field recordings of mainly water and birds. This music is thoroughly peaceful, tender and soothing, but unlike much of the so called New Age Music, definitely not clichéd or calculated in a hollow way. Of course it always depends on the individual listener how any music reaches one's "inner spirit" or "soul". In my case, listening to this album is a truly beautiful and cleansing experience. The deep-voiced cello has the key role in the magical equation.

Not necessarily each of the eight (!) pieces are anything more than harmonic and beautiful sonic tapestry for relaxation, and that's ok. Because there are deeply impressive highlights too. 'Soft Light' functions perfectly as the opener with its slow-paced dueting between piano and cello's pizzicato. 'Clouds' takes one deeper into inner visions and emotions, with a slight Oriental feel in the melodies and the delicate use of voice.

My favourite is 'Sweet River' that starts with birdsong and gentle sounds of water. The piano plays a melancholic melody, the voice is heard occasionally, and before you realize your mind is floating along the river in a timeless, placeless way. The production is perfect, each little detail serves the whole. The light percussion is a bit reminiscent of the vases in the NITS album Ting (1992). On 'Sojourn' the soft repeated pattern makes me think of BRIAN ENO at his most delicate -- yes, Ambient is another fitting category for this album -- while the cello wails beautifully at its top register, making allusions to the aforementioned The Sea albums.

On the final piece 'Remember' the voice is at its most central, in both the melodic and the sonic sense. No proper words, just d's and wovels. To sum things up, I warmly recommend this album if you appreciate calm introspection in music, the sound of cello, the ECM-like spatial production, and the Ambient genre, and are not put off by the term New Age or the sound effects of nature.

The last studio album of the legendary guitarist Jeff Beck (r.i.p. January 2023) was the first one since Loud Hailer (2016). It is a collaboration with Johnny Depp (b. 1963), best known as one of the most succesful movie actors of his generation. Without any knowledge on Depp's musical activities, I expected his contribution to be mainly that of a vocalist, but besides Beck obviously on lead guitars, Depp actually is the most prolific player of various instruments on this album. It's titled 18 because the creative process made the two feel young again.

Beck's distinctive electric guitar, which appears also on Roger Waters' Amused to Death (1992), gives the album's overall sound a slight resemblance to latter-day Pink Floyd here and there, but when it comes to song material, this is a widely varied set of 13 tracks. The serene instrumental opener 'Midnight Walker' composed by Davy Spillane could as well appear on a Floyd album. The first proper song 'The Death and resurrection Show' is an aggressively noisy industrial rock piece originally of Killing Joke.

'Time' (Dennis Wilson / K. L. Wilson) feels badly overproduced at places, but the calm, slow tempo backbone of the song is pretty nice and Depp's singing is pleasant. 'Sad Mother****in' Parade' is credited to Beck and Depp. It doesn't feature singing per se but spoken voice over the heavy-thumping, programmed soundscape. This far the album feels very perplexing in a negative way. 'Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)' is a Beach Boys song from their classic album Pet Sounds, and this atmospheric version relies mostly on Beck's wailing guitar and much less on vocals.

The album's other original new piece 'This Is a Song for Miss Hedy Lamarr' (Lamarr was an Austrian-born actress and scientific inventor) was written by Johnny Depp with Tommy Henriksen who plays the keyboards on it. A decent minor song. Funnily, against my above mentioned expectations on Depp's role, he seems to be pushing himself back as a vocalist, perhaps to underline his musician's role.

For the song material from the 60's and 70's, in my opinion things get better for the album's latter half, even if the vocals do remain in a minor role. 'Caroline, No', another Pet Sounds perennial, has been turned into a poshy platform for Beck's guitar. 'Ooo Baby Baby' is a Smokey Robinson song and among the most gratifying tunes for vocal-oriented listeners. The rest of the songs cover Marvin Gaye ('What's Going On' -- pretty good but far from the excellence of the original), Velvet Underground ('Venus in Furs'), King Curtis ('Let It Be Me'), Janis Ian ('Stars' -- a beautiful, serene highlight) and John Lennon ('Isolation' -- among the most faithful cover tunes here).

Jeff Beck fans can enjoy this album without fearing that some Hollywood star on vocals is trying to steal the spotlight. The song material and the way it's presented varies almost painfully at first but in the end offers a fairly pleasant if a bit overproduced set.

During the 1980's, the Finnish jazz pianist and composer Olli Ahvenlahti became a familiar face to a wide domestic public as "Puppe", the kindly smiling, piano-playing sideman of Vesa-Matti Loiri's humorous musical performances in his comedic weekly TV show. Loiri (1945-2022) was a legendary Finnish actor/vocalist, best known for his humorous roles despite doing also serious ones. However, most of those TV viewers are hardly aware that the same partnership made two artistically 'serious' albums of poetry-based Vocal Jazz. Lasihelmipeli (1985) is based on Hermann Hesse's poems, and this album uses the poems of the Lebanon-born "prophet" Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931). Admittedly they are primarily seen as part of Loiri's discography, but IMHO well worth adding under Ahvenlahti's JMA page since Loiri is not in the database. All compositions and arrangements are naturally by Ahvenlahti who also plays the keyboards.

Sad to say that these albums are far less known than Loiri's series of (non-jazz) albums based on Eino Leino's poetry. But understandably so, since jazz is not very popular as a genre, and Leino is much closer to Finns' hearts than Hesse or Gibran. By the way, Loiri's third poetry-based jazz album Uuno Kailas (1995), which was a collaboration with the new generation jazz stars Jukka Perko and Severi Pyysalo, gained even commercial success (at least for a jazz album).

The piano oriented music here is elegantly flowing and sonically rather light and airy jazz chanson that deliberately puts the emphasis on the meaningful lyrics. This also leads to a certain amount of repetition of the verses which may get slightly frustrating if you want to listen to the album primarily as jazz music. But Loiri is such a powerful interpreter – technically he has always strongly divided opinions as a singer -- that the listener simply cannot ignore the words. For the same reason, non-Finnish speakers won't be fully able to absorb these albums.

My favourites are the opening title track (= Seven times) for its effective combination of strong melodies and lyrics counting the seven times when the protagonist has despised his soul, the beautifully airy 'Sinä olet vapaa' (= You are free), the slow and peaceful 'Minulle sanotaan' (= I am told), and the emotionally dramatic final song in which a dying man adresses his words to a vulture circling around him. Musically the weakest song is undoubtedly the humorous 'Viisas koira' (= Wise dog) in which cats and dogs argue over religious details.

All in all, like the Hesse album, this would deserve a wider recognition among the Finnish poetry-based music.

Tietoisuuden maailma ("The World of Consciousness") is the debut album of the Finnish group SALAIVA. All music is written by guitarist and vocalist Miikka Huisko. Keyboards are missing, instead there's a saxophone. The band's sound is rich, organic and very retro, as if the music came from the early 70's. Recording, mixing and mastering were done by the band themselves, so the sound surely lacks sharpness and polish. However, this slightly psychedelic jazz-rock makes you feel good and very much at home if you've grown with vintage prog.

Salaiva doesn't sound like any particular 70's band. Associations may include e.g. WIGWAM, TASAVALLAN PRESIDENTTI, HAIKARA, even APOLLO and some other short-lived Finnish groups of the original prog era, and to some degree the jazz-rock of FRANK ZAPPA (less here than on their next album, though). Compared to that follower Hänk (2014), this album contains more vocals, but they just add another level to the music's progressive nature instead of becoming the backbone of the compositions. The voice is distantly reminiscent of Jim Pembroke in the early Wigwam, or Y.U.P's Jarkko Martikainen. On tracks 1 and 2 the vocal parts are mostly calmer moments amidst edgier jazz-rock full of gritty saxophone.

'Tietoisuus' is rather experimental instrumental, hazy and psychedelic. 'Herra olkoon teidän skanssinne' (a Canterbury-like wordplay which I'm not trying to explain to you) is a bit slower track but equally loaded with witty charm. There's a blues flavour in the strangely titled 'Blur (Ei saa)'. Its nihilistic but luckily very sparse lyrics would better fit into angry punk rock. "Ei saa" means "not allowed".

'Divaani' (10:42) starts as a slow, atmospheric instrumental with a focus on the seductive sax. The vocals are spoken mumble, and it's a bit hard to hear the words properly. In fact the music would perhaps work better completely without vocals. The solo for electric guitar is long and delicious. The soloing guitar is central also in 'Riding Camels'. Again, the brief vocal parts are quite unnecessary, but the fiery guitar solo is superb, bringing CAMEL's breakthrough album Mirage into my mind.

'Otis', the only track with English lyrics, sounds like a collaboration between Jim Pembroke, Eero Koivistoinen and Frank Zappa. 'Lauluni' is a soft and hazy little song, a very nice ending to this personal and charming debut.