My new EP is available on CD Baby now for digital download! Physical CD sales coming soon!

There are some fantastic musicians on here with me. Dean Magraw on guitar, Daniel Zamzow on cello, and Jason Craft on piano. Talented musicians all!

Of course, it was all put together and produced by Diana Grasselli. Without her, this would have never happened, so many thanks to her!

Many thanks to Kelly Andrews Powers for the gorgeous cover!

Also, to Steve, whose support got me through this whole process.

Much love to you all!

https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/rogerwaite

A contemporary jazz vocalist and singer/songwriter, Sophia Shorai has been a mainstay on the Twin Cities music scene for 15 + years. Born in Bindura, Zimbabwe (hence, her middle name Shorai), she began classical piano and voice training at age five. She spent her early childhood mimicking the voices and instrumentation of jazz legends in her father’s record collection. Then, this gave rise to exploring the Golden Age of standards in her early teens.

She has self-released five albums along with several singles spanning a variety of musical genres. Moreover, Shorai’s live shows cover everything from the Great American Songbook, funk, and R&B staples to modern revivals. Further, she collaborates regularly with the Midwest’s most celebrated musicians. Additionally, she has garnered international vocal recognition through TV and films. Advertisements for Barbie, Macy’s, Target, Kohl’s and World of Warcraft, among many others, feature her voice.

Well-known for her command of the jazz idiom, Shorai is currently exploring the lush landscape of modern pop with her trio. Showcasing her originals, Shorai finds new emotional depth and sonic space, extrapolating from life experiences lived and imagined, redefining time and place.

Channelled madness – the sound Dawn of Midi spent years shaping, culminating into their most mesmerising work yet

With Dysnomia, the Brooklyn-based group Dawn of Midi abandons improvisation in favour of composition, utilising sophisticated rhythmic structures from North and West African folk traditions to weave a sonic tapestry of trance-inducing grooves. From close up one may see only dots, but when stepping back an undulating image reveals itself. “We didn’t want to create anything cerebral,” says Belyamani, “we wanted something visceral, something that would awaken our instinctive dance impulses.”
Having met at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in 2006, bassist Aakaash Israni, pianist Amino Belyamani and drummer Qasim Naqvi found their original rapport through late night tennis matches on the campus court. The chemistry they founded there eventually led them back indoors to improvise together; something they did in total darkness to deprive themselves of all their senses except the crucial one – their hearing.
The manner, by which a trio of solely acoustic instruments ends up sounding like electronic music, has to do with the unconventional ways the group play their instruments on Dysnomia. The record comes to life in the trio’s critically acclaimed live shows, a test of endurance and trust that involves performing their hand-looped acoustic minimalism note for note, just as the compositions were recorded. Dawn of Midi’s sets are as energetic and rhythmic as a seamlessly mixed DJ-set, mesmerising fans in the same way the group’s favourite experimental and electronic acts have for decades.
The album was recorded to 2-inch tape at Waterfront Studios in Hudson, New York - a former church that was purchased and transformed into an analogue recording playground by the great engineer Henry Hirsch. Once the band visited the studio and met Henry, an expert in analogue recording equipped with a vintage Helios console, 16 and 24-track tape machines and a superb collection of microphones, it was obvious they had to record there; it was miles ahead of anywhere else they had visited. Rusty Santos then mixed the album to make sure it would hit as hard as the group’s favourite electronic albums do in spite of it being entirely acoustic.
“We wanted to make a record that sounded both musically futuristic and sonically vintage,” explains Israni, “and since the album never saw a proper international release, it is very exciting to see what might happen when more people are exposed to it. And to be aligned with Erased Tapes, whose enthusiasm for the music they release has done a lot for exposing unique instrumental and electronic music, makes it that much more interesting.”

Dysnomia will be released worldwide on June 1st, 2015 through Erased Tapes – available on 2x LP, CD and Download.

Lifted House, Copenhagen // Reservoir Media, New York

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