PRESS RELEASES
Visionary Pianist & West Coast Get Down Founding Member CAMERON GRAVES Rounds Out a Year of Critical Praise for Debut Album “Planetary Prince”
Planetary Prince – Available On Digital Platforms
& Physical Formats (LP & CD) via Mack Avenue Records
Psychotropic Eight Song Release Captures Seismic Shift
in Jazz Featuring Kamasi Washington, Thundercat,
Ryan Porter and Ronald Bruner Jr.
“‘Planetary Prince’ picks up where Washington’s impactful album, ‘The Epic’ (featuring Graves) left off, blending jazz with European classical music, prog rock, metal and hip-hop.” – VICE Noisey
“Cameron Graves is LA’s Cosmic Metalhead Jazz Prince.” – VICE Noisey
“…a smart, restless keyboardist with abundant credits in jazz and R&B…” – The New York Times
“If you’re looking for another fix of the same stuff that “The Epic” delivered, the debut album from the pianist Cameron Graves is your answer.” – The New York Times
“Cameron Graves…makes his own searing mark with an enrapturing and assured solo album.” – Pitchfork
“It’s [Planetary Prince] at once an addendum to ‘The Epic’ and an extension.” – Pitchfork
“The house pianist for the party at the end of the universe, pulling in signals from John Coltrane, J Dilla, Meshuggah and points beyond.” – Rolling Stone
“…the opening track on ‘Planetary Prince,’ presents all the essentials: a classically poised introduction, a writhing beat equally beholden to slick funk and prog-metal, serpentine electric bass lines, and lean, tight jazz-combo interaction.” – Rolling Stone
“Graves is a master, laying intricate melodic lines over driving drums and symbal chokes.” – DownBeat
“A war between good and evil is at the heart of this otherworldly and exhilarating recording…” – DownBeat
“…fellow keyboardist Cameron Graves showed why his album “Planetary Prince” was one of this year’s standouts….” – Los Angeles Times
“In all aspects of his being, Graves embodies intense seeking and absurd skill.” – LA Weekly
“It comes off somewhere between McCoy Tyner and The Time, Chopin and J Dilla – with an extra layer of mystic clashes between celestial princes of good and evil. It’s the score that Urantia always deserved.” – LA Weekly
“…sounds like the best elements of Weather Report, Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner, Austin Peralta and Flying Lotus.” – LA Weekly
“There isn’t a dull moment on this almost 80-minute record, and much of it is exhilarating.” – The Absolute Sound
“…Graves comes in like a whirling dervish and never lets up; on the unabashedly pretty “Andromeda” his rhapsodic approach revels his classical background.” – The Absolute Sound
“A new and exciting kind of jazz neo-primitivism fully takes hold with this exceptional record…” – Buffalo News
“…what you’re getting from this guy is a new rockish kind of ecstasy that we haven’t heard before. It’s the very roughness and lack of sophistication that makes it so welcome.” – Buffalo News
“Graves is an inventive piano player. He’s a martial artist, a deep thinker and an exquisite improviser. But most of all, he’s a genuine visionary.” – The Aquarian Weekly
“Listening to a piece like the torrential “El Diablo,” I kept thinking he’s learned a lot from the jazz rock fusion of the 1970s, in a good way, as if he took the guitar out of Chick Corea’s Elektric Band and added a horn section instead.” – The California Report
“Graves’ classical chops are often in evidence, but recall with a new perspective and youthful energy a prior generation of masters: names like Jarrett, Corea, and Hancock come to mind…” – All About Jazz
Cameron Graves · Planetary Prince Mack Avenue Records · Release Date: February 24, 2017 |