Bassist, composer and band leader, Robert Miller originally formed Project Grand Slam in 2007. PGS’s first two celebrated albums, “Play” (2008) and “Spring Dance” (2012), had two top radio singles – and the band also had a featured role in the hit NBC-TV series “Lipstick Jungle”, with five of their tunes featured in the soundtrack.
Project Grand Slam continued to perform their brand of jazz-rock fusion at the highest level on their third album, “Made In New York”, which was released in September 2015 and featured two hit singles, “New York City Groove” and “Fire” (Robert’s version of the Jimi Hendrix classic). Both singles featured 2013 “The Voice” semi-finalist Kat Robichaud on vocals.
Project Grand Slam has released its latest 11 track album, “The Queen’s Carnival”, featuring yet another hit single, entitled “The Rescue”, as well as the band’s own version of The Kink’s classic, “You Really Got Me”.
Smooth old school grooves, funk, eclectic jam band flavors and classical jazz, all wrapped up into one jazz rock fusion package. What is there to say except that this group’s musical genius brilliantly and beautifully brings all these genres off into a wonderful blend of extraordinary musical melodies that moves the soul, the mind, and gives the listener a higher plane of listening pleasure to their senses.
True musical genius is hard to find in this day and time in the entertainment world with everything digitized, and singers who sound as if your ears deserved some sort of punishment for enduring their unearthly sounds, which is classified as singing these days. Not so with the Project Grand Slam. I rarely have the opportunity to say anymore that I have listened to an album which I can pop in and truly liked and enjoyed every song on different levels. But this one did the trick.
The pumping smooth groove of “The Rescue”, the party-powered sounding happiness of “The Queens Carnival”, the rock driven guitars of “Gorilla”, the fluid funky rhythms of “Slap Shot”, and the eclectic reworking of “You Really Got Me”, really moved me deep with not only the music composition and all round fantastic performances, but with the positive mood it put me in, to boot. The question is which song on this album doesn’t have its own magic?
The way I was grooving to these jams in the car, people driving by must have thought I lost my mind. The cuts are that tasty. Listen for yourself, and see what I mean. Horns, bass, guitars, drums and vocals come together to deliver a project of high energy and determined groove.
But Project Grand Slam also finds the time to slow things right down, on the elegant arrangement “Lullaby For Julesy”, which closes the album. Everything here not only showcases musical professionalism and superb instrumentation by the entire band, but that for Robert Miller songwriting has a great priority alongside the grooves and jamming, which is what makes the album music to my ears!
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