BEAUTIFUL SCARS

KIP HANRAHAN, STEVE SWALLOW, MILTON CARDONA, ALFREDO TRIFF, BRANDON ROSS, XIOMARA LAUGART, LINDSAY MARCUS, LEIJIA HANRAHAN, LEO NOCENTELLI, ALVIN YOUNGBLOOD HART, FERNANDO SAUNDERS, ANTHONY COX, YOSVANNI TERRY CABRERA, PEDRO MARTINEZ, BILLY BANG, HORACIO EL NEGRO HERNANDEZ, ROBBY AMEEN, RICHIE FLORES, RON BLAKE, BRYAN CARROTT, JOHN BEASLEY, MIKE CAIN, DD JACKSON, LYSANDRO ARENAS, MARIO RIVERA, DAFNIS PRIETO

Busses From Heaven; Real Time and Beautiful Scars; The Girl That Won't Resolve; Caravaggio / A Quick Balance; Night Cumbia; One Summer Afternoon; Xiomara Wears the Heat Beautifully; Paris Through Tears; Montana; Leijia On the Way to Brooklyn; Milton Cardona; Salt in the Mozambique Evening; Rumba of Cities; Accounting in the Morning; Winterscape With I.M.F.; City of Gold (Palestine Blues)

Produced by Kip Hanrahan with Dick Kondas
Recorded August 2004 through March 2007, New Jersey, New York
Released June 2007
AMCL 1060

"...The name Kip Hanrahan might be unknown to the grand majority of the public that enjoys Afro-Caribbean music.  And it shouldn’t be that way, since this brilliant musician and producer has created some of the most important works of the genre in the last 20 years.  Creator of the innovative seal of American Clave… It is cause for joy to know that Kip returns anew to the battle with the fascinating “Beautiful Scars”, where once again he gives us a dose of his infinite creativity.

"...The CD represents an eclectic taste, characteristic of Hanrahan, making it difficult to explain the content of its themes, which are a mix of jazz, rumba, guaracha, son, hip hop, danzón, rock, blues, and many other things.  Kip Hanrahan is a giant of our music and of music in general.  If you aren’t familiar with his work, you can begin with the two volumes of “Deep Rumba”.  Bit by bit, you will be hypnotized by his work - as happened to this writer - and you will certainly finish by listening to “Beautiful Scars”, his most recent and grandiose production, much like the rest of his extraordinary musical testament..."
- Eric Gonzalez

"...You can't write about this astonishing record without writing from within its world. Great music demands that, even if the task is impossible.
Milton Cordona - one of the world's best percussionists - is on this record. So above, so below: just as with Cardona, when you think you understand this music you quickly find that you don't. The more you listen the more simple songs become complex, and vice versa. So it’s the classic creeper. It starts out compelling; demanding repeated listening but frankly difficult. No… not-easy. Before you know it it's joined the canon of your favourite unkillable music. I'd have the implant.

"So how does it, you know, sound? The art department of New York, Cuba and New Orleans, via Glasgow, Essouira and Palestine. Somewhere hot, that still understands the Northern winter. If you like jazz you'll understand the idiom - and if you like the best electronic music you'll also understand the idiom even though there's no obvious electronics. Rumba, not as a tourist attraction, but as a way of communicating with your city-bound brothers and sisters and your millennia-dead ancestors.

"Beautiful Scars is also a very, very sexy record. To engage Kip-speak, what I mean is: it's not bedroom music or an aide de seduction... Actually one can't - on the BBC website - describe the specific tastes, pressure, use of tongues and the subsequent intrinsic angers, joys, regrets and delusions derived, which this record cannot help but embody. This is exactly what the record is about.

"That, and politics. The politics of global capital and exploitation. Not in your face, but because that's what the world itself is about and only a miniscule amount of musicians take it on. I mean, really take it on. Aficionados of Hanrahan's music will recognise this; even they will be surprised at how good this music is. You ask: how can this be so fresh? How can it make you see the world as if through the jangled, elated-but-weepy psyche of a world-class hangover, or PMT on the perfect summer's day? As the record says, a day when everything is in its perfect place but bosses still screw their subordinates and lovers go home unfulfilled? Tangled. Difficult. Exquisitely beautiful..."
- Paul Bennun, BBC

"...To really impress, seek out the work of New York producer Kip Hanrahan.  A conceptualist and a percussionist, he gathers amazing players from places like Cuba, Haiti and Greenwich Village (plus Cream bassist Jack Bruce, maybe his most frequent collaborator) to flesh out his unabashedly carnal Beat fusion hippie experiments.  Two of his best albums are “Vertical’s Currency” and “All Roads are Made of the Flesh.r..."
- Ann Powers, LA Times