New York Pianist Toby Pazner Recruits Lee Fields & The Expressions, The Dap-Kings, Menahan Street Band & The Arcs Players for Revitalized "Sirens of Jupiter," The Olympians (Daptone Records)
"After repeatedly being visited by a strange messenger in his dreams while on tour in the islands of Greece, Toby Pazner became consumed with a vision to tell the stories of The Olympians through music. Chosen by the gods as a messenger for not only his musical gifts, but for his unique position at the center of the Daptone family, Toby built a home studio from scratch and employed some of the top Soul musicians in the world to help him breath life into this album," reads a fragmented chunk of The Olympians' on-site Bandcamp press release. Tobias "Toby" Pazner's musical journey with the Daptone/Truth & Soul/Big Crown Records-affiliated family dates back as far as 2005 and his piano-vibraphone credits include records by Lee Fields & The Expressions, Lady, El Michels Affair, Lady Wray, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Menahan Street Band, Aloe Blacc, Bronx River Parkway & Candela All-Stars, Ultimate Breaks & Beats, and The Bushwick Philharmonic. Toby Pazner then assembled a revitalized version of his short-lived 2008-09 solo project, The Olympians "featuring the talents of Thomas Brenneck (Menahan Street Band, Budos Band, Charles Bradley), Dave Guy (Tonight Show Band, The Dap-Kings) Leon Michels (The Arcs, Lee Fields), Nicholas Movshon, Homer Steinweiss (The Dap-Kings), Michael Leonhart, Neal Sugarman (The Dap-Kings), and Evan Pazner (Lee Fields)."
T. Pazner wrote and self-produced four tracks between 2008-09, "How Can I Love (Now That You're Gone)" co-written along with H. Steinweiss, "Stand Tall," "Midnight Movement," and "The Rain Song," which ended up materializing on two separate 7-inches pressed and issued by Leon Michels' own now-defunct Truth & Soul. Daptone Records surprise released the terribly unsuspecting world's first taste of Toby Pazner & company's self-described "r&b/soul New York instrumental" mission statement, whose full-length is expected to drop this upcoming October 28th, "Sirens of Jupiter;" comfortably inter-woven betwixt 11 aptly-named Ancient Greece-centric compositions such as "Apollo's Mood," "Venus," "Mars," "Neptune," "Saturn," "Mercury's Odyssey," and "Sagittarius By Moonlight"—all of which bear a striking sonic resemblance to Lee Fields & The Expressions, The Menahan Street Band, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, and even evokes undertones of Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach's vaguely Psych-Rock side-band, The Arcs. Although, perhaps the most interesting "mainstream" session Daptone Records founder Neal Sugarman and fellow Olympians Homer Steinweiss, Dave Guy, and Leon Michels have (and likely will ever) be involved with would quite arguably be Ariana Grande's, surprisingly Funky, Dap-Kings-assisted "OG Honeymoon Ave," which she professed likely dates back to about "2012(ish)" from her critically-acclaimed 2013 debut, Yours Truly.