Ray!

One of the year’s best-selling albums at NativeDSD this year, Ray! rocketed up our Top Selling DSD Best Sellers chart in days and dominated the best sellers list for weeks and weeks. The album stars the popular and talented Carmen Gomes and her ensemble.

Gomes uses the album to put her distinctive vocals and style on favorites including The Sun Is Gonna Shine Again, Georgia On My Mind, Willow Weep For Me and Makin’ Whoopee. Recorded in Stereo DXD and mastered to Analog Tape, this album is one you will savor again and again.

Subtlety Wins Out

Play Carmen Gomes, Inc.'s latest album, Ray! and the sheer intimacy of Gomes's voice, accompanied by no more than guitar, bass and drums – or indeed just bass on 'The Sun Is Gonna Shine Again' – makes for a compelling listen, the amp working with source and speakers to give a real 'artists in the room' effect.

There's no overt 'hi-finess' here, but instead an honest, rich and enveloping sound from boogie to sweeping orchestra to sultry Jazz.

Singer Carmen Gomes steps into big shoes with her new album 'Ray!'

With her regular combo she has sings 13 songs that we know from the legendary American singer, pianist and composer Ray Charles recorded in its own bluesy version. You have to but dare to interpret the work of The Genius. Gomes dares it and performs it with sophisticated arrangements have their own twist on classics such as 'CC Rider', 'Georgia On My Mind' and 'Let The Good Times Roll'. Carmen's approach to the soul, jazz and blues by Charles is characterized, just like her earlier work, through respect for the original and a quirky straightforward approach.

Her companions - bassist and husband Peter Bjørnild, drummer Bert Kamsteeg and guitarist Folker Tettero – don't play a note too many, but what they playing is rock solid. In some pieces Gomes even enough with a measured bass part by Peter, for example in 'Making Whoopee' and 'The Sun Is Gonna Shine Again'.

Carmen doesn't like voice acrobatics. However she swings and touches her ode to Ray from the first until the last note. That she belongs to the top of Dutch Jazz was already apparent in 1994 when she won the Dutch Jazz Vocal Competition. With the entrance of Folker Tettero in 2006 the blues got the upper hand in the Carmen Gomes Inc. band. Carmen leans comfortably on Folker's measured chords and riffs. Nevertheless, the Jazz always audible in Gomes' trained voice, which challenges and drags along – without exaggeration or raising your voice.

With the wonderful lead vocals of Carmen Gomes, the Carmen Gomes Inc. band delivers an album I find totally engaging from start to finish. They make these songs completely their own while honoring the great Ray Charles in so doing.

And a fresh sound they indeed deliver. This is their music, with a nod to the master here and there. Never over-produced, always respecting each other, the musicians find a nice balance of supporting each other, challenging each other, complementing each other, never stepping on one another.

Sound Liaison's recordings continue to impress me with their very clean, transparent, and precisely localized sound. Recording engineer Frans de Rond's signature is readily apparent in the purity of sound and precise placement of performers that he achieves in this multi-microphone studio recording. If you've heard his "One Mic" recordings on Sound Liaison, you will know how special his recordings can be.

I was a bit hesitant at first knowing this would be a multiple microphone outing. But he pulls it off superbly in a highly phase coherent, tightly knit, outcome that belies its multi-mic roots. As with his other recordings, this displays great depth, and almost physically palpable placement of the musicians in the soundstage.

Highest recommendation.

If you enjoy Carmen Gomes, Inc. you will love this album. The Sound Quality is spectacular.

Smooth, great tone and realism.