Search - Jiva :: Day into Night

Jiva's Back!

bordersj2 | Boston | 11/26/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Jiva's a group consisting of Chanda McKnight, Paige Lackey martin, Rhonda Thomas, Alex Lattimore and spearheaded by Khari Simmons. They're much in the mold of a lot of the nu-soul sounds out of Atlanta and maybe the US in general with the likes of Fertile Ground, The Rebirth and a few other acts that've risen over the past 7 years. Khari Simmon's in particular has been busy - within the last 14-17 months or so, he's done work with Jiva along with various other projects with Julie Dexter and his own remix work.



This is the follow-up to Jiva's successful Sun & Moon cd from a few years ago. It starts out nicely with "Mantra 2", which this time is a full song with Khari's trademark fender rhodes and keys dominant. Nice touch with the electric guitar in there. I didn't care for a small key effect in the intro, but once the song's moving, it's nice... albeit with a slightly cheesy bossa bridge. Sol e Lua is nice - a great, up-beat sort of song. There's nothign quite like live instrumentation, and the drums give the song a real snap. I also liked Better2Gether - nice guitar again - I've always loved that sound. Very unique instrumentation and personality to the sound - but again a little too much with the keyed effect. "Twilight Bossa" was a nice tribute to maybe their biggest hit from their prior album called "I Realized". But this one's based mostly off of teh remix to "I Realized", found on Khari Simmons "Soul Com Bossa" release - the remix really was a thing of beauty.



I liked this one - it's a worthy follow-up to a good album. It didn't totally blow me away like the first Jiva album did, but the group has their own identity, it works, they're sticking with it and I commend them for it. Soul and bossa are their thing. So give this one a chance - and if you like it, check out their previous albums, see "Soul Com Bossa", Julie Dexter & Khari Simmon's "Moon Bossa" (see the theme?), The Rebirth's "This Journey In", and be sure to check out the countless remixes to their songs - particularly "Love Choses Lovers"."