Search - Cam Newton :: Ipso Facto

Exceptional !!

Tony Yosco | Eugene, Oregon | 12/28/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I`ve been an avid fan of Cam Newton`s music for more than 20 years and eagerly await his latest recordings. So I`m excited to see that Summit Records has released its second album by Mr. Newton, the wonderfully gifted and original composer/guitarist from Portland, Oregon. As one who has enjoyed not only his previous recordings but also many of his scintillating live performances, I can happily say "Ipso Facto" captures the exuberance and spirit of those shows, as well as Mr. Newton`s compositional genius. It`s yet another superb offering from a unique and very talented musician---an artistic and aural delight."

Expansive Amplitude

Mark Beers | San Francisco, CA USA | 12/15/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I suppose you could call Cam Newton's Ipso Facto a jazz album, but one, like in a good curry, with many flavors, a sophisticated yet surprisingly accessible mix of American jazz and pop with Brazilian beats and world folk music. Newton's guitar virtuosity anchors the music--not, as the metaphor suggests, with weight and gravity, but with dynamism, finesse, and agility, sometimes on top of, sometimes interwoven with, the magnificent playing of his fellow musicians. But technical virtuosity is not enough to recommend an album. Excepting the rare solipsist, most musicians want their audience to actively engage with their music, the best of which inspiring the listener's own creative response. When I listen to the songs on Ipso Facto, I start "seeing" things as the music becomes a soundtrack for motion pictures in my head: slow motion dancers cross the Grand Canyon on a swaying hammock while rain falls below on a flower-filled pup tent floating down a row of corn on a collision course with a freight train pulling trees waving at me from the surface of a perfectly still pool ...; you get the picture--maybe not mine--but the point is Ipso Facto is a capacious album that invites you into a beautiful and evocative aural landscape where your imagination can play like a child. And this is not just an invitation to the mind; it also gets under your skin, or into your heart, or wherever it is you feel things, with incredible emotional range--at times meditatively sweet (never saccharine) and languid ("Empty Rooms"); sometimes nimbly celebratory and dance-ready ("Morning of the Gypsy King"); and at others locomotively hard-driving and energetic ("The Splendid Amplitude Of It All"). Perhaps the last song title hints at the general feeling I have for Ipso Facto, an expansive amplitude and breadth of emotion, indeed."