Skip Heller and his Exotic Sounds
Voodoo 5, featuring Lena Marie Cardinale—The Exotic Sounds of Skip Heller (Black Fez Records, 2024) & Voodoo 5, featuring Lena Marie Cardinale—Mojave After Dark (Black Fez Records, 2025)
Before diving into Skip Heller’s Exotica oeuvre, I encourage the reader/listener to go to the origin of Exotica as originally defined in Martin Denny’s Exotica (Liberty Records, 1957). This can serve to center oneself in this specialized music genre. The single from this recording, “Little Village” introduced Exotica as a genre defining term.
Exotica, as a musical genre, emerged in the United States during the post-WWII environment of the 1950s. Lushly configured soundscapes characterize the music, imparting a potent flavor of movie soundtracks of the period. The music boasts a preoccupation with the sounds and imagery of distant, tropical destinations and is closely associated with "tiki culture" which manifested in Polynesian, Hawaiian, and other "exotic" elements infusing everything from architecture to cocktails (and if all of this does not smack of mid-century modern America culture, then nothing does). Much of the fascination with the island locales was brought home by returning armed forces from the Pacific Theater after WWII.
Exotica has three main musical streams flowing into it: jazz and popular music began incorporating elements from non-Western music to evoke a sense of the exotic as early as the 1930s. Examples include Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol's compositions such as "Caravan" (1936) and "Pyramid" (1938) or Dizzy Gillespie, Gil Fuller, and Luciano "Chano" Pozo’s “Tin Tin Deo” first recorded by James Moody and His Bop Men featuring Chano Pozo on Blue Note in 1949. Classical music contributes with the second-hand island experiences of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel gained from their association with the French impressionist painters. Finally, the music of the island regions, Polynesia and Hawaii, are incorporated along with their instrumentation, including ukulele, vibraphone, congas, bongos, gongs, and kotos.
Where does Skip Heller come in? Well, he has never met an esoteric music subgenre he didn’t like. Jazz organ trio, classical-jazz crossover, Americana, blues, country, soundtracks, the more specialized, the better. Exotica, as previously described, fits the Heller bill perfectly. It is a perfect extension from where he comes. A preview of Heller’s Exotica interest appeared in Lua-O-Milo: The Exotic Sounds of Skip Heller (Dionysus, 2009). Voodoo 5, featuring Lena Marie Cardinale—The Exotic Sounds of Skip Heller (Black Fez Records, 2024) extends and doubles down on Lua-O-Milo, mostly by the addition of vocalist (and Heller spouse) Lena Marie Cardinale, who provides a face to the music. She has a provocative and sassy voice that can be as serious or not as necessary.
When Skip Heller adopts a new project, he goes all in. These Exotica recordings offer no exception to this. Heller has studied the subgenre, enabling him to discard the unneeded and add that brilliant bit of himself to the recordings. Compared to Martin Denny’s flagship Exotica, Heller’s approach is one of organicity. Heller’s production is punctiliously pristine, capturing the individual instrumental performances in a spacious, wide-open manner. Comparing to Denny’s pioneering of the subgenre, Heller elevates this music further into the jazz realm, generously featuring his fine and informed guitar playing. This is best illustrated on the lengthiest piece, “Miserlou” a dreamy consideration of dry lightning flashes in which Heller cites a cannabis-slowed quote from Charlie Parker’s “Yardbird Suite.”
With Mojave After Dark (Black Fez Records, 2025), Heller further elevates the music with the subtext of the mysteries of the desert in his own LA-backyard. Heller’s imagination runs amok with dry, Native American motifs that are stressed by the deep flute playing of Jay Work, and the judicious addition of steel guitar player Connor Gallaher. The music on Mojave After Dark is one tentative step on a dark night to the spaghetti-western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone. “Sonorous Desert for Rabbi Kris J. Kraus” (and that is one Skip Heller title!) incorporates all the textures offered in his band. Vibraphonist Mark Riddle provides the Exotic foundation that is elaborated on by Gallaher’s steel guitar (bringing in flavors of the islands and American Country music. Work’s flute playing and Heller’s guitar solos pull in the indigenous element while Cardinale wordlessly sings the humid melodies of the desert.
Every project Heller envisions betters his previous projects. This is not music full of schmalz, but that elevated to art. There is no exception here.