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::: Also Performs With :::
Origin of Animal
Chicago Junglebop Syndicate

Live Performance Fusion:
Straight-ahead Jazz
Funk
Bossa Nova
Hip-Hop
Drum & Bass
Afro Cuban

Dan McClenaghan – All About Jazz
L.Zaide's Planet Chill showcases the velvet-voiced singer, embracing, with reverence, ten American Songbook classics. L.Zaide's vocal delivery has been compared to trumpeter/vocalist Chet Baker's—a cool, smooth flow, a relaxed and effortless croon. The similarity is there, but he's much better technically, and a whole bunch deeper emotionally; also mix in some whispery Joao Gilberto gentleness.

Adam Greenberg - All Music Guide (AMG)
A journey through life as portrayed by a series of jazz standards. It's not a new album concept, but it often works quite well. Here, Chicago-come-Vegas performer L.Zaide croons his way through ten of the greatest standards around. The group, as well as L.Zaide, is highly technically proficient nonetheless. Solely for the song selection the album is worth picking up, but the album stands out for having some of the nicer renditions of the pieces.

Karl Stober - JazzTrenzz
Taking in stride the task of insightful interpretation speaks volumes for an artist. One who looks outside the craft and into the soul of a piece is so rare an occurrence. In the debut release by Rebel Phi records of L. Zaide’s Planet Chill: Memoirs of a Jazz Band we become stimulated by something much deeper than the sound. It’s his mystical delivery of intense memoirs within the project that excite. Included in this debut is an insightful vocalist who looks beyond the notes to sculpt the sound. More so, L.Zaide ventures out into concepts never before unearthed in these standards. L.Zaide makes the listener think and enjoy at the same time. Does the spin have meaning? Yes! However it says one thing more. Asking the listener to stay tuned for finer sounds to come from L.Zaide in the future.

Dick Crockett – “The Voice” 88.7FM -Sacremento, CA
His high end timber and phrasing will remind you of Chet Baker. Similar sensitivity on the ballads, “I Only Have Eyes For You,” “I Fall In Love Too Easily,” “Blue And Sentimental,” that Baker refreshed in a modern jazz ensemble up beat way and a “Corcovado” that Antonio Carlos Jobim would sanction. Guitarist Richard Forrester is special on this song. You are seduced by L. Zaide’s fragile honest delivery and the band around him provides ample fusion, solos and good vibrations. Put this one on the CD player and they will ask, "who dat???”

Mark Keresman - Jazzreview.com
ALL THE TIME one hears of the archetypical singers – Ol' Blue Eyes, Lady Day, Ella, Anita (O'Day), Tony, Joe Williams…all well and good, yet Chet Baker hardly ever gets mentioned as a vocalist. Maybe it's because his vocal abilities have always been overshadowed by his usually very fine trumpet playing, or because his career had so many ups 'n' downs…true, Baker was not a "great" singer, but he was a distinctive vocal stylist. Baker's seemingly (or not) blasé vocal style could convey more ennui, more of shattered dreams, and dry-ice cool pensiveness than dozens of so-called "better" singers too-dependent on displays of facile technique (and to h*ll with the lyrics).

Which brings us, Dear Reader, to Planet Chill by Chicagoan L. Zaide. He is a Son of Chet, but is no mimic or imitator. Zaide has absorbed the vocal approach of Chet Baker and channels it through his own vocal chops. He takes evergreens such as "I Only Have Eyes For You," "Night & Day," and "I Fall In Love Too Easily" and renders them with a light, cool, slightly breezy/detached air, deflating their melodrama and their clichés, giving them a knowing "nudge" while caressing them in an affectionately casual manner. His accompanists match him every step of the way, giving the tunes a shot of B-12 or unfussy fills 'n' trills as needed, along with brightness 'n' swing. Tony Branco's piano is nice, too, underplaying in that Hank Jones/George Cables fashion. If you need a soundtrack to accompany that old ennui and/or the slow melting ice cubes of that third Scotch on the rocks, neat, or if you think "nobody's doing what Chet did," seek ye this.