A double-cd release of The Last Poets' first two albums! Their 1970 self-titled debut broke out and made its own scene, forging a way for hip hop with politically charged, African-American enlightenments in syncopated rhythm. Fans of Sun Ra will notice similarities in vocal stylings, emotion and lyrical content, though in The Last Poets this treatment is much more fierce and raw than mystical and cool. 1971's This Is Madness got them a spot on President Nixon's Counter-Intelligence Programming lists. These street poets' use of graphic language (including the 'N' word used, oh, about five million times) pounds out their frustrations in the racial and social state of the country and at the time helped to extend their messages to a broader audience by way of its pure and utter rawness. Nicely packaged in the albums' original artwork, these albums are fierce documents of the group's seminal contribution to that time and still stir up some of the same emotions today.
A "reconstruction and mix translation" by Laswell, long awaited and hotly debated...and rumoured to be quickly pulled, due to some disputes over rights...
Slow, low, creeped out ambient experimental Teutonic jazz-noir dronescapes, with brush-stroked drums, sparse, placid piano and deep, deep bass� huh, hmm, remind you of anything? Bohren And Der Club Of Gore, perhaps?? For sure, this is for fans of Bohren And Der Club Of Gore!! Laube are another band, also German, trafficking in a similar, slow-moving style of darkness and drone, equally (or even more) ominous, sinister, and spare. If they hadn't ever heard Bohren before, it's a crazy coincidence. In any case, it's really great stuff, if you're into the Bohren brand of totally atmospheric, downbeat, jazz-tinged "heaviness". Three-piece Laube take that sound to, perhaps, a further extreme, even more stripped down, nodded off, and glacially paced - and, we don't think they never bring in any saxophone, as Bohren are sometimes wont to do, so the sax-adverse might prefer Laube for that reason alone!
The last track on disc one breaks the Bohren mold with some scattershot percussion and buried, distorted vocals (or voices, anyway); and there are some other differences to be found as well of course, but overall the inky black moodiness and less-is-more "doom jazz" aesthetic is very, very Bohren-esque. (Oh, and if YOU haven't heard Bohren, well, needless to say we recommend 'em.)
FYI, this double cd on Small Doses brings together Laube's two previously cassette-only releases, Ausmerzen and Schwach Gerkerbt, limited editions that came out on Justin "Expo 70" Wright's Sonic Mediations label, circa 2009 and 2013, respectively.
From the mysterious black cover and gothic font, we initially thought that this was some new vinyl release by Amort or Striborg or any number of black metal hordes we see day in and day out. But no, this is in fact quite an awesome surprise, a beautiful early-seventies drum-centric spiritual jazz record by the unknown to us, David Lee Jr., and it's really quite killer! Right up there with the likes of Steve Reid, Rashied Ali, Roland P. Young or Khan Jamal!
Hailing from New Orleans and moving to New York where Lee played in Roy Ayer's Ubiquity for a few years, Evolution was recorded in 1974 and is Lee's only solo record originally released on his own Supernal records imprint (not to be confused with the black metal Supernal!). Centered around martial rhythms and syncopation with a left-field avant jazz sensibility and even some blazing psych rock and soul flourishes, the disc is 14 short tracks with the title track centerpiece being a 7 minute extended drum solo. There are even a couple of short vocal tracks, one of which should just be skipped over at the very end called "I Want Our Love To Always Last" (even the Soul Jazz site won't let you sample it). But other than that one misstep, this is a highly recommended album for fans of vintage beat-heavy seventies jazz from the likes of P. E. Hewitt, Lee Miller, or any of the cool cats we mentioned above!
Do You like sixties pop-jazz with your underwater nature films? Then you will love this. Norwegian composer, Sven Libaek scored dozens of Australian science and nature films in the sixties and Trunk Records has compiled some of the best examples here. Some of you may be familiar with Libaek's work for Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic, which featured four of Libaek's themes in the score. Full of vibes, piano and strings, Libaek's film score work recalls the best of John Barry, Vince Guaraldi and John Cameron, composer of Kes and Psychomania. Totally Awesome!
The soundtrack reissue campaign of this Australian (by way of Norway) jazz composer keeps rolling along. A few lists back, we reviewed his score for Inner Space, a nature documentary made for television about the Ocean and its inhabitants (notably sharks!), and this week we got another knockout eco-jazz score about the Australian Outback. We have been in love with Libaek ever since the Trunk Records compilation of lost film scores came out a few years ago (now sadly out of print), and his music was also famously included in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic. Now that many of his film scores are seeing proper reissues, including The Set, Libaek's only non-documentary film score, and Ride A Pale Horse, from a film about about Australian Surfing, we'll try to review those as well.
Nature Walkabout opens with a fanfare of horns in a swinging reverie of flutes and drums. Libaek's trademark style is both pastoral and upbeat, mysterious and lighthearted. Comparable to composers such as John Barry, Henry Mancini and Vince Guaraldi, utilizing harmonicas, pianos and vibes in endearing melodies that seem to describe the delicate nuances, both beautiful and dangerous of the wild Australian landscape and the birds, mammals and snakes that inhabit it rather perfectly. Fans of library music, nature scores and cinematic pastoral jazz, take note!
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With Melvin Gibbs and Dougie Bowne.
San Francisco's fantastic live improv hiphop/jazz/turntablism trio, featuring the skills of DJ Quest of the Space Travellers/Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters, as well drum kit and double bass. Everybody loved their FatCat/Hip Hop Slam record "Monostereosis", and this is more of the same. Kinda like a more advanced version of the instrumental tracks on the last few Beastie Boys records, actually. Good stuff.
Another batch of essential and long overdue ESP reissues. This one was recorded in 1965 by one Giuseppi Logan, former sideman of Archie Shepp, Pharaoh Sanders and Patty Waters! Features a pretty stellar group (including Milford Graves) of musicians who have
If you're anything like us, all it will take is three simple words to convince you that you need this: FLUTE. FINLAND. NINETEEN SEVENTY ONE. Okay, so that last one's not really a single word, but yes, this fantastic chunk of Finnish Flute heavy jazz folk was indeed released in that musically mindblowing year, and is pretty much everything you could hope for from a seventies Finnish flautist, it's groovy, jazzy, folky, a little bit rocking and a lot bit pretty goddamn weird. Just take the opening track, after some field recordings of seagulls and lapping waves on the shore, Loiri whistles along to some simply strummed acoustic guitar, and suddenly you realize it's essentially a jazzed up cover of Blind Faith's "Can't Find My Way Home", hand drums and flutes swing in, some deep wordless "la la" vocalizing and then it's back to the waves and birds. Definitely an odd way to start a record, but these guys are Finnish after all.
The rest of the record is not so obviously strange (or is it?), the second track is some groovy flute driven folk, the flute playing is stellar, woozy stand up bass, intricate hand drumming and more steel string strum, there's some bluesy psychedelic guitar leads, and then there's a drum solo, accompanied by humming (or is that kazoo), and then it's right back into it, Loiri often singing and vocalizing through the flute (a la Roland Kirk), which makes it even more far out.
The record shifts gears constantly, the next track begins playful sing songy lullaby, suddenly transforming into some sort of gypsy folk music the next, what sounds like a drunken tavern sing along, and then it's right back to the lullaby like fluttery flute of the opening, and then a strange old field recording of a carnival or circus. All a single track. The next track is more straight ahead jazz, some incredible flute playing and amazing drumming, the next track too, sounding almost Latin Jazz, but then along comes "Mummon Kaappikello" a groovy bit of big band jazz, backing up some sped up chipmunk vocals, turning the otherwise trade jazz into something totally warped, and then it's right back into it, some seriously swinging seventies jazz funk, and still more kick ass flute.
The final three tracks are more folky jazzy grooviness, some serious strum heavy drum driven rhythmic jazz, gives way to some jazzy cabaret, with deep crooned dramatic vocals, and finally finishing off with a brief bit of folky flute and acoustic guitar that returns to the opening bit of Blind Faith. Wow. Awesome, and bizarre and amazing and easily one of the coolest things Porter has dug up. And again: FINLAND. FLUTE. 1971.
Eye popping pop art cover with a big foldout poster, both depicting Loiri in aviator's helmet and goggles, with a painted on bright yellow and red bullseye shirt and little angle's wings!
This huge ensemble of British new music/free jazz improvisers features such notable performers as Evan Parker, Kaffe Matthews, John Butcher, Steve Beresford, Lol Coxhill, Simon Fell, and many many more. Along with several dense pure improvisations from the ensemble, there's fluctuating pieces which have been 'conducted' (rather than scored) by various members of the group, exhibiting the dexterity, muscularity, and most importantly the sensitivity to subtle details of this synergetic group of musicians.
Jazz saxophonist Phillip Greenlief, a prolific local treasure, here departs from his experimental side and releases an album of standards, covering such diverse artists as Hank Williams, Billy Strayhorn, Monk, and Irving Berlin. Warm, masterful, and very listenable. With Dan Seamans (bass) and Tom Hassett (drums). Recommended!
It might seem strange at first, this long lost free jazz fusion classic popping up on weirdo avant outsider rock label Weird Forest, but it all makes sense the second the needles touches the wax. Recorded in 1972, with the intention of "levitating Nixon's Whitehouse", the band took up residency right down the street from said Whitehouse, and apparently Nixon instructed one of his aides to pull the plug on the concert, but this document, of one of the concerts was captured for posterity, and holy smokes is this some far our freaked out psychedelic shit.
Often described as 'fusion', that description probably keeps about half the people who would lose their shit over this record from actually hearing it. Which is a shame, cuz this is as heavy and druggy and tripped out as anything you'd hear today, even moreso.
Larry Young on organ (who played with Miles Davis circa Bitches Brew), Joe Gallivan on drums and percussion and steel guitar and moog, Jimmy Molneiri on the drum kit, and the singularly named Nicholas, on prototype guitar synthesizer (which he helped invent), ring modulator, hi-tension wires, wind, rain, thunder, lightning, water and whirling dervish (!!!). What the fuck?! The instrumentation alone should let you know there was something seriously freaky going on.
Six tracks, 52 minutes, sprawling, epic, tangled, druggy, trippy, super rocking, ultra heavy, jazzy, and funky freakiness. Opener "Peace (For Dakota And Jason)" begins with funky organ, and swirling effects, funky drumming, a stone cold groove that builds and build and builds until it sounds like Funkadelic jamming with Sun Ra, or No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand and Avarus all covering their favorite jazz funk jams simultaneously. The organ is wild and wooly, and loose and free, the drums are insane and chaotic, and all the other sounds, Nicholas, whipping up a frenzy of buzz and whir and skree and whatever other weirdness he can conjure. "Tomorrow, Today Will Be Yesterday" is more tranquil, but no less free and abstract, a little like Hendrix covering "Maggotbrain" but with skittery free jazz drumming and some twisted sound effects.
And so it goes. It's barely even jazz, only sort of funk, this is as about as free and abstract and out there as music got in the early seventies, hell, even now. "Ancient Place" begins all scattered effects, warped super distorted guitars, melted effects, stuttering loops, wild octopoidal drumming, eventually getting all drone-y before exploding into a sort of kaleidoscopic circusy free jazz funk freak out, and finally sputtering to a halt. The record closes with "Love Cry", 15+ minutes of wild free heaviness, and yeah, we do mean heavy, each instrument busting out some serious crunch, the organ a crushing throb, the drums a machine gun of scattered rhythms, all wrapped up in a constantly shifting field of synthesized guitar weirdness, and constantly mutating effects, eventually exploding into a sort of Santana / Sun Ra mash up, albeit drugged out and supercharged, before splintering into crumbling peals of throbbing low end, fractured melody, truncated rhythms, only to slip into what sounds like some abstract sixties experimental electronic weirdness, which mutates into a brief blaze of psychedelic jazz freakout before blinking out.
It may be fusion, but not in the traditional sense, instead, Love Cry Want fuses some of the most fucked up and freaked out and wildly brilliant playing we've ever heard into a psychedelic free funk jazz out rock that sounds as ahead of its time today as it did nearly 40 years ago.
Available for the first time on vinyl, super swank packaging, ultra deluxe heavy full color gatefold jackets, pressed on nice thick vinyl. And LIMITED TO ONLY 5000 COPIES!
Carousel jazz-spazz. Freaked out no wave skronk. Made me woozy. Love the cover painting.
Original music from the cable TV series of fishing shows. Excellent, minimalist stuff from the leader and saxophonist of the Lounge Lizards. Bonus: 2 "field recordings" of Tom Waits.
Watts Writers Workshop poet Curtis K. Lyle reads his compelling and at some points risque Collected Poem for Blind Lemon Jefferson, while Julius Hemphill provides flute back-up and some furious sax improv. This is pretty cool and interesting black consciousness spoken word which sets a precedent for hip-hop; unfortunately, at this point in history all that flute conjures images of watered-down media versions of beatnik espresso jams. Not as bad-ass as Gil Scott-heron, but worth a look for anyone interested in spoken word or African-American poetry. 1 2 [/archives/148p2.html] » [/archives/148p2.html]
For being released on the same label that brought us two albums of elephants playing instruments (the Thai Elephant Orchestra), an album of rapping by grade-schoolers (Da Hiphop Raskalz) and several other weird/wonderful projects, the idea of an album of avant-groovy cover versions of well-known television themes seems downright tame! Yet, downtown NYC hipster jazz/world/cassette culture/kitchen sink band M'Lumbo do manage to entertain and intrigue -- who could not help but enjoy unusual, out-there renditions of such familiar tunes as "Hawaii Five-O", "The Addams Family", "I Dream Of Jeannie", "I Love Lucy" and "Get Smart", among others?? It's exotica for the TV generation(s), coming across like a wild mix of Martin Denny and Afrobeat and John Zorn. And actually, most of the time you'd be hard pressed to identify the TV tune that they're using/abusing as a basis for each track of faux-ethnic improv, lost under electronics and samples and an abundance of percussion, and even what sound like the calls of jungle birds... in fact it's probably best if you try to listen *without* thinking about these songs being TV themes, or at least imagine that M'Lumbo's "cargo cult" conceit is true, and you're hearing the musical worship of classic cathode ray gods done by some musically freaky tribe of "savages" who just happen to have free cable and became addicted to old TV reruns.
Just as it first appeared in the Boston Area around 1977, there are no song titles, contact info or any other identifying information accompanying this mysterious release, a reissue of a private press recording of serene but outsider-inflected new age classical composition. Like another similarly minded aQ fave, Moolah, the music presented on Mad Music Inc. is an oceanic mixture of echoed piano, harp and gong, in short sketches with one track adding percussion, some subtle bass groove and female spiritual cosmic jazz vocals (not quite the "cosmic disco" stated on Drag City's cover sticker, but still pretty cool!).
The primitive cover painting of two diametrically opposed naked women looks like it was inspired by Da Vinci's famous Vitruvian Man, with the women jumping out of their constrained environs. This seems like it would be an easy candidate for the Nurse With Wound list, especially with the back cover graphic of a chuckling Ming The Merciless type character with a tape machine implanted on the side of his head. Whatever it means, it must have been too elusive for even Stephen Stapleton, an obsessive authority on such obscurities. Regardless, for fans of weirdo new age, library records, and private press mysteries, this should be a nice sounding addition to your collection!
On first listen it's practically impossible to even consider that this isn't some awesome live DJ set of rare jazz grooves, spiritual, modal, post bop, funky, soulful, don't really recognize most of the names, but then they're just crazy obscure right? Well, in fact, this is not so much a Madlib DJ set, spinning mad jazz, as it is a collection of groups featuring Madlib PLAYING real jazz. Every band here is a different permutation/alias of Madlib and his extended jazz crew, and as if it wasn't enough that he was an amazing producer and DJ, he is also apparently some sort of jazz master, as he and his bandmates conjure up every variation of classic jazz under the sun, whether it be psychedelic soul jazz, funky far out jazz fusion, classic bop, Latin jazz, sitar tinged Eastern jazz, the playing and composition is impeccable, but also far out and psychedelic, woozy organs, wah guitars, soulful female vox, shuffling drum skitter, amazing horns, lush piano, tinkling chimes, tribal percussion, all woven into an ever shifting array of sounds, funky blaxploitation style wah wah jazz funk, smooth laid back coffee house smoulder, wild psychedelic free jazz freakout, brooding dark ballads, soaring spiritual jazz shimmer, old school big band jazz, and it's not just the music, not only is the record named for a legendary seventies jazz fusion jam, the booklet features spot on fake Blue Note style album covers for the records from each of these groups that these tracks were supposedly taken from. So genius!
Madlib's last Medicine Show compilation, High Jazz, was a collection of recordings by Lib's modern jazz outfits, doing their best to simulate classic jazz, and as we mentioned in that review, had we not known better, we definitely might have been fooled. But THIS is the one we've been waiting for. ADVANCED jazz, as in REAL jazz records from the past 40 years, funky, soulful, hard bop, free, big band, all stripes and flavors, woven into an insanely kick ass DJ mix, and separated into movements, titled appropriately enough: Miles, Ornette, Pharoah, Herbie, Mingus, Ra, Dolphy, Ranelin, Deodato and Coltrane. The cover art too has been jazz-ed up, the painting of Washington and crew crossing the Delaware, updated to include various jazz greats, even Herbie Hancock's Headhunter can be seen across the water in another boat. And that's the vibe of the whole record, a definite reverence for the music and the artists, but mixed playfully, all sorts of random snippets interspersed between killer jazz jams, interviews and recording of various jazz greats, hilarious impressions of Miles Davis, spoken word jazz poetry, a stretch of wacky drug conversations and what sounds like an anti marijuana PSA, blaxploitation trailers, commercials, a hilarious Herbie Hancock anti-drug PSA (specifically "skag and downers"!), and while those segues are pretty funny, they're just interludes between some of the most amazing jazz ever, c'mon, a DJ like Madlib with a handful of classic jazz lps? Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out it's gonna rule, and RULE it does, although some folks here found the snippets and samples a bit distracting, but taken as a whole, Advanced Jazz, is a dizzying trip back in time, not just music, but sounds, voices, vibe, it's like strapping on some sort of temporal time travel helmet, and having 40 years of jazz and jazz-related culture flash by in 70 minutes. So awesome. Maybe the best Medicine Show yet!
There's nothing new about hip hop headz stealing wholesale from the Blue Note catalog. Never has there been a collection more ripe for the sampling, And years of funky jazzy hip hop can attest to that. So what's all the fuss about? Why is this new Madlib Blue Note record getting so much attention? Not sure exactly. On the surface, it sounds like it could be any group, with a knack for simple funky beats and a deft hand at sampling. I think maybe the key is choice of source material. In the case of Shades Of Blue, it's totally impeccable: Donald Byrd, Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Andrew Hill, Bobby Hutcherson, Wayne Shorter and more. But Madlib is more than just a competent sampler. He's managed to transform classic jazz and funk into a strangely appealing modern hybrid, by enlisting a bunch of musicians to flesh out the original recordings, many from nicely worn records (replete with snaps and cracks and that warm old record fuzz), adding some scratching, and funky beats, as well as some rapping on a few tracks, and then weaving all of those elements into a catchy, jazzy, funky whole. Nothing ground breaking here, but it is definitely a great party record or laid back late night listen.
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An entire studio album lost for 25 years!" the cover blurb proclaims. From 1973, this would have been John McLaughlin & Co.'s third album, but for some reason they put out a live record instead (with, I believe, some of the same compositions found here). Understandably though, this album remained a "Holy Grail" for jazz-fusion heads, and now, here it is, in 20-bit digitally remastered glory even. The true follow-up to "Inner Mounting Flame" and "Birds Of Fire", and a seemingly worthy one at that. You have to laugh when the cover blurb goes on to trumpet "Fiery, Ultimate Chops!" but that don't mean it's not good!
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Who has Swedish prog-organ legend Bo Hansson guesting on their new solo album?? Why Eric Malmberg, formerly the organist of Sagor & Swing of course! Imagine how chuffed he was to jam with his hero. Hansson doesn't play the organ here, though, he's on synth (funny, 'cause apparently Malmberg owns the actual Hammond organ Hansson used on his famous Lord Of The Rings album).
As you might expect if you've heard Malmberg and/or S&S (or for that matter, Bo Hansson) before, this is all about the magic of the Hammond organ, its gentle, groovy bombast, Malmberg weaving an instrumental prog-jazz delight of both bright and mellow moods! Gorgeous stuff as usual. It's got a much bigger sound than what the Sagor & Swing duo could crank out, as this is a bigger band, Malmberg joined here by many other folks besides Hansson. It's a dense but fluffy bed of sound, with shuffling drums and folky melodies, jamming synths and glorious horns. Some songs, like track one "Finalen", are propelled by martial beats, still joyous though... Like his countryman Bjorn Olsson, Malmberg has a knack for cinematic-sounding melodies that'll put a smile on your face. Recommended.
Jazz improvisations by this duo of Mat Maneri (viola) and Randy Peterson (drums). "the voicings on this CD are incredible. serene. unnervingly beautiful. at times ponderous with an almost painful deliberateness. the commitment to each other. the push / pull. the complete acceptance. warm / cold simple facts. illuminated prisms floating precariously above a high wire. compassionately sewn together. sometimes quirky almost mischievous." - Steve Dalachinsky
Karen Mantler has been quietly carving her own unique niche in the New York jazz world since the mid-to late eighties. The daughter of famous New Jazz stalwarts Carla Bley and Michael Mantler, Karen is an altogether different kind of offbeat jazz performer, one that should be much more wider known. She recorded several albums in the eighties and nineties with her band, Her Cat Arnold (yes, that was the name of the band taken after her beloved cat), that combined pop musical structures and noir-ish cabaret jazz with a defeatist deadpan black humor. One of our all time favorite Christmas songs is her wonderfully dreary tune "I Love Christmas" from her second album. Her sound is sort of like if Peggy Lee (especially her song "Is That All There Is?") or Blossom Dearie were scoring an early Jim Jarmusch film like Stranger Than Paradise, or even Scorsese's After Hours. Off-kilter, slightly arty, but altogether extremely listenable and relatably funny.
That same dark humorous tone permeates through her latest release on ECM, a suite of charmingly hapless complaints that range from the plights of homeless people, the aftermath of breakups, the expensiveness of lawyers, the malaise of winter, poor business and stupid volcanos that ground her at airports. The arrangements are stripped down to just piano, bass and guitar with occasional harmonica and clarinet that traverse a middle ground of lyrical rhythm of bummed out resignation without being too maudlin or too upbeat. You don''t hear jazz songwriters like this anymore. One that has incredible musical chops but is not afraid to be straight up at the expense of laughing at herself. She's a goddamn treasure!
One of two new tapes on this week's list from UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one might be the heaviest / noisiest thing we've heard on that imprint yet, a live freeform freakout from Norwegian free-noise duo Maranata, a sax/guitar/electronics combo here joined by a couple extra hands, belonging to the drummer from Japan's Nisennenmondai, so you're in for a dense barrage of free jazz / free noise chaos. Sounding like vintage Japanese psych, fused to Zorn's double quartet Spy Vs. Spy, or Borbetomagus jamming with Lightning Bolt, this is furious droned out heaviness, wild tangles of guitar, crazed chaotic drums, and the sax, which sounds less like a sax, and more like a burst of sci-fi laser blurts, the sound grinding, and blown out, the group slipping easily from loose improv, to frenzied blasting, to creeping, almost doomlike plod, this is heady, wild, psychedelic stuff. Borderline white noise at times, but displaying loads of texture and nuance, this is some intense freaked out shit! Extreme free music obsessives will dig big time. And folks thinking about dipping their toes into the world of free jazz/rock weirdness/wildness, this would definitely not be a bad place to start. Exhausting and exhilarating.
Jazzman strikes again, with another rad reissue of outsider jazz genius, this one in the form of Owen Marshall's 1975 album The Naked Truth (also the name of his band), a dizzyingly eclectic and totally far out psychedelic jazz freakout, equal parts droned out FX heavy experiments, lush spiritual jazz, twisted exotica and totally abstract psych-jazz weirdness, those various elements in constant flux, so even the prettiest parts are slightly twisted, and the most warped passages still somehow manage to be strangely lovely. Beyond the usual instrumentation, the record also features 'Hose-A-Phone', 'Tube-Phone', 'Boonet' and 'Ply-Tar', all instruments of Marshall's invention, all created, according to Marshall to "tap the very depths of his creative resources... to make music fun to play, and entertaining to listen to". And we'd have to say he succeeded big time.
The record opens with the far out psychedelic meditation of "Electric Flower", an abstract drift of squiggly electronics, keening high end tones, squeaking horns, and tripped out heavily effected vocals, all accompanied by more straight forward jazz horns, both meditative and totally far out. "Nana's Sleeping" gets a bit more dreamy and jazzy, just piano and saxophone, everything wreathed in reverb, the sound ethereal and drifty, which leads into the murky flute flecked funk of "Peanut Butter Ice Cream Man", groovy and dreamy, the sound weirdly blown out, giving it a strange abstract vibe. "Planet Funk" is a killer slab of jazz funk, sort of cinematic, like a lost cut from some amazing blaxploitation movie, while "Paper Man" introduces the "Tube-O-Phone", which plays the main melody, and sounds a bit like a dog's squeeze toy.
The rest of the record tends toward the spiritual jazz side of Marshall's sound, lush and lovely, at least until the closer "Ancient Astronauts", which bookends the record along with opener "Electric Flower", tripped out drifts of long tones, rumbling drones, strange abstract sounds, more of Marshall's invented instruments, super hypnotic, like some lost seventies psychedelic Eastern ur-drone. Fantastic!
The reissue tacks on a couple of bonus tracks, from a couple super rare 7"s, and sound like they could have been included on the record proper. "Grunt Uh-Uh-Uh" is a dark, brooding slow jam, slithery and sultry, the sound murky and washed out, the vibe dreamy and late night, and even though it's just a bonus track, it's one of our favorites on this reissue. And then there's "Evolove" which is all funky flute, Marshall's vocal grunts, the passionate groans of a female partner (?) and again has a serious jazz funk blaxploitation vibe. Killer stuff. Includes the a reproduction of the original sleeve notes, and includes all new liner notes as well.
Though an interesting and wonderful document of John Zorn's Ornette Coleman inspired quartet -- fabulously rendered by four of the most amazing performers in the Downtown scene -- we think Tzadik have outdone themselves with the obi strip comments this time
The classic Masada lineup (Zorn, Douglas, Baron, Cohen) hits us with yet another recording. Yeah, if like us you're into Zorn's group and their trademark Ornette-meets-Klezmer jazz then you've probably got a shelf already groaning under the weight of their other releases, but that's no reason to pass up another, especially this one, 'cause it's super. Masada is really one of the best modern jazz combos going, and "Live In Sevilla" is proof enough (and a great starting-point for the Masada virgin). Includes a bad-ass drum solo from the godlike Joey Baron.
It's becoming really hard to creatively describe records by John Zorn's Klezmer-bop ensemble Masada, especially considering this is record number twenty or something. Every record sounds quite similar, but by the same token, every record is absolutely
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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The fifth avant-klezmer release from the New York version of Zorn's Masada. The 4th, you'll recall, is available only by sending in yr proofs-of-purchase gleaned from the first 3.
Small ensembles of strings, keyboards, and clarinets playing klezmer/jazz tunes. This brief description must be augmented with the declaration that this is an ALL TIME AQUARIUS FAVE!!!
"An absolutely essential document of one of the world's most exciting working bands" says the obi. Well, if after a dozen-plus releases one can define this new one as "essential", I don't know - but it's true that Masada is an incredible band, and Masada fans will have to decide what's essential and what's not. Heck, all the Masada releases might well be essential!! For those just checking in, Masada is saxophonist Zorn's klezmer-meets-Ornette jazz combo, with trumpeter Dave Douglas, bassist Greg Cohen, and drummer supreme Joey Baron, great players all. For the curious, this is also a good purchase.
Another amazing 2cd collection of John Zorn's Masada, this time recorded live at the world famous Jerusalem Festival marking Masada's first visit to Israel. Dark and sublime klezmer mixed with the shrieking bombastic jazz Zorn is famous for. Excellent.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Koto virtuoso Masaoka teams up with jazz greats Reggie Workman (bass) and Andrew Cyrille (drums) to explore tunes from (or inspired by) both Thelonious Monk & Japanese folk music.
British avant-garde "stereo" guitarist Gary Smith unleashes the third release from his power trio Mass, wherein he's joined by the equally out there and extreme rhythm section of Gary Jeff and Lou Ciccotelli. You might know these guys from their contributions to projects like God and Aufgehoben No Process. Mass is a bit less oppressive than those bands, closer to "jazz" but not what most people think of as jazz, of course. Yessir, their electronics, improv moves, and rock-derived power combine for another satisfying head-bender.
