Crate digging and interesting obscurities

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More about Hasaan:

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Anywho, here is the full Jazz Sabbath album:

The ongoing "jazz is Dead" series recently featured Garrett (Gary) Saracho on keyboards. Its been a long time since we heard from Saracho. His one album as leader, "En Medio", was released in 1973 and is an extravagant affair with a mix of Latin grooves, psychedelic fusion electronics, free jazz blowing and even some neo-classical interludes.

When Julian Priester and Pat Gleeson, from Herbie Hancock's Sextet, put out their own psychedelic opus, they brought along the two main musicians from the above album, "Iapetus". Those two musicians were Hadley Caliman on woodwinds and Todd Cochran (Under his African name) on keyboards. This made the ensemble on "Love Love" sort of a psych fusion super group.

Don't be fooled by the names on the videos. Turrentine and Hubbard do appear on a few tracks on this album, but this is definitely a Herbie Hancock album. Okay, Herbie is hardly an obscure figure in the world of jazz, but how many of you have ever checked out this record. This album probably contains the most fierce and imaginative playing in Hancock's entire career, he is on fire on this one. The two listening cuts provided here are from the Chicago concert. They are intense, but the cuts from the Detroit concert are even better, unfortunately they are not on youtube yet. Just get the record and you can hear the whole thing.

Review:

While a lot of this thread has centered around psychedelic RnB and exotica, we are going to take a look at a unique bop pianist who did not get near the recognition he deserved, Freddie Gambrell. You can read more about Freddie in the review posted below.

We all know how the fusion fad ended up, with highly commercial recordings featuring bland predictable performances geared toward deriving cash from pop, rock and RnB fans, but that wasn't necessarily how it all started. 

Case in point, this recording ("Palais Anthology"), features high octane performances from no less than six of Europe's best fusion keyboardists supported by the ace rhythm section of Alphonse Mouzon and John Lee.  The performances on here are crackling hot with bursting at the seams creative energy. The keyboardists gleefully plug into whatever electronic gizmos they can get their hands on as they apply their fiery bebop chops to stacks of new fangled  keyboards. Early experimental fusion does not get much better than this.

DJ Spooky and Dave Lombardo    "Drums of Death"

Clumsy attempts to weld hip-hop to metal produced some of the worst music ever in the 90s, the unlistenable limp bizkit for example. Thats why it may come as a surprise that this album that combines DJ Spooky with famed thrash drummer Dave Lombardo is way better than expected and then some.

Dave supplies a variety of rhythms, but often with that enthusiastic 'metal overkill' that can be annoying in the wrong hands, but it works so perfectly and ironically at the same time on this one. DJ Spooky comes through with some of the best music of his career. It doesn't hurt that Chuck D guests on several tracks sounding as strong as ever. Gary Nestler, Vernon Reid and Jack Dangers guest on guitars.

This album is an unlikely classic that a lot of people probably missed.

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