snobb

	Jazz Genre	Nb. Rated	Avg. rating
1	Avant-Garde Jazz	272	3.67
2	Post Bop	91	3.56
3	Fusion	78	3.44
4	Eclectic Fusion	65	3.65
5	21st Century Modern	50	3.75
6	Nu Jazz	40	3.65
7	World Fusion	32	3.19
8	Jazz Related Rock	32	3.30
9	RnB	26	3.38
10	Jazz Related Improv/Composition	25	3.58
11	Hard Bop	22	3.45
12	Progressive Big Band	16	3.72
13	Third Stream	15	3.53
14	Post-Fusion Contemporary	15	3.30
15	African Fusion	13	3.65
16	Pop/Art Song/Folk	11	2.91
17	Vocal Jazz	11	3.18
18	Funk	10	3.35
19	Jazz Related Electronica/Hip-Hop	9	3.28
20	Funk Jazz	4	3.38
21	Jazz Related Soundtracks	4	3.25
22	Soul Jazz	4	3.50
23	Exotica	3	2.83
24	Big Band	2	2.75
25	Cool Jazz	2	3.50
26	Blues	1	2.00
27	Afro-Cuban Jazz	1	3.50
28	Acid Jazz	1	3.00
29	Jump Blues	1	3.50
30	Latin Jazz	1	3.50

Latest Albums Reviews

TOMASZ STAŃKO Tomasz Stańko Quintet : Wooden Music I

Live album · 2022 · Avant-Garde Jazz

Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko, who passed away in 2018, was one of the best European jazz musicians of the last half-century. For a few decades, his recordings, released by the prestigious German ECM label, were sort of the label's etalon of contemporary European jazz of the highest class. Stańko's early music is lesser known outside of Poland, and not every fan knows that more than a half-century ago Stańko started as a free-jazz artist. His first release as a leader came in 1970 (“Music for K”), and then Stańko spent months with his quintet touring Germany.

At that time Stańko played day-to-day firstly in a hippies commune in Würzburg, then in clubs of Darmstad. If the quintet's debut contains quite a composed music (with a lot of free improves as well), the quintet of exactly the same line-up on the German tour plays much freer, in fact fully improvised music. True, alto sax player Zbigniew Seifert switches from sax to violin here.

This, new for band music, played on tour by the collective, based on "wooden instruments" with only the metallic addition of Tomasz Stańko's trumpet (and flutist Janusz Muniak's occasional use of tenor saxophone), Stańko called a "wooden music". The album of the same title offers never-before-released music, recorded in the summer of 1972 and found in Radio Bremen archives.

Five album's pieces, lasting between 3 and 21 minutes, are all free and burning. Heavily based on double bass and acoustic violin free soloing against each other, there is a lot of fire in this album's music. Stanko plays extended fast-tempo free solos, anchored by a rock-heavy drummer. Fully improvised music contains tuneful snippets and is well framed in a jazz-rock fashion, which makes it quite accessible.

Soon the same quintet (with a new bassist German Hans Hartmann) will record in Germany their first significant album "Purple Sun", already much better organized and with a strong fusion influence."Wooden Music I" is important evidence of a great artist's formation period. Not recommended to numerous fans of Stańko's chamber ECM music though.

1 day ago
0 comments
Permalink
Share
Report #573298

AHMED أحمد Wood Blues

Live album · 2024 · Eclectic Fusion

أحمد [Ahmed] is a multinational band that plays the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator and philosopher. The quartet comprises two Londoners - pianist Pat Thomas and sax player Seymour Wright, plus the Berliner double bassist Joel Grip, and the Parisian drummer Antonin Gerba. Playing together a decade or so, they never recorded a studio album, but have some documented live gigs history.

The quartet's newest live album, "Wood Blues", was recorded in Scotland at The Glue Factory in Glasgow two years ago. It contains just one song, "Wood Blues", which is almost one hour long. The original 1961 Abdul-Malik composition (titled "Oud Blues") lasts about four minutes.

The album begins with a double bass line and Thomas' piano blues from Abdul Malick's original, which very soon switches to explosive bursts of sax and piano passages. The crown all song long is shouting and screaming. This deeply bluesy-rooted music is based on repetitive constructions in which the musicians eventually return to where they started and begin the same song again in a different way.

There are a lot of melodies, jumping piano, and free sax soloing all around on this album. Very percussive by its nature, this album, even being quite free, offers quite accessible and even danceable listening. The atmosphere recalls the early 60s free jazz concerts without being imitative at all. Not a piece of music for everyday listening, it contains that genuine real jazz spirit, not so often available on today's jazz scene.

8 days ago
0 comments
Permalink
Share
Report #573248

GARD NILSSEN Gard Nilssen's Acoustic Unity : Firehouse

Album · 2015 · Avant-Garde Jazz

During the last decade, about a dozen capable drummers made their name by recording ambitious albums playing jazz with an accent on composition, complex arrangements and including elements of contemporary non-jazz music. Tyshawn Sorey and John Hollenbeck are just two to be mentioned among others. Almost intuitively, from every new jazz album recorded by a collective led by the drummer, one can expect jazz based on modern composition first of all.

Norwegian drummer Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity's "Firehouse" is different. A traditional acoustic trio with Swede, double bassist Petter Eldh and Norwegian sax player Andre Roligheten plays free jazz, coming right from the times half a century ago.

"Firehouse" is without a doubt a drummer's album. Nilssen, who is known for his work with Puma and Cortex bands, plays dense, knotty, and often fast high-energy jazz, with a lot of tuneful sax soloing over it. At their hottest moments, Acoustic Unity recalls the other Nordic trio, The Thing. On the other hand, the sax player and the bassist both are noticeably bop-influenced, so there is a lot of music sounding very much as if it comes from the free-boppers of the late 70s or early 70s.

Same way as decades ago, music of such kind is attractive mostly because of its freedom, telepathic interplay, and some organic freshness coming from jazz roots.

17 days ago
0 comments
Permalink
Share
Report #573220

KAZUTOKI UMEZU 梅津和時 Umezu Kazutoki ・ Chiba Brass ‎: KabuOngyoku

Album · 2015 · Exotica

Kazutoki Umezu is a reed player and a significant figure on the Japanese jazz scene. He started his career in the late 1970s, playing with some of the country's most renowned avant-garde jazz artists, but soon switched to a more quirky crossover between free jazz, folk, electronics, and avant-rock. At the peak of his career, in the mid-90s, he recorded one of the most significant Japanese albums of "new eclectic fusion" - "Eclecticism" (with guitarist Mark Ribot and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes on board among others).

Umezu continued his experimental recordings collaborating with such different artists such as the Japanese brutal avant-rock band, Acid Mothers Temple, and Russian (and Russia-based) unorthodox bassist Vladimir Volkov as well as running his own KIKI Band. "KabuOngyoku", released in 2015, is one of Kazutoki's more left-field albums. He runs a reeds-only quartet here playing a quirky mix of avant-garde jazz and folk from all around the world. As a result, it often sounds like a wedding and funeral band from a parallel world.

The opener "KabuOngyoku", is a drunk klezmer with a touch of Japanese folk. "Tohoku" recalls a Finnish folk song and contains Japanese vocals. "Ridge of Miranda" sounds like a tune from a movie from the 70s, cinematic and theatrically melancholic. "Geyser" is an angular hyperbolized waltz, fitting well for imaginary ballet. Another waltz-like piece, "Flotage", sounds a bit like a minimalist version of Charlie Haden's Liberation Orchestra song from the 70s. On "Station" the quartet combines a waltz-like rhythm with the drunk band's free brass arrangements and klezmer spirit.

"Fey O" starts as a funeral march but continues in a funny danceable manner. "Western Picaro" is a tune from a Western movie. As the title says, "Waltzing Matilda" is a waltz, with a childish-like Japanese vocal (in moments it recalls Soviet-times pioneer songs from Russian cartoons). The closer "Tohoku March" is a true march, just swinging a bit.

In all, not an unexpected album for Umezu, it can be recommended for his musical die-hard fans only.

24 days ago
0 comments
Permalink
Share
Report #573190

YOSUKE YAMASHITA 山下洋輔 Yosuke Yamashita / Bill Laswell / Ryuichi Sakamoto : Asian Games

Album · 1993 · Jazz Related Electronica/Hip-Hop

"Asian Games" is an odd album. Japanese pianist Yosuke Yamashita, with the exception of Masahiko Satoh, is the most respected creative piano jazz master in the country, who started his career playing in the renowned Akira Sakata's avant-garde jazz trio in the early 70s. Here on "Asian Games", he is mentioned as leader/co-leader playing in an all-star international quintet with Japanese (non-jazz) keyboards/electronic star Ryuichi Sakamoto, Senegalese percussionist Aiyb Dieng, and two Americans - bassist Bill Laswell and synth player Nicky Skopelitis. Recorded in 1988 in New York and Tokyo studios, the album was released for the first time only five years later, in 1993.

As one can expect from the line-up, "Asian Games" differs from Yamashita's early acoustic trio avant-garde jazz or even more current post-bop works. The album's music is heavily based on Fairlight industrial sounds, programmed by Nicky Skopelitis with the addition of Aiyb Dieng's metal percussion and bells. Yamashita for the first time plays keyboards beside his regular piano. Bill Laswell adds bass and different effects.

Laswell is responsible for the final album's sound very much, since all recorded material was mixed, overwritten, and arrangements made by him on SSL studio computer. As a result, on this album we have quite typical Laswell's electronic jazz with overdubs with danceable Sakamoto keys and adjective Yamashita's "organic" piano soloing over it. In his memoirs, the studio session's technician wrote: "The piano playing, the guide through this sonic land of the dead, is Yosuke".

The album's opening track "Melting Pot" features a sample from Music in the World of Islam, Volume One: The Human Voice, which was also used in Regiment and Qu'ran on the seminal album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts by Brian Eno & David Byrne. In general, some things in the album's music could attract fans of Bill Laswell, or to a lesser degree, Ryuichi Sakamoto's fans too. Yamashita's piano doesn't sound authentic here and quite often there's a feeling that without it, the music would be more organic.

30 days ago
0 comments
Permalink
Share
Report #573159

Latest Forum Topic Posts

Posted 13 days ago in Kris Kristofferson, Idol of Country Music dies
The esteemed singer-songwriter behind "Me and Bobby McGee" and dozens of other hits was also memorable on the big screen in 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore' and 'A Star Is Born.' Kris Kristofferson, the soulful country music superstar who wrote “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” performed with the supergroup The Highwaymen and made audiences swoon in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and A Star Is Born, has died. He was 88. Kristofferson died Saturday at home in Maui, Hawaii, his family announced. “We’re all so blessed for our time with him,” they said in a statement. “Thank you for loving him all these many years, and when you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down at us all.”A native of South Texas, Kristofferson starred in football and rugby and won a Golden Gloves boxing tournament while attending Pomona College in California; earned a Rhodes Scholarship to study literature abroad; and piloted helicopters in the U.S. Army.He threw away a career in the military and moved to Nashville, where he worked as a janitor at Columbia Records and watched as Bob Dylan recorded his seminal 1966 album Blonde on Blonde. It took Kristofferson many months before his music career finally took hold.His drifter ballad “Me and Bobby McGee” was initially recorded by Roger Miller in 1969 before Janis Joplin made it a rock classic, her throaty version topping the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971, not too long after she died of a heroin overdose.Kristofferson also performed “Help Me Make It Through the Night” on his 1970 self-titled album, but it was Sammi Smith’s version that became one of the most enduring singles in the annals of country music, vaulting as high as No. 8 on the Billboard chart. (A couple years ago, Bono told THR‘s Scott Feinberg that he thinks “Help Me Make It Through the Night” is the greatest song of all time.)Kristofferson said he wrote the song after reading a quote from Frank Sinatra, who, when asked what he believed in, replied, “Booze, broads or a bible … whatever helps me make it through the night.”Kristofferson received the best country song Grammy Award for writing “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” and he added trophies in 1973 and 1975 for his duets with then-wife Rita Coolidge on “From the Bottle to the Bottom” and “Lover Please,” respectively (he authored those tunes as well).Kristofferson also wrote a morose song about a hangover, “Sunday Mornin‘ Comin‘ Down,” that was the Country Music Association’s song of the year in 1970 and a big hit for Ray Stevens and then Johnny Cash; “The Taker,” notably recorded by Waylon Jennings; “For the Good Times,” made popular by Ray Price and named song of the year by the Academy of Country Music in ’71; and “Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends,” which Ronnie Milsap made his own.“The reason I came to Nashville was that the lyrics here were the best that I could identify from my experience,” he told American Songwriter magazine in 1994. “The people that were writing the closest thing to white man’s soul music were country writers. They were writing about real life — about sex and cheating and drinking and losing and stuff like that. I figured the most honest you could be would be the most successful.”In 1985, Kristofferson, singing and strumming his trusty Gibson guitar, teamed with buddies Cash, Jennings and Willie Nelson to form The Highwaymen, and the four “outlaws” released three albums through 1995 and thrilled live audiences before Jennings and Cash succumbed to poor health.Describing his weathered, whiskey-soaked voice, Esquire wrote in 2014: “Kristofferson’s never quite seemed to take flight, but his being stuck down here with the rest of us mortals made him that much more one of us. It’s a voice held together by scars, and the songs that he made up out of his imagination always had the benefit of being founded on some kind of truth, like that voice in your ear you just know is right.”The charismatic Kristofferson was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985, entered the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004 and was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. He received an Academy Award nomination for best score in 1985 for Alan Rudolph’s Songwriter, in which he starred as singer Blackie Buck opposite Nelson in the Nashville-set tale.from www.hollywoodreporter.com snobb2024-09-29 22:15:32
Posted 30 days ago in What are You Listening II
[TUBE]/O06viZcFPOQ[/TUBE]
Posted 40 days ago in ‘Gaucho’: The Steely Dan album that went overboard
Countless musicians have driven themselves to madness while pursuing ideas of musical perfection. For hundreds of years, being able to play with more skill, poise, and knowledge than any of your contemporaries was a mark of genius, but that changed somewhat with the advent of pop and rock during the mid-20th century. Despite this shift in the musical landscape, artists like jazz fusion masters Steely Dan still struggled to grapple with the idea of musical perfection.The core duo at the heart of Steely Dan was always Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who met while studying at Bard College in New York during the late 1960s. That period was particularly revolutionary within the context of American music, as the advent of the hippie counterculture and psychedelic rock aimed to tear down the boundaries of traditional music scenes. All of a sudden, an artist’s musical proficiency was almost second to their attitude, appearance, and activism. Steely Dan, on the other hand, was initially drawn together as a result of Becker’s polished professionalism, which impressed a young Donald Fagen.As the Steely Dan story progressed, the band became more and more experimental in their approach, gaining a name for themselves as a result of their unique brand of jazz-pop fusion. Very few other bands of the time were attempting the same sound as Steely Dan, and the duo amassed a dedicated following as a result. Of course, nobody was listening to Steely Dan for their intense technical skill; their appeal lay within the originality of their material and the organic nature of their existence.Nevertheless, the duo were constantly striving to improve themselves as musicians, endlessly chasing the dragon of perfection. In the end, though, this fruitless pursuit caused more damage to the foundations of Steely Dan than Fagen or Becker expected. Inevitably, when you are focused on an all-encompassing quest for perfection, you can lose sight of what is truly important: making funky jazz fusion records for the masses.According to the duo, these difficulties came to a head during the production of their 1980 album Gaucho. Speaking to The Los Angeles Times back in 1991, Fagen recalled the thought process behind the album and the struggle that it entailed. “We were both locked into the idea that you have to surpass what you just did or else it’s no good,” he shared.“Not only surpass it, but do something completely different. I think on Gaucho we finally went overboard on that,” he added. “We were trying to realise a technical perfection that started to deaden the material.”It should be noted, at this point, that Gaucho is a very strong album, speaking to the tireless artistry of Steely Dan and representing a band who were maturing at an incredibly fast pace. However, it was at risk of not being a Steely Dan album.From the very beginning, the duo were influenced by the jazz world above anything else, but their needless pursuit of flawless performances meant that they lost the organic improvisational quality which is an essential aspect of the jazz sound.Without improvisation, experimentation, and a degree of trial and error, jazz music would be incredibly boring. So, it stands to reason that the jazz fusion of Steely Dan would be equally as dull with all its inherent improvisation and playfulness removed. Thankfully, on later records, Steely Dan aimed to rectify this, returning to the jazz-inspired playing style which had first endeared the group to millions of fans.from https://faroutmagazine.co.uk