I'm sure you must have heard the album Red, but what did you think of the live one USA??
Was jazz-fusion a dead end music genre?
- Thread starter Chris
- Start date
I'm sure you must have heard the album Red, but what did you think of the live one USA??
Woebot
Well-known member
gentle giant absolutely fucking rule
eleventhvolume
Active member
Fusion recs
Here's a few post 70s recs for the person asking. These all revolve to a greater extent around extemporisation that's combined with other non-jazz elements:
- Supersilent / 1 through 7: glorious fusion of many things inc. noise, freedom, jazz, folk, etc
- Mat Maneri / Pentagon: queazy, slippy violin-led contemporary NYC electric jazz
- Phantom City / both releases, fine late model Paul Schutze-led hybrid models
- Offworld / Two Worlds, Kirk Degiorgio in brilliant production move slices and dices Azymuth in techno meets jazz, sort of, shocker...
- Eivind Aarset / first two albums from the Norwegian gentle giant: convincing (imo) melding of ambient, jazz, post breakbeat and electronica
- Other Norwegian stuff: Food, Bugge Wesseltoft
- First two or three Material albums / Laswell gets an often deservedly bad press, but Memory Serves and Temporary Music, along with his own-name debut Baselines, are excellent downtown mashups. Oh and the Arcana albums are pretty marvellous
- Last Exit / Koln or anything else with the arguable exception of the studio-bound Iron Path
- Don't forget Naked City, thrillcore played as if it were Bach variations
- Sinistri/Starfuckers: anything by these Italian jazz/rock/blues art fusionists is worth checking
- Jon Hassell / City, Works of Fiction probably my top choice, but it's a tough call choosing just one
- King Crimson / The Great Deceiver: jazz rock par excellence
- Ronald Shannon Jackson / Texas, Red Warrior and lots of others
- Power Tools / Strange Meeting: excellent OOP power trio
- Various Chicago Underground formations
- Burnt Sugar / Blood on the Leaf with the Arkestra Chamber.
- Ornette and Pat Metheny / Song X. Check.
I could go on, but I'm tired. Hope there's something there of interest.
Here's a few post 70s recs for the person asking. These all revolve to a greater extent around extemporisation that's combined with other non-jazz elements:
- Supersilent / 1 through 7: glorious fusion of many things inc. noise, freedom, jazz, folk, etc
- Mat Maneri / Pentagon: queazy, slippy violin-led contemporary NYC electric jazz
- Phantom City / both releases, fine late model Paul Schutze-led hybrid models
- Offworld / Two Worlds, Kirk Degiorgio in brilliant production move slices and dices Azymuth in techno meets jazz, sort of, shocker...
- Eivind Aarset / first two albums from the Norwegian gentle giant: convincing (imo) melding of ambient, jazz, post breakbeat and electronica
- Other Norwegian stuff: Food, Bugge Wesseltoft
- First two or three Material albums / Laswell gets an often deservedly bad press, but Memory Serves and Temporary Music, along with his own-name debut Baselines, are excellent downtown mashups. Oh and the Arcana albums are pretty marvellous
- Last Exit / Koln or anything else with the arguable exception of the studio-bound Iron Path
- Don't forget Naked City, thrillcore played as if it were Bach variations
- Sinistri/Starfuckers: anything by these Italian jazz/rock/blues art fusionists is worth checking
- Jon Hassell / City, Works of Fiction probably my top choice, but it's a tough call choosing just one
- King Crimson / The Great Deceiver: jazz rock par excellence
- Ronald Shannon Jackson / Texas, Red Warrior and lots of others
- Power Tools / Strange Meeting: excellent OOP power trio
- Various Chicago Underground formations
- Burnt Sugar / Blood on the Leaf with the Arkestra Chamber.
- Ornette and Pat Metheny / Song X. Check.
I could go on, but I'm tired. Hope there's something there of interest.
I don't know real much about them. I have, stored on the other side of this planet, a copy of the first album, which i recall i liked much, especially the track Alucard. This, if i remember correctly, is one of the prog records i like much because of it's freshness, still having psychedelic and rock feeling in the '60 goes '70 continuum, before prog become all synphonic in his evolution. Like on their second album, wich i listened at a very young age and even i recall dearly not less because the track on Pantagruel make me discover the Rabelais book, one of my favorite ever (now, i have discovered a lot of books by namechecking on music tracks or reviews, like discovering about the same time Lautremont through Current 93 'Maldoror? tracks, or Ballard through Joy Division, ect...!). I remember also i love that track on Shipwrecking, truly really totally symphonic Prog and great at this. Then the only other one I had listened, because i used to have on tape, is the third Three Friends, that escaped the uber-complexity of the second for a more rockish and stylish and streamlined and thigh and hypnotic sound... probably a overlooked gem. The tracks you mention are from successive records, i think... and no i don't know them... you know, if money wasn't a problem, i would have all the book and all the music ever....
....which remember that on one of my now rarely buying records voyage, between a soul and a studio one reggae and a disco comps, i decided to pick King Crimson 'Discipline' ( i still did not know what i think of it... i like the likegamelan guitars, i really dislike the singer, the songs, as it's normal with Crimson, are really weak) and noticed the reissue of USA, that i have never listened, and the tracklist seemed if not perfect interesting. The perfect King Crimson record would for me be all the instrumental tracks from 'Lark', 'Starless' and 'Red' put together
not many records as good as that!
the ultimate 5am record...
some records have the floating atomosphere, but without the sad melodies... maggot brain has both, but gets a bit too rowdy!
Always interesting to think that Ray Shulman went on to produce Life's Too Good and Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, while brother Derek went on to do A&R in NYC, signing Bon Jovi, Cinderella, and other hair metal bands (!).
I think most people are of this mindset, aren't they?
Nah. I for one would include "The Great Deceiver" from Starless, and would probably include 21st Century Schizoid Man as well, maybe even Easy Money for laughs.
I suppose it's heresy to say it, but I liked the three records with Belew in the 1980s. Completely different project, completely different ambitions and goals, but they were one of the first to realize the idee fixe of Reich and other minimalists that repeating groups of fours, fives, sevens, and eights against each other for long stretches of time can be interesting. The twist was to overlay Belew's quirky pop sensibilities over the top (which seems to bother a lot of people, though not me - I *like* Belew's voice, and I like a lot of his songwriting as well, lol).
I assume that most prog fans are like francesco, and will cry "horrible!" at the 80s Crimson. The nice thing was that Bruford, Levin, Fripp, and Belew could actually pull off those tunes effortlessly live. (There is quite a bit of video documentation of that period floating around.) Fripp's intro to Larks' Tongues part III was ridiculous, I transcribed it in high school by recording it from vinyl on a 16 speed record player to cassette tape, which rendered the notes at half speed and one octave lower, and then transcribed the notes from cassette onto staff paper. The whole thing turned out to be torrents of raised fourths and perfect fifths stacked and moved around mostly in half steps and octaves, grouped in rhythmic units of fives. Fripp, what a weirdo. Does anyone remember his phrase "the drive to '85" back in the early 80s, when he seemed to be articulating some sort of bizarre musical destiny? (I may be misremembering) . . . brother!
This alone plus the Reichian minimalism thing means I am downloading this era Crimson tonight... thanks Tate...
My favorite from Red is probably 'Starless' which has vocals that push it into a somewhat light rock territory that I wish they'd explored more. It would have been great if they could have alternated between stuff like Red and more light, Camel style prog.
Are there more trascription tales Tate?? Can we hear them?? I love the obsession.
Are there more trascription tales Tate?? Can we hear them?? I love the obsession.
The minimalist aspect of Belew-era Crimson may seem fairly obvious from today's point of view, now that Reich and Glass are practically mainstream reference points in most music conversations, though in the early '80s I'm not so sure that many listeners would have made the connection between Reich/Glass/Riley and the latest version of Crimson (I didn't, but I was just a little kid when I got a cassette of Three of a Perfect Pair, ha; and Fripp would have probably just said that the approach was his idea anyway - perhaps I'm totally wrong about the connection anyway lol).
Belew-era Crimson had a pretty standard compositional trick: Fripp plays a figure in five, Belew layers something in four or three, Tony Levin comes in with his Chapman Stick (remember that instrument, the thing with bass notes and other strings, which are all *tapped* on the fret board?) doing another overlapping figure often in loops of eight, and then Bruford puts a groove over or under it. Ends up sounding a lot like the Metheny/Reich piece on the flipside of Different Trains, but orchestrated as a mini-rock band thing. I always liked it anyway. For examples, I'd recommend "Neal and Jack and Me" and "Waiting Man" from Beat, "Frame By Frame" and "Discipline" from Discipline, and "Three of a Perfect Pair" and "Larks' Tongues pt. 3" off of Three of a Perfect Pair. Be forewarned however that many find this to be overly poppy, overly fussy shite.
Will definitely be curious to know what you think of it, gek!Most prog fans are like me? God, where is the emoticon of shame...
?ps.... tomorrow i will cut my hair and listen only to my Oi and Gabba record......
Bang Diddley
Well-known member
Ill get on with reading the thread in a minute, but its only place I could find to post this tune with I came across over the weekend. Not quite Jazz Fusion but near enough I guess. I used to listen to stuff like this ages ago and been digging it out recently.
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edit : having had a quick read read prob not the place to post.
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edit : having had a quick read read prob not the place to post.
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i'm currently playing with a trumpeter and kongas man... UKFunky-ish beats, with loads of African and Latin rhythms in various states of deconstruction and plenty of bass... has something to do with this thread but not sure how much. maybe it's just a more current approach to fusion.
grizzleb
Well-known member
Easy as fuck to do in a sequencer, recommended for anyone who wants to add some interest to a loop they are buggering about with. Been used by many cunts, BOC also I think.
slim jenkins
El Hombre Invisible
Have been enjoying this quite a bit. Jolly, good-natured music that rocks and grooves when it has to. Some great synth (ARP2600) and guitar 'work'. Sometimes reminds of music for 70s NYC cop serials or something.
Track 2 seems appropriate.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
(in answer to the thread question)
Yes! Yes! Yes! Jazz-fusion was a dead end genre.
Broken beat?
Yes?
Fucking King fucking Crimson?
It's disgusting. Let it die. I sick on jazz-fusion.
Yes! Yes! Yes! Jazz-fusion was a dead end genre.
Broken beat?
Yes?
Fucking King fucking Crimson?
It's disgusting. Let it die. I sick on jazz-fusion.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Confession: I once made 100 quid from selling my dad's copy of 'In the court of..' on ebay. I figured it was OK because he doesn't own a record player anymore and its a shit record anyway.
I've kept all his Mahavishnu Orchestra albums though, they're excellent.