Vacant Horizon

what station were you listening to?

 

been listening to oregon the last few days and i gotta say that my favorite thing about them is towner. the rest sounds a bit cheezy and windham hill-ish. that soprano sax just screams kenny G to me

it's oboe maybe.

Did Towner recently put out a new album? Possibly a guitar/piano duo album? I heard a Towner track on the radio on the local Sunday morning jazz show, and it was really good.

what station were you listening to?

been listening to oregon the last few days and i gotta say that my favorite thing about them is towner. the rest sounds a bit cheezy and windham hill-ish. that soprano sax just screams kenny G to me

That Oregon Live is a great record. "Silence of a Candle" is a beautiful tune.

i have live at yoshi's which is really nice.

Also a big fan of Oregon and, more precisely, Ralph Towner. Listen to Solstice often - maybe the most beautiful of the ECMs.

i like oregon too. pretty mellow, but a enough going on to make it interesting. i really want to get into more ralph towner.

my post about ecm being a guilty pleasure was kind of a joke. i really like metheny's records from that label. he can be a little cheezy, but damn the guys melodies just move my soul.

hellborg is a great bass player in the vein of jaco. he has done a lot of projects with sipe. the best is called Temporal Analogues. its a trio with shawn lane. lane is a metal shredder. its just two long jams. they have it on emusic.

hellborg was actually the bass player on mclaughlin's vishnu redux in 1984. that would've been a pretty good album if not for the cheezy synths! all those guys just couldn't help themselves in the 80s.

No, I was wrong. It's from a concert recorded in Havana in 1979. I recall the liner notes saying something about some problems they had recording it, but I can't remember the details. Something about the some of the drum mics cutting out or just not working at all, which I think is why they never released it until recently.

 

I agree that McLaughlin should do another electric trio. I don't know much about Jonas Hellborg, but Jeff Sipe is incredible. I used to see him with Col. Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit a lot. Good call.

hellborg is a great bass player in the vein of jaco. he has done a lot of projects with sipe. the best is called Temporal Analogues. its a trio with shawn lane. lane is a metal shredder. its just two long jams. they have it on emusic.

That just came out last year. It's a live recording from the '80s if I remember correctly (with two or three studio tracks thrown in).

 

It's wailing and defintiely worth hearing if you're a fan of any of those guys, but where John and Tony are concerned, the first two Tony Williams Lifetime albums are better.

it's really more of a bonus EP that gives us a peak at what could have been. was it recorded in the 80s? if so, great sound for that era. sounds 70s to me. i wish mclaughlin would do something like this before he dies. a phat power trio of fusion with jonas hellborg on bass and maybe jeff sipe on drums

I think The Rising is very good too. I just happen to be of the opinion that Magic is excellent. Everyone loves to shit on the production of Bruce's albums. I'm not an engineer. I couldn't tell you a fucking thing about how to mix a record. I know I listen to a lot of music on a variety of mediums, and I have no issue with the production on Magic. It's one of my favorite Springsteen albums of all time, and the 2nd half of it (I'll Work For Your Love - Terry's Song) is in a class of its own. All the albums you list above solace I enjoy as well - BITUSA included.

mixing/mastering may be an issue with rising-magic, however, production is also an issue. terry's song was done by bruce by himself in jersey from what i understand and was not beholden to obrien. it sounds so much more immediate. so that begs the question, how much control do producers have on bruce and other artists? i think that a lot of artists have no idea about production and sound. i have met several artists who didn't have a clue about production/mixing etc. and had no idea why their albums sounded like shit! (in some cases, they didn't even have a clue that their album sounded like shit) it's crazy. like all the big artists, bruce's albums sound like the times in which they were produced. i just wish he would take the route neil young and dylan have taken in the last decade with less is more and no production sheen. it's ironic that rick ruben has become some big go-to guy because he really doesn't do shit. he forces the artist to just play and sing their song with no extras and these albums are hailed by critics.

Fellow Atlantan. Cool.

 

I had completely forgotten about WJZZ until I went to the dentist recently.

yeah, they used to play it in the bathrooms at a former employer. it was fun when they would drop in a little santana or steely dan;)

True. I've only heard a few ECM records. Some were smooth, others weren't.

 

This one is pretty cool:

 

will check it out! jan garbarek is an ECM sax player and his stuff gets a little smooth. but nothing like WJZZ, the local smooth station.

That's all true, but when you have to come up with descriptive names for everything it get's rather annoying. Why not just let MMW be called jazz? Miles Davis spent half his career doing music that didn't fit the jazz mold. Cecil Taylor doesn't fit the jazz mold. Sun Ra. Art Ensemble. Anthony Braxton. Are they not jazz? Should we make up descriptive words for the music all those guys make, none of whom sound at all alike? What purpose would that serve?

 

Or should we just listen and hope we hear something we enjoy?

 

In the end it's all just people hitting and blowing into things at different intervals, with varying degrees of skill.

to me the dividing factor is skill. training, skill, talent all seem to move me these days. funk/jam bands that sound okay are a dime a dozen. then you got a totally trained/talented/skilled group like mmw and its 'miles beyond'. having knowledge of theory, improve, etc. really sets mmw apart.

I realize that terms like jazz, as much as terms like alt-country, are artificial boxes that we put bands/music into because we are lazy, but for purposes of this discussion, can someone explain to me why there appears to be some debate about whether MMW is jazz or not? Give Tonic a spin. Or Friday Afternoon in the Universe. I know that some of their releases push the envelope a bit, but at heart, this is a jazz band, no? I've seen this band several times sit down and play an improv set for the night (see Tonic, which actually is a live release of one of those improv nights). Truly exhilirating.

my sense is that there's no argument. they, like scofield, just kinda found some following with the jamband scene. been meaning to check out Tonic for years!

Only if you feel guilty about it. I'm not sure why you would.

kind of a joke. a little of ECM has a bit of a smooth jazz feel to me.

tv?

http://nonesuch.com/journal/nonesuch-to-re...-hid-2008-11-17

feb 10th

post it on the bulletin board

this sounds very interesting.

Right....are these guys jazz actually? I suppose so.

 

LouieB

well there's the rub. i am into jazz. not funk or jamband stuff. some of these bands cross over, but the stuff that originates from jazz resonates most with me at this point. i would count mmw jazz, even though they have a following in the dying jamband circuit.

incidently, i also like ECM. is that a guilty pleasure?

Oh yeah, Naked City. Definitely challenging/abrasive.

 

Well, duh, I totally spaced on an opportunity to pimp Nels. Some great stuff that might appeal to Rider is the Scott Amendola Band. I like "Cry" best. Or, just check out any album Nels plays on that was released by the Cryptogramophone label.

yes, amendola is on my list. and i gotta check out nels stuff more carefully!

I saw Chris Potter at my school last year when he gave a masterclass and a performance. Moreover, his drummer Nate Smith in his group Underground gave a masterclass at my school too a few months later. I enjoyed his stuff at the time (I did not listen to any of his stuff prior to performance), but recently I decided to check out his stuff, and now I am realizing it's just okay in my opinion.

 

I dig Jeff Parker a lot lately. I've heard Brad Mehldau is good (he's also coming to my school in May), and I am starting to dig deeply into all of the projects Ken Vandermark has done.

 

And on a side note: I saw Dave Douglas with his brass band quintet at Chicago Jazz Festival this summer, and I thought it was decent.

 

I'm sure Louie B can give you some great advice too.

yeah, i like potter's composed melodies, but the underground stuff gets a bit jammy for me. same with dave douglas on the composition front. Mehldau is great, but i don't have anything by him. he's on my list. Jeff Parker is okay too. i need to get more into him. he just sounds like tortoise to me so i need to get a bit more open minded.

Well, thanks for the honesty.

no problem and sorry for being a bit of a dick

It sounds like he has recreated the fresh, live kind of vibe that fed into the last albums writing. Good thing in my book, he's on a better roll right now than he's been on since I was three years old.

i just hope it has more of a live sound than the last few records. brenden obrien tends to overproduce. magic had so great songs on it that went past production, but most of it sounded like it was playing from a tin can 5 miles away.

these guys are easily my favorite modern jazz group. Just so good.

If you are enjoying them you should seek out a group called Fat Kid Wednesdays. It's the same saxophonist from Happy Apple playing with a couple other guys and they are really good. Their records are released on a french label so sometimes they are hard to find but I think they might be on itunes

thanks. i knew those dudes had other gigs. the drummer is in bad plus, no?

thanks also for all the other suggestions. no pun intended, but my miles, vishnu, return to forever, years coincided with my jam band days back in the 90s. i am kinda done with that. i am really more interested in melody and exploring in the trad set up. maybe with rhodes added in. so i got some stuff to check out!

I can relate to that. I really like, admire and am inspired by Frisell, but a lot of his work doesn't connect with me. I haven't been able to get into Intercontinentals or Blues Dream, just to name two albums with larger lineups. As I said before, I gravitate towards his trio albums. For that reason, other favorites of mine include:

 

East/West

The Willies

Ginger Baker Trio: Going Back Home (my intro to Bill, and possibly the reason why I favor his trio albums/albums that feature his guitar as the primary solo instrument)

Bill w/ Dave Holland and Elvin Jones

 

Ive probably only heard about 10-15% of Frisell's output. There's SO much that he's on as a leader or as a sideman.

 

A few exceptions to my "I like Bill better without horns" thing:

 

Dave Douglas: Strange Liberation

Tim Berne: Fulton Street Maul (Nels' brother Alex is on this one)

Jenny Scheinman: 12 Songs

for some reason frisell makes me sick to my stomach sometimes. seriously. i have spent time with his live album from 91, gone, just like a train, and good dog/bad dog. he's still on my list though. the day will come.

for fans of rhodes...check out New York Electric Piano. mellow, but sick.

To be more specific - it's a reference to Norm MacDonald's impression of Letterman.

 

Also - I'll never for the life of me understand what drives people to click into a thread about an artist they don't like and post negative comments about them. It's not like this thread is titled "Bon Iver - what do you think?"

for me, i usually drop in a negative opinion when i am unconsciously projecting rage about my mother. no joke.

i never got into the music on that one. there some much better shows in 73. the band seemed tired at the end of the tour. my favourite part is Peter grant cracking the shits!

the playing is a bit sloppy with page. i haven't heard anything else from that era, so nothing to compare it too.

i'm kinda in a jazz phase and getting into some of the new post-bop stuff out there: chris potter, dave douglas, bad plus, MMW, happy apple. all of it blowing my mind and i can't believe i have the attention span for it. so, anybody into this or into other things i need to know about?

I have to say this is still one of my favorite concert film moments of all time:

 

The Song Remains The Same (film version)

dude, good call. another favorite moment is at the end with plant's howl fades away into a beautiful beginning to the rain song. awesome!

c

OMG this is gonna be so great!! prolly gonna be the best of 09. more out of tune falsetto singing. that's all you need to be an indie god these days.