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2009.12.12, 11:46 AM | #21 |
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Great post Jihad, I enjoyed reading it.
How if only vBulletin would allow me to rep you........
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2009.12.12, 11:57 AM | #22 |
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honestly, my top pick for defining album of the 00's is Amano Tsukiko Sharon Stones. It was a defining and iconic work, one that launches an artist's career (much like Muzai Moratorium in some ways) and really is a solid example of the music and a specific moment in time. It contains elements from 90's grunge and rock that carry over into this new 00's style, which really defines the feel/look of the 00's to me for some reason. The album itself is a classic, containing track after track of Tsukko's early hits, it holds almost 6 of her popular first singles. It was this album that sold me on her music and made me a lifetime fan. The opening of Bodaiju is perhaps one of the best album openers I've heard in quite some time. And the last track, a hidden ending song, wraps up the entire album in a nice little bow, sampling pieces of from all of the songs in the verse but yet working as an entirely new and solid song (unlike what Ringo did with Ringo Catalogue...Tsukko succeeds where Ringo failed).
anyways, so yeah Amano Tsukiko - Sharon Stones |
2009.12.12, 09:22 PM | #23 |
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justriiingo, do you like Matthew Shipp at all? He's done some albums that work within similar parameters of jazz/electronic/dance (well, with a tendency toward hip-hop beats I suppose), albeit with different-sounding results. You might like Harmony & Abyss or Equilibrium (my favorite of his CDs, and one of my favorite CDs from the past decade).
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2009.12.13, 12:24 AM | #24 | |
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2009.12.13, 01:30 AM | #25 |
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That's funny because to me he is more solidly on the jazz side of things than some of the people you mentioned above, including Portico Quintet (which I will try to check out further later on), or even Cinematic Orchestra. Not really looking for an argument. Certainly his more ambient moments don't swing, but I don't see swinging as a required element of jazz at this point. (And just to be clear, I don't think whether or not it's jazz has any bearing one way or another on whether you "should" like it, or what's better or worse, etc.)
Last edited by Superficial Fan : 2009.12.13 at 01:39 AM. |
2009.12.14, 04:40 PM | #26 |
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It's Portico Quartet btw...
I wouldn't consider pQ or The Cinematic Orchestra to be jazz acts either. They're jazzy at most, but not really jazz. But what is jazz and what isn't? I don't have the answer to it. It doesn't help that jazz musicians often push the boundaries of what "jazz" can represent, and it just gets more befuddling. I've listened to Equilibrium and I thought there were maybe 2 tracks (Cohesion and Portal) that I thought were "jazz". Portal especially sounds like something Bobby Hutcherson would play... it's great but only 1:13 mins! The rest is kinda like contemporary conservatory music, with a prog rock feel coming from the drums and bass. The chords are all very dissonant, I don't really hear those jazzy notes that I'm used to hearing. Not a particularly huge fan of the sound, I'm sorry! And oh, I generally like things which are labeled as jazz, but I've heard enough to know that there's a whole world of jazz that I just cannot stand i.e Jazz with too much improvisation, henceforth known as TMI jazz.
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2009.12.17, 01:01 AM | #27 | |
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Whoops. Sorry.
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2009.12.17, 12:59 PM | #28 |
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^ My pleasure. I'm always up for new sounds.
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2009.12.18, 04:06 PM | #29 | |||||||||||||||
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The Rock/Pop Cluster
Like many of you my favorite album of the decade is Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana. I also rate Adult quite highly, and Shouso Strip would probably have to appear on any adequate list of my favorites of the past decade. But since there are already entire threads devoted to each of those albums, that's all I'm going to say about them. Moving along. . .
Lansing-Dreiden – Incomplete Triangle and Dividing Island. Of all the CDs I am mentioning here, I suspect these might appeal to the most of you (at least among the CDs by less known acts). Lansing-Dreiden has its own peculiar flavor of retro, which is probably made more interesting to me anyway in the way that hints of the Beach Boys and the Moody Blues and psychedelia brush up against punk and post-punk and electro. It also helps that the songs are generally strong and catchy. A lot of their best songs are missing from youtube, but the videos below will give some idea of what they sound like some of the time (though Incomplete Triangle often has a much more jagged edge than either of these songs). No, the first one is not "Kabukicho no Jyoou":
Kate Bush – Aerial. A very satisfying comeback. I was initially skeptical, as I had parted ways with Kate Bush's work way back when Sensual World came out (though I suspect that if I would return to that now without the nervous system of a twenty-something male, I might like it more), but I was won over pretty quickly once I heard it. Boris – Smile. I came to this party very late, but I think this must be one of the best rock bands of this past decade. This album is pleasant harsh and psychedelic at the same time. I don't know if its sludge metal or stoner rock or neo-space rock, and I don't particularly care. I particularly love the frequent, unexpected jump/cuts in the music, but I also like the extended meditations in feedback.
Marit Larsen - Under the Surface. I have to admit I feel a bit pervy watching this, because I think she's adorable and hot, but I also like her songs, which remind me more of something that would have been on commercial radio in the 70s than what's around now.
Miranda Lambert – Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Miranda Lambert has described herself as a country singer backed up by a rock band, which may not be 100% accurate, but it's a good excuse for filing this under rock/pop. Overall, this album hits my classic rock spot. The sound isn't too good on this, but it's not too good on the other youtube copies I tried either:
Last edited by Superficial Fan : 2009.12.18 at 06:43 PM. |
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2009.12.18, 05:30 PM | #30 | ||||||||||||
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The Jazz/Near-Jazz/Instrumental:
Three albums I like from 2003 all have a certain brooding quality that at the time felt very appropriate to world events, particularly the U.S. "War on Terror" and its general drift toward fascism (still alilve, unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned): Matthew Shipp's Equilibrium, Cooper-Moore & Assif Tsahar's America (which begins with a jazz-rap screed against America's violent history), and John Fahey's Red Cross. The least known of these is America, which alternates (more or less) between laidback Americana, with strong hints of the Cooper-Moore's Southern origins, and dissonant free jazz blowouts. I think of it as presenting different visions of America and its possibilities, with the dark side not at all glossed over. (It's all instrumental, aside from the first track.) Equilibrium seems like it could be a soundtrack, perhaps a soundtrack for the bad news that continues to come out. I had listened to John Fahey a couple decades ago (I am aging myself here), but hadn't dug into him deeply at the time. I was happily surprised when he turned up in this decade talking about his enthusiasm for industrial music and putting out music bearing loud traces of that influence. Red Cross was his last recording, but I don't consider it lacking in vitality, as some do. There is something indescribably great about the sheer sound he gets out of his guitar, the exact color of his guitar sound. I also think that the extremely slow tempo on many of these tunes in this case has the effect of fragmenting the songs into a million splinters of sound, sort of like what is accomplished when a jazz musician takes a song apart, but in this case done without actually doing any violence to the melody. When he plays the standard "Summertime," it sure doesn't sound like the livin' is easy.
Esbjorn Svensson Trio's Leucocyte, from last year, feels like a late entry in the same sub-category as the albums mentioned above, with a mood that is oddly suggestive of premonitions of Svensson's own premature death last year. It's an album of jazz, jazz-fusion, alongside experiments in something closer to minimalism and noise (as in the genre). I'm not very good at talking about it, but it was my favorite album of 2008.
I'm filing Cuban virtuoso conguero Miguel "Anga" Diaz's Echu Mingua here because even though it has one foot in Afro-Latin dance music (the next big category coming up), I really find myself listening to it more the way I listen to, say, Sun Ra. Miguel takes his conga playing and pushes the limits by incorporating it into jazz covers or even chamber music with strings. There is a cover of "Round Midnight" with Anga playing five or six congas, accompanied by a small string section. My only big complaint about this album is that its alleged peak, with the song "Conga Carnival," is a big letdown for me since it's the only track I really don't like and it clashes with the other material. (Anga also died prematurely and tragically, shortly after this, his solo debut, was released. I'm a Scorpio, I guess I just gravitate toward death.)
Sunny Jain Collective's Avaaz is another blending of jazz with music from other ethnic traditions (in this case one much more removed from jazz than Afro-Cuban music is). Avaaz is a little to soft-edged for some jazz fans, from what I've seen in reviews. The jazz part of it is more straight ahead and mainstream than most of the jazz I like, but sometimes I think it's not as strictly in that mainstream as it sounds. For example, there are subtle things about the quality of the sax tone here that reminds me saxophone I've heard in Egyptian popular music (esp. in Oum Kalthoum and Abdel Halim Hafez songs), which leaves me wondering if there isn't something more distinctive and eastern about it all than some people are hearing. I also really like the way rather than sticking to borrowing from Indian classical music, Sunny Jain takes elements from folkloric and pop Indian music. The first track, for instance, is a cover of a bhangra song, and there is also a version of a Bollywood oldie "Awara Hoon" (which I first heard in a 3 Mustaphas 3 cover and always assumed was Turkish!). Along with some fine instrumentalists, the album includes several tracks with a wonderful vocalist, Samita Sinha. You can stream some or possibly all of Avaaz here: http://www.sunnyjain.com/store.html Finally, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb's Mayim Rabim and Ned Rothenberg's Inner Diaspora are both releases in the Radical Jewish Culture series, on John Zorn's frequently great Tzadik label. Ayelet Rose Gottlieb is both an incredible singer, with a powerful voice, and a very talented composer. On this CD she presents very contemporary settings of parts of the Hebrew "Songs of Songs," working primarily in a jazz/modern classical mode, but informed by various Jewish musical traditions, with hints of pop even. It does not come out as a hodgepodge, but as a very organic whole. Maybe the albums greatest weakness is that it has a very theatrical feel, which for me makes me less inclined to listen to it repeatedly. It feels more like something meant to be staged. Still, it's a great CD. Rothenberg's Inner Diaspora is yet another blending of jazz with classical chamber music, along with serious borrowings from Indian music (by way of tabla) and traditional Japanese music (Rothenberg has studied shakuhachi in addition to clarinet and saxophone).
http://www.lala.com/#album/792915009651162358 (Political aside: I am ambivalent about drawing attention to the work of Zorn and others, including Israeli-born Gottlieb, who continue to perform in Israel rather than honoring the cultural boycott against the Zionist state just as jazz musicians past honored the boycott against Apartheid South Africa. I want to emphasize this is about a state and an ideology, not about an ethnicity or religion.) |
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