Rabshakeh

I am a jet lagged mess today but I found it extremely good. All the greats of Nordic jazz are on it but none were yet greats. It is basically a very good euro-jazz record of its era (stew together Electric Miles, free jazz and modal stuff) with some very sibilant Norwegian poetry over parts of it.

This is part of the issue. So much work is just producing words to a template. The same is broadly true of modern journalism in the post-Buzzfeed age and even literature. We are used to and expect jargon filled content with little thought or meaning, so it is easy to see why people are happy to use and sample AI. I took a flight back this morning on a Cathay Pacific flight. Lots of AI content there: 'Visit London with its amazing North-South Divide' was a favourite.

The place I see it most is job applications. People use it to write job applications and covering letters. Every time we have a graduate job opening I get 100 of these things that are all different but all the same. If you know that a tool is going to produce some functional words that will get you a D- mark in a school essay then sure, that's a pass. By why use it for a job application?

Abdul Wadud - By Myself

It shows up a lot? I am fascinated at how people are so aware of its limitations and yet still use it.

Jan Erik Vold and Jan Garbarek – Hav

I had not realised that he was still alive. A great loss. RIP.

But to describe the effects of "Women taking over"? Lyrics aren't entirely audible on the version that I could stream.

Maybe I'm misremembering. I recall it being how feminism is taking over the world or something, and being really quite misogynistic. Perhaps I am getting confused.

The Jutta Hipp one is a stinker because she has a level of fame in the US and she is the one person the author was interested in at the start. But nice to see the others mentioned. This is such a dead zone for commentary and it is good to see that amateurs are interested. What struck me as strangest about it was the idea that this was just a French thing. Clearly, there were parallel scenes in Germany, Italy, Britain and Sweden, not to mention Eastern Europe, and the French scene itself was at times Belgian.

Agreed. It reads as something written by someone who is just becoming interested in the area. Mostly I liked it because of the recommendations

Is this the one with that weird Women's Song?

There's been a good recent substack on recordings from the French scene of the early 1950s: https://open.substack.com/pub/jazzbumsmike/p/jazz-in-postwar-paris-piano-masters?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=az9yj

Some favourites: Maarten van Regteren Altena - Handicaps Mark Dresser - Unveil Peter Kowald - Was Da Ist Barry Guy - Irvin's Comet Domenico Sciajno - Broken Bridge Joelle Leandre - Contrebassiste (Taxi) Hard to pull off a solo bass record in my view. I have listened to many. Lots are excellent but few are really top tier. Given how important the *sound* of the instrument is, a lot comes down to sound quality in my opinion. If you're willing to broaden to cello: Abdul Wadud - By Myself Erik Friedlander - Volac: The Book of Angels Volume 8

Don Cherry - Brown Rice

Comus - Song To Comus

The NY club The Blue Note seems to be going through a period of massive expansion. There is going to be a branch opening in London and I think one in the UAE. I am always a little sad when anything that was previously unique starts opening worldwide branches. But it is an interesting development. Unlike restaurants or art galleries there isn't much prospect of dilution. It will be nice to have another club of its caliber. I assume that the club has infrastructure to send musicians on tours of the Blue Note network.

Saw Kahil El Zabar at Ronnie's last night. A good gig. I have seen him often in the last few years as he has become a biggish star in the UK recently. He was with Corey Wilkes on trumpet and Kevin Nabors on tenor plus cellist Ismael Ali. There seemed to be some tension in the group which I read as being centred around Wilkes, who seemed a little bit off. But enjoyable nonetheless. It is a good summer and autumn for gigs here in London and I have lined up quite a few.

Hip Replacement

Donald Harrison Jr. Presents The New Orleans Legacy Ensemble – Spirits Of Congo Square

Maggie Nicols, Matilda Rolfsson and Mark Wastell – Semiotic Drift

I really like this record.

Is this a new one? How do you find it?

Isotope is one band that I don't think gets mentioned much. They're stuck behind more substantial British fusion leaders like Soft Machine, Nucleus, Jeff Beck and Brand X, and I'm not sure that they have their own unique identity. But their records are sometimes more directly on point for the genre than those bands. Currently listening to this one (which isn't their best but shows how they could crank out records without seeming slick):

I really fell in love with that one after hearing it given pride of place in the sequencing on a Mr. Scruff comp of all things during my university years.