Rabshakeh

Vijay Iyer / Wadada Leo Smith – Defiant Life Certainly better than anticipated from the conjunction of Iyer, Smith and ECM. There are sections that I enjoy a lot and it helps that there is some 00s EAI DNA in there (and that it is Iyer taking his hands off the piano in order to supply it for so much of the record). Do you have to enter a prompt for these or something? This one seems to be quite tightly connected.

Leo Smith – Creative Music: 1 (Six Solo Improvisations) Streaming via the Tzadik box set, and enjoying. All of these look worth investigation. I'll get in there and get working.

I'm listening now and enjoying more than when I first approached it. It is perhaps one that I went to too early in my AACM forays and then haven't returned to since. At the risk of completely derailing this thread, I'll pick up elsewhere later in the day.

I was trying to remember what my favourites were and I think this one is up there. I really do like this one. Again, there's the comparatively powerful rhythmic element.

Wadada Leo Smith And Ed Blackwell – The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer

The discussion almost seems to be as much about our respective responses to perceived social cues rather than musical ones. (Academic / Institutional Vs Natural / Organic). Interesting that we hear the same musicians so differently. I would love to connect with Smith! I always thought I would like his music and have never understood why I don't connect with it. I do feel it is a deficiency in my musical listening, so I look forward to the lesson plan. Strangely, given my dislike of large box sets, Ten Freedom Summers and Sacred Ceremonies are my favourite Smith I have heard so far. Maybe they have a bit more role for rhythm than most Smith or maybe it is the compositional space? I don't know.

As I say, I liked that Ganavya overall. Clever idea and well executed, I thought. It is interesting that, outside of some rather auterish Alice Coltrane records, that particular mix of devotional carnatic chant and jazz has not yet been tried. (Or if it has I don't know it or I have forgotten it.) It really is "spiritual jazz". I didn't find it "organic" though - in fact that Don Cherry "organic music" ingredient is precisely what I thought the record most missed: to my ears it had a self-aware institutional feel in place of the free-spirited hippy one I wanted. But as I write that comment I see that it represents a reaction so subjective as to be basically irrelevant. Where I really didn't like the record was the multi-part covers towards the end, and that was to what the "overly studious" comment was meant to apply. I thought those were weak, and that was largely because I thought that they were so considered. The rest of the album was good and I might have included it in my list above were it not for those closing tracks, which to me cost the record its A grade. I'll be looking out for more of her releases though. On Aftab, Love In Exile was for me the actual nadir, and is the Iyer record that really did make me ready to give up. I may be guilty of moaning about Iyer a bit much since it came out, for which I apologise. Listening to it felt like attending a lecture. There was also something about how bad I thought the record was combined with the eulogies it triggered in the jazz press (and the vicious smack downs of the few dissenting voices) which really flicked a nerve. I perhaps wrongly see latter day Iyer as a scenemaker in a sinister position of (comparative) institutional power, who is taking the genre as a whole in the wrong direction, like a modern day Crouch / Marsalis. That is why I keep wibbling on about him. I do actually like Night Rain by Aftab though. Night Rain is far too mature for its own good and has Iyer in a prominent role but to my ears it works as a mature album in the manner of 1990s ECMs. I also don't want to suggest that I don't rate earlier Iyer. Historicity is obviously enthroned as one of the great classics for a reason. I have not listened to Defiant Life yet. The combo of ECM, Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith (who I respect greatly but rarely connect with) made me assume that I would not like it but given your recommendation I shall definitely give it a listen.

Clifford Thornton - Ketchaoua This is an underrated album. I have a real thing for it.

Anthony Braxton, Ursula Oppens and Frederic Rzewski – Composition No. 95 For Two Pianos

The whole Indo-Jazz concept is an interesting one. My personal view is that Indian rhythm instruments + jazz improvisation is an absolutely winning combination, one that perhaps works even better than Afro-Cuban or samba rhythms in jazz. I don't know why it should be because there is no meaningful link of which I am aware between jazz rhythms and Indian rhythms. But then it all comes down to what is exciting and Indian rhythmic development so often is. However "Indo-Jazz" to my mind more often refers to jazz using Indian stringed instruments in lead or harmonic roles or the use of Indian scales and classical Indian improvisational techniques in a jazz context. I don't really find that either of those has a particularly high hit rate when combined with jazz or used in a jazz context. Again, I don't know why that should be, and it is just a matter of personal taste. Obviously India is home to two of the world's preeminent improvising classical traditions, so you would think it would be natural, but perhaps the strength of the Indian traditions means that a working combination is harder to achieve. It is interesting and perhaps telling that "Indo-Jazz" so often gets dubbed a "fusion" music, whereas Latin jazz or jazz samba are subgenres of jazz. Either way, it rarely works for me as a mix, although when it does, it does. One major problem for me with more recent attempts at "indo-jazz fusion" has been that in the last decade or so it has often taken place in an institutionalised context. In particular, the dominance of Harvard Professor Vijay Iyer who plays on so many such records. Amancio D'Silva's and John Mayer's music was so pulse-raising; Latter-day Vijay Iyer's many many records make me wonder whether jazz has any future at all. Unsmiling academics playing unsmiling academic music. Even records that I have quite enjoyed like Ganavya Doraiswamy's Daughter Of A Temple or Arooj Aftab's Night Reign have suffered from being overly studious. Anyway, I'd be interested in any other members' views and recommendations.

Terrible name for a really interesting record.

Mine would be: Alice Coltrane - Journey in Satchidananda Amancio D'Silva - Konkan Dance Andrew Cyrille - To Hear The World In A Grain Of Sand (World Music: Live At The Donaueschingen Festival) Braz Gonsalves 7 with Pam Crain - Raga Rock Don Cherry and Latif Khan - Music / Sangam Emil Richards and the Microtonal Blues Band - Journey to Bliss Indo-British Ensemble (Victor Graham) - Curried Jazz Joe Harriott / John Mayer Double Quintet - Indo-Jazz Suite Joe Harriott / Amancio D'Silva Quartet - Hum Dono Rudresh Mahanthappa - Kinsmen Shakti with John McLaughlin - Shakti with John McLaughlin Whether all of these are technically "Indo-Jazz" is another question. Some are more serious that others. The Braz Gonzalez one is perhaps Indian jazz rather than Indo-Jazz but it is a good record.

Kiyoharu Kuwayama and Masayoshi Urabe - From The Abolition Port

Okay. Maybe I'll wait for his second release then! I did like the cover.

Frederic Blondy, Jean-Sebastien Mariage and Dan Warburton - L'ecorce Chante La Foret What's this one?

Leroy Jenkins' Sting – Urban Blues

Nice red vinyl too to make it all the sweeter.

I think that ironically the genres covered did expand. More world music and classical and less of a focus on jazz. But I think the releases sounded more similar. Maybe. Then again maybe not. There are releases by the likes of Evan Parker and Barry Guy that don't fit that mold at all. I think that the difference is the expansion of ECM 'product' starts to drown out the more original records.

Last night for a sequence of bizarre reasons I ended up being guilt tripped into going to watch a touring "collegiate a capella" singing group from an Ivy League university at a gentlemen's club in the West End. Very impressive in its own way. These kids had worked up 15 part harmonies and stale little comic skits, and they were able to perform songs and complex arrangements impromptu in different languages (there were some Norwegians there and they dropped into a perfect version of the Norwegian national anthem, with harmonies). One kid was clearly a bit early music fan and that came out in some of the arrangements. Still, I did feel like I had been abducted by aliens and forced to take part in a cruel experiment in human social anxiety. The kids were fine with it, but the British audience (entirely friends and family) was visibly struggling with the awkwardness.

I enjoyed Welcome To The Afterfuture at the time, and that series of records he did attacking Puff Daddy (as he was then) type glossy rap were a big deal for me as a kid.

There you are. Everyone has their own ears, and I don't doubt that others' are better than mine. Opinions presented above my own and only opinions.

Is that the single? Busta Rhymes was one of the background sounds to my teenage years. The opposite of mumblerap.

Mike Ladd - Negrophilia: The Album I remember being very disappointed with this record back when it was released in 2005. I was deep into Thirsty Ear and, at the time, had not yet realised that "Alternative Hip Hop" as it was called then was a polite cul-de-sac. Revisiting it now two decades later it doesn't seem any better quality-wise (the production in particular is third rate), but it is at least a bit charming, which some of its successors in style could perhaps learn from. There was lots wrong with Ladd's music but at least it always felt like a chat with a friend.

I only know Secret Oyster, but streaming these guys. It is interesting that with time they went more Moody Blues and less jazzy. Typically it is the reverse.

Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber – Black Sex Yall: Liberation & Bloody Random Violets