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Slava Gliožeris

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Jazz Genre Nb. Rated Avg. rating 1 Avant-Garde Jazz 272 3.67 2 Post Bop 92 3.56 3 Fusion 78 3.44 4 Eclectic Fusion 66 3.65 5 21st Century Modern 50 3.75 6 Nu Jazz 41 3.65 7 World Fusion 32 3.19 8 Jazz Related Rock 32 3.30 9 RnB 27 3.43 10 Jazz Related Improv/Composition 26 3.60 11 Hard Bop 22 3.45 12 Progressive Big Band 16 3.72 13 Third Stream 15 3.53 14 Post-Fusion Contemporary 15 3.30 15 African Fusion 14 3.64 16 Pop/Art Song/Folk 11 2.91 17 Vocal Jazz 11 3.18 18 Funk 10 3.35 19 Jazz Related Electronica/Hip-Hop 9 3.28 20 Jazz Related Soundtracks 5 3.20 21 Funk Jazz 4 3.38 22 Soul Jazz 4 3.50 23 Exotica 3 2.83 24 Big Band 2 2.75 25 Cool Jazz 2 3.50 26 Blues 1 2.00 27 Afro-Cuban Jazz 1 3.50 28 Acid Jazz 1 3.00 29 Jump Blues 1 3.50 30 Latin Jazz 1 3.50

Latest Albums Reviews

JOSÉ JAMES 1978

Album · 2024 · RnB

New York-based jazz/R'n'B singer José James's newest album, "1978" (his birth year), is a beautiful and elegant tribute to the music of his childhood. Containing all originals, the album can recall RnB sounds from the 60s and 70s, but it also has vibes that place it clearly in 2024.

The opener "Let's Get It" contains a string quartet and is a hypnotic aerial and percussive piece with a groove and vibe that may remind some of Al Green's laid back work for Stax. “Isis & Osiris” is a repetitive soul piece, sensitive and of fragile atmosphere. “Planet Nine” is funky, but still elegant, with a catchy tune. “Saturday Night (Need You Now)” is danceable and sexy,

"Black Orpheus (Don't Look Back)" is another in the Al Green direction and contains background vocals and beautiful guitar solos. "Dark Side Of The Sun" is a song with a more contemporary sound, it combines organically soul from the 70s with synth arrangements and Belgium-based poet Baloji rapping. "Place Of Worship" is a standalone piece based on international beats and containing Brazilian singer Xênia França vocals, besides José James' own.

"For Trayvon" is a ballade tribute to Trayvon Martin, with sensitive James' vocals over piano and strings. It is a beautiful and memorable melody as well. The closer, "38th & Chicago", contains Afro-Cuban percussion (from Pedrito Martinez) and another guitarist, Marcus Machado, with a lengthy solo.

The music, which connects past and present imperceptibly, may not be the most innovative, but probably the most beautiful album of this genre in the year 2024.

• 49 days ago
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• Report #573888

ERIC JACOBSON / WE SIX Heading Home

Album · 2024 · Post Bop

Chicago-based trumpeter Eric Jacobson's third album as a leader, "Heading Home," sounds right out of the 1970s mainstream jazz scene, the nineties post-bop revival scene, or, simpler, it just sounds like one timeless classic album of mainstream jazz.

Eric leads an acoustic quintet of high-probe musicians, playing quite conservative, but extremely professional post-bop, with a lot of swing. Cross-generation band combines seasoned pianist Bruce Barth, veteran drummer George Fludas, mid-generation tenor Geof Bradfield, and session bassist Dennis Carroll.

Eight pieces, all Jacobson's originals, sound as if they come from inventive and enthusiastic post-bop times of the early 70s. There is a lot of light, optimism, and elegance in the album's music. Each composition has a different rhythm, from the up-tempo opener "Survival" to the lyrical ballade "My Love for Amy" to the swinging danceable "Heading Home".

Listeners usually expect quality mainstream jazz from Origin label's recordings. Still Eric Jacobson's "Heading Home" is a bit special one - very well played and edited, it is an example of how once great traditional post-bop can sound actual and really attractive today. Can be recommended for jazz purists and modern jazz haters, as well as for everyone who simply loves Jazz.

• 2 months ago
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• Report #573803

NIECHĘĆ Live at Jazz Club Hipnoza

Live album · 2018 · Nu Jazz

Niechęć, a Polish band from Warsaw, came as a comet with their debut album "Śmierć W Miękkim Futerku" in 2012. Their cinematic mix of alt-rock, jamming, jazz-fusion, post-rock, and free jazz, all well played, with dark melodicism, won listeners by storm. The band's sound, based on heavy keys/electronic passages, sounded attractive not only for jazz lovers but for prog-rock and alt-rock fans as well.

The band's second album "Niech​ę​ć"(2016) significantly strengthened their reputation. So, two years later it looked like the right time for a live album release. "Live at Jazz Club Hipnoza", recorded in Southern Poland, opens with a longish heavy jam, which is probably the most problematic song on the album. The band's strong side is its melodic well well-arranged tuneful songs, so the bulky composition (titled "Koniec"("The End")) based on heavy keyboard passages without noticeable development or direction leaves a mixed impression.

Fortunately, things change for the better right after that. After the short introduction, the band offers listeners what they do best - emotionally colored well-crafted songs with a great balance between energy and melodicism.

The program comes almost exclusively from their second studio album, with two exceptions. The almost twelve-minute long "Chmury" is a new song, which will be released on their third studio album, "Unsubscribe", in 2022. It builds tension from the very first piano/sax/keys sounds and continues with the same atmosphere till the end. The eight-minute-long "Transhumanizm" starts as a slow-tempo dreamy lite (at least by the band's standards) electronics piece, but in the second half explodes with expected heavy keys/sax passages. It has never been released on their studio albums until now.

The closer, "Krew"("The Blood"), starts from free jazz sax soloing and continues with the same sax and piano interplay. The album's end is more impressive than "The End" at its beginning.

For newcomers, I would recommend starting from any studio album (I would probably prefer the debut). Any of them is more comprehensive, better edited, and as a whole more attractive. "Live at Jazz Club Hipnoza" could be interesting for the band's fans, who get the possibility to hear the band playing live.

• 2 months ago
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• Report #573711

EZRA COLLECTIVE Dance, No One's Watching

Album · 2024 · African Fusion

Londoners Ezra Collective were the first jazz band to receive the prestigious Mercury Prize. For their third studio album, "Dance, No One's Watching," the promotional campaign for the album started months before the release date, quite unusual for a jazz release. One of the very first singles, released before the album's release, neo-soul "God Gave Me Feet For Dancing" with Yazmin Lacey's vocals, became a hit in its own right. Not surprisingly, right after the release the album received massive press, mostly very positive.

"Dance, No One's Watching" is an excellent danceable album, combining some better components from London's new jazz scene of the New Millenium. Predominantly up-tempo, it offers Afro-beat, Caribbean, Latin, and South African music, mixed with today's London sound and melted in a never-ending dance fest. True, there are not many new ideas or sounds, and very often drums/rhythm are closer to popular danceable music than jazz (in moments the album's music recalled an excellent example of clever danceable music from the past - Sofie Ellis-Bextor's "Murder On The Dancefloor"). The whole sound is quite polished and safe, still, that way the album's music can attract a much wider listeners circle, not just jazz lovers, that's for sure.

One of the better albums this year for feet, not for the head. Dance, God Gave You Feet For Dancing.

• 2 months ago
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• Report #573680

CLAUDIO MILANO (NICHELODEON) Alberto Nemo, Claudio Milano (with borda), Niccolò Clemente : Frattura, Comparsa, Dissolvenza

Live album · 2024 · Jazz Related Improv/Composition

Unorthodox Italian vocalist Claudio Milano's newest album, "Frattura, Comparsa, Dissolvenza," was recorded by a quartet with electronic artist Borda and two pianists/electronic artists/vocalists, Niccolo Clemente and Alberto Nemo. Unlike many of Claudio's previous releases, the new one has nothing too much in common with the progressive rock of the 70s, which always was a strong Milano influence.

Just four pieces, 43 minutes long in common. Minimalist and liturgical atmosphere, dark and partially chamber. The opener "Frattura Iniziale" is Alberto Nemo's composition. Nemo began his career performing sacred music in chapels. Slow, dark, and minimalistic repetitive piano and operatic voice together sound like church liturgy. Partially recalls Ran Blake's music. Beautiful song and the best on this album for my ears.

"Comparsa" opens with a dark and dreamy(gothic?) piano solo, and operatic vocals come soon after. Song author and composer Niccolo Clemente adds electronics too. The vocals feel the space flying free. The same atmosphere of church liturgy and Gregorian chants continues.

"Dissolvenza", the longest album's composition, is more based on electronic effects sound. Claudio's vocal acrobatics pushes it towards a more leftfield zone. If the album's opener can be compared with chamber Ran Blake's works, "Dissolvenza" is closer to Diamanda Galas' music.

"Frattura Finale", the album's shortest piece, is written by Nemo again. Chamber piano, minimalist repetitive construction, and emotional voice over it. The Mass is ended.

As always in Claudio's music, there are a lot of philosophical themes and minds in the lyrics (true, it's good to be fluent in Italian though). According to liner notes, the album was recorded somewhere in a gas station. Surprisingly enough, its acoustics recall more of a church space. Probably not an album for Claudio's prog rock side fans, "Frattura, Comparsa, Dissolvenza" shows his great alternative talent - an electro-acoustic minimalist chamber vocalist. Well done!

• 3 months ago
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• Posted 4 days ago in Jamie Muir (King Crimson) obituary
  Percussionist best known for his work with King Crimson and his delight in exploring the boundaries of improvisationRichard Williams   None of the many former art students who enlivened the British rock scene in the 1960s and 70s brought with them a greater sense of anarchic spectacle than the percussionist Jamie Muir, whose stage equipment included not just drums and cymbals but steel chains, blood capsules, a bowl of pistachio shells and a bird whistle.Muir, who has died aged 79, was introduced to the public in late 1972 as a member of King Crimson. This was the third lineup convened by the group’s leader, the guitarist Robert Fripp, under a name that had first made headlines in 1969 with an appearance at the Rolling Stones’ free concert in Hyde Park, followed by the release of an incendiary and globally successful debut album.Fripp’s new assemblage included the singer and bassist John Wetton, the young violinist David Cross, and a drummer, Bill Bruford, whom he had enticed away from Yes, another successful progressive rock group.In the six months Muir stayed with them, his presence changed the group’s philosophy completely, loosening the notoriously strict guidelines imposed by Fripp and exploring the boundaries of improvisation.This was a shock not just for their audiences but for the musicians, too. Into Fripp’s world of complex interlocking riffs in unorthodox time-signatures came a man in a bearskin bolero, orange loon pants, a waxed moustache, an infectious grin and an instinct for disruption, whose idea of a solo might involve emptying a sack of leaves over his kit.For Bruford, a schooled musician for whom the experience might easily have been discomfiting, Muir’s presence – almost that of a performance artist – represented a liberation. “He had a volcanic effect on me,” he remembered.But then, suddenly, on the eve of a tour of the UK, Europe and the US, he was gone. The group’s management issued a statement claiming that his absence was caused by an injury suffered on stage. In fact Muir had returned to Scotland to spend several years as a Buddhist monk, the indulgences of his former life replaced by retreat and meditation. Later he returned to painting, to which he devoted the decades before his death.Born in Edinburgh, one of the four children of a solicitor, William Gray Muir, and his wife Elizabeth (nee Montgomery), he attended Gordonstoun school in Moray, where he encountered a younger pupil who would become King Charles III. That was followed by Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied painting while playing the trombone in jazz bands.In 1967, having dropped out of college and switched to drums, he joined a free-jazz group called the Assassination Weapon, who played in a pub with their own light show until attracting the attention of the police and losing the gig “for inducing a drug-like atmosphere”.Moving to London, he took a job as a department store assistant while playing with various bands, including the poet/singer Pete Brown’s Battered Ornaments, the jazz-rock band Sunship and the Afro-rock band Assegai.He also founded a short-lived free-improvisation group called Heavy African Envelope, two of whose members, the singer Christine Jeffrey and the electronicist Hugh Davies, would also join him, along with the saxophonist Evan Parker and the guitarist Derek Bailey, in the Music Improvisation Company, which made an album for the ECM label in 1970.That year he joined the saxophonist Don Weller in a four-piece rock band called Boris, whose appearance at the Marquee in London received an enthusiastic recommendation in Melody Maker. Intrigued by that review, and by a subsequent interview Muir gave to the paper, Fripp contacted him. After the two had played together informally, the drummer became a most unlikely recruit to the guitarist’s new lineup.Their first full appearance was on a popular weekly German TV show called Beat Club Bremen, followed by a 27-date tour of the UK, where audiences were disconcerted to find that the only tune they recognised was 21st Century Schizoid Man, a favourite from the first album, itself withheld until the encores.When the band made a studio album, Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, its title was taken from the phrase Muir produced in response to a request to describe the kind of music they were now playing.“King Crimson was ideal for me because it was a rock band with more than three brain cells,” Muir said later. “I felt completely at home.” Reviewers and audiences, once they had recovered from the initial shock, were largely enthusiastic. Nevertheless, after a gig at the Marquee his colleagues learned of his decision to leave not just the band but the world of music with immediate effect.He had been persuaded to lead a different life by reading Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. “I didn’t feel happy about letting people down,” he said, “but this was something I had to do or else it would have been a source of deep regret for the rest of my life.” His next few years were spent at the Samye Ling monastery near Eskdalemuir in Dumfries and Galloway.When Muir re-emerged in the early 80s there were occasional engagements with music, including a duo album, Dart Drug (1981), with Bailey, and the soundtrack to a film called Ghost Dance (1983). But painting became the priority, first in Islington, north London, and then at a permanent home near Penzance in Cornwall, although exhibiting his work held little interest for him.Parker remembers Muir asking him to sit for his portrait, and taking a long time over doing so, using a pencil to produce a work in a very detailed and painstaking hyper-realist style. When it was finished, Muir laid it on his kitchen floor over a sprinkling of leaves and rubbed the pencil across the paper to produce a frottage effect before picking it up, showing it to Parker, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it into a waste bin.He is survived by his brother, George, and a sister, Mary. Another brother, Andrew, predeceased him. Jamie (William James Graham) Muir, percussionist and painter, born 4 July 1945; died
• Posted 6 days ago in What are You Listening II
  [TUBE]/Yn6WaBZpxSQ[/TUBE]
• Posted 7 days ago in ‘Köln 75’ review: Lively re-staging of a 1975 jazz
  Ido Fluk • Director of Köln 75"It’s a movie about a jazz concert, but it’s a punk rock story"http://cineuropa.org/en/video/474207/ snobb2025-02-23 11:48:49

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