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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.

• 13 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.

• 29 days 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.

• 45 days 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.

• 52 days ago
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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!

• 2 months ago
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• Posted 3 days ago in Audience With The Queen: Galactic with Irma Thomas
    Galactic has recorded a new album with Irma Thomas, Audience With The Queen, that will be released on April 11.The album will contain eight new songs written specifically for Thomas, and a new take on Nancy Wilson’s “How Glad I Am.”Irma Thomas at Jazz Fest 2024.Photo by Noe Cugny / OffBeatThe first single, “Lady Liberty” is a poignant, powerful track that explores racially fueled violence and social justice, with Thomas singing, “Another black man shot down last night and they keep adding up /Is this the world that we’re living in? The one we raise our children in? /Lord save us all, Lady Liberty took a fall.”“It’s about what’s happening now,” says Irma Thomas, “and now isn’t going anywhere. No protesting is involved, it’s just that what’s happening around us needs to be sung about and heard. I’m making people more aware, through song, to pay attention to what’s going on.”“The music is super funky on this track, but I was also really excited to hear Irma Thomas tackle lyrics about such important social issues,” says Galactic co-founder Robert Mercurio. “The subject matter is a departure for her. She gave me goosebumps when we were recording this song in the studio. Hearing a person of her stature sing about social injustice in America really hits home for me.”Ben Ellman, Robert Mercurio, Stanton Moore, Jeff Raines, and Rich Vogel of Galactic, at Tipitina’s, New Orleans, LA. November 2018. Photo by Melissa StewartAudience With The Queen: Galactic with Irma Thomas marks a landmark departure from Galactic’s 10 previous studio LPs, most of which revolved around the band’s core instrumentalists – Ben Ellman (saxophones, harmonica), Robert Mercurio (bass), Stanton Moore (drums), Jeff Raines (guitar) and Rich Vogel (keyboards) – accompanied by a mix of different vocalists.[TUBE]/dtNnUZAj7F4[/TUBE]from https://www.offbeat.com snobb2025-01-22 06:22:08
• Posted 9 days ago in Film director David Lynch dies at 78
   Director-writer David Lynch, who radicalized American film with with a dark, surrealistic artistic vision in films like “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” and network television with “Twin Peaks,” has died. He was 78.Lynch revealed in 2024 that he had been diagnosed with emphysema after a lifetime of smoking, and would likely not be able to leave his house to direct any longer. His family announced his death in a  writing, “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.'”The “Twin Peaks” TV show and films such as “Blue Velvet,” “Lost Highway” and “Mulholland Drive” melded elements of horror, film noir, the whodunit and classical European surrealism. Lynch wove tales, not unlike those of his Spanish predecessor Luis Bunuel, which proceeded with their own impenetrable logic. A four-time Oscar nominee, Lynch received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2020.After years spent as a painter and a maker of short animated and live action films, Lynch burst onto the scene with his 1977 feature debut “Eraserhead,” a horrific, black-humored work that became a disturbing fixture on the midnight movie circuit. His outré and uncompromising style quickly won the attention of the Hollywood and international movie-making establishment.He was hired by Mel Brooks’ production company to write and direct “The Elephant Man,” a deeply affecting drama about a horrifically deformed sideshow freak in Victorian England who became a national celebrity. The feature captured eight Academy Award nominations, including Lynch’s first for best director.He found less success with his 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling science fiction novel “Dune.” The production, made on a budget of $40 million during an arduous three-year shoot, was a colossal box office flop.However, Lynch rebounded from the disaster with two films that defined his mature style: “Blue Velvet” (1986), a frightening hellride through the psychosexual underbelly of a small American town, and the sexed-up, violent road movie “Wild at Heart” (1990), which was honored with the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or.In 1990, he revolutionized American episodic TV with “Twin Peaks,” a series he created with writer Mark Frost. With action springing from the investigation of a high school girl’s mysterious murder in a Washington lumber mill town, the weekly ABC show plumbed disquieting, theretofore taboo subject matter and made the inexplicable a fixture of modern narrative television.A major hit in its first season, “Twin Peaks” lost its momentum and ultimately its audience in year two. However, it spawned a feature-length prequel, 1992’s over-the-top “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me”; 25 years later, the ongoing affection of a loyal cult of viewers sparked a limited-run third season for Showtime that picked up where the second season left off.Later in his career, in such features as “Lost Highway” (1997), “Mulholland Drive” (which won him the best director award at Cannes in 2001) and “Inland Empire” (2006), Lynch flexed a super-heated style that pivoted on plots emphasizing doubled personalities, unexplained transformations and shocking acts of violence. The quiet yet quirky “The Straight Story” (1999) harkened back to the more reserved emotional pull of “The Elephant Man.”The director himself was consistently reticent about sorting the meaning of his work for his viewers. In the book-length collection of interviews “Lynch On Lynch” (2005), he addressed the enigmatic core of his work with writer Chris Rodley.“Well,” Lynch said, “imagine if you did find a book of riddles, and you could start unraveling them, but they were really complicated. Mysteries would become apparent and thrill you. We all find this book of riddles and it’s just what’s going on. And you can figure them out. The problem is, you figure them out inside yourself, and even if you told somebody, they wouldn’t believe you or understand it in the same way you do.”In addition to his honorary Oscar, Lynch’s one-of-a-kind career was acknowledged by a special award (shared with his frequent star Laura Dern) at the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards and a Golden Lion at the 2006 Venice Film Festival.He was born Jan. 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana. His father was a research scientist for the Department of Agriculture, and his peripatetic family lived in the plains states, the Pacific Northwest and the Southeast before settling in Alexandria, Virginia, where Lynch attended high school.An indifferent student, Lynch focused on painting. A one-year stay at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and an abortive trip to Europe with his friend Jack Fisk (later a noted Hollywood production designer) were succeeded by his enrollment at Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1965.Living in a forbidding Philly neighborhood with his first wife and infant daughter Jennifer (later a director herself), Lynch began to dabble in film, directing the animated shorts “Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)” and “The Alphabet” (1968).“The Grandmother” (1970), a combination of animation and live action, was filmed with money obtained from a grant by the newly founded American Film Institute. In 1971, Lynch moved to Los Angeles to study filmmaking at the AFI’s Conservatory for Advanced Film Studies, headquartered in the former Doheny mansion in Beverly Hills.Beginning in 1972, Lynch began work on a feature at the AFI. 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• Posted 24 days ago in Chic Singer Alfa Anderson Dies at 78
  Alfa Anderson, the singer of some of disco group Chic’s biggest songs, including “Le Freak,” “Good Times,” “My Forbidden Lover,” “At Last I Am Free,” “I Want Your Love,” has died. The band’s Nile Rodgers shared the news on social media, but he did not disclose a cause of death. Anderson was 78 year old.Anderson was born in Augusta, Georgia, on September 7, 1946. She is said to have composed her first song at the age of three, but, as she grew older, she made her focus education, eventually attending school to be a teacher, first at Paine College and then at Columbia University. Still, she sang in her schools’ choirs, and, eventually, she debuted as a backup singer for Cannonball Adderley, at Carnegie Hall, in 1976. Anderson went on to record background vocals for Dionne Warwick and Roy Buchanan; she also featured on the Quincy Jones–produced 1978 soundtrack for The Wiz. While working on the soundtrack, she met Luther Vandross, who encouraged her to audition for the newly formed Chic in 1977.Both Vandross and Anderson sang on Chic’s self-titled 1977 debut, but Anderson wouldn’t claim her place as lead vocalist until the departure of original lead Norma Jean Wright the following year. She would go on to feature prominently on the group’s biggest albums—1978’s C’est Chic and 1979’s Risqué—until Chic’s first dissolution in 1983. During this time, Anderson was a frequent guest on Soul Train and Top of the Pops, and she sang on Chic-produced albums like We Are Family, by Sister Sledge, and Diana, by Diana Ross.After touring internationally with Vandross in the mid-1980s, Anderson turned to teaching, eventually becoming the principal at Brooklyn’s El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice. She released music intermittently, through the 2010s, including the single “Former First Lady of Chic” and the self-released album Music From My Heart. In 2015, Chic’s “Le Freak” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and, three years later, it was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.[TUBE]JAXYvRxl-Og[/TUBE]from https://pitchfork.comsnobb2025-01-01 11:18:58

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