Erik Truffaz - In Between

Wow, so far this month the only thing harder than finding time to listen to music has been finding time to write about it!  But with Christmas having come and gone I'm working on a couple of posts now.

First off is one of my Christmas finds, Erik Truffaz's excellent 2010 release "In Between".

The overall vibe of  "In Between" is melancholy.  The CD starts strongly with my favorite track, the 10 minute "Secret of the Dead Sea".  This track sets the stage for both the general vibe of the album as well as the sonic soundscape - the keyboards are up front, providing a nice base for Erik's trumpet.  In fact Benoit Corboz's keyboard work is superb throughout, both as more of a moody layering as it is on "Secret of the Dead Sea" as well as on the funky Rhodes-driven "Lost in Bogota".

Two tracks feature the vocals of Sophie Hunger, the original "Let Me Go!" and a Bob Dylan cover, "Dirge".  Both tracks are pleasant, if not the highlights of the album.  Sophie has an interesting voice, I'll have to check out some of her own work.

All in all "In Between" is a strong work in the "Nu-Jazz" genre, generally a little more somber and understated than a lot of music in that niche.  A good recording to take in during the late evening with the lights down.

Erik Truffaz - "In Between"
01 The Secret of the Dead Sea (10:08)
02 Let Me Go! (featuring Sophie Hunger) (3:12)
03 Mechanic Cosmetic (5:48)
04 Fujin (4:10)
05 Dirge (featuring Sophie Hunger) (3:42)
06 In Between (4:39)
07 Lost in Bogota (5:09)
08 Balbec (6:13)
09 BC One (4:29)
10 Les Gens Du Voyage (5:08)
11 Giuseppe (2:49)
12 Dead Sea Stones (3:20)

Jimmy Herring Band

Jimmy Herring is wrapping up his 2010 fall tour in the next week or so, and I've been listening to a few of the shows that have turned up on the torrent sites.

Jimmy's 2008 release "Lifeboat" was a real treat of modern fusion.  The guy has some serious guitar chops, and with a top notch band (the core band consists of Oteil Burbridge on bass, Jeff Sipe on drums, Kofu Burbridge on keys and flute, and guest appearances by Greg Osby and Derek Trucks), the album cooks from start to finish. Kofu's flute provides some nice texture as an offset to the more aggressive guitar, I don't know why there isn't more flute in fusion as I love that instrument in jazz (Charles Lloyd comes immediately to mind).


Herring is "taper-friendly", so the shows surfacing on the torrent sites sound great as the tapers don't need to work with stealth set ups.  My favorites so far (links to etree or dime trackers):

11/14/10 - Portland ME
11/18/10 - Charlotte NC
12/2/10 - Athens GA

The band this tour is a little different, Jeff Sipe remains on drums, with Matt Slocum on keyboards and Neal Fountain on bass.

If you like what you hear from the live shows, then by all means pick up Lifeboat!

Jimmy Herring - Lifeboat
01. Scapegoat Blues - 6:37
02. Only When It's Light - 6:08
03. New Moon - 6:10
04. Lifeboat Serenade - 6:00
05. One Strut - 7:31
06. Jungle Book Overture - 6:34
07. Lost - 6:18
08. Transients - 5:32
09. Gray Day - 7:02
10. Splash - 6:27

Black Friday with King Crimson

I'm enjoying a lazy day-after-Thanksgiving off from work with the house almost to myself.  I've been on a bit of a King Crimson kick recently, and currently have Heavy ConstruKction from 2000 cranking out here from the computer.

Crimson is an interesting band, to say the least, and I enjoy music from all of their various eras.  Robert Fripp strikes me as someone who would be tremendously interesting to sit and chat with, scary smart and eccentric in a mad scientist sort of way.

My personal favorite Crimson release is 1974's "Red", which turned out to be the final release of the 70's era Crimson.  Dark, intense and heavy, it's a masterpiece of prog rock and probably deserves a post of its own one of the days when I find the time - maybe I'll order the latest re-master that includes the Steven Wilson 5.1 surround mix and then write something up.  The title track still stands as one of the greatest songs ever recorded, and has remained a concert staple for the band.  Also excellent releases from the early incarnation are their debut "Court of the Crimson King", "Larks' Tongues in Aspic", and "In the Wake of Poseidon".  "The Night Watch" captures the '73 band as a live unit exceptionally well.

After dissolving Crimson later in '74, Fripp declared that the band was finished, forever.  Fortunately that turned out to not be the case!

Seven years later the band rose from the ashes, retaining Bill Bruford on drums, and adding bass-virtuoso Tony Levin and Adrian Belew on guitar and vocals.  Originally intended to operate under the band name Discipline, Fripp instead chose to reclaim the mantle of King Crimson.  This quartet released three albums in the early to mid-80s, with 81's "Discipline" being the strongest in my opinion - for sure right up there in my "top 5" Crimson releases.  Belew brought a pop sensibility to the band that helped soften some of the hard edges, but certainly didn't do away with them ("Indiscipline", anyone?).  And "Thela Hun Gingeet" on "Discipline" is a masterpiece of weirdness, I absolutely love that track.

After the mid-80's the band took another hiatus, returning with '95's "Thrak" as a sextet (or as Fripp liked to refer to it, the "Double Trio").  The four member of the 80's band returned, adding Trey Gunn on bass and stick, and Pat Masteletto on drums.  "Thrak" is a heavy album for sure.  But my favorite recording of the double-trio is actually the "Live in Tokyo" video I purchased on VHS back in the day.  I dubbed the music onto CD, and that recording has received a ton of play on my part. Great recording quality and inspired performances, the only songs I really miss from other double trio recordings I've heard are "21st Century Schizoid Man" (which was not played often) and "Neurotica" (an inspired piece of insanity from "Beat").

2000 saw the departure of Levin and Bruford (Bill Bruford has since retired from gigging) and the release as a quartet of "ConstruKction of Light" in 2000 and "Power to Believe" in 2003 as studio releases.  I was pretty disappointed with ConstruKction, but Power is another excellent album that is a fascinating merger of metal and ambient genres.

Crimson resurfaced briefly in 2008 as a quintet.  Fripp, Belew and Mastelotto were joined by the returning Tony Levin and new drummer Gavin Harrison (Porcupine Tree).   This incarnation played about a dozen concerts in August 2008, but as of yet there has been no new material forthcoming - let's hope that changes in the near future.

Erik Truffaz

French trumpeter Erik Truffaz is another European artist that I first heard when a flurry of concert recordings surfaced on Dime a couple of years ago.  Mixing an ethereal trumpet sound with modern beats and world music rhythms, Truffaz creates soundscapes that are often mesmerizing.

Over the weekend I listened to "Mantis", released in 2002.  There's a nice variety of music on here, with the expected high levels of musicianship exhibited all around.  In addition to to Truffaz's understated trumpet playing, guitarist Manu Codjia makes a particularly strong impression with some very nice guitar work.

1. The Point  [5:35]
2. La Memoire Du Silence  [7:49]
3. Saisir  [6:33]
4. No Fear  [2:14]
5. Nina Valeria  [4:49]
6. Parlophone  [3:57]
7. Magrouni  [3:50]
8. Mantis  [7:46]
9. Yasmina  [4:10]
10. Mare Mosso  [2:43]
11. Tahun Bahu  [10:29]

iTunes Pushed Me Over the Edge

I've long used iTunes, not as a player so much as a transport to get music onto my iPod or iPhone.  It's *always* been a bloated program, and every release seems to get a little worse.  The interface is great for syncing with an iPod though, and that's what kept me using it.  Until this weekend anyway.

Ever since V10 came out this fall with the arrival of the new iPods, the software has been a frustrating mess.  Frequent crashes were bad enough, but I've also started to see other weirdness like album art being corrupted and needing be replaced.  Add the fact that iTunes has never been very good for maintaining multiple libraries (I have a lossless library in ALAC format, and my MP3 library for portable use) and I decided it was time to throw in the towel.

I've used foobar as my player for quite awhile, it's a great program and very customizable in both performance and appearance, with many plug-ins available.  I have two installations of it, one for each of my two libraries.  When listening to music on my computer I almost always listen to the lossless library, even though I'm about 99% sure that I can't tell the difference between a high quality MP3 file (i.e. LAME V0) and a lossless file.

So I spent some time this weekend getting comfortable with the iPod plug in, and creating new playlists for my Classic and my iPhone. I also found some great foobar skins here.  While it may not be quite as intuitive as using iTunes, that minor shortfall is more than offset by not having to deal with the bloat and crashes and artwork problems.

In short, Itunes: goodbye and good riddance!

Coming up is a post about french trumpeter Erik Truffaz...

A Study in Contrasts

I like to tell people I have diverse tastes in music (my wife likes to tell them I have bad taste in music, but that's another story).  When I copy music onto my iPod I try not think about what the previous album in the playlist was as I'm adding the next one.  This can lead to some interesting juxtapositions of musical styles as happened this weekend.

First up was an excellent 2007 concert recording of Carla Bley's "Lost Chords" quintet featuring Paolo Fresu on trumpet.  This great show from Zurich was broadcast on satellite in a couple of pieces, and then wonderfully reconstructed into a single torrent (it appears to be still seeded here).  It features a great band with, in addition to Paolo Fresu, Andy Shepard on sax, Steve Swallow on bass, and Billy Drummond on drums.  Carla is a pianist, composer and perhaps most notably a superb arranger - I was mostly aware of her work with Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra.  This concert features her "Banana Suite" as the core of the program, followed by several other outstanding pieces.

The arrangements are just beautiful, and the playing is top notch.  This is not challenging music from the perspective of requiring effort to digest and enjoy, it just flows nicely and makes for a great evening soundtrack.  This isn't fusion by any stretch of the imagination, just some nice jazz.


Disk 1 (42:34)
------------------
01 Banana Quintet parts 1 & 2 (21:22)
02 Banana Quintet parts 3, 4 & 5 (18:40)
03 Applause > One Banana More > Announcement CB (02:30)

Disk 2 (60:08)
------------------
05 Rut (11:28)
06 Announcement CB (00:45)
07 La Paloma (11:14)
08 Liver of live (10:43)
09 Announcement CB (00:29)
10 Ad Infinitum (16:19)
11 Death of Superman - Dream Sequence No. 1: Flying  (09:04)

As things were laid out on my iPod, next up came Oresund Space Collective's "Inside Your Head". Where Carla Bley's music was highly composed and impeccably arranged. the Collective's music is more of a "let's pick a key, start noodling, and see what happens".  Not to say that's an invalid approach, it's just a polar opposite.

As their website advertises, this is "totally improvised space rock", and  as the "collective" part of the name implies there is a somewhat revolving cast of players involved.  The tunes tend to start out with a somewhat ambient-ish feel, and then develop into a nice groove.  Think Ozric Tentacles, but with a less driving beat.  With lots of odd sounds and side-to-side panning thrown into the mix, this is good headphone music.

The band allows taping of their gigs, so in addition to their official releases there are some good concert recordings on the Live Music Archive.  That makes for a risk-free way to check them out and see if they might be something you'd like to look into further.



01 Substantia nigra (10:23)
02 Optic chiasm (16:35)
03 Fornix (12:53)
04 Aqueduct of Sylvius (9:56)
05 Vermis (20:47)

Blast from the Past: In a Silent Way

Last week on Head-Fi, somebody who listened to a lot of House music was looking for some recommendations of jazz music to check out.  The first thing that jumped to mind for me was Miles Davis' "In a Silent Way".

As I posted at Head-Fi, I consider Silent Way to be one of the masterpieces of modern music.  (The same goes for Miles' "Kind of Blue" - and how many artists can you think of that released two classic albums, ten years apart, in two distinct genres?).

While "Filles de Kilimanjaro", recorded in 1968 and released in 1969, may have hinted at the direction Miles was going to head, Silent Way was his first big step away from jazz and towards the new genre of fusion, albeit an almost proto-ambient type of fusion. 

Silent Way's foundation is the 3 keyboard lineup of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Joe Zawinul.  John McLaughlin's guitar work here is tasty and restrained, as is Tony Williams' drumming.  Dave Holland shows why he is one of the all-time great jazz bassists.  Top it off with Wayne Shorter on sax and of course Miles on trumpet, both of them in a mode of adding to the milieu rather than tearing off solos.  One the remarkable things about the band Miles put together for the Silent Way sessions is that the members went on the form many of the seminal early '70s fusion bands:  Weather Report (Joe Zawinul & Wayne Shorter), Return to Forever (Chick Corea), Mahavishnu Orchestra (John McLaughlin), Headhunters (Herbie Hancock), and Tony Williams Lifetime (Tony & John McLaughlin).

Heavily edited and pieced together into two long tracks by Teo Macero, Silent Way moves away from individual solos and instead focuses on the group as a cohesive unit.  Unlike the subsequent Bitches Brew, which is very dense and challenging, Silent Way is beautifully ethereal.  Turn off the lights, pop on the headphones, and get lost in the atmospherics that these great musicians created.

1."Shhh/Peaceful" - 18:16
2. "In a Silent Way/It's About That Time" - 19:52

European Music Scene

I got to thinking the other day about how much of the music I've been picking up recently has been coming from Europe.  One of the major sources for my music is the Dime torrent site, where concert recordings of artists who do not object to these shows being traded are available for downloading.

Between terrestrial radio sources and European satellites, there are a ton of jazz & fusion concert recordiongs floating around out there.  And while a fair amount of these concerts are by American artists (Herbie Hancock jumps to mind as an artist who has had a fair number of concerts broadcast in the past couple of years) there is also a pretty solid contingent of newer artists from Europe who are making some very interesting music.  I've posted before about Eivind Aarset from Norway, and there is his cohort in the "nu jazz" scene Nils Petter Molvaer.  There's the excellent Dutch sax player Tineke Postma, the eccentric Oddjob, Marc Ducret, Nguyên Lê, Wolfgang Muthspiel...I could go on for awhile here.

The sheer variety of music broadcasts from Europe are impressive, and based on what pops up on the torrent sites we just don't get much of this type of music broadcast here in the States.  There are some exceptions of course - the Monterey and New Orleans Jazz Festivals have broadcast over the past few years (the 2006 Monterey set by Charles Lloyd remains a favorite of mine).

Unfortunately it seems that here in the US the media caters to the lowest common denominator - if they can't make a shitload of money off of something it's just forgotten.  It's a pity and probably doesn't bode well for the future of jazz in America, which is ironic.

Quiet Sunday Morning with Radio Massacre International

It's a rainy Sunday morning here in the Seattle area (of course it's raining, my son's baseball team was supposed to wrap up their fall season with a double-header later today - don't think that's gonna happen).

Everybody else was sleeping in so I had the family room to myself, decided to grab a book and my ipod and enjoy something mellow.

Radio Massacre International's Bothered Atmos really fit the bill.  Floating along in a nice ethereal space it was just what I needed given the mood of the morning.  These guys have some excellent releases out, think early Tangerine Dream as a general frame of reference.

1. Weightless (16:55)
2. Snap (11:56)
3. All The Water In The Universe Is Melted Comets (23:22)
4. Cathredral Floor (21:39)

Live Unitopia

So a recording from one of the Unitopia shows from their brief European tour this month has surfaced on Dime:
http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=327666

The sound is pretty good, although I must say that big part of what I like about them is the pristine production on their studio CDs.  Nevertheless this is a nice document of how they sound as a live band.  Also, the rumor is that one of the shows was recorded for a DVD release.

Odds and Ends

I was listening to Unitopia's "The Garden" over the weekend and was struck by the closing song "321".  Written as a tribute to the Beaconsfield Miners, the song really hit home in light of the amazing story of the Chilean miners rescued last week.

Three hundred and twenty-one hours, locked inside the earth
Three hundred and twenty-one hours, before we’d see the sun again
Three hundred and twenty-one hours, every minute lasts a lifetime
Three hundred and twenty-one hours…..

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Djam Karet is apparently out with a new release.  The clips on the website sound promising, I may have to pick this one up as I've enjoyed a number of their previous albums, especially "New Dark Age".


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For those who enjoy music more in the progressive rock vein, if you don't already you'll want to check out Bill's Prog Blog.

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Blast from the past files:  over the weekend I stumbled across my copy of Todd Rundgren's Utopia, the 1974 debut by that band.  Did it sound dated?  Maybe just a little bit.  But what a great album, brought back some memories of college.

Unitopia - Artificial

Unitopia is an Australian prog-rock band that turned a lot of ears with their 2008 double CD “The Garden”.  Falling into a “melodic symphonic prog” category, “The Garden” was an excellent pseudo-concept album anchored by a couple of epic tracks (the 22 minute title track and the 18 minute “Journey’s Friend”).



2010’s follow up, “Artificial”, is another extremely strong release.

“Artificial” is a bit more of a concept album than was “The Garden”.  According to Unitopia’s website, “Artificial” is “a 10 part suite based on the themes of artificial intelligence and behavior and how we perceive ourselves as a society and as individuals.  Covering topics such as dealing with low self esteem, overcoming depression, feelings of nostalgia and longing for the “good old days” and man’s great leap forward in science and technology”.



The CD’s ten tracks flow seamlessly together, presenting themselves a single, coherent piece with the final track, “The Great Reward”, revisiting many of the themes and pulling them all together to bring the CD to a strong conclusion.  Standout tracks include the 13 minute “Tesla” (named after the inventor Nikola Tesla) which moves through several different musical terrains to great effect, “Nothing Lasts Forever”, a piece of Beatle-esque pop confectionery straight from Sgt. Pepper, and “Rule of 3’s” (Nikola Tesla became obsessed with the number 3) which features a sinewy guitar riff that reminds me a bit of Martin Barre circa Thick as a Brick.



Mark Trueack’s vocals are a real strong point for the band, as are Matt Williams’ guitar work and Sean Timms’ keyboards.  Peter Raidel provides some very tasty sax work, I know a lot of prog fans don’t really care for sax but as a jazz fan I really appreciate the texture it can bring to the music, and Peter does a fantastic job here.  Jamie Jones (Drums), Shaun Duncan (Bass) and Tim Irrgang (Percussion) make up the strong rhythm section.  The overall production is superb as well.



Not only is Artificial on my list as one of the best releases of 2010, it is one of my “Desert Island Discs”.  Artificial is available from Amazon.

Miles from India

Clearly I have Miles Davis on the brain, and that's OK!

Last night I listened to the first disc of Miles from India, a fascinating collaboration between western musicians, many of whom had played with Miles over the years, and musicians from India.  Bob Belden produced this package and did a fantastic job of selecting the artists and a cross-section of Miles' music.  My tastes run towards Miles' electric period (from Silent Way through his "retirement" in '75) although I do enjoy some of his earlier work (and come on, "Kind of Blue" still stands as an absolute masterpiece of 20th century music).

The music here really benefits from the textures added by the Indian musicians on traditional eastern instruments.  The contrast between the organic sounds of their instruments with Pete Cosey's downright nasty guitar tone is really a beautiful thing.  Mike Stern also adds some nice guitar work on a couple of tracks, and really the list of musicians is a "who's who" of jazz musicians who had worked with Miles including Ron Carter, Gary Bartz, Michael Henderson, Chick Corea, Marcus Miller, John McLaughlin, and so on.

This is a truly excellent album.

Music in Weird Places

I listen to a lot of music when I'm doing other things - driving, walking, reading, etc.  I'd consider all of those pretty common I guess.

Today I had to have an MRI, and the radiology center had a pretty extensive list of music to choose from to listen to during the procedure.  Since I was pretty antsy about the whole thing I wanted something kind of relaxing, so I opted for Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain".  In retrospect, probably not the best choice for the circumstances.  I should have chosen some sort of industrial/metal rock, then all of the weird grinding/buzzing/clicking noises the machine made would have just blended in.

Anyway, I'm hoping to pick up the pace on the posts, and I'm working on one in more of a prog-rock vein right now...

Parallel Realities Live (DVD)

  Concert DVDs can be tough to get totally right.  Many of them get too gimmicky with the visual effects (quick cuts between musicians, totally losing any flow of the music), sometimes the 5.1 mixes are a distraction rather than an enhancement, and frankly some artists’ music just doesn’t come across as well live as in the studio.

Recorded 20 years ago, Parallel Realities Live has long been my favorite concert DVD.  It nails all three of the main criteria I have for a concert DVD (in ascending order of importance):

1.  Video:  No frenetic cutting between camera angles, this DVD lets you take in the concert with a nice, relaxed perspective.  It was also shot in 16:9 aspect ratio (surely a rarity in 1990) so it looks great on a widescreen TV.

2. Audio: The obligatory Dolby Digital 5.1 mix sounds very good, and the DVD also includes a PCM stereo (lossless) audio track for your 2 channel listening pleasure.  Superbly recorded and mixed, this one is a gem and sounds better than many CDs.  

3.  The Music:  Talk about a super-group!  Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette are all among the premier jazz players on their respective instruments, and Pat Metheny is arguably the greatest living jazz guitarist.  The performances here are top notch, and cover a wide range stylistically.  

Another nice thing about this DVD is that you can just pop it into the DVD player and it starts playing, no messing around with a menu required.  This is an excellent release featuring four premier jazz musicians who are playing at the top of their game from start to finish.

Eivind Aarset - Live Extracts

One of the more interesting musical diversions for me in recent years has been Eivind Aarset.  I first heard his music about 5 years ago when I picked up a concert recording off of Dime.  A long time collaborator with Nils Pettter Molvaer of the Nordic “Nu Jazz” movement, Aarset’s music is a sublime mixture of ambient soundscapes, drums-n-bass rhythms, and guitar tones that range from patented Stratocaster clean to downright nasty to “that can’t be a guitar”.

In addition to grabbing Aarset concerts whenever they popped up on Dime, I started buying his studio releases, beginning with his debut “Electronic Noire” and continuing up through 2007’s “Sonic Codex”.  While most of his live shows that I had heard had been in a trio format, the tours following Sonic Codex found Aarset’s band having expanded to a sextet.  The resulting density of the sound is very compelling.

Now I have a long standing preference for live music, and enjoy artists who don’t try to recreate the studio version of a song onstage but instead make it something new every time it’s played.  (The studio version of the Dead’s “Dark Star” was 2:40, on 1969’s Live/Dead it’s 23:18 - that’s making something new!).  Aarset’s music takes on a very different breadth and scope when played live.

The CD starts off in a very ambient space with “Electromoers”, which flows into an epic 10 minute “Electromagnetic” that builds from a subtle melody to an all out industrial attack.  Some seriously heavy shit.  In fact the most noticeable difference between the studio versions of these songs and their presentation here is the huge dynamic range, the contrast between the ambient valleys and the intense peaks of the music.  

Drøbak Saray and Still Changing are two other particularly strong songs, with Drøbak Saray having a nice middle-eastern influenced melodic hook.  But this CD isn’t about melody, it’s about soundscapes of varying intensity.  One of my favorite releases of 2010 for sure.

Buying Music Online in Lossless Format

Most of my recent music buying has been used CDs via Amazon.  I can't bring myself to pay $10 for an MP3 version of a CD when I can get the CD itself for about the same price.  (Amazon's MP3 encoding is perfectly fine, as far as I can tell they use LAME by default, with most CDs encoded at 256K or V-0 which to most people is indistinguishable from lossless).

But personally, for the right price I'd much rather be able to download the music in full CD quality.

HD Tracks has a pretty decent library of lossless music at around $12 for a CD, including a good portion of the ECM catalog.  And recently I picked up a couple of Eivind Aarset releases from Gube Music which appears to primarily carry music by nordic artists, again for about $12 after the exchange rate.  (I'm currently also working on a post about Aarset's "Live Extracts CD).  No DRM, liner notes & cover art in PDF format, I could get very used to buying music this way, I hate having to wait a week for the CD to get here in the mail.

Juxtaposition

One of the things that happens given the way I listen to music (I use a playlist of about 20 albums - yes I still call them albums - that I update and sync to my iPhone every Sunday, then start at the beginning on Monday and play it straight through) is that I get some interesting juxtapositions of music.  This morning when I fired the music up getting ready for work I was in the middle of "Gateway", the first release by the Gateway Trio of John Abercrombie, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette.  Great album, amazing band.  I think I only got the last track or two in, and then it was Jethro Tull's "Nothing is Easy - Live at the Isle of Wight 1970".  Another great band, but just a tad of a shift in genres there!

To Shred Or Not To Shred, That Is The Question

Over the weekend I grabbed a remastered version of the Carlos Santana / John McLaughlin show from Berkeley, CA (9/5/73).  The pair did a brief tour in support of their "Love Devotion Surrender" album, and the Chicago show from that tour has been widely circulated from a recording of the FM broadcast.  The Berkeley show is also from an FM recording, and the overall quality is very good.

Both of these guys were at creative peaks around this time with Santana having recorded the epic "Lotus" live album a couple of months prior in Japan, while McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra was breaking up after releasing two seminal fusion recording over the previous two years.

Propelled by Billy Cobham's insistent drumming, the relatively simple arrangements build a base for relentless guitar dueling between Carlos and John.  Khalid Yasin (aka Larry Young) on organ, Doug Rauch on bass and Armando Peraza on congas round out the band.  There is some incredible guitar playing during this show, and there is nothing subtle about this musical assault.  Highly recommended.

Disc 1
Meditation
The Life Divine
A Love Supreme
I’m Aware of You

Disc 2
Flame-Sky
Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=265710

Welcome to Music for the Mind!

From the Amazon.com review of "Music and the Mind" by Anthony Storr:  'British psychologist Storr argues that music originates from the human brain, promotes order within the mind, exalts life and gives it meaning.' Well, yeah.  I cannot imagine life without music, it's just such an integral part of my life.  For me I use it as an enhancement of my surroundings (listening to "Bitches Brew" while sailing past Kilauea at night was almost a religious experience), or as a distraction from the tedium of driving, or just as way to get "out of body" for a while and escape into another place.

So this blog is just going to be about music I'm currently enjoying, be it a new release or an old gem I may have recently discovered or re-discovered.  I've got pretty diverse tastes in music, so things will be ranging from jazz & fusion to progressive rock to electronic & ambient to who knows what.  I'll also blog about concert recordings I've come across on any of the bit torrent sites I frequent as this is the way I usually find new music - there are a number of artists I found out about from a concert I downloaded via bit-torrent and went on to purchase official releases by.  From time to time I may get into the technical side of things, such as headphones or music devices, but one thing I'm to stay away from is politics.  I've got strong political opinions but music is about bring people together, so in that spirit I'm going to stay away from a topic that can be so divisive these days.

Onward and upward!