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)