Mini Jazz Klub 28, 1980 (Quintetto di Giorgio Gaslini)

Italian composer Giorgio Gaslini has a huge output as you can see, and moreover he is blessed with a wikipedia page.  I'd be curious to know if there is something worth hearing somewhere in that stuff.  On the other hand his quintet didn't make too much, this Mini Jazz Klub its first production being a bit stuck in the trad. jazz territory versus fusion I found a slight bit disappointing.  The last track, Praga Song:

Jumping to 1980: Formace JQ in Mini Jazz Klub 27

An amazing little gem by a band who seemingly never made anything else, unfortunately.  This came relatively late in the series but is squarely in the synth-library and fusion territory of the mid-70s.

The songs are all named after famous astronomers and the opener on the topic of Galileo is just so hugely enjoyable:





It reminds me a bit of the library work of Oscar Rocchi, whose work we featured before in his involvement as the Modern Sound Quartet.

Impuls in Mini Jazz Klub 7, 1977

As was the case with Energit last time, the Impuls Mini Jazz Klub material was recycled for the CD release of the 1977 Impuls album along with all the Jazzrockova material.  So those who had that CD copy will find nothing new here at all in this post, a common occurrence presumably for some.

The EP tracks however are outstanding, well worth hearing, and probably better than the tracks on the LP release, consider:

Energit in Mini Jazz Klub 6, 1977

This EP was added in along with the Energit track "Superstimulator" from Jazzrockova II to the CD reissue of Energit and Piknik.  (The latter includes some rock-like live performances that proved quite disappointing.)

Their Mini Jazz Klub proved fantastic, though:





Of course, just after the ST album they were at the height of their game.

Famous Czech fusioneers Jazz Q, Impuls and Energit in the Jazzrockova Dilnas from 1975 and 1977

In relation to the Mini Jazz Klub series (more to come on that subject later) I noticed these other Panton LPs with the famous bands Jazz Q, Energit and Impuls (plus another band called CHASA with a very disappointing ethnic entry, who apparently never had an LP release).  I think you have already all the albums of those 3 biggies.  (In relation to the middle band, the Lubos Andrst album Capricornus is one of my all-time favourite fusion albums too featuring as it does that supernatural European fusion mix of chamber music and intelligent composition.)  And Martin Kratochvil with that amazing April Orchestra posted years ago here played in Jazz Q, just to remind you.

As far as I know none of these tracks appeared on the released LPs from the seventies which the bands put out.  Some, perhaps all, did show up later on the recent CD reissues.

From the first album it's Impuls' Sly mastery of hard fusion that just knocks me flat-out:





Now turning our attention to the possibly superior second album the most noteworthy entry is the Jazz Q track oddly entitled Na Shledanou, Joan: 






Martin really had a gift for combining (early "mashup"?) blues or jazz-based patterns with his classical education in music, as in this piece.

Kenneth Knudsen and Anima, 5 albums: Pictures (76), Anima (79), Kilgore (80), Songs (82), and Shanghai Circus (86) [LIMITED TIME ONLY]

Recall I posted once his Anima work in lossless, and a beautiful work that was and is, eternally.  The number of visits to and downloads on that post (numbering in the kilos) testify to its (killer) popularity.  But in my opinion his masterpiece was its predecessor called Pictures, from 1976.  And of course to be complete one would have to include the more experimental material he did in Coronarias Dans (two albums, both recommended).

Moving on to the 80s from Anima the album, the band with the same name and led by him is interesting at least in part for the progressive quality of Kilgore, with its fusion elements, and occasional (late) Genesis sound, plus the prog-pop of Songs.  I think someone once asked for a rip of that one too and it was posted in comments somewhere, but here it is again.   And then after that, of course, by the year 1986, we take a nosedive into silly 80s rock, with portentous talk and reggae, inevitably.

The track called Signal from his first record just blows me away, esp. with its hearkening back to the electric piano work of Coronarias:





What's especially remarkable to me though is how far he advanced since the Coronarias album that just preceded, in terms of inventiveness and variety, it's as if we are on a different planet here.

Just to give you an idea, from 1980's Kilgore, the following interesting track called Circles is clearly beholden to Peter Gabriel:

(Kyriakos Sfetsas in) Greek Fusion Orchestra's Without Boundaries from 1980

Some might already be quite familiar with this, but I never heard of it until very recently.

The masterpiece of Kyrias Sftesas, who composed quite a bit of music, I would bet this was the only progressive album he made, and it's quite the impressive work.  It features four long tracks, all equally wonderful in some way or another, perhaps similar a bit to Vanessa's Black and White masterpiece though with less of the intense electric fusion, more classical and acoustic piano passages.

My favourite in terms of sheer unbridled creativity is the Ballad for John:





The university composition education really shines through here.

Does anyone know if he did anything else worth hearing?