Brecker Bros in Steps and Steps Ahead, 7 albums.

 

The Brecker Bros were a band I diligently avoided due to their horrific connection with the toxic David Sanborn, the musical equivalent of a fresh napalm facewash in a slop bucket, but actually the Bros. turned out to be pretty good when I had a listen to their discography-- at least, the first ST album (1975) was good, quite progressive music along the lines of the Auracle Glider material and their related artists. Michael Brecker and Mike Mainieri, who was also on these pages on a couple of occasions, appear in these closely related cousin-like bands Steps and Steps Ahead.  I guess the former evolved into the latter after a couple of years.  Not to be confused with the far more brilliant Canterburian prog-fusion one-off band also called Steps. which hopefully everyone knows and possesses.  (A good example of what I was talking about when I said Euro-fusion surpassed US fusion.)  

Although the music (of US Steps) doesn't quite cut it like the first Brecker album there is a lot of enjoyable fusion spread out between these 7 albums, 8 LPs actually since one is the obligatory double-live where the overextended improvisations take over more than 95% of the playtimes like the so-called non-coding "junk DNA" that makes up most of our chromosomes.  

As expected, by the time of 1989's NYC the quality of the composition has drastically declined (LPDP), from a not so high basis admittedly, and the only surprise I had was that there wasn't some rapper yelling in the background about "them Brooklyn projects" on top of the over-loud slapped bass, screeching Sanboring saxes, and digital drums.  I think in particular the compositions of Mainieri really stand out in the whole, for example, he made Red Neon, Go or Give, which appeared (shockingly) on the NYC album, it reminds not a little of the French band Noco Music I ripped long ago:

Although a more typical song for this band is the title track to Modern Times (1984):