Back to Francis Coppieters with the amazing library KTS-5

 

Here's one I was really looking forward to enormously based on the hype associated with it (from two people?).  We saw him before back here with the amazing Colors in Jazz which personally I really love. In addition to the usual generic and completely ordinary, by the numbers, library stuff which infects all these records, there are some bona fide magically original tracks or compositions, such as the opener, Vent Vert:

A nice find, I never would have known about on my own.

Jackie Orszaczky [ex-Syrius] - Beramiada (HUN 1975)

Again a beautiful cover graphic.

Jackie Orszaczky:  Bass guitarist, singer, composer, songwriter, producer. Born in Hungary, Budapest 1948. Lived and worked in Australia since 1974 he died in Sydney in 2008. 

Most notably he played in the group Syrius (of Devil's Masquerade fame) which released two seventies albums.  After their debut he made this remarkable instrumental fusion album which is just amazing.  The discogs review doesn't at all do it justice:

When I first found out about this record, a friend of mine remarked that the guy still played around Sydney. Sure enough, a month or so later I was standing in the Erskenville Rose listening to Orszaczky’s band play some great live funk. I’ll never forget some guy just walking out from the audience and up to the mic. He whips out a harmonica from his pocket and starts playing the funkiest harmonica solo I have ever heard. But back to his first solo record. When I first found this album, I wasn’t that excited because I had no idea how hard it was to come by. I found out about it, and bought a copy at my local record store the next day for a very reasonable price. When I got home I skipped right through the first side and came to rest on ‘Friends of Mrs. S’ with it’s great breakbeat intro and compelling jazz/funk sound. It wasn’t till a while later that I came to discover other tracks like on the album like the fusiony ‘White Raven’, or the epic 11 minute suite ‘Tubarose’ with it’s great bass-line and building groove. It was even later that I learnt about Jackie’s history with the Hungarian jazz-rock outfit Syrius, and that they had recorded their first album and released it in Australia on the Spin label (aussiefunk.blogspot.com).

The track Morning in Beramiada is just about as perfect a fusion track as you could ever dream of, with the slow rolling strumming start complete with guitar above the first fret plucking and energetic riffage, the transition before the  midway mark into a seemingly different track followed by those unison instrumental passages:

Given the level of composition here it's really hard to believe this record isn't better known.  Both energy and creativity are sustained all the way through the approx. 35 minutes playing time.

Best from Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo (7 albums)

Another incredibly, interminably long discography as you can see here.  Again, the usual comments about how this genome has some bona fide functional genes but tons and tons of 'junk dna' interspersed throughout, the majority of the music in fact. And I know lots of people will argue with me about this. 

The music is very uneven and for me at least, out of 7 albums there are perhaps a dozen tracks I would enjoy listening more than once or twice.  Very libraryish situation of course. 

All instrumental fusion with classical elements as you'd expect from the European provenance.

Theme for Gabor from 1976's Night Flight

Magic Mystic Face from 1977's Faces

Concerto, from Mizrab:

Discogs info:

Szabó Gábor István

Profile: Hungarian jazz guitarist.

Born: 8 March 1936 in Budapest, Hungary.

Died: 26 February 1982 in Budapest, Hungary (aged 45).

An influential jazz guitarist, famous for mixing jazz, pop-rock, and his native Hungarian music. Inspired by jazz music heard on Voice Of America radio broadcasts, Szabó began playing guitar at the age of 14.

Escaping Hungary in 1956 and moving to the US where he attended the Berkeley School Of Music in Boston. In 1958, he was also invited to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival. Szabó then went on to perform with the quintet of southern California drummer Chico Hamilton from 1961 to 1965.

Beginning in 1966, he recorded a well-received span of albums under his own name on the Impulse! label. In the late 1960s he co-founded the short-lived Skye Records label along with Cal Tjader and Gary McFarland. Later he signed with Blue Thumb Records and CTI Records.

Szabó died in Budapest in 1982 from liver and kidney disease while on a visit to his homeland.

Rock On, Danny Edwardson and Seamus Sell, by request

By request, this KPM library record is all instrumental rock riffs or passages with typical chord progressions heard before on numerous seventies rock records-- sometimes bluesy, sometimes funky, sometimes more mellowed out or minor, a good imitation but quite lacking vs. the 'real thing' because of the absence of vocals in my opinion.

Francis Coppieters, Piano Viberations (1975) and Colours in Jazz (1984)

A Belgian jazz pianist, see here.  Two library or librarylike records with some generic music but also some nicely written tunes.  From the 1975, Funky Chimes:

Dig that great Alan Hawkshaw or Frank Ricotti sound to it.

The remarkable composition Aquarelle really astonished me when I first heard it:

Quite surprisingly then, it turns out the 1984 album is better than the one that came a decade before.

More to come from him soon.