Soffgruppen - Greatest Sits, 1975

 

A classic fusion record for sure, one-off only unfortunately.  From discogs:

Swedish avant-garde and experimental jazz band from Gothenburg.

They consisted of:

Matz Nilsson on electric bass and double bass

Anders Kjellberg on drums, percussion and bells

Pierre Swärd on piano, hammond organ and cowbell

Claes Yngström on guitar

Stephen Frankevich on the trumpet

The usual high energy instrumentals with electric instruments, some meandering free jazz passages unfort., the gorgeous electric piano with vibrato sound we miss so much, etc. Most of the music I see was written by bassist Nilsson, who also played in Hawk On Flight another brilliant fusion band, the more free jazz oriented (and boring) Mount Everest, plus with Janne Schaffer, etc.

His composition called Jag Tanker:

Brilliant stuff, wish there was more...

More Igor Nazaruk from the uploaded miscellany

When Pipichol uploaded more from him from varied collections I jumped on it instantly as can be duly expected.

You can find that back here, in the comments section, (hopefully still sitting there).  Along with the standard LPs which we know about, and which were recorded in the discogs database, there is a bunch of loose tracks in one of the folders from miscellaneous sources presumably based on the varied sounds ranging from poppish vocal songs to modern classical through jazzier stuff.

Some of this is well worth hearing, here and there.  I was shocked by the advanced sounds of this very progressive piece:

and the wonderful energetic fusion that you can find here:

If only! there was a whole album of similar stuff out there waiting for us to discover/unearth it!

and the modern classical on this track:

Translations? Provenances?

As usual with the cyrrilic alphabet in the way it's impossible to figure out what any of this is. Hopefully some enlightenment forthcoming?

As was the case with Chugonov, what a shame we can't hear absolutely everything he created or alternatively, that he didn't create more!  But it seems we've made a big step in that direction, thanks to his incomparable generosity here.

The requested US AOR Kardaz (1979)

Superb cover art in such a low key lofi way but what about the music? Well it's squarely pop aor & not so hard rock, typical of the mid 70s USA although this came out late in the game.  As usual in these cases there are a couple of nice songs, but a lot of throwaway perhaps wannabe-commercial compositions. The opener Another Faceless Crowd brings back some lovely hints of our old fave Baby Grand with its evocation of the traveling musician's life perpetually on the road:

And Don't Ever Stop [playing this kind of classic rock]:

Jaroslaw Smietana's 1 to 4 from 1986

A lovely Eastern European fusion album that was unknown to me until recently. The remainder of his work is a bit too normal jazz. This one does remind me of some of the fusionary greats like Urbaniak, etc. Notice the button of 'f*ckin gonuts' up there. Info here.

Scandinavian Song:

Risa Potters' 2 from 1970 & 1972, by request

In addition to being a beautiful woman, some incredibly lovely songs can be found on these 2 unknown LPs, and thanks for bringing them to our attention.  Discogged here.

The first one sounds similar to a cross between Mary Hopkin's Earth Song with its highly gentle acoustics and the ever creative Joni in her earliest, guitar-augmented by string quartet phase eg Song to a Seagull or Clouds or, if you know it, the Nico album from 1967 called Chelsea Girl. In other words, very emotional, tender, expressive, and delicate with its arrangements.  The earlier mentioned beautiful Shelagh McDonald is also similar.  (I hope everyone knows her 2  albums! I've loved those so deeply since I first heard them decades ago.)

I think between the 2 of them the first has the most interesting and creative songwriting, perhaps predictably, with the occasional awkward lyric like on Half Woman Half Child in which she actually says, God must have been stoned when he created me. I find that line difficult on so many levels... but consider the amazing Old Man track:

From the second album, My Mistake is simple but highly highly effective, emotionally: