New Cold Fusion Band Bozon (1980), limited time only

Some of the best music I've heard since our last recent-era discoveries Zopp and Level F (which were already more than a year ago!) this is really exceptionally beautiful progressive fusion complete with that tenderness that chamber ideas from European classical music add to the genre, like some of the best Muffins material in their earliest days.

From the CD packaging / discogs:

The band heard on this CD was Bozon in its final incarnation. Bozon began in the late seventies forging a unique form of jazz-rock in a rehearsal studio (”the space”) behind the Dharma Submarine Shop near the nexus of Market and Van Ness streets in San Francisco. Countless long days and late nights were spent working on complex original compositions that often featured an anarchic sense of humor and “odd” time signatures (with no regard, indeed a disdain for the monotony of the four-four disco beat so prevalent at the time). The diversity of the players’ backgrounds brought a large palette of influences into the mix. Sometimes, this created an overly complicated gumbo of confusion (both for the players and listeners). However, when things did go right, the results could be surprising and sublime. Bozon played a modest succession of rather eccentric parties and gigs, but it was hard to duplicate their sound out of the space. As disco gave way to punk, the handwriting was easy enough to read. The group disbanded in late 1980/early 1981.

The bulk of this CD was originally recorded in 1980 in the space on a couple of Teac 40-4 tape decks and the sound quality was pretty dismal. Almost three decades later this material was transferred into the digital realm (none too soon, as the tape was disintegrating) and, in a laborious process, cleaned up. Two of the pieces were originally recorded in 16 and 24 track analog studios and were also moved into Pro Tools for editing. The goal wasn’t to “re-do” the music, but to improve the sonic quality and present some lost work from an unknown band.

Pretty amazing. And such an appropriate title: 'cold fusion' referencing both the music and the technological story which you can read about here as usual on wikipedia, a fascinating scientific and sociological topic if you recall the original 'discovery' of cold fusion which happened in the late 1980s and which, to my surprise, is still being pursued by oddball scientists here and there throughout the world.

The track called Son of Chuck and Bob sounds very Muffinsish, note the high level of musical virtuosity on display here:

On the other hand, Veins in the Pavement is incredibly adventurous:

This is about as perfect as music can get for me, with the lovely anarchic-dissonant opening chord full of those chromatic minor seconds on that beautiful electric piano (reminds me of Moraz on Yes' Sound Chaser) which builds up to a riff which then goes completely haywire with quasi-atonal passages from everyone including guitarist plus garbled speech from someone in the band, with even a slowed down mysteriously dreamy bridge passage, the closest reference point being some of the wildest zeuhl material such as on the inimitable Xalph LPs I so raved about here.  If you're patient enough to listen through to the end following all the solos you'll note the song closes out with some really lovely chunky chords with the obligatory tritones that make me wish it could have gone on minutes to hours longer. A nice, mysteriously poetic title to the track too.