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.

Snowball 1977, by request, with Joey Carbone and Richie Zito

 

By request this album databased here is a classic tax scam release produced by Robert Gallo who I mentioned and featured some time ago.  The music is very generic pop rock from the seventies with that classic sound of piano plus guitar plus harmony vocals often with Beatlesian influences in arrangement and songwriting.  It's amazing how some artists have that lucky ability to influence an entire decade, as Nirvana did for the nineties.

First track:

Back to Mike Moss and Four Rivers with Upstream

Not quite the same as the Ain Soph piece, this is wholly improvised I believe. Information here.

B2's Inside:

Jeff Berlin, three albums

From discogs:

Jeff Berlin (born Queens, New York, January 17, 1953) is an American jazz fusion electric bass player, best known for playing and recording with Bill Bruford's band in the late 1970s.

These are his first three albums from the 80s.  T. Lavitz worked with him on the Champion album.

From Champion, Mother Lode is quite interesting and energetic:

As you might reasonably expect the last album from 1986 called Pump It presents a serious decline in progressiveness.

T. Lavitz's first 4 albums 1984 to 1989 (Extended Play, Storytime, From the West, Bad Habitz)

His discography here.  He appeared on the preceding John Macey's 1984 Meltdown album.

American jazz-rock/fusion keyboardist, composer and producer (Lakewood, NJ, 16 April 1956 - 7 October 2010). Commonly known as just "T".

Believe it or not he even has a wiki page.

From the first EP, Crystal:

This and other songs were recycled for later albums.

Note that he appeared in the wonderful fusion band Electric Tigers, which is worth checking out too, their first album came out in 1985.

From Storytime, Sparkle Plenty, reminding me a lot of the Auracle keyboardist John Serry's wonderful works:

The track referring to Times Square in NYC is remarkably pretty:

The long awaited and requested John Macey's Meltdown album [limited time only]

 

There are four albums or eps in total as you can see here.  I'll post a completion at the bottom here so we can have it all together for once.  1981's Eclipse of course was the masterpiece, but 1987's More Notes was also really impressive, less so the late follow up, Metalbopblues, from 1992.  

This one is from the Orwellian year 1984 and it's quite uneven, with two bluesy vocal tracks that feature a more commercial approach with attempts at clever lyrics (eg, Presidential Ambitions) but luckily there are some really solid electric guitar-based fusion pieces (similar to the Eclipse album that is) as you can see from the first and ST track which brings to mind all the great American fusion we've heard before:

Oh god do I love that complex, high energy, high creativity sound, and boy do I miss it too.

So this was well worth obtaining to achieve a completion for this artist.

The requested Zaviot ST (both albums)

These guys from Israel made two albums in the mid eighties, as you can see here.  Very similar to the Tel Aviv Connection who were basically the same band.

It's light fusion / contemporary jazz with those overlong improvisations that I dread always.

The first track called Slide:

The Tel-Aviv Connection from 1988, as requested

These folks made only one album featuring the German keyboardist Christoph Spendel who has appeared here before, a few times for ex here with Chameleon. The music is very light fusion with contemporary jazz, and those overlong solos I dread so much.

Sample track, Jerry and Jon:

Requested Remi Chaudagne's 1984 L'ile des Temps, plus Solo To, 1992

Information on this interesting and slightly odd album here.  There are synthesizers and a predominant bass with some saxophone solos and melodies here and there, but the whole makes for an odd listening experience with in my opinion some excess bass solos, some songs being just played on bass, and very limited use of the digital keyboards (in terms of textures and sounds), equally limited compositional efforts.  Nonetheless it's quite interesting in its overall uniqueness.

Desirs is a little bit more fleshed out in ideas than most of these tracks:

I managed to find his second album which came out a decade later, but it's even more simplified and heavy on the bass solos.

Arttu Takalo: Never Stop Dreaming, Songs for Sad People, The man in the shadows [limited time only]

 

Here's some more recent material.

From discogs:

Finnish vibraphonist, percussionist, composer and band leader. Born on September 18, 1971 in Kouvola, Finland.

There are some really lovely tracks here and there in these albums which are mostly instrumental, sparsely arranged pieces, but unfortunately a lot of generic neo-art rock / prog.  

Check out these very tasty samples for an idea but don't expect the quality to hold all the way through.

Du Smakar Salt, from Neverstopdreaming

From Songs for Sad, A Flower Picked by a Girl's Finger: