Showing posts with label Knut Rössler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Knut Rössler. Show all posts

Tuesday, 5 May 2015

Knut Rössler 's Brassy Brew - Bus Stop (Germany, 1981)



Surely there's nothing like a gorgeous cover photo as the above.

This is the brainchild and compositions of saxophonist and flautist Knut Rössler.
Remember him?  He was in Fuchs-Goos Band and Chameleon which I posted here.  He also appeared with G. Lawall here.

The music is quite light and funky and less progressive than the Chameleon 2 record which for me is his best work.  That album came together like magic in a progressive all-round harmony.

Clearly the most accessible track is B2's perfectly titled "Hit": 





A bit simplistic, but perfect for a pretty spring day.



Thursday, 6 February 2014

Fuchs-Goos-Band's Chameleon 2 from 1981 and Chameleon 1979, by request







A really beautiful Euro-fusion album, which is unfairly ignored and forgotten.

This band comprises the following highly talented German jazz musicians: Christoph Spendel (keyboards), Joachim Fuchs-Charrier (percussion), Knut Rössler on saxes and flute, Werner Goos of course on guitar, and Paul Muller on bass, and this is apparently their only output.  Between this one and the earlier Chameleon from 1979 the only man in common was Knut.  So I can't say for sure the title implies a follow-up installment to the earlier record, which was more energetic and synthesized, understandably, since as we've seen before, the eighties brought in a trend towards more acoustic music.  Notice that Knut was also in the amazing ethnic-fusion band Orexis, virtually all their albums, so you get an idea of how much a part of the progressive fusion scene he was.  The album "Three Chairs" he did with Goos and Spendel later (in 1982 I think) is also highly recommended but was far more acoustic than even this one.

On to the music, which as usual with these great Euro-fusion records is well written, interesting, never boring, and with chamber music importations.  Consider the marvellous track "Song for a Lady" which recalls multiple previous flute/guitar tender tracks like Gong's Mireille for ex.  Here the playing of Knut is utterly out of this world:





As is his soprano sax playing on top of phasing electric guitar arpeggio series on the drawn-out but never tedious "Zyklus One":