Return to Michal Pavlicek in Stromboli, 1987, and Shutdown,1989

 

You might recall Michal Pavlicek's wonderful material recorded long ago for the Mini Jazz Klub EPs. I posted it here and commented on how great those compositions were from him (that one was released in 1983).   He went on to make a great deal of electric guitar music sometimes with some progressive elements, and that great piece Tvari v Tvar (translated as Face to Face) was reused subsequently quite a few times on other CDs.

From the first Stromboli, a track called Aladin clearly gives you an idea of his progressive dimensions:

The 2nd album called Shutdown, from 1989, has female vocals (Bara Basikov) and is a little bit more commercial, though a lot of it recalls the alternative music that would soon sweep the world, showing they had a feeling for the zeitgeist, here's the title track:

 

Some really remarkable Steve Vai-like guitar playing on that one with the atonal bends, oddly mixed with classical or operatic elements here too.

His work on his own even up until recent times is well worth hearing too, a rarity as an artist who never gave up that uncompromising progressive spirit. I confess I haven't heard even a slight portion of it all, and he moved into writing soundtrack stuff too, but what I did hear sounded pretty good.

Symphress - Father Time Part 1, requested, limited time only

 

From the first track you can get an idea of what this recent release, from Romania, sounds like. It's a typical mixture of heavy metal electric guitar with symphonic prog elements (chord progressions and atmospheric sounds):

Discogs has two releases listed, you can see here.

In contrast, an acoustic track:

Various, First Jazz Festival in Sofia from 1977

 

Here' s just a wonderful surprise and the kind of thing that I just live for and you too most likely.

Information:

First Jazz Festival In Sofia '77 - 1978

Vinyl rip Balkanton BTA 10288

***

01. Hello, Dolly (G. Herman) - Orch. “Dixiland”

02. Blues Ib B-Flat (J. Adderley) - Jazz Quintet

03. Golden Gate (V. Nikolov) - Orch. “White, Green, Red”

04. Samba (S. Shterev) - Jazz Quartet

05. The First By Beethoven (O. Coleman) - Orch. “Rousse”

06. A Sunday Afternoon Walk (L. Denev) - Jazz Quartet From Bulgarian State Conservatoire

07. A. Ballad (M. Stanchev) - Jazz Duo

08. Dangerous Curves (A. Bruzitsov) - Orch. “Experiment”

Information is here. You'll notice familiar names like Nikolov and White Green Red, Orch. Rousse or Septet Rousse, and Shterev. Hopefully you remember.  On the other hand there are bands we should know but don't particularly the Orch Experiment with its wonderful title:

 and the Jazz Quartet with the Sunday Afternoon Walk:

Really enjoyable stuff, totally a surprise find. Thanks a million to those who are able to dig these treasures out of the dark, hard ground...

Incredible recent work from Dave Greenslade, Time to Make Hay (2015) [limited time only]

 

Here' s a guy so well known, even my wife knows his name and some of his stuff.  And let's just say she's not exactly a prog rock fan (to my eternal chagrin).  Not at all...

I thought we were done with Greenslade back in the glorious 70s but this came up from a friend and just absolutely blew me away. OK it's not as good as the classic stuff, but boy does it come close in terms of totally original, creative compositions. There's very limited information on the discogs page, so much so that it described the music as avant garde, when in reality it's quite squarely classic progressive rock but without too much electricity / fusion / jazz, which is OK.

Title track as a first impression:

The bizarrely titled Koblenz has quite the unusual riff, chords, and even overall sound, following the drum machine introduction:

I love the way he develops the oddness of it with the fake orchestra playing almost symphonic patterns and sax melody as it moves on. 

Suffice it to say that in addition to those 2 remarkable ones, there are other tracks I'm sure you will be surprised and delighted by. Very little that is not worth hearing in fact.

Subsequently I went through all the post-70s material to see if this was a unique finding, and to some extent it is indeed, with not much to hang on to, in the later years.  Greenslade's discography is here. All the other albums: From the Discworld (1994), Going South (1999), Routes / Roots (2009) have only a couple of songs worth hearing, oddly enough, and the last album, G & T (2021), is just purely simple blues. Note however the incredible composition Sideways, from 2009, similar to old Dave Stewart (eg Egg) or Radio Piece:

But boy is this one worth savoring, and keeping forever.

Back to Neil Ardley again with Time Flowers

 

I thought I had thoroughly listened to all his discography some time back with the post here, but I was quite wrong about that. Although this music from 1971 is mostly quite ordinary and even too much in the big band direction there is one standout composition which absolutely blew me away and hopefully others too, called The Time Flowers. As the narrator explains, it's a symphonic poem based on a science fiction or fantasy short story. It covers just about everything interesting and creative in modern music and fusion, perhaps you could compare it to the long suite like the Peabody Wind Ensemble track Fourth Stream, but more refined and delicate in ideas and occasionally even more atonal and dissonant. For me, the perfect mixture of complex classical music and fusion that I absolutely crave at all times. It also seems shockingly strange to me that such a great piece of music is so completely forgotten, even for those, like me, who are very well acquainted with Neil Ardley. Note that it's co-composed with Keith Winter, keyboardist on the Isotope albums.

There's a whole bunch of other luminaries on this collection btw, including Heckstall-Smith, Dave Greenslade (who is going to come up here shortly too), my beloved Mike Gibbs, and our old library favourite from long ago, Frank Ricotti on vibes, amazingly, on the Time Flowers composition.

I suppose I might have encountered this back then when I quickly went through all his works, but somehow I missed this one. Good to look back once in a while.