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viewing 1 To 18 of 18 items
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3CD
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M 1223CD
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"Multi-instrumentalist Michal Urbaniak (violin, saxophone, lyricon). was born in Warsaw in 1943 but grew up in Lodz, of which he is an ambassador and honorary citizen. In 1962 he traveled to the United States for the first time, performing at various jazz festivals with Andrzej Trzaskowski's quintet The Wreckers in Washington DC, Newport, New Orleans and New York. He received rave reviews, including in the New York Times. From 1969, he led the Michal Urbaniak Group, which consisted primarily of Polish jazz artists, namely Adam Makovicz (electric piano), Paweł Jarcębski (bass), Czesław Bartkowski (drums) and his wife Urszula Dudziak (vocals). The present Radio Bremen concert was recorded with this line-up as well. After that, he and his wife moved back to the United States, where he performed in numerous clubs and concert halls (f.e. Carnegie Hall, Beacon Theatre) with jazz stars such as Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Billy Cobham. In 1985, he participated in a recording session with Miles Davis for the album Tutu! He was a co-founder of the so-called UrbJazz fusion jazz in New York. As the first creator of fusion music, he introduced rock, rap and hip-hop into jazz by forming the band Urbanator in 1989 and the UrbSymphony Project in 1995. In the 2000s, he wrote music for 25 American movies, among others, and also appeared as an actor. To date, the exceptional Polish artist has released over 60 albums. Two original albums from Michal Urbaniak's early days and a unique live recording from Radio Bremen, where he presented the tracks from the two albums Paratyphus B and Inactin before they were released on vinyl a couple of months later."
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CD
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M 1219CD
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"Alto saxophonist Marion Brown was an initially underrated hero of the jazz avant-garde. It was only after he moved from Atlanta to New York and joined John Coltrane that audiences and critics took notice. Dedicated to discovering the far-reaching possibilities of improvisational expression, Brown possessed a truly lyrical voice. In the early seventies, he played with Anthony Braxton, Andrew Cyrille, Bennie Maupin, Jeanne Lee, and Chick Corea, among others. On this recording, he was accompanied by the German jazz musician Gunter Hampel (composer, vibraphonist, saxophonist, flutist, pianist, and bass clarinetist). His son Djinji remembers his father by saying, 'The way he played sounded like his speaking voice, the way he held his horn reminded me of the way he held my hand, the way he walked was in the same rhythm as his songs, and then everything made sense. His music was first and foremost who he was. It was the purest expression of his soul, and everything he did had the same gentle power as his music. He was truly one with his art; there was no separation between the two.'"
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2CD
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M 1221CD
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"Historic live recording of Marion Brown from the Club Lila Eule, Bremen (Germany) from April 24, 1969, feat. Ed Kroeger, Sigi Busch and Steve McCall. The alto saxophonist Marion Brown (1931), who grew up in Atlanta, moved to New York in 1965, and almost immediately, while still an unknown, played on John Coltrane's seminal album Ascension and Archie Shepp's Fire Music, quickly became one of the most radical yet romantic of free improvisers. Brown was an important figure in twentieth-century jazz. Together with Ed Kroeger (trombone), Sigi Busch (bass) and Steve McCall (drums), they played various concerts in Germany as a quartet in 1969 and also stopped at the Club Lila Eule in Bremen on April 24. His son Djinji remembers, 'His playing tone, sounded like his speaking voice, the way he held his horn reminded me of the way he held my hand, the way he walked was in the same rhythm of his songs, and then it all made sense. His music was who he was first and foremost. It was the purest expression of his soul and everything he did had the same gentle strength as his music did. He was truly one with his art, there was no separating the two.'"
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LP
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M 1214LP
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"Tony Williams certainly counts among those unique drummers in jazz today, whose work has had a lasting influence on styles and still does. At the tender age of 16, saxophonist Jackie McLean brought him to his band in New York. He also made his first recording with McLean. Soon after, aged 17, Williams was already making a splash in the second Miles Davis Quintet. Almost twenty years later, in 1980, on May 30 and 31, Tony Williams went to the Zuckerfabrik recording studio in Stuttgart/Germany, together with Tom Grant (keyboards, synthesizer, he joined this band on the recommendation of Jeff Lorber) and Patrick O'Hearn (bass, synthesizer). In the 1970s and early 1980s, this studio was an illustrious address for audio productions of all kinds. Larry Coryell, Wolfgang Dauner, Stephane Grappeli, Elvin Jones, Martin Kolbe + Ralf Illenberger, Volker Kriegel, Alphonse Mouzon, John Scofield and the United Jazz+Rock Ensemble recorded there, to name just a few. Tony Williams and Peter Schnyder co-produced the recording. The album was recorded in just two days and mixed right there in the studio. This timeless album, released in an edition of only 500 copies, was hardly promoted at the time and may therefore have remained unknown to one or the other. All the better that now for the first time since the release of the Vinyl it is also available on CD, with a significantly improved sound."
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2CD
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M 1316CD
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"Despite Manfred Schoof's various activities over the years, the number of recordings he released under his own name has remained fairly limited. That could be an indication of the high standards he applies to his publications. All the more delightful that Schoof has agreed to a publication of this performance by his second quintet on May 2, 1978 in the Bremen music club 'Römer'. This music club still exists today, albeit with a different program focus. On bass and drums, the lineup shows Günter Lenz and Ralf Hübner, members of the original Mangelsdorff quintet. Michel Pilz on the bass clarinet provides uncommon impulses in the wind section and as a soloist (his bass clarinet, rarely heard in productions of this kind, chimes wonderfully together with Schoof's trumpet). Rainer Brüninghaus on piano, e-piano and synthesizer completes this quintet. Schoof later worked with him time and again on various projects. The inclusion of keyboards and synthesizers shows parallels to later solo works by Brüninghaus, of which there are far too few. The recording of this concert by Radio Bremen is technically of high sound quality and thus offered a welcome basis to undertake a consistent remastering. The whole band is clearly enjoying the performance, this is captured very dynamically and directly; the production is extremely vivacious and timeless -- as if you were right at the concert."
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CD
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M 1215CD
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"Amazing live recordings of Bill Bruford's Earthworks, recorded in November 1987 in Bremen (Germany), musically a tremendous show to remember. Having already spent twenty years on the cutting edge of modern rock percussion, Bill Bruford (ex-King Crimson, Yes, UK a.m.m.) formed Earthworks in 1986, as a deliberate return to his roots in jazz. Availing himself of the brightest young talent on the burgeoning U.K. jazz scene, namely keyboardist and tenor horn player Django Bates, and saxophonist Iain Ballamy, both best known as frontrunners with the anarchic big band Loose Tubes, Bruford encouraged the use of rock technology with jazz sensibility -- the hallmark of Earthwork's stylish approach. By letting in air and light, and adding a little wit and wisdom, they produced a particularly British antidote to the increasingly grotesque jazz fusion scene. The first LP for Editions EG, Earthworks, was a testament to their achievement. It sounds simple, but the band only found its direction through serious live playing. No theoretical studio concoction here. Japan, Europe and the UK were all visited before the release of the first album. In November 1987 Bill Bruford, double bass player Mick Hutton, Django Bates as well as Iain Bellamy performed at the 'Schauburg' in Bremen (Germany). The famous German radio and TV station Radio Bremen recorded the show. Stylistically, Earthworks offered here again all the band's openness to diverse styles: Power rock passages alternate with lyrical, balladic passages. Influences from African and Latin American music stood next to swinging sections. It was an amazing show and musically a tremendous night to remember."
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CD
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M 1214CD
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"Tony Williams certainly counts among those unique drummers in jazz today, whose work has had a lasting influence on styles and still does. At the tender age of 16, saxophonist Jackie McLean brought him to his band in New York. He also made his first recording with McLean. Soon after, aged 17, Williams was already making a splash in the second Miles Davis Quintet. Almost twenty years later, in 1980, on May 30 and 31, Tony Williams went to the Zuckerfabrik recording studio in Stuttgart/Germany, together with Tom Grant (keyboards, synthesizer, he joined this band on the recommendation of Jeff Lorber) and Patrick O'Hearn (bass, synthesizer). In the 1970s and early 1980s, this studio was an illustrious address for audio productions of all kinds. Larry Coryell, Wolfgang Dauner, Stephane Grappeli, Elvin Jones, Martin Kolbe + Ralf Illenberger, Volker Kriegel, Alphonse Mouzon, John Scofield and the United Jazz+Rock Ensemble recorded there, to name just a few. Tony Williams and Peter Schnyder co-produced the recording. The album was recorded in just two days and mixed right there in the studio. This timeless album, released in an edition of only 500 copies, was hardly promoted at the time and may therefore have remained unknown to one or the other. All the better that now for the first time since the release of the Vinyl it is also available on CD, with a significantly improved sound."
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2CD
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M 1315CD
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"The musical life of the American jazz saxophonist Gary Bartz is busy and eventful. The eighty-year-old American Bartz jammed with Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan and Pharoah Sanders at a young age. In 1965 he became a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In 1970 Bartz joined the Miles Davis Band, played with Davis at the Isle Of Wight -- Festival and on his studio/live album Live Evil. In 1972 Gary Bartz founded his own band, NTU Troop. He borrowed the name from the Bantu language. Bartz: 'Ntu means unity in all things, in time and space, life and death, in the visible and the invisible. Musically, it stands for an alliance of bop, free, rock and African music.' On 8th November 1975, Gary Bartz performed with the NTU Troop in Bremen's Post-Aula. Radio Bremen was there and now the recording is being released physically and digitally on Moosicus. Gary Bartz was joined on stage by drummer Howard King, bassist Curtis Robertson and pianist Charles Mims, an extraordinary, musically brilliant quartet that was well-rehearsed and coordinated. Unfortunately, it was short-lived, because quite soon after this performance, the NTU Troop went their separate ways again. King, Robertson and Mims went on to work with Roberta Flack, Lou Rawls and Patrice Rushen, among others, while Bartz continued his solo career with such major labels as Capitol Records and Arista. For Gary Bartz, jazz is 'improvised composing', which can be heard on this live album recorded 46 years ago."
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2CD
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M 1312CD
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"The digitalisation of Volker Kriegel's private audio tape archive (1943-2003) conserves the musical legacy of one of the great musicians and pioneers of jazz rock in Germany. Familiar as well as unknown facets of Volker Kriegel's music became accessible again in best possible sound, complemented by rare or previously unreleased bonus material. With the present recordings we open another chapter and present two fascinating concert recordings from two very different creative phases in Volker Kriegel's life: one dating from 1979, with the Mild Maniac Orchestra and guests in Lagos, Nigeria, and the other from 1990, with his last band in Bochum. In 1979 Volker Kriegel was well established in the German and European jazz rock scene. Under the aegis of the Goethe-Institute he and his Mild Maniac Orchestra and guests toured for seven weeks through eleven countries of West- and East Africa in early 1979. Exploring Kriegel's personal tape archive unearthed the recordings from the Africa tour, with some 30 hours of concert recordings on a total of 15 tapes! Among these, this evening of two concerts in Lagos showed the most convincing playing and recording quality, both artistically and acoustically. Time leap into 1990: Volker Kriegel plays with a new band in Bochum. Only keyboarder Thomas Bettermann remains from the old Mild Maniac Orchestra line-up. This last career phase of Volker Kriegel as bandleader had so far only been documented by his one studio album, Palazzo Blue (1987). The recordings from Bochum are the perfect live counterpart. Volker Kriegel, naturally forms the center of the action, in which however the individual talents of his fellow musicians could fully unfold: saxophonist Christof Lauer with his powerful, expressive playing, keyboarder Thomas Bettermann as soloist and sensitive companion of Kriegel, and Michael Schürmann and Thomas Alkier as perfectly coordinated rhythm team."
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2LP
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M 1310LP
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"The ingredients of a Kriegel style jazz rock are as simple as they are complex: an often pumping rock bass, whose stoic groove Eberhard Weber leaves behind in wide arcs on his corpus-less electro contrabass, and a drum set drumming crisply dry to the beat by Joe Nay, which is put under tension time and again by Peter Giger's shimmering percussions. Rainer Brüninghaus's flat-oscillating chord playing on the e-piano, which he breaks open with long, eloquently phrased garlands, and Kriegel's wide, slightly distorted legato bows on the semi-acoustic guitar. This is Kriegel's creative cosmos, so he sounds: The rudeness of rock and the suppleness of jazz go hand in hand with the melancholy of blues and the emotionality of soul. The five bonus tracks following the six Mild Maniac tracks on the original album are interesting for the re-release of this Kriegel recording, which has often been praised as a legendary recording. Kriegel played the last four numbers with his Mild Maniac Orchestra at the 1977 Schlossfestspiele in Idstein. But only in the last title, in Kriegel's long 'Schnellhörspiel', is the whole band with all the musical set pieces described above present."
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3LP
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M 1302LP
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"Back to the Hanover college ... While Brubeck challenged the producers for the program of the Time Out LP a year later with a lot of his own compositions, at the end of February 1958 he only included two of his own works among a lot of Jazz material from the 'American Songbook', without resorting populistically to the eternal hits and evergreens of the time. Recognizing 'Gone With The Wind' at the start of the concert shows just how knowledgeable the audience is. The Brubeck original 'One Moment Worth Years' is followed by 'Someday My Prince Will Come', a hit from the popular Snow White film by Walt Disney (whom Brubeck greatly admired, as evidenced by the LP program Dave Digs Disney), but above all the pianist can celebrate the mix of rhythms here which dominates the rest of the evening. Then the bassist Eugene Wright takes center stage: some standards follow: 'For All We Know' and Ellington's 'Take the A-Train', received with enthusiastic applause and introduced by Brubeck's own Ellington homage 'The Duke'; then 'Out Of Nowhere'. We can still be astounded by the clarity of the recording, making the dialogue between Desmond and Brubeck sound as if it was recorded today; and although countless technical advances have been made to improve the quality in the more than half a century since these recording - an outstanding live recording from then, overseen by the radio technicians from NDR, can still distinguish itself with flying colors."
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CD
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M 1301CD
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"Anyone in the NDR studio in Hamburg on the 9th of March 1953 who could read minds would probably have witnessed an international dialogue, which has ever since repeatedly influenced the Jazz world. '60 years Jazz in the NDR' - and what an event stands at the very beginning! The power of imagination is really not sufficient to conceive of the interaction of Gillespie's quintet with the other band in this studio session - or how on this 9th of March what was probably the most important modern quintet in the German-speaking world performed alongside Dizzy. Hans Koller had formed the band around himself. Koller was born in 1921 in Vienna. After time spent as an American prisoner of war, in 1946 he returned to his home city to found a Jazz club, and the saxophone sound he made his own influenced at least a generation. The trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff was not even 25 years old in March 1953, and it is not so long since he swapped the guitar for the trombone as a professional musician. Jutta Hipp is the pianist. Born in Leipzig in 1935, she was regarded as the greatest piano talent of her time; her career took off vertically, but ended abruptly and tragically shortly after she moved to the USA. She never played piano again and she never returned to Germany. She died in 2003 in New York, almost completely forgotten."
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LP
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M 1301LP
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"Anyone in the NDR studio in Hamburg on the 9th of March 1953 who could read minds would probably have witnessed an international dialogue, which has ever since repeatedly influenced the Jazz world. 60 years Jazz in the NDR - and what an event stands at the very beginning! The power of imagination is really not sufficient to conceive of the interaction of Gillespie's quintet with the other band in this studio session - or how on this 9th of March what was probably the most important modern quintet in the German-speaking world performed alongside Dizzy. Hans Koller had formed the band around himself. Koller was born in 1921 in Vienna. After time spent as an American prisoner of war, in 1946 he returned to his home city to found a jazz club, and the saxophone sound he made his own influenced at least a generation. The trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff was not even 25 years old in March 1953, and it is not so long since he swapped the guitar for the trombone as a professional musician. Jutta Hipp is the pianist. Born in Leipzig in 1935, she was regarded as the greatest piano talent of her time; her career took off vertically, but ended abruptly and tragically shortly after she moved to the USA. She never played piano again and she never returned to Germany. She died in 2003 in New York, almost completely forgotten."
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2LP+CD
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M 1206LP
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"With Spellbound Gurtu once again underlines the fact that jazz still forms the basis for his musical oeuvre. With his band he takes a surprising leap into the history of swing music in the USA and also plays pieces by style-forming trumpeters who have long been a part of the jazz canon: Dizzy Gillespie's Afro-Cuban classic 'Manteca', or a tribute to the extraordinary fusion sound of Miles Davis from the 1970s, 'Jack Johnson/Black Saint', as well as his 'All Blues' from the masterpiece Kind Of Blue and, of course, Don Cherry's 'Universal Mother' which, with its genre-crossing flow in the version by Gurtu, is almost like a further motto for Spellbound. With the music on his new album the percussionist succeeds in something that nowadays is unusual and indeed rare: building a bridge between the continents and cultures. With 'old' Europe as the geographical basis which, with its multi-layered cultural and musical history, has become Gurtu's second home."
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CD
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M 1206CD
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"With Spellbound Gurtu once again underlines the fact that jazz still forms the basis for his musical oeuvre. With his band he takes a surprising leap into the history of swing music in the USA and also plays pieces by style-forming trumpeters who have long been a part of the jazz canon: Dizzy Gillespie's Afro-Cuban classic 'Manteca', or a tribute to the extraordinary fusion sound of Miles Davis from the 1970s, 'Jack Johnson/Black Saint', as well as his 'All Blues' from the masterpiece Kind Of Blue and, of course, Don Cherry's 'Universal Mother' which, with its genre-crossing flow in the version by Gurtu, is almost like a further motto for Spellbound. With the music on his new album the percussionist succeeds in something that nowadays is unusual and indeed rare: building a bridge between the continents and cultures. With 'old' Europe as the geographical basis which, with its multi-layered cultural and musical history, has become Gurtu's second home."
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2CD
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M 1309CD
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"Biton thus produced a total of five albums in which Volker Kriegel was involved - but which were forgotten for a long time and did not even appear in many early discographies. However, collectors in the completion mania then paid ever higher amounts for these LPs, and also some DJs had discovered the Biton sound and obtained beats & breaks for their own productions from it. With this release of the Volker Kriegel: Biton Grooves there are now 37 tracks in best quality, crackle-free and affordable, which Kriegel and his fellow musicians recorded in the sessions for the legendary LPs BIT 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008. And read the names of the participants, then it quickly becomes clear that this was the first league of German jazz and jazz rock at the start -- and all more or less line-ups, which one also knows from regular Kriegel albums of the respective phase: Rainer Brüninghaus and later Thomas Bettermann (e-piano), Peter Giger, Klaus Weiss, Joe Nay & Evert Fraterman (drums/percussion), Eberhard Weber, and Hans Peter Ströer (bass) and others.Yes, and what do you hear here now? Great instrumentalists, no question about it -- and music that would at least partly have fitted on one or the other Kriegel album of those years. OK, here and there the melodies and sounds are a bit simpler and more catchy, but Kriegel's trademarks -- his wonderful chords and double stops, the wah-wah and sitar interjections, his still impressive guitar licks in downward movement -- all this can be experienced 1:1 here. And of course, the partly bizarre distortion sounds of those years, which for many later born electric guitarists for a long time just sounded unbelievable to impossible. And long ago back again..."
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M 1308CD
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"Volker Kriegel (born 1943, died 2003) is one of the best and most important German jazz guitarists of the post-war period. He is internationally highly acclaimed and pushed the innovation of jazz rock. The circle of friends around his wife Ev Kriegel has now made an incredible treasure of old recordings from his various creative phases audible again. Previously unreleased live recordings as well as well-known material from his albums have been digitized and lovingly remastered. These audiophile pearls form the Volker Kriegel Archive, which is now released on Moosicus. Schöne Aussichten was first released on vinyl in 1983. Volker Kriegel plays guitar, sitar and synthesizer. Hans Peter Ströer plays bass, synthesizer and guitar, Junior Weerasinghe, Evert Fraterman on drums, Ernst Ströer and Michael Di Pasqua on drums and percussion, Thomas Bettermann on keys, Frank Loef on saxophones, Wolfgang Schlüter on vibraphone and Eberhard Weber on bass. The bonus tracks 'Wellenmusik 1-3' were written by Volker Kriegel in 1982 for the experimental film 'Wellen' by W. Mackrodt (first broadcasted 1982 on WDR)."
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M 1310CD
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"The ingredients of a Kriegel style jazz rock are as simple as they are complex: an often pumping rock bass, whose stoic groove Eberhard Weber leaves behind in wide arcs on his corpus-less electro contrabass, and a drumset drumming crisply dry to the beat by Joe Nay, which is put under tension time and again by Peter Giger's shimmering percussions. Rainer Brüninghaus's flat-oscillating chord playing on the e-piano, which he breaks open with long, eloquently phrased garlands, and Kriegel's wide, slightly distorted legato bows on the semi-acoustic guitar. This is Kriegel's creative cosmos, so he sounds: The rudeness of rock and the suppleness of jazz go hand in hand with the melancholy of blues and the emotionality of soul. The five bonus tracks following the six Mild Maniac tracks on the original album are interesting for the re-release of this Kriegel recording, which has often been praised as a legendary recording. Kriegel played the last four numbers with his Mild Maniac Orchestra at the 1977 Schlossfestspiele in Idstein. But only in the last title, in Kriegel's long 'Schnellhörspiel', is the whole band with all the musical set pieces described above present."
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