ELEMENTAL MUSIC Archives - Guerssen Records

Unhalfbricking

GuerssenAdmin — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:00:00 +0000

Life, is considered pivotal in the development of English folk rock music. The album also gave the band their first UK chart success, reaching #12 in the UK album chart (the second highest position in the band’s career), while the single release, “Si tu dois partir”, climbed to #21 in the UK singles chart. Other highlights include Sandy Denny’s “Autopsy” and “Percy’s Song”, which features vocals by Iain Matthews.
Unhalfbricking received a 5-star review in AllMusic, with Richie Unterberger describing it as “a transitional album for the young Fairport Convention, in which the group shed its closest ties to its American folk-rock influences and started to edge toward a more traditional British folk-slanted sound”.

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The Astrud Gilberto Album (Limited Edition)

GuerssenAdmin — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:00:00 +0000

Astrud Gilberto became an accidental success when her fragile command of English made her the de facto choice to sing “The Girl from Ipanema” at a session led by Stan Getz and her husband, João Gilberto. Of course, despite its overwhelming success, it wasn’t clear that she could sustain a career when she recorded her first solo LP, The Astrud Gilberto Album. She had sounded more like an amateurish novelty act than a recording professional, her voice was sweet but fragile, and the Getz/Gilberto album had featured two strong voices, with Gilberto herself an afterthought (albeit a commercially effective afterthought). But The Astrud Gilberto Album was at least as good as Getz/Gilberto (despite what jazz fans say), for several reasons. The Brazilian repertoire plays particularly well to traditionally weak vocalists, her voice was yet more sweet than had been heard previously, and as before, the record featured two strong leaders — arranger Marty Paich and the incomparable Antonio Carlos Jobim. Paich’s strings positively coated the album with radiance, and his choices for lead instrumental voices — Bud Shank’s flute, João Donato’s piano, Jobim’s guitar — complemented her vocals perfectly. Gilberto sounded beautiful on a range of material, from the sentimental “Dindi” to the playful “Agua de Beber,” and as long as intelligent musicians were playing to her strengths (as they do here), the results were splendid. John Bush

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Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause And Cure

GuerssenAdmin — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:00:00 +0000

Lee Hazlewood’s second album for MGM had something of a split personality, though both sides were an accurate depiction of various sides of his musical mind. Released in 1967, Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure opens with five story-songs, most of which are dramatic narratives in which Hazlewood speaks rather than sings, spinning tales of brave but kind-hearted matadors, pioneer women in love with Indian braves, and old men strumming away their stories. Hazlewood approaches his recitations with all the seriousness he can muster, while Billy Strange’s arrangements provide elaborate but understated accompaniment, suggesting a film score that doesn’t drown out the dialogue in the big scenes. Elsewhere, the album’s second half finds Hazlewood in broader and more playful form, as he celebrates his own blissful laziness on “Home (I’m Home),” a wino’s marginal existence on “After Six,” and a good-time gal’s less than rosy reputation on “Suzi Jane is Back in Town,” which is set to a very theatrical ragtime backdrop. “In Our Time” is a folk-rock number that sounds like a P.F. Sloan homage, while “Dark in My Heart” has a Dylan-esque tone as Hazlewood shares his troubles while the band cooks up a “Tombstone Blues” shuffle behind him. If the first half of the album speaks of a mature and focused vision, the second sounds like a clever guy goofing off and doing what he wants, with a handful of expert sidemen along for the ride, and none of it seems to have been created with any thought of how the label might make their money back. The unifying theme of Lee Hazlewoodism: Its Cause and Cure is simply Hazlewood being Hazlewood, with a crew of first-call studio pros helping him realize his vision (or sometimes his whims) as the Playboy Philosopher of the L.A. Cowboy Set, and while he made better albums, this one reflects his wit and talents better than most. Mark Deming.

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Tide

GuerssenAdmin — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 22:00:00 +0000

Reissue of the 6th studio album by Brazilian jazz legend Antônio Carlos Jobim. Released in 1970 on A&M Records, this instrumental Bossa Jazz masterpiece was produced by Creed Taylor and engineered by Rudy Van Gelder. It features the arrangements of Eumir Deodato (who also conducted the band), and includes a plethora of sidemen from the U.S. jazz scene, such as Joe Farrell, Hubert Laws and Ron Carter, as well as Brazilian stars like Hermeto Pascoal, Airto Moreira and João Palma.

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Rip, Rig & Panic (Limited Edition)

GuerssenAdmin — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 22:00:00 +0000

Recorded in 1965 at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in New Jersey, Roland Kirk’s album Rip, Rig and Panic finds him teamed with the most awesome rhythm section he ever recorded with: pianist Jaki Byard, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Elvin Jones.
It received a 5 stars rating on AllMusic, with reviewer Thom Jurek stating that “Rip, Rig, and Panic may be pre-Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s greatest outing. Kirk and his quartet moved through a series of musicological changes that defined him as an artist at the time. Five of the seven compositions are his, and reach through each of the phases that Kirk was interested in integrating into his compositional and improvisational voice. Positively smashing.”

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California Dreaming (Limited Gatefold)

GuerssenAdmin — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:00:00 +0000

Released in 1967, California Dreaming was Wes Montgomery’s last album for Verve (other than an exciting collaboration with Jimmy Smith). It’s an extraordinary orchestral date featuring arrangements by Don Sebesky that showcases soloists such as pianist Herbie Hancock and percussionist Ray Barretto. The songs (which include “Sunny” and the title tune “California Dreaming”) are in this case mostly pop material of the era, from which the great performer extracts magic sounds. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboard jazz album chart and No. 4 on the R&B chart, and was one of the last great works by Montgomery, whose later guitar style influenced jazz fusion and smooth jazz. At the peak of his popularity, the guitarist unexpectedly died of a heart attack on June 15, 1968, at the age of 45.

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Jewels Of Thought (Limited Edition)

GuerssenAdmin — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:00:00 +0000

Jewels of Thought is an album by the American jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. It was recorded at Plaza Sound Studios in New York City on October 20, 1969, and was released on Impulse! Records in the same year.

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Wisdom Through Music (Limited Edition)

GuerssenAdmin — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 22:00:00 +0000

180 gram Vinyl Edition. Gatefold Cover. Recorded in New York City and Los Angeles, California, and was released in 1973 by Impulse! Records. Wisdom Through Music, with its smaller line-up – Sanders is joined by flutist James Branch, pianist Joe Bonner, bassist Cecil McBee, drummer Norman Connors, and percussionists Badal Roy, James Mtume, and Lawrence Killian. – consists of five tracks. Most notable is “High Life,” on which Sanders emulates the West African style of music with roiling, celebratory drumming and singing, and killer flute playing. “Love Is Everywhere” is a shorter version of what is now a Sanders performance standard; it appeared in full on Love in Us All released in 1974. Its rawness and soulfulness simply burst from the musical frame with celebration before Bonner and the ensemble take over and rip it up.
The title track is a slow, meditative, drone-like piece with abundant percussion by Roy and gorgeous arco work from McBee. Bonner’s “The Golden Lamp” is driven by McBee, Branch, and an uncredited instrument reminiscent of kora and/or an oud. It closes with the nearly 11-minute “Selflessness,” a jam that begins as a sung chant and sprawls out into another Sanders orgy of celebration with excellent tenor blowing, as well as spirited interplay with Bonner and the percussionists. These two recordings belong together, and create a compelling whole, revealing a compelling chapter in Sanders recorded history. (AllMusicGuide)

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Love In Us All

GuerssenAdmin — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 23:00:00 +0000

Biggest Tip! Limited Edition LP. Deluxe 180-Gram Reissue. Special Gatefold Edition Including Original Artwork. Few will need introduction to the work of Pharoah Sanders. He is a titan with few equivalents in histories of free and spiritual jazz. The creator of some of the most important and singular records in these fields, Sanders, who was once described by Ornette Coleman as “probably the best tenor player in the world”, is equally noted for his work with artists like John Coltrane, as a member of his groundbreaking final quintet, Alice Coltrane, Leon Thomas, Ornette Coleman, Don Cherry, and Sun Ra, often rendering a remarkable influence over the results.
Pharoah Sanders was among the most important creative voices of the 20th Century. From his emergence on the New York scene during the early 1960s until his passing, he remained one of the driving forces in jazz. Known for his great breaking style of playing that helped lay the groundwork for spiritual jazz, as well as a particular movement of free jazz – infusing lyrism and melody with overblown, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques – during the same period that he was working with John Coltrane, and then Alice Coltrane, Sanders embarked upon his own career as a band leader, producing a suite of albums across the 1960s and ’70s for ESP, Impulse!, Strata-East, and others that remain some of the most celebrated, enduring, and sought-after in the canon of jazz. They are a marvel beyond words and stand entirely on their own. From their first sounding, there is no mistaking them for anything but Pharoah’s music.
“Love in Us All” was recorded in 1972 but released on the Impulse! label no earlier than 1974. It consists of two extended compositions, “Love Is Everywhere” (which Sanders also recorded that year in a different version for his album “Wisdom Through Music”) and an homage to John Coltrane, titled “To John”. Both serve as an aural representation of the way Sanders’ music polarized the jazz world at the time. Ted Davis of Paste Magazine included “Love Is Everywhere” in his list of “The 10 Best Pharoah Sanders Songs”, stating that it “captures his sound at its most wonderfully cosmic, esoteric and enlightening—a perfect distillation of all the things that made him such a singular and unforgettable artist.” According to AllMusicGuide writer Nathan Bush, “Coltrane himself never created a work as emotionally direct as “Love Is Everywhere”.

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Summum Bukmun Umyun. Deaf Dumb Blind

GuerssenAdmin — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 23:00:00 +0000

A graduate of the mid-1960s ensembles of John Coltrane, saxophonist Pharoah Sanders has been described as “probably the best tenor player in the world” by Ornette Coleman and was a major figure in the development of free jazz.

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