(Free Jazz / Avant-Garde / Contemporary Jazz) Exploding Star Orchestra - We Are All From Somewhere Else - 2007, FLAC (image+.cue), lossless

Exploding Star Orchestra - We Are All From Somewhere Else Жанр: Free Jazz / Avant-Garde / Contemporary Jazz Год выпуска диска: 2007 Производитель диска: USA (Thrill Jockey) Аудио кодек: FLAC Тип рипа: image+.cue Битрейт аудио: lossless Продолжительность: 50:55Rob Mazurek composition, direction, cornet, electronics Nicole Mitchell flutes, voice Jeb Bishop trombone Corey Wilkes flugelhorn Josh Berman cornet Matt Bauder bass clarinet, tenor saxophone Jeff Parker guitar Jim Baker piano, ARP synthesizer, pianette Jason Adasiewicz vibraphone John McEntire marimba, tubular bells Matt Lux electric bass guitar Jason Ajemian acoustic bass Mike Reed drums, percussion, saw John Herndon drumsSting Ray and the Beginning of Time 1. Part 1 2. Part 2 3. Part 3 (Psycho-Tropic Electric Eel Dream) 4. Part 4 5. Black SunCosmic Tomes For Sleep Walking Lovers 6. Part 1 7. Part 2 8. Part 3 9. Part 4 (Fifteen Ways Towards a Finite Universe) 10. Part 5  All About Jazz ReviewsWorking from a commission by the Chicago Cultural Center and the Jazz Institute to assemble a group representing Chicago's contemporary avant garde, cornetist/composer Rob Mazurek's newest venture, the Exploding Star Orchestra, has long since eclipsed its provisional origins. Conceptualized and composed between Brazil, France and the States, We Are All From Somewhere Else is as ambitious in scope as it is in execution. Mazurek's recent music sounds partially inspired by his new home in São Paulo, where he lives with his Brazilian-born scientist wife. The sonic interpretation of a surreal parable about cosmic transformation involving electric eels, stingrays, exploding stars and phoenix-like rebirth, the album follows the narrative structure of a suite. The Exploding Star Orchestra features a bevy of Chicago's finest improvisers, including the majority of Tortoise and some notable AACM members. While it's founded on the principle of democratic improvisation, and each member contributes equally to the ensemble sound, there are standouts. Nicole Mitchell's dulcet flute, Jeff Parker's edgy guitar, Jim Baker's otherworldly ARP synthesizer and the leader's expressive cornet all make particularly notable appearances. Mazurek arranges a dizzying array of stylistic challenges for the Orchestra to navigate. The opening suite, "Sting Ray And The Beginning of Time" begins with a thunderous, propulsive vamp and a series of vivid solos bolstered by intricate, angular charts, suggesting a hybrid of the big bands of Muhal Richard Abrams, Don Ellis and Charles Mingus. Soloists materialize in and out of the mix, taking turns weaving brief thematic statements through the throbbing undertow. "Psycho-Tropic Electric Eel Dream" features the sounds of pre-recorded electric eels from the INPA research lab in Manaus, Brazil. Accompanied by Jim Baker's ARP synthesizer and Nicole Mitchell's flute, the tune exudes a haunting electronic ambience. Serving as a bridge between suites, Jim Baker's majestic solo piano meditation on the stately interlude, "Black Sun," provides a respite in the eye of the storm. The final suite, "Cosmic Tomes For Sleep Walking Lovers," opens with reversed recordings of Amazonian storms before the ensemble erupts, raging full-on in a riot of circuitous exhortation. Modulating from Ascension-like ecstasy into an intricate cyclic pattern, the second part gallops along hypnotically, recalling the minimalist drive of early Phillip Glass and Terry Riley. Invoking earlier styles, the third part of the suite references the multi-hued arrangements of Gil Evans and Sun Ra, with a nod to Miles Davis' "All Blues" interpolated into the tune's waltz rhythm. Futuristic, adventurous and accessible, We Are All From Somewhere Else is Mazurek's most ambitious and fully realized statement to date—a stunning achievement, highly recommended. ~ Troy CollinsThis record bristles with the hubris of an artist who ignores conventional notions of prevailing styles, blithely imposes his own aesthetic vision, and achieves a rousing artistic success in the end. That artist is Chicago-turned-São Paulo cornetist Rob Mazurek, who composed and conducted this performance. This record also bristles with the sound of electric eels. That’s not a clumsy metaphor: I mean, literally, that Mazurek recorded eels in a special tank at a research laboratory in Brazil (two species, “Pulsating" and "Waveform”) and you can hear them during a musical passage entitled “Psycho-Tropic Electric Eel Dream.” Why are the musicians improvising around the sound of electric eels? Well, it’s all apparently very heavy. According to the press kit, this is “a story involving an exploding star, cosmic transformation, a sting ray, the travels of the sting ray, intelligent conversations with electric eels, the destructive power of humans, the death and ascension of sting ray, the transformation of sting ray ghost to flying bird, and the transformation of bird to phoenix to rocket to flying burning matter to a new-born star.” (There is other complicated stuff about “text-flipping,” and indeed the packaging features a poem that you can read forward or backward.) The record consists of two suites (Sting Ray and the Beginning of Time / Cosmic Tomes for Sleep Walking Lovers) joined in the middle by pianist Jim Baker’s impressionistic “Black Sun.” The first two parts of “Sting Ray” call to mind Frank Tortiller’s similarly loud, percussive, and vibraphone-laden arrangements on the Orchestre National de Jazz’s Close to Heaven (Le Chant du Monde, 2006). After the electric eel interlude, there is a sweet and slightly spacey closing movement (here, as elsewhere, flautist Nicole Mitchell and guitarist Jeff Parker stand out among the soloists). The surging opening minutes of “Cosmic Tomes” boldly employ the composed chaos John Coltrane used on Ascension (Impulse!, 1965), featured here more as an organizational technique than a path to spiritual transcendence; this coalesces unexpectedly into a tightly disciplined minimalist passage out of the Steve Reich school (but with more exuberant and soulful execution). The second suite ends, like the first, on a moody and slightly weird-sounding note. Orchestral big-band jazz recordings about human communication with electric eels being rather thin on the ground, we can rejoice in the release of this effort. I would venture to say that even if more jazz artists addressed the eel communication issue, this record would stand out in the field regardless. That may sound glib, but the program underlying this composition is so audaciously weird that one cannot help but feel a slightly drunken glee when Mazurek succeeds so ably. As in the best music by Sun Ra (whose thematic conceits similarly strained credulity but won over the listener in the end), the ensemble swings throughout, solos bursting out with aplomb. Glorious. ~ Jeff Dayton-Johnson  EAC ReportExact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008EAC extraction logfile from 15. January 2009, 10:34Exploding Star Orchestra / We Are All From Somewhere ElseUsed drive : HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8162B Adapter: 1 ID: 0Read mode : Secure Utilize accurate stream : Yes Defeat audio cache : Yes Make use of C2 pointers : NoRead offset correction : 102 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes Used interface : Installed external ASPI interfaceUsed output format : User Defined Encoder Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s Quality : High Add ID3 tag : No Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE Additional command line options : -6 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=%e" %s -o %dTOC of the extracted CD Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector --------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 0:00.00 | 11:41.20 | 0 | 52594 2 | 11:41.20 | 2:09.32 | 52595 | 62301 3 | 13:50.52 | 7:48.63 | 62302 | 97464 4 | 21:39.40 | 4:40.60 | 97465 | 118524 5 | 26:20.25 | 3:07.67 | 118525 | 132616 6 | 29:28.17 | 4:52.33 | 132617 | 154549 7 | 34:20.50 | 4:30.42 | 154550 | 174841 8 | 38:51.17 | 6:32.53 | 174842 | 204294 9 | 45:23.70 | 0:11.02 | 204295 | 205121 10 | 45:34.72 | 5:19.55 | 205122 | 229101Range status and errorsSelected range Filename C:\eac\Exploding Star Orchestra - We Are All From Somewhere Else.wav Peak level 100.0 % Range quality 99.9 % Test CRC E3B80222 Copy CRC E3B80222 Copy OKNo errors occurredEnd of status report Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra (2007) sasha4100