And more recently, The Filthy Habits Ensemble got featured on spanish Radio 3
Adding data to the Gary Lucas discography, here's "Street Of Lost Brothers" in data and pictures. From 10 years ago. On John Zorn's label. And Zorn also guests on one track!
Nice.
If you visit the United Mutations blog every once in a while, you'll probably know that I visited the Mosae Zappa Festival in Maastricht in early May. It was a very fine festival with two nights of Zappa and Zappa-related music. I loved it.
Each and everyone of the bands that performed did a superb job.
One of these bands was The Yellow Snow Crystals. This german quartet combined Zappa and jazz and mixed it with a fine dose of humour. Lots of instrumental material, but also some very funny vocal songs (translated and sung in German). Great.
Trombone player Paul Hubweber told me that the band was working on an album. If the album will be something like the "Zappn'" demo that he gave me, we'll soon all be dancing to the music of The Yellow Snow Crystals.
The Zappateers among you should check out the audience recording of the Mosae gig. It gives a fine idea of what the band is about. And we should all try to catch these guys in concert again. As I said, this was great.
Keep an eye out for their album!
Kimono Draggin' - Farewell Performance (FULL SET) from Cristof Almondy on Vimeo.
-- info: Jan van Kemenade
On the first of May, I linked to the ZappaInFrance blog, where they had The Erik Smith Trio's version of FZ's 'Sy Borg' up.
Today, I added the album cover and the tracklist to the U.M.Archives.
A pretty neat album, by the way. A classic jazz trio.
the ozit website says:
From the late 1960s through to 1980, John Peel collected tapes of recordings of Captain Beefheart’s live shows, particularly ones made in the UK. During a tidy-up at Nan True’s Hole in 2003, he discovered around six large reels of tape containing many of Beefheart’s live UK performances and sent them on to Ozit Morpheus Records for sorting out and release on the Dandelion imprint.
Here is Volume 1 of material from those tapes. Like all Beefheart live tracks, they are chaotic, erratic and yet charming. Because of the age of the material and sometimes crude recording techniques originally used there is the odd glitch in the recordings, but rather than trying and digitally repairing the sound, we're bringing it to you exactly as it came off the tapes, warts and all, but full of Beefheartian energy. Volume 1 contains songs mainly from the Clearspot era tour of the UK.
- info: Luc Reniers
The latest Zita Swoon (Group) album arrived today. The music on this album was originally written for a stage performance: music and dance.
This is beautiful. "Dancing With The Sound Hobbyist" gets me relaxed within seconds. It's all about the right atmosphere. It's laid-back, but it still has a groove.
Here's 'Girls Go Catwalk', performed live a couple of weeks ago, to give you an impression of what I mean.
Heavy metal guitar player Glen Drover used to be the lead guitar player of Megadeth.
On his "Metalusion" album, Glen Drover covered Frank Zappa's 'The Purple Lagoon' and 'Filthy Habits'. The same album also includes two Jean-Luc Ponty compositions: 'Don't Let The World Pass You By' and 'Mirage'.
Bryan Beller's "Wednesday Night Live" DVD arrived last week. I gave it a spin this morning. I've said it before: Bryan Beller (and his band) combine excellent musicianship with beautiful compositions. I love it.
The DVD also includes some nice bonus stuff: some older recordings, but also (quite funny) interviews with the other musicians.
So if you haven't ordered it already, you know what to do !!
Here's a little snippet
More data has been added to the Gary Lucas discogaphy. Last year, 5nakefork records (love that name) released a 7" entitled "Music For The Eden Project'.
It's a limited release of 300 copies (200 on green and 100 on orange vinyl).
I received my copies today. Haven't listened to the music yet. Still playing the new Zappa album. This will be something for tomorrow...
Don't forget, Gary Lucas will be performing at the Zappanale Festival next August !!
"Penguin In Bondage" !! It's the new Zappa album.
Download only, and 26 minutes long, "Penguin In Bondage" includes a a fragment of a 1974/05/11 Chicago concert on which the band plays a fine 'Penguin In Bondage', but it also presents FZ telling the history of The Mothers Of Invention. From Paul Buff in Cucamonga to the recording of the Absolutely Free album.
Superb!!
If only this sort of material would come out on CD...
Paul Wertico is known as being the drummer on quite a number of Pat Metheny records. On "Impressions Of A City", Paul does his own thing. He gathered fellow musicians John Moulder (guitar) and Brian Peters (bass) with whom he has been performing fusion music since the mid-ninetees. He added Dani Rabin (guitar) and Danny Markovitch (soprano & tenor sax), and went into the recoring studio without rehearsing the pieces.
Markovich and Rabin, as you might know, have released two fabulous albums as Marbin. These two fabulous Israeli musicians are responsable for the 'mid-east' link on this album.
"Impressions Of A City" sounds very fresh. It mixes soundscapes with great jazz solos.
"Impressions Of A City" is an excellent album. It's a collection of hopeful, positive sounding images of a place that I would be happy to live in.
