Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz, Vol. III

I mentioned the OGG-download purchase in the last post and after some difficulties with Paypal, all 4 CDs worth of the Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz Vol. III boxset was on the hard-drive. I've only had the chance to listen to 3 of the 4 discs (really easy to transfer to CD even on iTunes... more on that later), but everything has been a treasure. Leo Records splits the discs into essentially 4 or 5 sets of musicians. From what I've heard so far Homo Liber is by far the most interesting (and most rarely recorded). "In Memory of Andrey Tarkovsky" (the Russian filmmaker) is a saxophone and pipe organ stepping the bounds between apocalyptic church music and the aural equivalent of taking a gun to the temple. The Vladmir Chekasin Big Band tracks remind me a lot of what William Parker's Litttle Huey Creative Music Orchestra does today: bombastic big band with alternating sections of bop, chaotic free music, and horrible noise accentuated by vocalist Elvira Shlykova. The split disc between vocalist Sainkho Namchylak and Tri-O has been the most spun so far. Namchylak is the ultimate free vocalist both reacting and counter-acting those around her in cadence, rhythm, pitch, and tone. At times, I can barely distinguish her voice from the sax. The only tracks I haven't gotten to have been those from Andrew Solovyev, Igor Grigoriev, and Vlad Makarov all under different group names.

For other Mac users, once you have downloaded the OGG decoder, iTunes automatically recognizes the tracks and will burn them to CD-R, though it takes longer than burning MP3s. The wait is worth it, though, because the sound quality is top rate. I'd suggest immediately burning OGG files to CD-R immediately since they take a chunk of your RAM (causing pauses and such while playing).

There are 4 volumes in the Golden Years of the Soviet New Jazz series. It's quite an invaluable document of the avant-garde/free-improvisation scene in '80s Soviet Russia and the surrounding countries. My only complaint with the download is that it doesn't include the extensive liner notes. I wouldn't mind a printable text document or PDF file because like most jazz folks, I'm a nerd and love to read up on the obscure artists.

Thanks to Phillip for DJ-ing New Orbit this past Monday. I heard some David S. Ware and he apparently played Rova's 50 minute version of John Coltrane's Ascension. Good man.