Category: Music

There have been some discussions of late, as to the validity of European jazz. I think the discussions are silly. People were playing and hearing jazz in Europe before most of the current crop of known jazz musicians (from either hemishpere) were born.

Well, if you need more convincing that great jazz is being made in Europe, check out Travelling Hard by the Robert Bachner Quintet.

One of the first reviews I wrote for Scratch My Brain was of Bachner’s first CD. This follow up album features the same 5 musicians. The Vienna based quintet swings hard and plays with a conviction and honesty that I find very appealing. The liner notes menion that Bachner has studied with Conrad Herwig, and I hear that in his playing, but I find Bachner to be less careful and calculated sounding than Herwig, and that is meant as a compliment.

Travelling Hard flows nicely as an album and has been in my heavy rotation since the day it arrived in my mail box.

Sometimes I come to conclusions about people or their music before I have any good reason to. Often it is due to the look of an ad, or something that I read in an interview. I need to keep reminding myself not to pass judgement until I hear the music.

I have been aware of guitarist Dom Minasi for a few years now, but I didn’t actually listen to his music until recently. Something about the way he was presented just didn’t make me think I would dig his stuff. A few weeks ago I received a copy of The Vampire’s Revenge from Minasi’s PR guy.

I like it. The dark sci-fi artwork doesn’t portray the vibe of the music to me at all. I guess one could get into the vampire story parallel with the music and the art would make sense, but I never really developed any vampire fascination, although I did sit near Anne Rice at the Orpheus Ball one year.

This music is enjoyable without the back story. The album is two CDs long, and it does function well as a suite. There is a continuity and coherence that flows through the nearly 2 hours of music. I get some Escalator Over The Hill vibe from this CD, even though they don’t sound much alike. They both use large numbers of musicians, and also make use of voice. That might be the connection my brain is making.

When you are feeling like exploring, give The Vampire’s Revenge a shot. It might suprise you, it suprised me.

Someone must be reading the stuff I write here, because people keep sending me CDs with the implied or stated expectation that I will write something about them. That stirs odd feelings in me. Since they spent the time and the money to send me a CD, I feel some obligation to write about it, eventhough there are many writers who have failed to act upon any feeling of obligation that might have stirred as a result of my mailings.

Anyway, in the interest of full disclosure, I didn’t buy this CD, it was sent to me by a jazz promotion service. That’s a good thing, because it is very unlikely that I would have purchased a jazz CD by a harpist. That could have been my loss, because this is a pretty good CD.

The disc is a pleasant mix of standards and originals. The players are uniformly good, and it is well recorded. The harp fills an interesting sonic space. It blends into the guitar sound at times, and fills the space where the piano would be at others. One doesn’t think of a harp when one tries to imagine hard swinging instruments, and there are times when the harp’s time feel is, well…harp like. I don’t hear this as a deficiency, as much as a point of interest.

This disc probably won’t be in my heavy rotation, but only because my listening habits are leaning to the more adventurous side lately. This CD is solid well played mainsteam jazz, with good tunes, and well crafted improvisations. I commend Ms. Robbins for stretching the minds of jazz-folk by making an undeniably good jazz record on an undeniably unusual jazz instruent. I am all for turning the unusual into the usual.