Welcome to the weekly Sup Forums jazz Blindfold Test thread. Every Friday and Saturday. If you're new, the point of these threads is to have fun and encourage critical listening, discussion, and general enjoyment of jazz. All critical music listeners are welcome. The more participation we have, the more fun and successful these threads will be. In the interest of keeping the thread alive and bumped, any general jazz discussion is welcomed here as well.
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THIS WEEK'S THEME: Foreign Jazz COMPILED BY: jazzisprettycool
NEXT WEEK: ??? COMPILED BY: ???
If you missed last week's thread, DON'T WORRY. It's not too late. Here are the links for the mystery tracklist. Download the tracks, record your thoughts/guesses/evaluations for each one, and then come back and post them in the thread. Remember, people will be posting guesses and thoughts in this thread so don't read the thread until you have listened to the music and collected your thoughts in order to avoid spoilers. Track info for this week's tracks will be posted on Saturday, so if you see the thread is close to dying before then, give it a bump.
1: Rumbles and reeks of danger like some 60's soundtrack song. The piano riff sounds familiar, but I don't think I've heard this particular track before.
This kind of makes me think of 60's French nouvelle vague, so maybe someone like Martial Solal.
Man the piano riff feels really familiar - I have a feeling I might have heard another version of this.
Pretty nice track, if a bit brief.
2: So indian vibes with a tabla and a sitar or similar. Not familiar with that much jazz that draws this heavily from Indian music - maybe something Trilok Gurtu or Ravi Shankar is involved in.
It's nice how the sax and trumpet are playing in a more traditional jazz style - gives this track some nice contrast.
I guess I'll have to primarily guess that it's some Ravi Shankar thing, although I guess it's kind of an obvious guess. He did something with Bud Shank and the horns here have a west coast-y feel, but I don't think this is from that collaboration from what I remember.
3: Off to Brazil we go. More on the easy listening side of bossa nova - as far as easy listening/lounge goes, bossa tends to be as good as it gets.
Polish vocal group Novi Singers did a bossa album, so maybe this is a clever ruse. This really reminded me of them for some reason in any case. Can't think of any Brazilian vocal bossa groups off the top of my head.
Fun summer music.
Elijah Perry
>Track 1 I like this. The “head” is pretty interesting with a nice combination of modern harmonies. I’d guess this is from the 70’s. There’s some Tyner-style fourths going on but there’s also some nice closed voicings in there that I like. I like the contrapuntal effect the pianist has going on in the solo with the lines he’s doing in his left hand even though it sounds pretty pretty much pattern-based. There’s also some Ahmad Jamal flavor going on in this too. I’m not sure who this could be. If the theme weren’t “foreign” jazz I’d probably assume it was somebody American. I didn’t really pick up on any clues about where this recording could be from though.
>Track 2 As I’ve stated before, I very seldom like sitar use in jazz/rock/pop. I guess I didn’t mind it here in the first part of the song when it was playing melodically behind the flute solo. The flute solo was very shapeless though. Then the middle section of the song is pretty interesting. I really like this polyphonic style of composition and whoever wrote/arranged this piece did a pretty good job. Then again, I think i’d prefer to hear this composition played by a more traditional “jazz sextet” rather than a group with sitar and tabla. Can anybody tell the time signature once they go into the solo sections though? Possibly they’re all playing in different time signatures? It’s hard to tell where the downbeats fall. So to sum up- I like the composition a lot, though not necessarily the instrumentation. The solos were passable but nothing spectacular and the rhythm section seemed generally unclear, possibly intentionally. I’m going to assume this artist has some kind of Indian connection.
Joseph Phillips
4: More indian influence. Hahaa! It's Caravan - it's been a while.
Sure, the exotic tinge is a big part of Caravan's appeal, but not sure this twist was really necessary. :)
No particular guesses to the musicians, very much feels like a novelty track to me.
5: Hmh. I don't even know what language they are singing in. I already spent a Novi Singers -guess once, maybe I should double down - doesn't sound like Polish, though.
Light entertainment jazz from 60's, early 70's. Not particularly memorable outside of the mysterious language.
6: A little more contemporary sound - sounds like maybe the 80's.
With the violin in there, maybe Jean-Luc Ponty or Michał Urbaniak. I guess both are a little more fusion or funky than this.
The pianist kind of sounded like he wanted to be in the 60's, but didn't quite get there for me. The sax solo on the other hand was nice.
This kind of seems to be drawing a little from fusion sources as well as modal jazzy piano, still - not surprised if this is some thing involving Ponty.
This reminds me of some 80's Pharoah Sanders albums - although the sax player doesn't, but there's something similar in the general sound.
This builds up nicely towards the end, I didn't particularly enjoy this at first, but I think it ended up coming together pretty well, I'll probably listen to more of this after the reveal.
David Collins
>Track 3 Brazilian obviously. Flora Purim? Oh I doubt it actually after that male scat solo. Sounds a bit like Frank Rosolino singing. Anyway it’s a pretty thinly disguised version of A-train and now it’s pretty obvious once it switches to full-tilt swing. Now it sounds a bit like Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross or Manhattan Transfer with the way that their harmonies fit almost like a horn arrangement for a shout chorus of A-train. I’m don’t really know of any foreign groups who did stuff like that. This sort of thing usually ends up feeling very dated to me (although there are still groups who do this stuff). I’ll listen to this and appreciate the arrangement and the ability of the singers to blend it right but I’d usually never listen to something like this for enjoyment.
>Track 4 >putting Caravan on a playlist >not making it the last track You know you just fucked up right? Anyway this sounds like a decidedly Arabic version. I’d have liked to hear them do more to make it an interesting arrangement rather than just playing basic Caravan A section over a Baladi rhythm then fucking around with harmonic minor scales for a few minutes. I guess they do add that extra tag into the end of the melody which is nice but I think it’s been done before. The only person I know who does stuff like this is Rabih Abou-Kahlil but his stuff I’ve heard has had a lot more individual character than what this has.
Benjamin Richardson
I'll also just throw out Francy Boland as an additional guess for #1...
Parker Moore
>Track 5 Now this is Portuguese. This is a little bit different with the way they’re combining horns and vocals now. Also electric bass. No wait, it’s French I think. It’s a cool arrangement but I wanted to hear the sax take a real solo. It sounded like he was itching to, but had to play around what the vocals were doing. A vocal solo could have been nice too. Again, this ends up feeling pretty dated to me. French possibly?
>Track 6 They should have just gone all the way and made this bassline a tone-row. Sounds like there’s a vocalist over-top of the horns. Or maybe that was just the violin. Anyway I’m not sure what to make of this head. I’ve never really heard anything like it. This piano solo is pretty nice though. He’s got a nice quartal flavor but then also some blues ideas in there and some more abstract phrases. This tenor player is pretty great too. Reminds me a bit of Brecker and the feel of this overall has a very 80’s sound.
>Track 7 This reminds me a bit of Mingus in a way. The trumpet player reminds me a little of Kenny Wheeler too. This one was pretty good overall, I liked the solos and the loose waltz feeling. It sounded very American to me though, like a mid-to-late 60’s kind of thing. Nice overall.
John Ramirez
>Track 8 I thought the beginning section went on for way too long. I’ve always hated this kind of bass solo with no melody or definite rhythm or even shape. Once the tune itself gets started though it’s not bad. This definitely sounds like a late 70’s kind of thing. This trumpet player sounds pretty familiar to me and is pretty good but I can’t put my finger on it. The triumphal horn choral towards the end sounded a bit like “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”. I liked this arrangement overall, I could do without the beginning section though. The trumpet player stood out the most to me, I could see this being something that Enrico Rava or Paolo Fresu was involved in, somebody European like that. Or I could see this being Japanese too. It reminded me most of the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin band but I don’t think I’d call them foreign jazz.
>Track 9 Witchcraft. With a sort of half-assed Caribbean vibe. I’d assume this is Gabor Szabo. I do like the guitar playing. I’ve never listened to Szabo all that much but if this is him I’d say this sound is pretty influential on modern guitarists. Especially the way he harmonizes the melody and his solo. The Caribbean feel was a little bit gimmicky but overall this arrangement actually works pretty well.
>Track 10 This is somebody very influenced by Bill Evans. Oh because it’s “Israel” a tune that Bill Evans is known for. Sounds like a pretty good imitator. I guess playing this tune that influence especially comes out.
Ethan Davis
Oh that's a pretty good guess that I hadn't thought of. I've never listened to that band all that much.
Robert Long
7: The accompaniment here reminds me of some early 60's Coltrane.
I don't have too much to say about this, but I actually liked this one a lot. Maybe my favorite track so far this week.
Something Italian maybe?
8: This one sure is taking it's time to get going. A very mid-70's feel from the time fusion started moving towards smooth jazz. Like early Bob James or something, although this seems to be getting more bizarre than funky when we're maybe getting out of the Rhodes intro.
Well, it did get pretty funky. Feels very much like some CTI release - like Deodato or something. Some of that kind of stuff is one of my guilty pleasures, but this track just feels too long and I'm not sure what it's trying to accomplish overall.
Haha. A Mighty Fortress Is Our God from nowhere! Is this some strange alternate version/cover of Bob James' Valley of Shadows that has the same bit at the end? Obviously this has something to do with that track.
A Mighty Fortress... is a pretty well known hymn here in Finland - a very serious and somber thing that is traditionally sung at the traditional Christmas Peace Declaration ceremony: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Peace . Always cracks me up when it just comes out of nowhere at the end of that Bob James track.
