Topic: The Music Thread

@TheBrandedSwordsman I work with some Finnish musicians in one of my bands (see below) and one of them was asked to produce a song for someone and I got "hired" to work on the arrangement... which is most of the work tbh
Anyways - that included arranging harmonies for some parts of the song and it's all in Finnish. My vocals won't be featured in the final mix though, they will record an actual singer doing the same thing

Here's that band of mine - the singer and the guitarist are Finnish, the rest are Polish. I wrote and produced this myself, btw. Also made the video (my 1st ever After Effects project) - we're all DIY like that

Also, I failed to post the jazz stuff again... I promise I'll get to it

@Voltan Good stuff, really catchy song, heavy metal isn't it? Loved your keyboard work on the song, are you Polish yourself then? How did you meet the other guys in the band? Still looking forward to the jazz stuff!

@TheBrandedSwordsman Yeah, I'm Polish. The band started here in Warsaw a looong time ago. Long story short - when our previous singer left the band, we had trouble finding someone to fill his shoes so we decided to contact a guy we found on the internet. Later I learned he was friends with a guitarist whose work I was familiar with, so when our original guitarist quit for personal reasons, I got him join too. Remote work is nothing new for metal bands tbh

Anyways, let's get started with some Arch Echo...

Nova Collective...

And Tigran Hamasyan's wild mix of jazz piano, Armenian folk, Indian Carnatic music and even modern metal to some extent

@Voltan It's all great stuff but I don't know how I feel about mixing jazz and contemporary metal together, it's like the two styles are pushing in fundamentally different directions. On a side note, I have a headless Steinberger guitar like the guy in the first video, but mine has a smaller body. Headless guitars in jazz fusion started in the 70s with Allan Holdsworth and continued with bands like Paul Masvidal's Cynic. Are you a fan of either of those artists? Holdsworth had some dynamite keyboard players back in the day, especially on the album Atavachron. I think I am stuck somewhere in the 70s, bands like Mahavishnu Orchestra and some John Scofield and Bill Frisell took jazz and rock fusion as far as it could go at that time, and with the exceptions of acts like Last Exit and Frisell's work in Naked City I don't think jazz fusion works if it gets much heavier than Mahavishnu, and even though I say Naked City worked that's just because the metal of the time, 70s & 80s metal music, which they drew from throughout their career was about as far as they could get away with, mixing with jazz, and, yeah I am not so sure about djent and jazz, the creativity is there, though, the creativity is great.

Edit; Plus Naked City was overall an "experimental rock band project" and not deliberately setting out to be jazz fusion or jazz-core.

Edit 2: Nova Collective sounds a bit like a more relaxed version of Atheist on their Unquestionable Presence album ,which is excellent jazz-metal.

Edit 3: The last track was absolutely crazy, but I don't know how far we can get away with pushing the boundaries of music and still call it music, quite the mashup nonetheless.

> it's like the two styles are pushing in fundamentally different directions

See, I don't agree. Jazz and metal are both very expressive styles of music - jazz being mostly about expression through harmony and metal being all about dynamic contrasts and strong, very defined rhythms. I think they complement each other and I love hearing them together. And I actually like it when they take it to extremes sometimes
It's all a matter of personal taste though. I was definitely a metal fan first so there's that

I am familiar with Holdsworth and Cynic - great stuff.

I do have some "softer" stuff that goes in interesting directions too.
Like... GoGo Penguin - a traditional trio at a glance (piano, bass, drums) but doing something quite unique

The drum-focused but chill music of Richard Spaven

The melodic fusion of Lydian Collective:

and as bonus: these absolutely crazy people

@Voltan I love GoGoPenguin so thanks for posting that, yeah, fair enough, being a metal fan first and foremost definitely helps, so I can understand that. I remember when I first started listening to jazz after metal I was always excited whenever the occasional power chord was snuck into the melody (See one of the tracks, I forget which, on Grace Under Pressure by John Scofield, which features Bill Frisell, another notable jazz guitarist).

But no, I am sure that I am a jazz-head first and foremost now, and 70s jazz fusion is about as far as I am willing to go when it comes to mixing jazz with rock or metal, except in the case of Naked City, who I presume you've also heard?

It's new vinyl day!

I need to buy more shelves 😩

@Voltan I also got vinyl in the post today - Angel Bat Dawid & The Brothahood - LIVE. Great jazz record.

@TheBrandedSwordsman I'll check that out - and yeah, I'm familiar with Naked City and John Zorn in general but I'm not sure it's my thing

@Voltan Up there with Frank Zappa's One Size Fits All for my favourite records of all time. You must be a Zappa fan yourself as a musician? Besides the lyrics, a lot of it is really musicians' music. Check it out as well if you haven't heard it already.

@Voltan Did you check out Angel Bat Dawid and Frank Zappa yet? Here's Zappa, from that album.

Let me know what you think?

(Angel Bat Dawid)

@nessisonett I thought you would be the best person to ask about this 'cause I can't find it anywhere. Any good albums that mix soul music with rock if that's even possible? Also, your top 5 jazz-rock fusion albums?

I can't live without music. And I listen for very different genres. Mostly I love old jazz. And i enjoy hip-hop and rock music a lot.
Now I listen to all albums of TOP for the hundredth time. Love their style

@TheBrandedSwordsman To be perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of jazz-rock fusion. My tastes in jazz are almost exclusively classic and rooted in people like Mingus, Coltrane, Davis, Sanders etc. The only fusion I’m really big on is Miles Davis’ later stuff and that’s just because I like his sound. Although I quite like the 70s Japanese fusion stuff that they used for F1 coverage over there. That’s why Mario Kart has a fusion soundtrack.

Soul and rock though, I dunno. The obvious would be Michael Kiwanuka.

@maryeddington What does TOP stand for? I like jazz myself, but mostly the modern and 70s fusion stuff, as I was saying to @nessisonett .Which jazz and rock artists do you like? Have you tried any jazz-rock fusion? Surely if you like rock and old jazz you wouldn't mind the combination of the two?

Gutted I was outbid on a copy of The Clean’s Compilation on vinyl. One of the most forward thinking bands of all time, writing music that sounds eerily similar to the slacker rock trend in the 90s all the way back at the start of the 80s. They, and other bands operating out of Dunedin, essentially created people like Courtney Barnett’s entire schtick and people like Beck and Stephen Malkmus of Pavement definitely owe a debt to them as well. Surely one of New Zealand’s greatest exports! Anything Can Happen for example is from 1981, a whole 5 years before The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths which is often credited with revolutionising that style of music.

After watching super dooper alice cooper i've been revisiting the early albums..still dont like easy action and pretties for you but love it to death,killer,schools out and billion dollar babies are just so damn cool..just cant bring myself to play my vinyl as they are just too damn special to risk scratching..also just found my stooges cd's too...

@Jimmer-jammer Are you a fan of Led Zeppelin? I was listening to In Through the Out Door today and as a fan of the Human League many a year ago the keyboards work really well for me. As a piano player yourself you should be interested in hearing some of the keyboards on this album? What's your favourite Led Zep album?

@nessisonett I was listening to John Scofield's album 'Electric Outlet' earlier and noticed, since we were on that subject the other day, that the bass guitar on the album is credited to someone only known as 'DMX' mysterious eh?

@TheBrandedSwordsman So I’m about halfway through that Angel Bat Dawid live album now. It has a very strong “a bunch of people gathered together to jam for an hour and a half (possibly while getting high)” feeling to it - which is not a bad thing but I’ll admit I usually like more “structured” music if that makes sense. It sounds like a very honest performance though and I’ll stick with it to the end for sure 🙂

Also I think TOP might stand for Tower Of Power 😀