Our friend Fuchs from Dinamo 103.8 has just unearthed a talent in the form of his uncle Erkut Şahinbaş. An architect who’s won the National Architectural Award of Turkish Architects twice, Erkut Şahinbaş is an avid jazz listener. His one hour mix with help from Fuchs himself is part one of a 2 part series, the next one “For Jammers” to follow next week. This one is “For Lovers”!

chris botti – miami overnight
chris botti – all would envy
ernie watts quartet – spirit song
robert glasper – downtime
robert glasper – no worries
the christian jacob trio – piece two
aydin esen – weepin’ (for that dream)
chris botti – when i see you
brazilian trio – amor
fahir atakoglu – connection

Two albums that I’ve been procrastinating over for a few months, Vijay Iyer’s Historicity and Ben Allison’s Think Free has been topping nearly all the noteworthy jazz lists. I was waiting for something intelligent and inspirational to say about both albums but frankly after all these years I think I’m only valuable as a spotter and not a reviewer, and I can only write on jazz by taking cues from allaboutjazz etc. So it’s about time to end the anxiety of seeing this on my todolist everyday by giving you a few pointers.

Vijay is one of the new superstars of the piano, If you’re into progressive jazz you already know that from his body of work with Steve Lehman, Tyshawn Sorey and Rudresh Mahanthappa. Historicity is the effort of a piano trio with Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums, but it’s not a standard piano jazz album. I’d rather play cheap and call it math jazz or something. One of the densest albums that passed through our speakers this year. The new shape of jazz to come?

All the best jazz groups, and certainly the best piano trios, have managed this trick. They honor the past directly, but they also honor the past by imposing a highly individual personality on classic songs. With Historicity, the Vijay Iyer Trio emerges as another modern jazz trio that has found a fresh vision in an old form. Like Robert Glasper and Jason Moran, to name just two on the current scene, Vijay Iyer is refracting jazz piano in a new way, no longer merely pushing the boundaries of harmonic freedom, but altering the core with genuine changes to the groove. Popmatters

Lead by Portishead’s Geoff Barlow, Matt Williams on keys and Billy Fuller on bass Beak> is a new trio from Bristol who just released their debut on Ipecac Records.

The band has some pretty rigorous guidelines in place. They record all their music in one room and they don’t use overdubs. The band wrote their entire album over the course of one 12-day session. In a statement about Beak>, Barrow says, “It’s really good to create music under different conditions than you’re used to.” Pitchfork

Now I haven’t listened to the full album, but from what I’ve heard the band has created a claustrophobic lo-key kraut & psych sound with 70s analog electronic sensibilities not unlike Silver Apples.

BEAK>, then, is a record that gradually gives up its secrets with each listen, in turns sombre, blissful, angry and energetic – a record of moods and their transfer to disc. The ingredients, and the musical personalities, combine to make a very intriguing and invigorating listen. MusicOMH

review by urufixx :

Beak> Portishead’den Geoff Barrow’un önderliğinde, Billy Fuller ve Matt Williams’ın biraraya gelip oluşturdukları yeni bir grup. Grup albümünü öve öve bitiremeyeceğimiz Ipecac Records’dan çıkardı. Genel olarak kraut-rock ve psychedelic rock unsurların başını çektiği deneysel güzel bir çalışma. Albümün psychedelic tarza uygun olarak ağır ilerlediği söylenebilir. Bazı parçalar ise hissettirdiği duygular aracılığıyla albüme dinamizm katıyor. Bass ve davullar ön planda hissedilmekte. Deneysel ses efektlerinin müziğe oldukça renk kattığını rahatlıkla söylenebilir.

Son yıllarda 70′ler müziğine bir geri dönüş yaşanıyor farkında mısınız? Beak> de 70′lerin o leziz psychedelic ve kraut-rock gruplarının ruhunu alıp 2000′lerin müziğine oldukça güzel uyarlamış gruplardan biri. Kendilerine özgü kaliteli bir müziğin oluşmasını sağlamışlar. Çok da iyi yapmışlar bence. Bu albüm mutlaka desteklenmeli. Kraut-rock,psychedelic rock,experimental müzik ve Ipecac records severlerine, fanlarına şiddetle tavsiyedir. İyi dinlemeler.

It can be said that there’s now a distinct breed of Aussie funk, perhaps iconized by The Bamboos, with less afro caribbean influence than their counterparts. Cookin on 3 burners is a relatively new trio specializing in organ led jam & funk, featuring guitarist Lance Ferguson of The Bamboos, organist Jake Mason and drummer Ivan Khatchoyan. It’s basically the classic organ trio sound of Dr. Lonnie Smith, fed more funk and less jazz. A solid effort with good mixing sometimes sounding as powerful as an 8 piece orchestra, vocal help is by another rising Aussie star Kylie Auldist. Includes an au naturel cover of Gary Numan’s Cars. Nothing ground breaking here, but a highly enjoyable well-polished album if you’re into this sound. 3.5/5

It’s a shame, we’re so late to talk about Proudpilot, one of the few internationally notable acts coming out of Istanbul, and y’know what their drummer Golem is an occasional writer for undomondo. Well, maybe that IS the reason, I don’t know, it’s easy to overlook the ones close to you.

Monsters Exist their debut on Peyote Records -the publishing side of Peyote the club, an important hub for Istanbul underground- packs a stone punch right in the middle of your stomach. What else would you expect from a drummer who listens to powerviolence & grindcore and plays dubstep & dnb all the time, and two sisters who make bizarre electronic soundscapes on their own.

Their stripped down core aesthetic is prevalent through the album. Songs don’t develop more than they have to, in a way like early Discharge where they capitulate on one idea throughout the song. The synth is as hypnotic as it gets. The album is dark, dystopic and tribal, like watching the corruption of modern society with no mediator in between. My initial reaction was to criticize it because it wasn’t diverse enough, I take it back because Monsters Exist sound better as a concept album -even though it isn’t it-. A total win from Proudpilot and a fresh page for underground music in Turkey I hope. 4/5

Talking about Jazz Liberatorz without going into a long rant about the world of bling & how despicable the “MTV/Cribs/Industry rappers” troupe are, seems impossible as the roots of hip-hop have been hijacked by the industry and turned into a simulacra of what it originally meant in the last decade.

Fortunately this French trio of DJ Damage, Dusty and Madhi is carrying the torch of resistance. KIF Recordings darlings already have a slew of 12′’s under their belt and their second LP “Fruit of the Past” is a compilation of their previous efforts. 26 songs featuring familiar names like Mos Def, Fatlip and Declaime among others, this is straight up jazzy beats and positive soulful vibes.

I sat down to write a post about the new LP from French hip-hop trio Jazz Liberatorz, yet I after half an hour of friendfeed banter, I realized that I’ve been rocking to NYC klezmer-math-jazz power trio Rashanim for the time being and thinking obsessively about questions like if I will ever live to see them live somewhere, why on earth they aren’t better known or how to obtain the new Rashanim album NOW. After checking my RYM account for the umpteenth time to see if I have given them 5 stars, I realized my only option was to buy it from a site called thinkindie. Regardless of my financial failure, I valiantly pressed buy only to see that they don’t sell to TR. Well, what can I say apart from cursing the moment that someone first thought of using areacodes/national boundaries for digital media. Now I have to listen to Shalosh until I order a CD from Tzadik or stream the new album from Squidco (which apparently is acoustic :/) or Myspace. The second song is from Exil’s 1975 album Fusionen.

I know I’ve been circling around the same field for the last few posts, but one of the better albums that’s assisting me on this vacation is Steve Kuhn’s latest ECM offering Mostly Coltrane. The connection tying this to the previous NYC jazz posts is his regular sidekick Joey Baron who is a pillar of the Masada clique and Joe Lovano on tenor who tries to fill Coltrane’s obviously unfillable shoes with quite a success.

Brooklyn born Kuhn is now effectively in his 70’s and unbeknowst to many (including me), he was Coltrane’s first pianist before the legendary McCoy Tyner who’s also 71 years old now. He has released a string of albums on ECM in the late seventies but for two decades his only ECM offering was 95’s Remembering Tomorrow. His return album “Mostly Coltrane” is a tribute to John Coltrane and might be seen as a “what if/alternative history” take where Kuhn returns to pieces he used to play with Coltrane as well as newer – even posthumously released – material. I don’t want to rate this one against Coltrane versions since they are remarkably different so I leave it to jazz critics, but it’s safe to say a tribute like this is much appreciated.

Finnish free jazz trio Black Motor’s newest release Vaarat Vastukset might be said to be on a manic-depressive cycle. The opener and the closer with sluggish non-tempo, chimes and bells and howling sax sounds like an ominious ritual which fits very much with the cover image and the name as well. Yet still the other half of the album behaves like it is on a manic fit with rapidfire drums & sax sounding more like conventional free/improv jazz. It’s probably the black part that has made this one a spectacular journey, because this really grew on me unlike many improv stuff which sound good for what it is but don’t reward repeat listens. However acting in self interest, I’ve not featured the ominious closing track – which is one of the highlights of the album – which will hopefully be on this new summer mixtape I’m trying to fix in a couple of days. Out on Valerio Cosi’s Dreamsheep label.

All girl twee pop trio Liechtenstein has released their debut full length “Survival Strategies in a Modern World” on – who else – Oakland’s Slumberland Records, also home to one Cause Co-Motion! (our favourites), Crystal Stilts and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (not our favorites).

You know the drill, there’s really nothing authentic with this sound, it’s all rehashed 60’s power/bubblegum, lo-fi girl vocal choir pop, but Roses in the Park is a great song (love the modulation (?) at 1:00) and the album is a pretty solid listen if you’re into this kind of thing (Ashamedly I am. I can’t get over listening to teen-pop music ). I hope the girls are not as annoying as the Vivian Girls in real life.