The Absolute Sound October 2023

An unimpeachable classic considered to be the pinnacle of Rastafarian inspired music. Master drummer Count Ossie's band, including the incomparable tenor saxophonist Cedric 'I'm' Brooks, recreate a Rasta grounation, or gathering, playing and chanting a sublime supplication, including Bible readings, in praise of Emperor Haile Selassie I.

What happens when an orchestra that is so determined to break the barriers of big band and what jazz should be, attempts to take on the greatest and holiest of Jazz works? Why, you’d get 1977’s grand masterpiece Toshiyuki Miyama & The New Herd’s Orchestrane: New Herd Plays John Coltrane. This has been one of my absolute favourite discoveries of 2020 and I’m surprised it’s not talked about more. Miyama and band are well known for their adventurous experiments with the big band sound and concept even reaching as far out as free jazz on occasion. However on Orchestrane, they pay respects to the source material by being more restrained yet injecting new life into these timeless classics. Far from derivative perhaps even a giant step for big bands and orchestras in the modern age.

Karajan was a great Tchaikovsky conductor. Although he recorded the last three symphonies many times he did not turn to the first three until the end of the 1970s. There’s no doubt that the reason these early symphonies sound so fresh is because the Berlin orchestra was not over-familiar with them. The Tchaikovsky symphonies were recorded at the Philharmonie between October 1975 and February 1979 and are presented with their Slavonic March and the Capriccio Italien, both recorded in Jesus-Christus-Kirche in October 1966. The six symphonies span the whole of Tchaikovsky’s career as a composer, from 1866 until 1893, the year of his death.

DGM started writing new music in the spring of 2019 with the overall process taking almost one entire year since it was the band’s desire to push themselves beyond any previous boundaries set by their previous works. Truly, no small feat given the band’s catalog. The end result is “Tragic Separation” an album where the band ticks all the boxes of the Progressive Metal genre, but adds more and more of their own personal identity and approach.
You can still find all the trademark elements of DGM’s sound with sweeping choruses, technical passages, lightning fast fretwork, big vocals, and bombastic transitions, but the care and the dedication to the songwriting emerges in phenomenal songs which carefully encompass everything that goes from Symphony X to a more classic hard rock sound, even giving a nod to the Kansas sound in the title track…

Handel wrote the secular oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno (The triumph of Time and of Enlightenment) to the text of one of his patrons, Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, in Rome in 1707. The libretto, which doesn't stand up to close logical scrutiny, centers on Beauty, who must choose between self-indulgent Pleasure and the austerity of allegiance to Time and Enlightenment. Needless to say, any patron entering the theater for the performance, having noted the title on the playbill, would have no doubt about the outcome of the struggle, so dramatic suspense cannot have been one of the inducements for an eighteenth century audience. The rewards, however, are real, most notably Handel's remarkably fertile inventiveness and musical ingenuity, which justified sitting through a two-and-a-half-hour performance that was guaranteed to be a dramatic non-starter. Handel keeps recitatives to a minimum, and the oratorio is rich in musical substance and variety.

Ensemble Nimbus is a Swedish quartet (keyboards, clarinet, viola and percussions) that belongs to the tradition of Scandinavia's orchestral-grade progressive-rock with a touch of Univers Zero. A very modern and lively twist on the Zamla/RIO/Zeuhl type sound, but high-tech and very very lively, featuring Hasse Bruniusson (ex-Zamla Mammaz Manna) on drums. Bruniusson is also a member of the better known Roine Stolt's Flower Kings where he is the bands percussionist. Within Ensemble Nimbus he also plays acoustic & electric drums as well as adding the percussion. This band, yet another Swedish band, is described as the "second generation of European… RIO. "Garmonbozia" is their 3rd studio album.