Challenger Level 1

Charlie Hunter & Bobby Previte as Groundtruther + special guest John Medesky - Altitude (2007) {2CD Set, Thirsty Ear THI571812}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 543 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 234 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 35 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2007 Thirsty Ear Recordings | THI 57181 2
Jazz / Avant-Garde Jazz / Modern Postbebop / Experimental / Modern Creative

The third installment of the Groundtruther trilogy sees Charlie Hunter and Bobby Previte inviting John Medeski to be the third wheel. With both Hunter and Medeski on board, one could be forgiven for thinking this was going to be a funky good time, but Groundtruther is about pure spontaneous improvisation and totally unconcerned with getting people out on the dancefloor. There are two discs: Above Sea Level is the electrified set and Below Sea Level is the acoustic set. The electric set has Medeski playing his full array of vintage keyboards (including some really nice Mellotron) with Previte playing a hybrid electric/acoustic drum kit and electronics and Hunter using a near lethal amount of distortion. Medeski and Hunter compete for wicked tones, and with Previte's knack for triggered samples, it can be difficult to figure out who's doing what at times.

Psychedelic Percussion definitely sticks to his title. With the help from Paul Beaver of Beaver & Krause (famous keyboard wizard and sound engineer for the likes of Stevie Wonder), vibe master Emil Richards (check is two fantastic album on Impulse! with The Microtonal Blues Band featuring Joe Porcaro, father of the famed Toto brothers) and Gary Coleman (percussionist in the famous Wrecking Crew), Blaine goes wild in the studio with drums, gong, xylophone, organ, bongos, congas and timpani. Unusual textures and tones lead the way to 12 instrumental exotic numbers similar in a way to Raymond Scott most visionary experiments.

Josephine raises a stained-glass lamp and shepherds us spelunking the depths of spirit in this four-part double album. Following the fame of her voice are choruses of winged entities (and a space shuttle) that ascend and descend a maze of spirituals: ritual prayers, blues laments, vestal hymns and jubilant benedictions. The edges of the natural world are revolving backdrops from which our narrator perches upon symbolic precipice or saunters desolate snow-blanched forest, exploring eternal themes of mortality and morality, beneath the moon and in occasional dialogue with a mysterious lord of love, an ambiguous mystical figure.

5 Classic albums in mini LP-style card sleeves; Magnetic Fields (1981), Zoolook (1984), Rendez-Vous (1986), Revolutions (1988) & Waiting for Cousteau (1990).

Just after his live performance in Houston to celebrate NASA's anniversary, Jean-Michel Jarre released Rendez-Vous, an appropriately cosmic-sounding album of glittering synth pop. It consists of the same music heard at the Houston concert and shows Jarre moving closer to conventional rock territory, though still with his distinct blueprint. The final track, "Last Rendez-Vous: Ron's Piece," was composed by Jarre for astronaut Ron McNair and was intended to be the first musical piece played and recorded in space. McNair's historic duty was cut short, however, by the Challenger shuttle disaster of January 1986.

These three masses are early works but Bruckner had already gestated into Bruckner by the time of their composition. His symphonies regularly quote motifs from these works; they resonated in his mind down the years (and in fact, the F Minor Mass was written as a palliative gesture when the poor bugger was madder than usual).