Cocoon Pizza Beer

Bengt Berger - Bitter Funeral Beer (1981) {ECM 1179} {OOP & RARE rel 1994)
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 254 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 101 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (png) -> 169 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 1981, 1994 ECM Records | ECM 1179
Jazz / World Music / Avant-Garde Jazz / African Traditions / West African

The term "cultural imperialism" is often used, justly, when Western musicians appropriate aspects of third world music for their own, watering it down to listener-friendly levels and giving scant acknowledgement to its original creators. Whereas this sort of approach has been the unfortunate rule, from Paul Simon to David Byrne, every once in a while a glorious exception emerges. Such an exception is Swedish percussionist Bengt Berger's Bitter Funeral Beer band. Berger, who devoted lengthy periods of study to West African music, particularly that of Ghana, assembled a large contingent of fellow Swedes, trained them in various aspects of West African traditions and, most importantly, chose Ghanaian folk themes with utterly beautiful and irresistible melodic lines from which to improvise.

Unless you go strictly by the lyrics and/or the circumstances, the third and fourth Scritti Politti comeback albums are not very dissimilar. They're principally bright-colored guitar pop albums, though 2006's White Bread Black Beer features neither the guest MCs nor the deeply hip-hop-rooted arrangements that speckled 1999's Anomie & Bonhomie. Beneath that, everything on White Bread Black Beer was written and played by Green Gartside at his house, and the sleeve design of the album is credited in part to an Alys Gartside.

Sometimes it seems that actual human feeling, conveyed through passionate musicianship and songwriting, is all but absent in popular music nowadays. Mike Keneally is thrilled to prove otherwise with his eighth album, Dancing. Mike has invited Beer For Dolphins, his masterful eight-piece band, into the studio to lay down nearly 80 minutes of the most gleefully adventurous, yet heartfelt, Keneally music ever. This album is truly a feast for the ears…

The core of this group – John Surman, Alan Skidmore, Peter Lemer, Tony Reeves, and Jon Hiseman – recorded an LP titled Local Colour for ESP-Disk in 1966. The plan, conceived the year after the 50th anniversary of the recording session, was to reunite the original quintet, which had existed for six months back in '66, but unfortunately Nisar Ahmad (George) Khan, tenor saxophonist on the original album, came down with something and couldn't appear. Alan Skidmore (Lemer bandmate in SOS) was deputized and, as all familiar with his career would expect and you will hear, came through with flying local colors at the concert on February 20, 2018 at noted London jazz club Pizza Express. Four months later, Jon Hiseman passed away at age 73 after battling a brain tumor.

Compiled from the finest sources available, Pizza and Fairy Tales is a detailed examination of Paul McCartney's mid-80's era of "finding himself" in the new musical world order. Working with several esteemed producers, McCartney veered from style to style looking for a direction. The result was a lot of music, much of it unheard previously, which is featured on this two-CD collection.