Keyser & Shuriken - newsletter #31: Minor victories
Newsflash 16.08.2000
Dear friends,
You might have seen the Grencso Kollektiva on our top 10 and playlists
since a while, and it seems fair enough to spread the word about them. All
summer long we were listening to their current album Rejtely (Mystery)
sitting on Shuriken's balcony at night with friends. By our opinion it is a
wonderful piece of superb laid back jazz music and certainly the best
Hungarian jazz album of the last decade. Being released on KVB, a very
small "underground" jazz label it can't get to a bigger international
audience which we think is a shame. Its pulsing summer energy, positive
vibe, old school, but still fresh orchestration and really special
Hungarian tone makes Mystery a unique, one of a kind album.
Grencso & Co (Istvan Grencso - alto sax, Robert Benko - double bass, Gyorgy
Jeszenszky - drums) are all older guys (around 40 we guess). The man
(Gyorgy Czaban, http://tilos.hu/djk/kolbasz.html; czaban@tilos.hu) who runs
the KVB label, (an innovative "home" label of Kozgaz Vizualis Brigad, a
cultural brigade into jazz, etno and independent film that has put out 3
CDs yet) had a really hard time persuading these guys to do this album.
That is because the Hungarian jazz musicians are really strict - almost to
the level of snobbism - when it comes to playing popular titles in jazz.
Even if the whole jazz standard thing is basically nothing but playing
traditional or pop songs and sometimes jazz classics reshaped in your own
style, playing Hungarian "dance music" titles of the 50s to many seems as
an artistically degrading option to many. But this album really rocks: the
guys play with a true 60s jazz sound (completely restructuring the old
songs), somewhere between be bop, the modern jazz anthologies and the more
repetitive and melodic period of Shepp. Meanwhile they sound really fresh
and remind us sometimes to Cinematic Orchestra (without any tech gadgets in
trio). Right now most of you doesn't have any other opportunity to listen
to their music than listening to our radio shows
(http://tilos.hu/mp3/Saturday/0600.m3u), since KVB is a small label without
international distribution. Anyway, Shuriken works on finding some foreign
label that would licence either some tracks for compilations or the whole
album.
Now some words about our activity: last weekend we have played at the
Soulsugar clubnight in Vienna
(http://www.3null3.at/infectious/SoulsugarMain.asp) with Tom Wieland of Les
Gammas fame. Despite of the extreme heatwave hitting the city we still
could get the people dancing inside the hot venue. A minor victory. Big
shouts to our friends we met in Vienna: Tom, Flow, Mario.
This week's reading is from the other side of the sampling business
(respect to the original masters!):
Stephen Greco: Bob, you're right up there with James Brown as one of the
most-sampled artists. What do you think makes your stuff so appealing to
DJs and the hip-hop crowd?
Bob James: Gee, if I knew, I'd be in the sampling business. It's been
fascinating: some of the things that have been sampled have been from the
least successful pieces I recorded, back in the '70s. [...]
Steve: You seem a pretty good sport about being sampled. Do you often get
situations, like the one with the Souls of Mischief, where you flat-out
deny permission?
Bob: I try to be tough when I need to be, but in a fair way. I've had some
feedback of people who felt I was too severe, and I've turned down a couple
of cases in which I thought the record was so offensive that I didn't want
to be associated with it. I've also had cases in which my music was was
altered so much that I saw it as unfair. What a lot of these guys don't
realize is that my reputation and career as an artist is on the line. They
may think that they're doing me a big favor by introducing my music to a
younger audience that may have never heard it otherwise - and on some
levels that's true - but in that case it's their choice and not mine.
Platform Interview with Bob James - 3/99
(http://www.platform.net/phonics/03_99/26bobjames/bobjames1.html)
Keep on groovin' till next week!
Keyser & Shuriken
Playlist
Tilos Radio FM 98.00
Telibeviszonzott vagyakozas (20.08.2000) - DJs: Keyser & Shuriken; Leengum
Listen:
Lo-fi:<http://tilos.hu/mp3/Saturday/0600.m3u>
Hi-fi: <http://tilos.hu/mp3/Saturday/96/0600.m3u>
1. Marcel - Silent Carnival (Mole)
2. Thievery Corporation - Samba Tranquille (ESL)
3. Jaffa - ? (Stereo Deluxe white)
4. Moodorama - Loss of Sense (Stereo Deluxe)
5. Toxic Lounge - Lemon Incest - Sofa Surfers vs. Enduro Dub (Klein)
6. Alistair Colling - Oboro Zukiyo (Night of the Misty Moon) (Switch)
7. Mum - Resonant Frequency (Klein)
8. Jaffa - ? (Stereo Deluxe white)
9. Mos Def/Adlib - All praises Due (Guidance)
10. Thievery Corporation - Indra (ESL)
11. Reggie Gibson/Paul Hunter - Love Jones (Guidance)
12. Lighthouse - Love of a Woman (Vertigo)
13. Flying Fish - The Bloc (Earth)
14. Chuck Perkins/Joe Claussel - Jazz Funeral (Guidance)
15. Art Konik - Mingpark (Comet)
16. Soul N Soda - Samba Samba (Stereo Deluxe)
17. Sidewinder - Stanways Revenge (Jimpster remix) (Fenetik)
18. Pat Barry - Snake Hips (Synth Attic mix) (Guidance)
19. Big Bud - Blueberry Muffins (Earth)
20. The Transistors - Mission On Venus (Temposphere)
21. Les Gammas - Guauanco - Recloose mix (Compost)
22. Art Konik - Afro Monkey - Afro touf mix (Comet)
23. Thievery Corporation - Air Batucada (ESL)
24. Mescalito - Sentence Deferred (Tummy Touch)
25. Grencso Kollektiva - Ott fogsz majd sirni (KVB)
Tour dates:
26.8. Budapest: Olof Palme House
16.9. Budapest, Trafo: Euroconnections
30.9. Vienna (A), WUK: Taste of the East presented by Keyser & Shuriken
I. - with Yonderboi (live act; Mole, H) and dZihan & Kamien (Couch, A)
20.10. Munich (D), Into Somethin'
21.10. Pfarrkirchen (D), Bogaloo
5.11. Zagreb (CR)
18.11. Budapest, Sziget Events Hall: FREEE Birthday
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Keyser & Shuriken weekly newsletter
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Contact: E-mail: keyser.shuriken@freemail.hu; Phone: +36 20 9329279
Thanks for the support: Anna @ Acid Jazz; Manu @ Comet Records, Rainer,
Michael & Kaisa @ Compost Records; Zeljko @ Cosmic Sounds London; Vlado &
Mario @ Couch Records; Christian @ Klein Records; Iain @ Grand Central
Records; Andrea @ Island Blue; Andre @ Jazid Club & Records; Jazzland
Records; Jürgen (Jazzanova) & Sonar Kollektiv; Tom (Les Gammas crew);
Nicola & Filippo @ Fez Jazz/Schema; Eddy & Dus @ Madrugada Records; Gak
Sato & Rocco @ Right Tempo; Marcus, Oscar & Reini @ Spinning Wheel Records;
Oli & Sammy @ Stereo Deluxe; Alex "Reggie" @ Straight Ahead; Ali @ Switch;
Gilles (worldwide); Hannes & Flow @ Twentysomething Tunes; Laszlo @ UCMG
Hungary; Yonderboi & Trevira Modern, Ambi & Amorf Ördögök; United Future
Organization & Kaori; Werner @ Uptight; Pita @ ParaRadio; Gilb-r & Didier @
Versatile/Future Talk; Zino & Sakato (GPWW Unofficial Site); Rune & Dag @
Voices of Wonder; Tosha (Pencilbrain)
Respect: all people @ Tilos Radio
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