What albums did you listen to today?...continued

Sunbirds - Sunbirds Excellent funky jazz-fusion from the band under the command of Klaus Weiss, an Austrian percussionist and composer, who notably played in Niagara. The music on this one is very playful and very pleasant. Great guitar and keyboard work. Highly recommended!

Pharoah Sanders - Thembi I like Pharoah Sanders’ music a lot for its very lyrical character. I could listen to him dissonantly overblowing his sax all day and not get tired or disturbed, but that’s not all here. There are also loads of rhythmic modal passages one would find a lot in his music. Great album.

Can - Ogam Ogat These recordings apparently come from the same sessions as Tago Mago and I can kind of understand why this stuff didn’t make its way to the record. Musically, it’s just not very good, in my opinion. There are nice moments here and there, but also the recording quality is very bad and you can barely hear anything from Irmin Schmidt. Still, pretty interesting.

Soft Machine - Third Ahhh…. This is undoubtedly one of my favorite albums of all time. I hadn’t heard the album version of “Facelift” in a while and was kind of surprised at how it differs from various live interpretations I’ve been exploring in recent months. Fantastic piece. As always, “Slightly All the Time”  impresses me at Soft Machine’s skill, “Moon In June” does something special to my heart, while “Out-Bloody-Rageous” (probably my favorite track) makes me reflect on various things in life. 

Edzayawa - Projection One Killer psychedelic rock from Nigeria. Surprisingly elaborate funky rhythms, trippy guitar and organ, and splendid ethnic-tinged vocal work. This is one of the better albums from Nigeria I’ve heard so far, maybe even one of the better from the whole continent.

Friendsound - Joyride Quite an oddity. This album clearly shows a new sound being crystallized, for 1969, it was definitely “on the edge.” There is a fair amount of that worn-out psychedelic jam fashion on this album, but there are also some quite innovative experiments to be heard here. I especially enjoy the musique concrète bits.

Franco Battiato - Pollution What a fabulous album. I am truly astonished. This one generally gets lower ratings than Sulle Cordie di Aries, but I think I might like it even more at the moment. Franco Battiato is such a brilliant, genius musician - the musical landscapes he paints are very intelligently crafted and carefully instrumented. Masterpiece!

Pink Floyd - More Quite possibly, I might not have heard this one in all its glory before. This is typical excellence from Pink Floyd of the period. The mixture of beautiful, charming, yet always exploratory and forward-thinking songs and extremely atmospheric, eerie instrumentals is what makes this such a superb album for me.