Paris Reunion Band - Theaterhaus, Stuttgart, Germany 7/8/88

There appears to be a video of this show somewhere, although I’m not sure if it’s legit, Euro, bootleg or what. Irregardless, this is definitely something of an allstar jazz group with people like Woody Shaw, Nat Adderley, Joe Henderson, Idris Muhammad and the like involved, and more like the reunion of an early 70s jazz group with these type of players. Of course while you’re almost always going to get a good show with these sorts of guys in the seats, the very nature of it being a reunion band puts the focus on nostalgia, and thus this doesn’t actually resemble the 70s work of most of these musicians but more like a look back to the 50s and 60s. Yeah, things do get angular and weird at times, but there’s a tightness to the group that doesn’t evince as much chemistry as you’d expect.

Rudis/Custodio/Diaz-Infante - CRR Live

It’s funny how expectations work, as for whatever reason I thought I’d be getting some jazz with this title and while that’s definitely a stream of music that plays a part in this group’s style, it’s only one in a multitude. In fact this whole group seems to crunch the history of music into one album, combining all these strands of experimental and unusual music into an updated and modern sound that really does defy description. It’s roughly like if you took modern ambient music, free jazz, fringe DJing, and a bit of “world music,” ran it all through a musique-concret blender into a multitude of harsh and dissonant pieces that speak an entirely new musical language. It’s very dangerous stuff that’s likely to challenge all but the very experimentally inclined. From an early perspective it seems like a collection of strange viginettes, but the more I listen the more the musical vision is unveiled and the musicality of the group comes out. And to think they’re doing this music on the fly makes it even more impressive.