30 June 2013

Damiani Opus Music Ensemble-Flashback 1983 (izmez-polis,lp 26002)'


Here's a lovely little known album , by Paolo Damiani's Flashback ensemble,the stated intentions of which being to investigate the similarities/differences between Mediterranean folk music and Jazz.

A nexus of free Improv/Jazz and Italian folk idioms is' now common place .. mostly through the work of Gianluigi Trovesi, who's album 'Dances' on red records in 1985 proved to be a breakthrough  album in the vein, Paolo Damiani was also the bassist in that trio, and has played with Trovesi periodically since...both have played regularly with the Italian Instabile Orchestra.

although perhaps only intermittently successful in its stated aims,as attempts at genuine syntheses of this nature... often are the disjunctions and failure are as interesting if not more so than the syntheses.

Being a - Don Cherry-Albert Ayler,and so called world music Fanatic i fully appreciate the attempt and have always been drawn to such endeavors..

A beautiful , vibrant spirited performance which manages to come across , despite the harsh slightly glassy quality of the sound on this recording.

Other than Fresu and Schiaffini, the other performers here are unknown quantities to me,and the only other record i know well on this label is Tony Oxley's 1986 album Live at Rocella Jonica .which has been reissued on CD.
Damiani ..appears to have been prolific in the intervening years ,making records for Egea, and Splasch among others.

BTW, another Stunning example of tenuous syntheses of Free Jazz and in this case Sicilian polyphonic traditional vocal music is "New Village on the left" by Marcello Melis,an even earlier example.

for full details including personnel  click on the cover scans
Enjoy!!!

8 comments:

  1. Flac
    http://www42.zippyshare.com/v/56535203/file.html
    http://www68.zippyshare.com/v/27070218/file.html

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  2. Paolo doesn't make bad records and this is one of the few I don't have, so thank you "BIG TIME" for this SOTISE.

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  3. on repeat mode from some hours
    THANK YOU!

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  4. This is a delight - Thank You. I became interested in Paolo hearing him play on an Albert Mangelsdorff show posted here and have since picked up a copy of Jazzitaliano Live, Trovesi's Dances, and this. He's quite a bit more than a fine bass player - he has created a musical space unique in jazz and the other influences that occupy it. If it captures you as it has me then it is a beautiful place. Sound quality is fine to my ears and I can not perceive the concept of failure in this set, but as a musician I know that nearly everything you do falls short of what you set out to do, however, there are those magic moments...we all live for. Only Paolo and his mates know...but this one brings me plenty of joy. P.S. I put it into an editor to cut tracks and found that (with a little fuzzy math) Side B = the tracks listed for A and vice-versa.

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  5. Jackalope
    yes this does capture the imagination
    enjoyable on its own terms...

    i think i followed the labels on the vinyl in naming the files, it appears each side was wrongly labeled.

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  6. New link:
    http://www.mediafire.com/download/kdsxlshi2lrd2pd/Paolo_Damiani_OPUS_Music_Ensemble_-_Flashback_%281983%29.zip

    Igor

    ReplyDelete