Various Artists – Utopic Cities: Progressive Jazz in Belgium 1968-1979
2 LP / 2 CD / DL
Sdban Records, 11. Juni 2021
1. Placebo – S.U.S. 04:23
2. Solis Lacus – Utopic Cities 07:02
3. Open Sky Unit – Open Sky 05:38
4. Brussels Art Quintet – Vas-y Voir 05:30
5. Koen De Bruyne – Pathetic Dreams 09:03
6. Raphaël – Archangelo 12:52
7. Philip Catherine – Memphis Talk 04:02
8. Jacques & Micheline Pelzer Quartet – Face Reality 08:19
9. The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band – Sakara 07:13
10. Marc Moulin – Tohubohu pt. I 05:13
11. Babs Robert – Pro Forma I 06:14
12. Lou MacConnell – Naima 11:09
On June 11th, independent groove label Sdban Records will release Utopic Cities: Progressive Jazz in Belgium 1968-1979 featuring twelve essential compositions from a highly creative period in Belgian jazz. The release follows Sdban’s critically acclaimed Let’s Get Swinging: Modern Jazz in Belgium 1950-1970, released back in 2017.
Utopic Cities is an eclectic selection of forward-thinking jazz from the Belgian underground, including the left-field fusion of Marc Moulin’s Placebo, Koen De Bruyne and Solis Lacus; the intense post-bop of Jacques Pelzer and Lou MacConnell; the cutting edge soul jazz of Philip Catherine and Open Sky Unit or the otherworldly avant-garde of Babs Robert and the Brussels Art Quintet. Recorded in the aftermath of the revolutionary year 1968, this music is the fruit of a highly creative momentum in Belgian jazz history that produced a unique sound which distinguishes itself from its American source of inspiration by an indefinable characteristic that can be hardly better described than ‘Belgian’.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #158 – Piano Jazz 2024 (Teil 1) - 19.12.2024 – 20:00; #159: Martial Solal (1927–2024) – 21.1., 22:00; #160: 11.2., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba