Simon says :
Today my friend Ish - he of the many blogs - is here to present the latest in our ongoing series of rhodes compilations, a fantastic collection he's curated from MPS albums featured at his blog Magic Purple Sunshine. Take it away Ish ...
'Mindwill' excerpt
Ish says :
When I created Magic Purple Sunshine just a few months ago, I had a vague idea of what the MPS sound was. I had shared a couple MPS albums on my blog Ile Oxumare, and owned a few more. I thought wouldn't it be cool to try and create a blog where the combined forces of Blogland could share and collect the music of this exceptional European jazz label. It would be based on the idea behind my Strata-East Fan Club blog, but bigger. Much bigger! The idea would be that the whole discography would be listed as a kind of skeleton, and then I'd go out and try to find links.
'Shelda' excerpt
And so it began. Now listing close to the entire MPS discography of well over 500 albums, thanks to this universe of blog owners and visitors, it actually has downloadable links--both blog links and direct shares--for hundreds and hundreds of these albums. It's a completely collective work that owes its content to its very generous readers.
'North Beach' excerpt
It turns out the MPS Sound is bigger than I thought! There's all kinds of jazz represented, and lots of cousins from the worlds of Brazilian music, Now Sound/Easy Listening, and others. I haven't been able to download and listen to all the albums posted there, but I've listened to a lot, and WOW.
Some are not to my taste. There's music there certainly more suited to a 1960s TV game show or perhaps the next Austin Powers flick. Some would even put your grandma to sleep. But some are INCREDIBLE. MPS excelled and innovated in progressive, electrified jazz: and not just outright fusion but a unique sound that could be loud and free, groovy and funk-tinged, or mellow and melancholic. And guess what? Key to that sound was the Fender Rhodes electric piano. So here I am at Simon's blog: the perfect place to tease Blogland with an introduction to some sides that might not be so well-known.
TRACKLIST
01. 'Statement' - George Duke
- from 'Feel' (1974)
02. 'Soft Hands Had the Rain' - Bora Rokovic - from 'Ultra Native' (1971)
03. 'Shelda' - Smoke
- from 'Everything' (1976)
04. 'Something Wrong' - Jasper Van't Hof's Pork Pie
- from 'Transitory' (1974)
05. 'Lift!' - Volker Kriegel- from 'Lift!' (1973)
06. 'Isus Mirror' - Hans Koller Free Sound
- from 'Heidelberger Jazztage '72' (1972)
07. 'Autumn in March' - Association PC
- from 'Rock Around the Cock' (1973)
08. 'North Beach' - George Duke - from 'Faces In Reflection' (1974)
09. 'Mindwill' - Volker Kriegel & Spectrum - from 'Mild Maniac' (1974)
10. 'Waitaminute' - Peter Herbolzheimer Rhythm Combination & Brass - from 'Waitaminute' (1973)
11. 'Keep on Driving' - Don Sugarcane Harris - from 'Keep on Driving' (1970)
12. 'Miriam' - Michael Naura Quartet - from 'Heidelberger Jazztage '72' (1972)
13. 'Poobli' - Alphonse Mouzon - from 'Virtue' (1977)
A note about quality: I tried to glue this together in iTunes, and hopefully the ID3 tags will sequence everything correctly. The tracks are of varying quality, mostly high kbps mp3s : I couldn't begin to tell you where the originals came from; most are from shared albums, and ALL the full original albums are linked at Magic Purple Sunshine. The whole thing is timed to fit on a single CD.
So now that you've been touched by MPS-Love, come on over and get a full dose. New album links are posted almost every day. And don't forget to leave a comment for the gracious sharers of this incredible music.
