Bohren & Der Club of Gore

"Yes, jazz. In fact, this just might be a variation of jazz you might never have heard before. Remember Angelo Badalamenti's music for David Lynch's great TV series Twin Peaks? That slow, slinky, playful, minimalist blend of '50s rock 'n' roll and lounge piano, how hearing a single movement in the soundtrack instantly hit you with the mental image of Audrey Horne coquettishly walking across a room? Well, the music on Black Earth is just as simple, but instead, this music sounds more like a corpse clawing its way out of a grave, lumbering in the moonlit night, with creaky joints and a half-decayed face, in search of human flesh to feast on. Sure, there are times when you are hit with a mental image of a cherry-lipped femme fatale, but it's always only for a brief spell, as the music pulls you deeper and deeper into a dank pit of nasty, monstrous, ambient jazz."

Adrien Begrand, PopMatters

Bohren & der Club of Gore is a band founded in 1992 in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany by Thorsten Benning, Morten Gass, Robin Rodenberg and Reiner Henseleit. Originally, members of Bohren started out playing in various hardcore bands such as 7 Inch Boots and Chronical Diarrhoea. In 1992 they produced a crossover of jazz, hardcore, and ambient, which they self described as an "unholy ambient mixture of slow jazz ballads, Black Sabbath doom and down tuned Autopsy sounds". Henseleit left the band in 1996 and was replaced by Christoph Clöser in 1997, replacing the guitar with a saxophone at the same time.

http://www.bohrenundderclubofgore.de/html/index.html

ASTRUD GILBERTO

Talking about Astrud. When building the basis of this Jazz Den, we were very pleasantly surprised by finding Astrud's personal web page. So happy we are ever since that we decided to pay homage to this wonderful voice and persona of the Brazilian lands. Here's a very good picture. If you don't fall in love, you don't. If you do, join the club, and learn to feel the pain at the rhythm of bossa. I take this opportunity to say that it is my intention to push our chief editor of contents Mr Xeno up to unbearable limits, so that he writes an essay on the common cultural coordinates of Jazz and Popular Brazilian Music (samba and bossa nova) in the context of the black people's freedom from slavery.

ACOUSTIC LADYLAND

Photography: Johanna Ruebel

After a storming presentation on TV, we've been craving for this. Now JazzDen is in legal possession of the last acoustic ladyland cd.

We are eagerly waiting for our chief editor Mr Xenon returning from his break in France to write a review on this album.

Meanwhile, check some of the songs online:

Iggy

High Heel Blues(live)
Perfect Bitch
Thing(live)

ERIKO ISHIHARA QUARTET

We saw " Japan's answer to Diana Krall" !

"Eriko Ishihara’s fluent playing is the perfect foil to her gentle, lyrical vocals. With a bluesy piano style a la Gene Harris and Wynton Kelly, she has a natural gift for timing and phrasing, and great vocal presence. Her latest CD, I Wished On The Moon, will further cement her growing reputation as a musician who’s definitely in the ascendant." said the Colchester arts centre web site.
And it was true! (Well, almost true...).

Anyway she sounds a bit like Astrud Gilberto. We are pleased to say that, although we were so broke that we couldn't buy a cd, I told Eriko that she sounded like Astrud. And that Mr Xeno thought the same. She almost blushed...

JAZZ in MOVIES

Round Midnight. "Paris, 1959. The tenor sax player who has just been booked at the Blue Note was once known as one of the greats. He is staying in a hotel with other black American musicians who will keep him away from alcohol so he will show up to perform every night."(from IMDb website)

Bird "Saxophone player Charlie Parker comes to New York in 1940. He is quickly noticed for his remarkable way of playing. He becomes a drug addict but his loving wife Chan tries to help him."or his (from IMDb website)