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 Prana Trio - After Dark [Circavision Productions - 2004]Jazz is in origin folkmusic, over the years there have been many interpretations of the genre and it regularly crossed over to other genres as far as contemporary art music. Nowadays the term jazz can’t really be used as a descriptive term for a distinct sound. It seems synonymous with ‘improvisation’ but I’ve seen too many jazz concerts where everybody was reading from sheetmusic for a large part of the show. So here we have a trio who unmistakenly make something to which the term ‘jazz’ applies, I guess the groove and interplay between the bass and drums certainly bear similarity with what’s commonly seen as jazz. Sunny Kim’s haunting voice don’t stay within any tradition and of course the bass and drums have to follow that. Hatchet Face shows a firm drum ‘n’ bass influence while Kim’s processed vocals soar over us like the aurora borealis (or australis of course, can’t see that on a picture) on the sleeve. It’s a disturbing outburst between more calm and dreamy pieces like Living Within The Ocean, where we return to a more familiar contemporary jazz sound. In Nalgene Bottles were taken into scarier realms, screaming of separation, again, while Regrets is a more melancholic piece. In Why? we actually get a real jazz shuffle, so yes: this is jazz. Just a very adventurous interpretation of it and definitely not to ‘chill’ to.The band, named after the Hindu word for the basic lifeforce, take their lyrics from Sufi poets Rûmi and Hâfez as well as Lao Tsu who wrote the Tao Te Ching. From there they take the perilous journey to the Garden. For me the music needed a few spins to ‘smell from the spilled cup’. I had to blow off some dust but beauty was its reward.  
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|  | | Prana Trio - After Dark | Jazz is in origin folkmusic, over the years there have been many interpretations of the genre and it regularly crossed over to other genres as far as contemp...
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| | | Crude ‘n’ Hope-corroding Wall... | Back in 2024, I got my first taste of Absurd Reality, and I was so impressed by how crude and nasty its take on walled noise was. Behind the project is South...
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