Modern creative jazz

6 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Jazz Fusion, JAZZ: Jazz-Funk

Show all album songs: Free Speech Songs


Details:
2007 Release. Guitarist and composer Ahmad Mansour has been active on the New York and European music scenes for over two decades, performing and recording with established players such as Marc Copland, John Taylor, George Mraz or Marc Johnson and countless younger talents, with a dozen CD releases as leader, spanning the gamut of modern guitar and compositional styles. Recorded live on tour in Europe, April 2006, Free Speech is testament to the group's improvisational magic on stage, further strengthening the chemistry heard on its last ESC Records release, Public Domain. Performed with unbridled energy and drawing from a wide variety of influences, this music defies categorization.

"Joined by fellow daredevils and audacious improvisers Stomu Takeishi on 5-string electric bass and Ted Poor on drums -- two ubiquitous figures on New York's creative downtown music scene -- Mansour explores some rather open-ended, outer territory in these live performances. Mansour and his highly interactive trio create music that is at once compelling and provocative, edgy and at times hauntingly beautiful. If jazz is the sound of surprise, then this is jazz with a capital 'J'."

Bill Milkowski, JazzTimes USA

"Mansour's second release on ESC further twists and elongates many of the themes and dynamics introduced on last year's Public Domain. Like its predecessor, Free Speech captures the group on tour in Europe and takes the trio's characteristically open-ended interactions to some marvellous new levels. Built on a hypnotically rocky beat the title track's bluesy riff and molten, dreamy chords veer into a chasm of squawks and undersea whines before reaching a scorching apex while "Modulator"'s driving wah-wah groove brings silky, sweeping lines from Takeishi over the powerfully restless, yet inventive Poor. The album's magnum opus, "Nebula", reconfigures Mansour's "A Minor Introduction", creating deft, intricate soundscapes, amid dazzling group interplay in which lush, liquid melodic sequences ebb and flow at will. "Rule and Divide" is an achingly understated reinterpretation of the tender ballad while the closing "Out on a Limb" is a scorching funk vamp."

James McGowan, September 2007, Jazzwise Magazine UK