Request: Elliot Freedman Group - Bands of Merriment, Vol.1, West Coast Quintet Live [by request limited time only]
With regards to these guys, discogs says:
Profile:
The Elliot Freedman Group advances a harmonically elegant, compositionally uncompromising, non-canonical adventurous jazz. “Very, very good avant fusion” Guitar Player magazine
Of course the title of this one is either ironic or ridiculous, you choose. As described, it's tight fusion with some contemporary jazz elements (eg acoustic jazz piano). His personal style is very similar to Alan Holdsworth, but I find the sound of the guitar which is somehow passed through a synth (?) quite distracted sometimes with its twangy whistling aspect. You'll see what I mean when you listen to it.
For ex., the first track, Finding Form For:
source https://progressreview.blogspot.com/2025/05/request-elliot-freedman-group-bands-of.html
Thanks for listening, but really? "the title of this one is either ironic or ridiculous"? Bands of Merriment is ironic? What irony? Ridiculous? One's not allowed to title an album for the joy of putting groups together that play my tunes? And you couldn't mention the vibes--like as "contemporary jazz element"? The guitar, the long-scale baritone guitar, drives a Roland VG8, which indeed does things to the sound of each string directly--so, not pitch-to-MIDI--and, yes, there's a bit of extra resonance dialed into the sound, resonsively to vibrato, akin to a violinist's vibrato slightly changing the tone thru additional resonances. You couldn't talk about the music a bit more?
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