Colin Towns + NDR Big Band - Frank Zappa's Hot Licks (2005) [EAC-FLAC]

Colin Towns + NDR Big Band - Frank Zappa's Hot Licks (2005) [EAC-FLAC]
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 445 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (tiff) -> 96 Mb


If this scorching live set is anything to go by, the November tour by Germany's NDR Big Band playing Colin Towns' arrangements of Frank Zappa classics will be unmissable. One-time rock keyboardist Towns (who worked for Deep Purple star Ian Gillan) became a film and TV composer, then a jazz bandleader, and the founder and funder of creative indie label Provocateur Records. His writing for big jazz ensembles mixes rock, improv, postbop and a slashing Stravinskyesque melodic wildness - but the result often comes at you with a visceral energy of such heat that it melts the edges.

For this live set from the 2004 Moers festival, Towns adds an ingredient that was already hot in the first place: Frank Zappa's compositions. Peaches en Regalia is a punchy, funky, big-band blast, the melody taken in turns by the horns. King Kong and A Pound for a Brown feature fine solos (notably from a terrific guitarist, Stephan Diaz), churning arrangements of brass blurts, wheeling reed lines and pulsating riffs. Slow marches, oompah circus music and heavy rock guitar licks (on Stevie's Spanking) all underpin the NDR's improvisational skills. Sinister Footwear is a grippingly lurching chordal dirge, and Little Umbrellas/Big Swifty rockets through opera quotes, interrupted by squealing trumpet breaks. A hurtling G-Spot Tornado (from Zappa's Jazz From Hell album) takes a string of climaxes through the album one notch higher. There's hardly a flat moment anywhere.


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Tracklist:
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01. Introduction & Anthem
02. Peaches En Regalia
03. Eat Tat Question
04. Let's Make The Water Turn Black
05. Watermelon In Easter Hay
06. Brown Shoe's Don't Make It
07. Willie The Pimp
08. King Kong
09. Pound For A Brown (On The Bus)
10. Waka Jawaka
11. Stevie's Spanking
12. Sinister Footwear -2nd Mvt
13. Little Umbrellas
14. Big Swifty
15. Black Napkins
16. Be-Bop Tango
17. G-Spot Tornado

*RECORDED LIVE AT MOERS FESTIVAL 2004

-2005 Rent A Dog / Provocateur Records / NDR | rad 2007-2

Personnel: Colin Towns (Coductor and Arranger), Lennart Axelsson (Trumpet), Ingolf Burkhardt (Trumpet), Claus Stotter (Trumpet), Reiner Winterschladen (Trumpet), Dan Gottshall (Trombone), Sebastian Hoffmann (Trombone), Stefan Lottermann (Trombone), Ingo Lahme (Trombone & Tuba), Flete Felsch (Saxophones), Peter Bolte (Saxophone), Christof Lauer (Saxophone), Lutz Buchner (Saxophone), Frank Delle (Saxophones), Vladyslav Sendecki (Piano & Keyboards), Stephan Deiz (Guitar), Lucas Lindholm (Bass), Marcio Doctor (Percussion), and Ian Thomas (Drums).


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