GTB Blog

A blast of assured electro-jazz

Posted September 11, 2015

a block-rocking riot

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The fifth album from the Bristolian electro-jazzers is a block-rocking riot, says Louder Than War’s Paul Margree.  Get The Blessing navigate the same rich delta of post-everything British jazz rock as those other free ranging explorers Led Bib, Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland, …
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**** a welcome addendum of mystique, intrigue and flat out bravado to the jazz vernacular

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pounding rhythms, spacious atmospheres and strongly-crafted melodies – plus, of course, the unpredictability and musical mischievousness that have made the band so exciting and successful

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Krautrock…Eno-esque minimalism…resembles a BBC Radiophonic Workshop monster 7/10

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Punk-jazzers moving into wierder territory on fourth LP. This Bristol-based quartet have been steadily moving away from their initial incarnation as an Ornette Coleman tribute band with every successive release. On their fourth album, the vestiges of “jazz” are still …
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**** This is trip hop-informed contemporary jazz-rock at its very best

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The Portishead-affiliated jazz-rock band hit new heights on their first fully improvised album You may be familiar with Portishead’s rhythm dream-team of Jim Barr and Clive Deamer. You may not know, though, that since 2000 they have been members of …
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Jazz-rock, yes, but not as we know it. Bands attempting to combine the two traditions so often slip into gee-whiz bombast or bland modal ambience. Not so the Bristol-based quartet Get the Blessing. A collection that was, it seems, mostly improvised from scratch in the space of a few days, this is fiercely intelligent music in which muted trumpet and saxophone, enhanced by thoughtful washes of electronica, perform pirouettes over refreshingly melodic vamps. The Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley drops by, too. Clive Deamer’s drumming is astonishingly measured and precise throughout.

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**** It’s probably their best album yet, and the titles aren’t bad either

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This album is an incredible achievement in which there is not one bad aspect. A Masterpiece of temperance and understatement, a career defining moment in which we all fall in love with ‘The Blessing’

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an extremely powerful, memorable, atmospheric and original album, built on the jazz tradition, but to which the label ‘jazz’ is pretty much an irrelevance. One of the best records I’ve heard in a while

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