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Savoldelli – Casarano – Bardoscia The Great Jazz Gig In The Sky Review by Gary Hill This CD is made up of songs from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Of course, the title might give that away. I’ve always said that if you are going to do music written by others, make it different. You should make it your own. Well, these guys took that idea to heart. Although the title might suggest otherwise, this is not a jazz album. It’s more electronic weirdness. That said, there are classical elements. One of those is the prominent stand up bass, which is what I refer to in the track by track part as just bass. This is trippy. It’s unusual. It’s fairly effective, too. I’m not overly crazy about the vocals, but the drastic changes in the musical arrangements make up for it. This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2016 Volume 3 at lulu.com/strangesound.

Track by Track Review

Speak to Me This really feels insane in this format. It’s trippy, echoey stuff with all kinds of bits of voices all over the top.

Breathe Bass creates the musical melody. The vocals are a bit on the raw side, but in a tasteful way. This is very different, but also very cool. Other elements join after the two minute mark bringing both trippy space and jazz to the proceedings. It gets pretty crazy as the instrumental jamming continues to work outward.

On the Run This cut gets re-envisioned as electronic weirdness. That’s sort of what the original one, but this is more stark.

Time I’m not crazy about the vocals on this one. We get another scenario with the vocal section being over a very stripped back arrangement (this one more electronic and trippy), while the movement after is powered up space meets jazz. There is some cool bass soloing later in this track.

The Great Gig in the Sky/Money This starts with slow moving music that’s both trippy and quite classical in nature. Around two minute mark we get some percussive elements along with spoken vocals. Then the familiar vocal from the original version joins as it moves onward a bit like some kind of techno jazz jam. When it gets into the money section, I’m not totally sold on the vocals. The bass and other jamming, though, works really well. This is pretty crazy stuff in a lot of ways. The female scat vocals add a whole layer of oddity. There are some techno urban bits that show up on this, too. It works out to trippy space at after a time before echoey, rather classical music takes it. This segues into the next cut.

Us and Them There is a dreamy, trippy nature to this. It’s part space and part jazz. Although this is more mainstream in some ways, it also gets into some strange territory. Still, this is one of the more effective pieces of the set. The extended instrumental section is one of the coolest prog jams of the whole disc. It has some great guitar work and is still tastefully space driven. It gets pretty crazy, but still remains very cool. It resolves out to a more mainstream arrangement for another vocal segment. At almost twelve and a half minutes in length, this is the longest thing here.

Any Colour You Like This trippy bit of electronic sounds comes out of the end of the last cut. It’s only a couple minutes long, but does get an infusion of cool bass work later. It gets pretty intense before it ends.

Brain Damage That bass drives a lot of this. It’s a more stripped back, psychedelic kind of jam. This gets pretty psychotic. Some of the vocals mid-track are particularly psychotic. The ending is electronic weirdness after some cool instrumental work.

Eclipse Jazz and space merge on this trippy number.

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