SLAMCD266 Pinski Zoo – After Image

Pinski Zoo celebrate 25 years of kicking down the barriers and sticking doggedly out for individualism with this double album – a collection of live tracks from tours between 2003 – 2005, mixing their new material with classic updated versions.

‘After Image’ is Pinski Zoo‘s best and most representative album to date. After 10 years of releasing albums of personal projects such as Jan Kopinski‘s ‘Earth’ (live soundtrack to the silent film Zemlya), ‘Zone K’ and Steve Harris’s Zaum project, Pinski Zoo have released a definitive recording, ‘After Image’. These UK originators of free funk/power jazz (however it’s described) is captured on 2CD’s of music with their twin bass propelled rhythm section and the expressive, energetic freedom that live takes bring to the recording.

“Pinski Zoo deserves mega-stardom because it not only funked your socks off but foresaw future developments in jazz fusion.” – The Guardian

Jan Kopinski: saxophones
Steve Iliffe: keyboards
Karl Bingham, Stefan Kopinski: bass
Steve Harris: drums

“The performances are as thrilling and unpredictable as any on the band’s early-’80s breakout recordings. Utterly faithful to their original, post-Coltrane route to the jazz/funk shotgun marriage, Kopinski and Iliffe’s playing is as shocking and in-your-face as it was back when they were freshmen…Organic, no-surrender, spiritually uplifting music, After Image is probably the best album the band has released to date. After 25 years at the barricades, that’s an astonishing achievement.” – Chris May, All About Jazz

“PZ is still uncategorisable (I’d plump for post-punk-funk-harmolodicism if pressed), still uniquely exciting, danceable and darkly atmospheric, still powers irresistible pulses without stooping to tediously inflexible beats, still conjures nebulous, magical, mysterious soundscapes from forbidding ranks of hardware, still enchants with tender melodies plucked from the rowdiest melee. Less ferocious than of yore, perhaps, but there’s a much-extended palette. Harris is nimble and texture-savvy, Iliffe a master of colour, Jan K’s saxes as gorgeous and passionate as ever.” – Barry Witherden, BBC Music Magazine

“The “British jazz boom” of the late1980s produced such distinctively different improvisers as Courtney Pine, Andy Sheppard and Tommy Smith – but it also fostered an unswervingly hardcore cult band called Pinski Zoo, who mixed Dark, throbbing soul-sax, free-improv and jazz-funk with the thudding energy of Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time, early Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders.” – John Fordham, The Guardian

“This double CD is as close to a definitive Pinski Zoo album as you’re likely to get. It contains two storming versions each of anthemic live staples such as ‘Bounce’, ‘Firepoint’ and ‘Please Note’, but also captures the band’s subtler strengths: an attention to textural variation and nuances of timbre that would not be out of place on a Weather Report or Joe Zawinul Syndicate album…Pinski Zoo are a mature musical unit, and should be given credit for spearheading what is becoming an increasingly important and popular jazz movement, creating space for such contemporary bands as Led Bib and Fraud.” – Chris Parker, The Vortex

“Pinski Zoo have an immediacy and vigour that’s always compelling. Unlike many post-fusion bands, their music retains a rockist edge and they’re unafraid to be a bit nasty. “Bounce” is dominated by the sort of retchy bass line that’s a trademark, while Jan Kopinski’s tenor has rarely sounded so authoritative. “Father Daughter” treads into what could be described as the ‘driven ballad’ territory that David S Ware occupies so skilfully, allowing Kopinski to reveal his lyrical side. But it’s their up-tempo mania that makes most impression – compromise isn’t a word in their lexicon.” – Philip Clark, Jazz Review

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