Music
Press
Besides Alissid Jazz, their Russian colleagues Safety Magic also cooperated with Nikolaj Oorjak/Oorzhak (only on a bonus video*). Both groups make moody, trance new World/(jazz) fusion music, while Safety magic mixes it also with more complex, sometimes fast rhythms, partly ethnical (partly even African inspired –thumbpiano and other rhythms-, Indian,..), jazz driven, with moody jazzy sax & trumpet arrangements, sometimes also rather free and wild, electronic textures, passages and arrangements and textures with didgeridoo, a few radio intermissions disturbing the recording, and the use of certain acoustic guitars. This release worked with a whole variety of technically & inspiratory related wordless vocal experimenters (some of them do vocal fantasies comparable to Iva Bittova’s vocal world, other are shamanic, fantasy-like experimental or semi-Indian/post-Celtic), often recorded with a bit more echo. Most known voice is Damo Suzuki who started his career in the early 70s with German krautrock group Can (he participated with their most important albums). In Russia, also Inna Zhelannaya has its importance for her contributions with Farlanders and her later works. Other Russian vocal performers are Tatjana Ipatova, Tatjana Mikheeva, and male vocalist Jury Dementjev. Tatjana Ipatova shows a child-like voice, a bit shamanic in nature. Tatjana Mikheeva’s voice uses babbling, trumpet-like sounds with her voice as well as operatic outtakes.
Combination of moody jazz, didgeridoo, vocal experiments, shamanism,..best to experience live or for a CD, from start to finish.
The video shows an energy-enfolding groovy jazz track with overtone singing, saxes, didgeridoo, electric bass, Rhodes piano, percussion and a bit of electronica.
From http://psychevanhetfolk.homestead.com/WORLDfusion.html#anchor_84
- WORLD FUSION music, review, Belgium
Discography
Safety Magic, LP, Emergency Exit, 2005
Voices, LP, Goatika Creative Lab, 2007
Photos
Bio
Moscow project SAFETY MAGIC first presented itself in 2002 and was immediately discussed as a new phenomenon in Russian contemporary art. Trans-jazz meditations, complicated rhythms and elegant tunes are performed with such ritual power that drives out of mind. SM's music is outside the scope of standard style definition. Rich, deep drive, brilliant jazz improvisations, delicate application of state-of-the-art technologies and innate ethnic trance have made SM the best musicians in World Music genre in Russia. There have been never performed the same show twice. As it was rightly marked by the project's initiator Dan Lerman, SM is a living process and at various times all new and new people are involved in it, giving to it different shades. There can be on stage either 3 musicians or 12, each of them is a professional, and it looks like playing in SM allowed them to reach a new level. Their joint creative work has given birth to the most powerful sound, which can maybe only compared to the projects King Crimson and Can.
Not without reason Damo Suzuki (the vocalist of the earlier well-known and now cult group Can) & Safety Magic performed joint concerts in Moscow and St-Petersburg within the frames of his project Damo Suzuki's Network in May, 2005 and April, 2007). Master of jazz Anatoly Gerasimov and Vladimir Chekasin and many other famous musicians took part in SM as invited guests.
The presentation of SM's first CD, went off in February 2005, had a good press & Internet reviews.
"One of these days the presentation of the first disc of super group Safety Magic the most powerful ethno-jazz-rock group on today's rock-stage took place in club "In Brestskaya". In the over-crowded club the well-known saxophonists Vladimir Chekasin and Anatoly Gerasimov soloed as special guests, Anna Korolyova sang. To support Safety Magic have arrived Pep-See, Markscheider Kunst, Pelageya, and Karl Khlamkin. Quite a serious scope. The central event of the presentation became performance of Safety Magic with Chekasin, Gerasimov and Korolyova. They so sensitively heard each other, that true pleasure from their shining performance entered the audience literally into a stupor. Video performance from Boris Berger ("Emergency Exit") created an additional semantic layer to the masters' world-action."
NEWSmusic.ru
SM was invited to a number of eminent International festivals: "SKIF" 2005, 2006, "Usad'ba Jazz" in Arkhangelskoe 2005 (SM's soundtrack was included to the festival's anthology), festival "Art Pleasure" (Chesterfield) 2006, where SM performed together with Nino Katamadze and Tony Allen on the same stage, Ethnoland 2005-2006, "Nashestvie" 2006, "Folk-around-the-clock" 2006, "Ethnotrip" 2006, Ethnolife 2008, International Festival of World Music "Sayan Ring" 2005, 2008.
Inna Zhelannaya joined SM in the autumn, 2005. After several joint concerts in Moscow it was decided to keep on the collaboration, which turned out to be a successful project right up to 2007.
In 2007 SM released their second album "Voices", where the musicians combined several unreleased live and studio recordings, including all the vocalists that had participated in SM, such as Nikolay Oorzhak, Inna Zhelannaya, Damo Suzuki and others. All of them took part in the presentation that took place in spring 2007 in Moscow and Saint-Petersburg and looked like more as a big ethnic festival due to "rich" line up and many friendly guest musicians.
SM's video featuring Nickolay Oorzhak (Tuva's throat singing) has secured first place in Best Live Video nomination at Klipfest-2007.
Now SM has reached a new stage. Masha Makarova (Masha i Medvedi), an old friend and a creative search partner attempted an audacious experiment and as a result of joint efforts there went off series of concerts. In December 2008 SM released a new Live Video from one of such performances.
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