Author: John

Eastern Europe was a hub for amazing Jazz Fusion. This record by the Czech group Mahagon is one of the most impressive examples of that. It combines songs that are purely instrumental with vocal songs and has a wide range of songs, all standouts on their own, each possessing a certain complexity.

If you are interested in exploring some of the most soulful jazz music, it will be worth it for you to check out Lonnie Liston Smith. He is known to produce a magic sound when playing the piano and keyboards, so much that helped inspire the style Acid-Jazz. Particularly the music with his band The…

If you are interested in some of the best composers and movie scores, Italy might be the place to look at. There are countless great composers from Italy with an immense, legendary output. Ennio Morricone, Piero Umiliani, Piero Piccioni, Bruno Nicolai, just to name a few. But they also were great innovators: Giorgio Moroder for…

Poland has a great history in Jazz. In the 1960s and 70s, Polish Jazz was expanded by pioneers like Tomasz Stańko and Zbigniew Namysłowski to incorporate elements of the avant-garde and traditional folk music. A particularly important artist was Michał Urbaniak, one of the originators of jazz-funk fusion. The jazz scene in Poland went to…

During the 1950s and 60s, Western music was a strong influence in South Korea. Around that time, you can find many interesting Korean cover versions of popular Rock and Soul music from the United States. This influence created a unique underground sound over the following decades that became even more interesting when Korean bands started…

Germany’s music scene is a great place to explore if you are interested in electronic sounds and more mechanic, colder atmospheres. A great example for the unique German sound is Krautrock, a genre that was the outcome of West Germany’s further development of popular psychedelic rock music from the 1960s. Many bands, most famously Can…

Music from the UK can be interesting to explore because it was so impactful in shaping various global music scenes. In the 1960s bands like The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Genesis dominated charts across the world, at the same time as pushing the genre of rock into something experimental and psychedelic. And decades later, a…

Brazil’s music scene is a great place to dig into if you want to find some of the best rhythm, percussion, vocals, and a smooth mixture of bossa nova, jazz, and psychedelic rock. The Música Popular Brasileira scene which developed in the mid 1960s is where traditional Brazilian music took a new form, taking influence…

Much of Soviet music always had a vibe of underground and resistance, which makes it an excellent place to discover super rare gems. In the Soviet Union officially only music that was approved by the state was allowed, which meant that there was not much room for alternative genres and experimentation. But this created an…

For examples of the best avant-garde experimentation in music, French music can be great for you to explore. French artists were great at challenging norms and traditions in music and created great experimental songs.