Guy Strazz Quartet – Eastern Blues

Eastside Radio’s album of the week is Eastern Blues by the Guy Strazz Quartet.

The Guy Strazz Quartet combines some of Australia’s finest instrumentalists, featuring APRA award winning Guy Strazz AKA Strazzullo on acoustic and electric guitar, Aaron Flower on electric guitar, Hugh Fraser on acoustic bass and Toby Hall on drums.

Strazz cites his main interest in music as cross-cultural jazz, and Eastern Blues is an embodiment of this interest. Citing Ravi Shankar, Shakti, Miles Davis, Charlie Mariano and the Karnataka College of Percussion as inspirations to his work and beliefs of cross cultural jazz, the diverse cultural influences that Guy Strazz himself has absorbed over his career further add to the overall ambition and experience of Eastern Blues. Whilst the theme is undeniably acoustic guitar jazz, elements of flamenco, Eastern European and Indian flavours all play their part in diversifying the release from other acoustic guitar releases. The album is an excellent execution of stimulating contemporary acoustic jazz music. The synergy of the quartet is tight, and the result is undeniably a jazz sound with world influences as opposed to world styled acoustic guitar music. It is this achievement that makes Eastern Blues such a special release, and credit must go to the quartet who carefully manage not to get lost in these world genres but rather learn and use techniques from them with the utmost subtlety and precision, with the result being a superbly produced piece of modern cross-cultural jazz music.

Eastern Bluesis a release by Rufus Records an is available from itunes. For more information go to www.rufusrecords.com.au or www.guystrazz.com

Stay closely tuned to Eastside as we are giving away a copy of Eastern Blues to a listener every day this week!