Paratyphus B (Remastered 2023)

Album review

Polish-born, New York-based jazzman Michal Urbaniak is a saxophonist, flutist, and violinist. Active since the 1960s, he's released, played on, produced, and/or arranged hundreds of recordings. During the '70s and '80s, Urbaniak's various groups relentlessly pursued their own direction. Their ambitious sound wed Polish and Eastern European folk music to modal, classical, post-bop jazz, funk, swing, rock, vanguard experimentation, and more.
Sound Pieces is a three-disc compilation from Germany's Moosicus label. It comprises the Michal Urbaniak Group's two 1973 studio releases, Paratyphus B and Inactin, with a Radio Bremen live performance from late 1972. This lineup -- Urbaniak on violin, tenor sax, flute, and lyricon; then-wife Urszula Dudziak on vocals, echocord, and percussion, Adam Makowicz on piano, electric piano, and clarinet, Czeslaw Bartkowski on drums and cymbals, Branislay Kovacev on conga and drums, and Pawel Jarzebski on bass -- had been playing clubs and festivals for several years by this point.
Paratyphus B's eponymous opening cut reveals the band's unusual approach: A massive upright bassline guides Makowicz's electric piano and Dudziak's scat vocals through a knotty progression over free form improvisation from flailing drums. Eight of "Valium's" 13 minutes wind electronic sounds, Rhodes piano, drums, vocals, and bass as they roil and prattle before Urbaniak's violin, bass, and drums erect a funky jazz vamp and the band jumps in. The 15-minute "Sound Pieces" begins as a saxophone/electric piano and percussion ballad, while Jarzebski plays arco. A third of the way in it opens wide toward spiritual jazz, before Dudziak's sweeping, soulful, almost otherworldly singing and a restrained electric piano transform it into a lithe groover. Inactin relies on more funk and rock in its articulations. "Ekim," deceptively introduced by a violin solo, becomes a slow, narcotic jazz-funk jam. While "Fall" is an exercise in speculative improvisation, "Groovy Desert" is driving, nearly danceable avant-jazz-funk.
The Radio Bremen material is vital and kinetic. The electric "Winter Piece" showcases Dudziak's command and creativity as a vocalist. While the rest of the band endeavors to frame that startling soprano instrument, she transcends breaking barriers and setting up a new approach to jazz vocals -- her only peer at the time was Flora Purim. Urbaniak's gentle, swinging, Monk-esque intro to "Valium" belies the frontiers it travels across in 28 minutes. "Irena" is delivered as a spaced-out, nearly free psych jam that offers prime solo space to Jarzebski, Urbaniak, and Dudziak. "Sound Pieces" is a free jazz for its first half before melting into bossa, samba, and mellow funk and back again à la later Hermeto Pascoal. The closing medley combines "Green Desert" and "Lato" in a spiraling work that melds swinging Latin funk, charging jazz-rock, psychedelic improv, and Eastern drone with adept post-bop for over 34 minutes. It's breathtaking and worth the price of admission on its own. While there have been many compilations and anthologies of Urbaniak's work, Sound Pieces is the first to comprehensively address the primacy of the MUG and sounds wonderful to boot. This is for anyone interested in the murky roots of jazz and world fusion.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo