Favourite ECM Titles

A few gems not mentioned yet:

Anoar Brahem - Barzakh
Anoar Brahem - Conte de l'incroyable amour
Egberto Gismonti - Danco dos Escravos
Egberto Gismonti - Sanfona

"Barzakh" is up there with ECM best selling record ever (Keith Jarrett's - The Koln concert) as one of my all time favorite albums.

Argyro, I had not noticed your Anouar Brahem recommendation. If you appreciate his music, you should also give a listen to Rabih Abou-Khalil, another master of the oud. Start with the album Al-Jadida. You will not be disappointed!

I pretty much own every Brahem and Abou Khalil album so let me chime in.

Rabih Abou Khalil has a lot of different albums out, which can be generally loosely described as oriental / jazz fusion. Oriental melodic and rhytmic signature (I am not a musician clearly).

The astounding eyes of Rita is more traditional oriental, as are my other two Brahem favorites that I mentioned. In "The astounding eyes of Rita" Brahem goes back to the moods of his earliest albums.

Rabih Abou Khalil also has one very traditional oriental sounding album out called Nafas (GET IT - Great stuff), while Brahem's most Jazzy album is Khomsa.

While we are on subject, there is another ECM favourite which is a must have and you are sure to like if you like any of the brahem stuff. This album is "Making Music" by Zakir Hussain.

By the way, the reason some folks picked up a Brahem album may be because "The astounding eyes of Rita" was record of the month in Stereophile a while ago. I first heard him (Barzakh) in an oriental furniture store in London and was immediately hooked.

The third giant of the Oud (and guitar) worth mentioning is Thierry Robin. I never quite got into him as much as Brahem and Abou Khalil, but he does oriental / world fusion, and his best known album "Gitane" earned 4.5 starts on allmusic.com. Worth checking out.

Madfloyd,

I just ordered this disc on amazon marketplace myself. Do a search for:

Gurdjieff, Tsabropoulos: Chants, Hymns and Dances

I bought from the reliable "moviemars-cd" site.

The only complaint I can lodge against ECM is that unlike "audiophile" labels like Chesky, they never got into SACD. Commercially probably a sensible decision, but an infinite regret to me.

My taste has evolved too, but there are some very timeless releases on ECM that I keep coming back to, and the occasional new discovery to boot.

Since this is becoming a bit of a world-music / fusion free for all, I have to mention Hariprasas Chaurasia (try "Shikhar"). Absolutely phenomenal raga on the bamboo flute.

Unfortuntaley, 96/24 is all 2 channel, which to me is a marginal improvement (as is 2 channel SACD). Multi channel SACD takes things to a whole different level in my experience. No such think available on ECM.

If we are going to throw vocalist into the mix, the one to listen to is Hamza El Din - a Nubian Oud player / vocalist. He has performed on stage with the Grateful dead, but released some very authentic albums.

Airegin, you closed the Oud - Bandoneon loop for me. along with Anouar Brahem, one of my greatest musical discoveries of the last decade is Richard Galliano on Accordeon/Bandoneon. I like his playing better than Piazolla (Galliano plays quite a few Piazolla compositions though). I first heard Galliano on Brahem's excellent CD "Khomsa" and have since aqcuired over 10 of his discs (as well as seen him live). My favorite would be "Blow Up", which is a duo with Michel Portal on clarinet.