Jazz Archives

 

Yazzbot Mazut is a Poznań-based band, which debuted as a quintet in 2008 with a warmly received concept album W pustyni i w puszczy. As musicians, they started from punk, hardcore, reggae and electronics, but it is the original rhythmic improvisation they have developed together for years that has become their main tool of communication and exploration. The core of the group consists of the guitarist Andrzej Szawara, bassist Szczepan Kopyt and drummer Piotr Kowalski. In autumn 2009, the clarinetist and keyboardist left the band and were replaced by a young saxophonist Lena Romul. In several months, new material was created. The album Mazut Mazut (May 2010), recorded during a two-day session in the Dragon club in Poznań, is a convincing and electrifying blend of styles, and at the same time the band's own and unique diction, through free jazz, free funk, recognizable echoes of the M-base, world music, neosoul, off-jazz and nu jazz, trip-hop and electro, jungle and dub, latino and afrobeat.
Yazzbot Mazut are worthy successors to the Polish avant-garde jazz "yass" scene.

[...] The debut album of Yazzbot Mazut quintet from Poznan was published a year ago as a natural consequence of a tiring formula of the Prototype group, to which belonged Yazzbut's guitarist Andrzej Szawara, bass-player Szczepan Kopyt and drummer Piotr Kowalski. The clarinet player Piotr Mełech and the keyboard player Darek Dobroszczyk are new to this formation.
Reference to classical fusion music and some trans motives make one feel enraptured by their overwhelming expression. The group has ambitions to fill the emptiness after natural death of avant yass scene. The original vision of their music seems to be predisposed to do that. [...]

[...] I had been waiting for some months for a Polish electro jazz album, that would knock me out and put me in a blissful mood. I was already close to losing my hope, when...
'W Pustyni i w puszczy' (In Desert and Wilderness) balances delightfully between fusion, jazz-rock and free experiments. There is some touch of early Miles Davis in it, some psychedelic jazz-rock, sometimes our associations take us to disheveled Chick Corea.
'Mao Tse-Tse' or 'Grube Ścieżki' can be prescribed as antidotes for depression. [...]