Landress / Hart Group ~ USA ~ Los Angeles, California

Dancing Moments (1981)

---2/1/11

According to whatever data I could find, Landress / Hart were a Los Angeles based jazz fusion duo (though a full four piece group), one on guitar and the other on keyboards. The latter is the usual smattering of period synthesizers and Rhodes piano. It's all rather pleasant, and played to perfection. The Mrs. joined me for this listening session and thought it to be a very nice instrumental album as well. These guys were definitely pros who deserved more recognition. Recommended for fusion fans.

----9/15/19 

The above constituted the original CDRWL entry.  Not exactly hyperventilating the glory of its contents. And yet, shortly thereafter, the album became something of a "holy grail" for collectors. I know it had to be a coincidence - that someone important (who we would call an "influencer" today), whoever that someone was - shared the album with others of a like mind, perhaps reminded by our post. We had reported at the time that it was a "$5 record", because that's what the last auction on ebay had received. Next thing you know, prices on ebay were fetching $500 and more! There's no accounting for the collector mindset. I see today that the price has normalized downward, but hardly back to $5.

In any case, on this revisit the music definitely can hold its own - and I found myself enjoying it more than prior. Still nothing extraordinary, but it would make for a nice reissue, especially given the demand.

"Julian", over at Progressive Reviews, has this to say: "...In fact it's very similar, as the amateur fan will remark, to all those other US light fusion (but not fuzak!) albums I've posted before like Bellvista's great The Painter and Chateau Breakers and the fabulous Franklin Street Arterial album (posted as a comment somewhere or another, can't remember where). In terms of sheer complexity and originality it's not quite at the level of Franklin Street, or my other big fave Clareon, in terms of dynamism not approaching Spaces' Border Station, but I love its pleasantness, and as he said, the superb playing."  He = CDRWL. There's also a humorous comment about how his wife noticed all these albums sound the same - and perhaps it's even the same album. lol. She's got a point. We'll leave it right there.

No reissues as of 3/24/25.

2/1/11 (review); 9/15/19 (update / new entry)