go, dog. gone.

Frequent and long-time be.jazz commenter Godoggo has lately been very active on his own blog. I like his style.

I saw a second-hand copy of John Carter's Dauwhe a few weeks ago and rushed to pick it up, even though I wasn't sure if it was part of his famed Roots And Folklore series. I've heard a lot about the series and Castles of Ghana in particular, but Dauwhe is the first one I've come across. It's still unlistened-to, as the first time I put it on was while laying down the new floors and the music quickly proved unsuitable to such a task. It was replaced with either 3121, T.I. or Arcade Fire, so my discovery of that appetising "seamless melding of composition and free improvisation... rooted so deeply in the blues and swing" will have to wait a little while longer.

Speaking of the composition-free improvisation continuum, G. links to Steuart Liebig's "Goals in Composition/A Riposte to Critics," which is a worthy addition to the "Artists Should Be Writing" file.

[Some people] have been disappointed that the improvised material did not have the same intent and fervor that they are used to hearing from other people who work in a similar vein. To them I would say that they are used to people improvising with disregard for the written material, which is an anathema to me.

Too often I have heard concerts or recordings where written material is played and then the improvised material starts . . . and there is little or no connection between them. I find this lack of connection tiresome - - I often question the need for the written material if the players do not tie their improvisation into the piece at hand.

qu'en dîtes-vous?

"La troisième bataille du jazz" (Jazz's Third Battle) by Francis Marmande, about Albert Ayler, and more specifically about his late-50s army stint in France and a near-riot-inducing 1966 concert. Marmande is such a great writer. Some find his style over-wrought, but it's not: he's in control the whole time. You couldn't write an article like this in english (sorry, english-only readers).

antecedents

Keith Jarrett Solo Concerts: Bremen and Lausanne -> Brad Mehldau Live In Tokyo
A few years ago, it was cliché to affiliate Mehldau with Evans and now it's cliché to do the same with Jarrett. I don't know if Jarrett invented the mix of jazz, folk, pop, concert hall-ready barrelhouse, super consonance and minimalism of his 70s solos concerts, but I think it made Mehldau's LIT possible. "Things Behind The Sun," "River Man" and "Paranoid Android" sound like Jarrett stuffed back into a song structure. By the way, Solo Concerts: Bremen and Lausanne is one to get for those who like Jarrett's playing but can't stand his voice.

Unrelated to Jarrett: I'm not particularly taken with the "Monk's Dream" on LIT: I think I prefer my Monk more hard-bitten, which would explain why the most pleasing part of this version is the straight-forward theme recap at the end. All the other tracks are real songs, and Mehldau tackles them expertly.

Several years ago, I read an interview of his in which he said that the main challenge in playing post-GAS songs was finding a way to arrange them. On LIT, Mehldau applies a similar arrangement sensibility to Gershwin, Drake and Radiohead. It's a powerful one, as he never simply blows over the changes, but is constantly manipulating the song's mood and material: he's reshuffling and repainting the furniture, rather than stripping the house down to its foundations and building it back up again. It's almost like he's creating a reduction of, say, Nat King Cole singing a heavily orchestrated "Nature Boy," in real time. Actually, the Jarrettisms evoked above creep into his Gershwin, too. For example, in the percussive chords that extend the end of "Someone To Watch Over Me." It's largely gratuitous, but not entirely so, as it emphasises a note that served as a pedal*, an octave or two lower, at the beginning of the tune.

Joe Henderson The State of the Tenor -> Chris Lightcap Big Mouth
More specifically, Ron Carter's "Loose Change," with its double stops and customised straight-eights beat, sounds very much like a precursor to the kind of compositions Lightcap writes for Tony Malaby and Bill McHenry.

It's weird to think that Henderson was only 48 at the time. Even in the 60s, he looked a lot older than he was. Are enough 26 year old instrumentalists being given the opportunity to make the kind of splash the Shorters, Hendersons, Hancocks, Hills et al. could? Is it still even possible? I'd like to think so.

* It might not be a pedal, but in any case there's a note that's emphasised across a number of chords and strongly influences the character of the interpretation.

moving in with brad (part 3)

Mobjazz (a jazz blog in french I only recently found out about) follows Piano Bleu in suggesting that House On Hill (cf. moving in with brad parts 1 and 2) is actually a series of variations on "August Ending." Don't know if it's true, but that could account for the similarities between tracks and the even progression that's maintained from beginning to end.

Looking at his Nonesuch discography, it's striking that in 2 years, he's released 5 albums (counting the upcoming duo with Pat Metheny), but each one in a different context (if you count the trios with Rossy and Ballard as different contexts). Is this overproduction or simply a schedule appropriate to jazz musicians and their two-days-in-the-studio albums?

doing the record collection math

Ethan's 1973-1990 survey is insane. The record descriptions are generally short, but any blogger will appreciate how much work it takes to draw up a list like that one. Ostensibly, he's patching together a history long past, but my favourite aspect of it is that in the cracks there emerges an idealised community of present-day jazz musicians listening to bootlegs, copying the masters' solos or playing on their recording sessions, then having lunch. I am mildly worried by how few of these records (nine) I have.

be.mp3: rawfishboys - boetie

The duet between a bass and a non-harmonic instrument: if it's not already a cottage industry, it should be. To me, an album of clarinet and bass duets is quite appealing.

WaR, an EP-length album by Rawfishboys (MySpace) a.k.a Joachim Badenhorst (clarinet) and Brice Soniano (bass). They mix delicate and touching songs with some slightly harsher improvised pieces. Sometimes they do both on the same track: "no Fridge For clusters" goes from improv to song and back, turning the old head-solo-head form inside out. Think Giuffre/Bley/Swallow meets, well, Giuffre/Hall/Brookmeyer, but without the middle men. Album-closer "maya" has much of "The Western Suite"'s rustic charm.

Rawfishboys - "boetie"

"boetie," WaR's first track, falls in the delicate and touching camp. There's a second version later in the album, in which the roles are reversed: the clarinet sighs the descending lament, while the bass provides the surrounding flutters.

Candi Staton - 25/08/2006 @ Petrol, Antwerpen

I don't have too much to add beyond what has already been said by Ben Ratliff and Status Ain't Hood. I lean more towards Ratliff's appreciation ("it had a stop-and-start, by-the-numbers feeling") than Breihan's enthusiasm ("I walked in blind and walked out converted, and it's pretty great when that happens"). The set wss almost exactly the same, and I agree with both of them that "His Hands" was pretty much the only really haunting moment. The band was slightly different: no horns and it's highly unlikely the drummer was Staton's son. Overall, I vastly preferred Bettye Lavette's flayed voice and mix of earnest intensity with old-school showwomanship. In comparaison, Staton was rather superficial.

The show started with "Suspicious Minds," "I'm Just A Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin')" and Merle Haggard's "You Don't Have Far to Go" and ended with the great "You've Got The Love" and "Young Hearts Run Free." The disco grooves ran deeper than the straight soul; the guitarist added some particularly good solos to the country songs. In between, she stated a preference for mature men who know what you need and when you need it over young fools (who, presumably, don't know either), declarared a generalised love for the audience, told a sad tale about the cycle of poverty and violence in the ghetto and recommended that we stand by our men, but also inquired as to who she was and what she was to us. It was the first encore I've seen taken so literally: they came back on and simply extended "Young Hearts Run Free."

I don't know if musicians really like the obligatory solo section. The drummer went all stony-faced during his solo, but his smile came back as soon as he returned to the groove. The Petrol crowd was appreciative, though. If you ever go to that cavernous docklands club, make sure to visit the chandelier in the back room: it's made entirely out of plastic glasses.

molten... but apart (part 1)

Will Layman's article on fusion is another good installment in his column. It focuses on Wayne Horvitz, Bobby Previte, Ben Goldberg, Don Byron and John Zorn.

today the act of fusing jazz with other forms of music is so essential — and so natural — to what jazz musicians do that it typically involves more than one fusing at the same time.
(...)
Naked City played super-tight sets that sounded like they were controlled by a very hip two year-old with a remote control in hand: reggae crosscut to Bugs Bunny music crosscut to death metal crosscut to film noir soundtrack. In that group's first disc from 1989, the gauntlet of the new fusion had been thrown: jazz musicians could now play absolutely anything in their way, but only best would be able to make the great crush of American variety truly their own.
(...)
[Horvitz and Previte's] relatively early work had a characteristic "fusion" sound, but it was hardly the sound of squealingly precise guitars or funked-out jams. Taking their cue from soundtrack music, Camera and Claude's were works of melody, atmosphere, and arrangement, with rock and pop rhythms taking their rightful place beside swing as valid ingredients in a "fused" American music. That these musicians improvised with authority and within a certain musical vocabulary meant that it was still "jazz", but the word was clearly being bent in new ways.

"Echos d’un jazz libre d’Amérique," an article from the French review Multitudes, takes a different bunch of players (Tim Berne, Jim Black, Amy Denio, Ellery Eskelin, Gerry Hemingway and Ken Vandermark) and draws on interviews conducted between 1997 and 2003). Though it doesn't explicitly talk about fusion, it does draw up a taxonomy that's related to Layman's description:

Their invention is characterised by (a) the hybridisation of disparate genres (free jazz inherited from the Ornette Coleman generation, punk's abrasiveness, Balkan folklore, the klezmer tradition), (b) the integration of instruments and phrasing borrowed from noise-rock (echoing and distorted guitar) or chamber music (cello), (c) situating improvisatory spaces within ambitious thematic structures (generally refusing the classic theme-solos-theme form), and (d) iconoclastic attitudes (from excessive volume to shocking album covers). This New York scene thus established an expressive space that linked the jazz explosion of the 1960s (Coleman, Dolphy, Mingus, Coltrane, Ayler), contemporary chamber music (Boulez, Ligeti, etc.), aleatory explorations (Cage), the noise subculture (Japanese hardcore, Sonic Youth), funk (Prince), jazz-rock (Mahavishnu Orchestra) and 1970s European Free Music (Brötzmann, ICP) and even prog-rock (Robert Wyatt).

Ellery voices his oft-repeated view of the contemporary situation, which echoes the concept of the Age of Everything and explains why today's fusion sounds so natural to Layman: it's about fusion rather than Fusion, a way of doing things rather than a style.

The scene is characterised by its very fragmentation: there is no dominant voice, no clearly imposed creative method - which seems to me an excellent environment to create music. Now that the more or less major upheavals of the modernist movement have taken place, we can get to making music with everything at our disposal, instead of being limited by one or the other philosophy that imposes a narrow conception of art or music... This conception of "freedom" is complex, however... For me, to be postmodern means to be "free" to draw on any idea and any influence, while being "free" to displace them into a different context, to mix them in a unique way and to recombine them with different ideas.

Tim Berne brings some grist to the current "who needs a label" discussion (cf. visionsong's interesting, personal and pragmatic take), even though his interview dates back to 1997, the CD-selling heyday:

I've had a lot of disappointments with labels. Most of the time, even if you sign with a major, the discs end up wasted, the company goes bankrupt or is sold. Musicians are used to being insistent and resilient, they hang on even when the financial conditions are bad. But the major label employees only know one way of selling CDs, which is to place them in stores and wait. They do that for a month or two, then they get bored. They can't think on a smaller scale, adopt a more grassroots approach. They're hooked on the system and can't see beyond it. To promote a CD, they just sign a check for $50,000 and put an ad in Down Beat or Musician.

By starting my Screwgun label in 1997, I sought to reach people more directly, because we play all over the world and people always want to know where they can get our CD. That tells me that distributors aren't doing their job. I didn't want to go on like that, so I take my albums with me to sell after concerts. You can also get them by mail or order them from the web site, alongside the distribution networks in the stores. Also, I didn't want to be subjected to other people's calendar and whims: this way, we make a record, we put it out and we move on to the next one. It's worked very well, it's totally viable. It was easy enough, except that it's a huge investment of time and energy.

consider my day made

Mwanji Ezana of be.jazz renown has posted a spectacular review of artsongwriter Corey Dargel's debut CD, Less Famous than You -- a thoughtful, colorful and detailed analysis I'd be giddy to have written. Do not miss it. - Steve Smith

I'm blushing (and believe me, that takes some doing). The review in question is just below.

Corey Dargel - less famous than you

Corey Dargel (website | MySpace | blog) has a nice backstory: classical training (as the saying goes) allows him to be reviewed by Anthony Tommasini and write serious manifestos for NewMusicBox (the big one, the more modest early one), but he also lets his pop instincts lead him to a twisted confluence of art song and electronic pop and offbeat publicity photos. Less Famous Than You embodies Dargel's artsongwriter concept: he writes music, then sets his own words to them. Thus, lyricist, singer/songwriter and composer cohabit without fusing.

Corey's singing is affecting without much emoting. The distance thus created indicates that these are portraits rather than confessions. The cover art shows us his viewpoint: observing those who are looking at others more worthy of recognition. For example, the joy of "Glasses" is sung in much the same way as the loss and loneliness of "I Don't Remember." "Change The World" is the exception to the rule: his voice turns listless and drags sadly when evoking a situation closer to his own life.

Most songs are about mental disorders, obsessions or psychological violence of some sort (kind of like Gnarls Barkley, actually). This is unsurprising, given that Dargel has also written a series of songs based on the effects of prescription drugs. Stalkers, fan(atic)s, exploited child stars, jilted lovers and others illustrate a media and pharmaceutical system that generates or exacerbates individuals' weaknesses.

The music is often an intricate weaving of superposed keyboard parts and beats that range from staticky to euro-house. It has a certain brand of well-crafted sloppiness: elements are positioned so as to create the illusion of being a little out-of-sync and disturbances bubble just under the surface. The densely-layered melodies are quietly exuberant in their orchestration and profusion, betraying a warm, beating heart underneath a cool exterior. Dargel's deadpan is thus emphasised but also lent crucial shading.

Logically, Corey manipulates the conventions of pop like a native but also subverts them like an outsider. "Glasses" combines bright - almost naïve - 80s synths with slippery beats in 9. All songs are of pop-ideal length, hovering around the 3 minute mark, but the slowly unfurling narratives and frequent lack of oft-repeated choruses go counter to the time constraint and create a kind of laid-back tension. The distinction between the metaphorical and the concrete is often blurred, which allows Corey to be neither obvious nor cryptic while creating complex stories. Still, even the most elusive song can suddenly drop a hard-hitting line like "Since when does disability equal a lack of devotion?"

It's not all about subversion, though. "Boy Detective" is a perfect demonstration of Dargel's intimate acquaintance with the myriad minute details that make pop music work: here, that means a hollowed-out effect on his voice and neat, touching, synth-driven hooks.

Despite music and lyrics being conceived independently, some tracks sound quasi-programmatic. In "Like A Ghost," the narrator's complaint that his lover is concealing his/her true nature and constant celebration of his partner's weaknesses goes from righteous to oppressive, a way to control rather than support. This is echoed by the way Corey seems to deliberately warp and distort his usually gorgeous keyboards into grotesque shapes. On the wistful "Change The World," as Dargel sings about reuniting a former band, the track's instrumentation grows from a solo act to a full band.

There's room for humour too. It comes in pinches, such as the Madonna-ish oops-I-didn't-know-we-couldn't-talk-about-that way he says "sex" on "Global World View" or the computer-enhanced high-note on the chorus of "The News" (an ascending line that peaks on "untrue"), or in dollops: pretty much the whole of "Gay Cowboys"' epic road trip and "Every Word..."'s triumphant finale that mockingly underlines the main character's spiralling delusions.

Finally, I don't really recognise any of the famous or semi-famous who are described or obsessed over, but I have a probably totally wrong theory that "Global World View" is about a repressed love affair with Osama Bin Laden: "Now you're playing it safe/Staying in your cave," "They said you're a threat to my freedom," "I have to stop making out checks to your organisation."

For more, see Darcy and The Rambler's reviews.

nostalgia's always just around the corner

Punk rock may now be by the babies, for the parents, but I don't really care about punk rock. I do care about this:

The Care Bears [on Fire] —singer-guitarist Sophie Kasakove, 11, bassist-singer Lucio Westmoreland, 11, and drummer-singer Isadora “Izzy” Schappell-Spillman, 10, all classmates at Park Slope’s Berkeley Carroll School

That's where I went to first and second grades. Despite piano lessons and a futile attempt to count my father's LPs (I stopped after a few hundred) that was probably the seed of my collector-ism, I was never featured in a magazine of any description. By the time I was the CBoF's age, I was going to Masaï Mara rather than Fairway (whatever that is), so I don't feel too underpriveleged.

a slight redesign

Graphic design is obviously not my strong point, but I've attempted to get a sleeker, lighter look. Let me know what you think: easier or harder to read? More or less eye fatigue? Etc.

citizen jazz update

VVG Trio - In Orbit
Re-reading the review, I find it rather stiff. Oh well. Hopefully the post and MP3 dedicated to the VVG are a little more relaxed.

bojan z

Bojan Z's Xenophonia is easily among the best and, especially, most pleasurable recent albums (jazz or otherwise) I've heard in a good long while. It's bursting with imagination and sure to be on a number of 2006 lists. I don't have his previous album, Transpacifik, but I've heard it a few times and it's another lovely record, more of an acoustic trio, despite the presence of a Fender Rhodes. Here's an interview in English I'm happy to see:

In general that's where I find my inspiration, in life. One thing I know for sure my inspiration is life and not death. It's interesting, that I know for sure from those few years of war [in Yugoslavia], you know, there was death all over the place—nothing artistic was coming out of this. But life! Ahhh! You know, colors, people, food and nature, smells, the sounds of course. I'm very, how do you say, sensitive to it?
(...)
[For Xenophonia] I just took more time to work on the sound—the vertical dimension—the colors, the profundity, which sound goes where. For example, on some of the instruments I play, I had this set-up which was acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes and customized Fender Rhodes which gives me quite a lot of possibilities sound-wise— mixing the piano with Fender Rhodes... In general, about the performance, we were all working on textures and sounds more than who's going to be the fastest, that's where the difference for me is.
(...)
I bought my first Fender Rhodes in ' 81 in a bar in a village next to Belgrade and the funny thing is that a few years ago, knowing that in Belgrade I can eventually find a Fender Rhodes cheap I called my brother to try to find something there and he found actually the same village. But he found just the shell of a Fender Rhodes and just a few keys.
(...)
[W]hat I did was I started buying all the parts on e-bay and basically I had different vintages and different years and while I was putting this thing together I kept all the imperfections. I actually wanted every note to sound different because it was not the point to have to have just another Fender Rhodes—I was dreaming about having an instrument that I could tamper with for Arabic scales or scales coming from cultures other than European for quite some time.

With a piano you cannot do it because you have to have your own tuner. It's impossible. But I thought finally, that's what I'm going to do with this guy; it's easier to learn how to tune it, instead of having to find some effects, distortion, treating it like a guitar and thing like this you know. That's why I call it “xenophone.” Why? Besides the connection to the name of the record—it's the reaction I get every time I plug it in and play something on it and I observe the reaction from most of the people—it’s like some stranger, some naked stranger has walked in. Ahh!! What is this?!

The xenophone is key to the record's success. It does sound something like a guitar (albeit a strange one), actually, but in a natural way. No cheesy modulator wheel note-bending, for instance. Rather, the instrument isn't tempered like a piano and notes come out a bit unpredictably, mirroring the slight imprecision of the motion of a guitarist's hands. There's the sound and, of course, the way Bojan integrates it with the other two keyboards. At times he manages to make the piano sound just as weird: sometimes by preparing, but the miraculous moments are when, suddenly you think "what's that strange sound?" and it ends up just being the regular old piano.

Generally speaking, I'm more attracted to the Keith Jarrett school of Fender playing: the guys who hate the instrument and do everything in their power to destroy it. Jarrett on the Cellar Door? That "broken key" solo is one of my favourite Fender Rhodes moments ever. The "oooh, those vintage Fender Rhodes sounds are so pretty" school can be nice, but is often quite toothless. Bojan Z loves the instrument, but manages to turn Jarrett's destructive urge into a reconstructive one (quite literally, as described above) and the result is great.

Scott Colley told me a few years ago that before each set in the Village Vanguard Jim Hall would take a mike and say something, you know, good old man, decent, jazz guitar legend and saying things like: “I’m listening to so many different styles of music and find myself still discovering things. Recently I bought a record of the Dixie Chicks. It’s amazing what they do.” And the people die laughing. And then: “Seriously, I am not used to living in a fascist regime.” This at the Village Vanguard. But you’ll never hear a word about it in any of those “jazz” newspapers, but what you will see is “My Favourite Things’ questionnaires to Kenny Barron. It’s like an interview:

Q: Which is your favourite watch?

Kenny Barron: Well, I have a Rolex…

Q: “What’s your favourite color?”

Can you imagine this? Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin!

Q: What is your favourite wine?”

A: Oh, Chateau Ikan, 1929—they never let you down.

They are serious! You guys are serious, one bottle is $6,000!...

Besides that then you have the thing that middle class gigs are non-existent. You know most of us, we live from the gigs which are financially speaking from $1,000 to $10,000 range, you know it depends where you are, smaller or bigger hall, bigger venue. You know I’m speaking about bands, band price. And this doesn’t exist; they have from zero to $1,000, which is….pay a band with this! And then you have these tremendous numbers of thousands of dollars from $10,000 on for Sonny Rollins and Keith Jarrett and people like this.

So this has completely killed the economy that the music can generate... The reverse side of the coin is if you find yourself in front of saxophonist Joe Lovano, he is going to blow your mind! You’re going to get scared. So that’s the other side of the coin, music artistry, the giants that are still alive and kicking. That’s not just a legend, it is true. It’s happening.
(...)
I just love hearing all these different things piano-wise, just on the one hand to remember the lost colors of this instrument because there is a tendency nowadays growing into a certain pattern of piano playing that most of the pianist are using and they just forget about these things for example, Errol Garner or Earl Hines and guys like this, the way they were using this instrument—so all these colors are a bit left aside. So, Duke Ellington is one of my favorite piano players because he's the one I like listening to at almost any moment of the day, so fresh and so mysterious and his attitude so...hip!

some other stuff

Now that Switzerland's favourite son has his own church, he's surely doomed to never win another Grand Slam again...

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Divergent duos are great fodder for extra-long articles (I consider the above a Wallace-Federer duet). After Burton (and a bit of Green), come Patton and Benjamin, inevitably. One thing I don't understand, is why, right at the end Dee asks

You wonder, too, about the degree to which Big Boi knows all this about his old friend, and knows that the key to staying together is to let André talk about leaving all he wants

It'd be bad enough on its own (the old "musicians aren't self-reflexive and therefore can't possibly be as insightful as I am" move), but is extremely puzzling after multiple assertions by the author himself that Big Boi is fully cognizant of the situation.

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Contrary to what the above article says, apparently getting to interview Outkast together isn't that hard.

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As long as you include a weather report, fashion updates, celebrity sightings, a redundant random attendee quote, near-riot news and a mini-police blotter, your music review doesn't actually have to review music. That's good to know.

+

Classic, but not particularly insightful, Philip Larkin quotes and some funny and not-so-funny anecdotes in what is nominally a review of Ashley Kahn's Impulse! book (via ArtsJournal).

Part of the psychology of collecting jazz is that we fans covet not only the music but also the record labels.

I semi-agree with this, contra Darcy's disdain for a world "where listeners (not just promoters) actually care about what label you're on." I still think that a label's role as gatekeeper/beacon/handy collection organiser is helpful. Come to think of it, a label is a little (and, today, increasingly) like a dematerialised record store.

The ones that seem to have a personality of their own (a few current-day examples in alphabetical order: Ayler, Clean Feed, De Werf, Fresh Sound New Talent, Moserobie, Thirsty Ear's Blue Series; a current-day counter-example: Verve) can suffice as reasons to listen to (or studiously avoid) something. Of course, it's just one factor among others. But if you're going to know the names of the sidemen and of the engineer, as well as the recording date, you're bound to know the label, too. Why else would labels strive to develop a visual identity?

shaken, not stirred

ODD: DJ Martian links to another list, but with different entries. I don't know where the truth lies.
ADDED: list complete

UK mag Jazzwise has a "The 100 Albums That Shook The World" feature this month. The full list isn't available on the website, but the last three are, two of which are be.jazz favourites:

100 Polar Bear Held On The Tips of Fingers

...Groundbreaking, it gave young British jazz bands the guts to label themselves like rock bands and to stretch beyond their comfort zones.

Actually, I'm listening to Joey Baron's Tongue In Groove for the first time as I type this, and it sounds in spots like a precursor to Polar Bear.

99 The Bad Plus These Are The Vistas

Very few jazz groups today set out to mess with your head. You know, get inside there, push the furniture over, chuck things out of the window and generally make a nuisance of themselves...

I've managed to obtain a few others:

1 Miles Davis Kind Of Blue
2 John Coltrane Love Supreme
3 Ornette Coleman Shape of Jazz to come
4 Bill Evans Trio Sunday at the Village Vangaurd
5 Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus
6 Thelonious Monk Brillant Corners
7 Charles Mingus Ah Um
8 Charlie Parker Savoy Recordings
9 Miles Davis Bitches Brew
10 Keith Jarrett Köln Concert
11 Coltrane Giants Steps
12 Eric Dolphy Out To Lunch
13 Louis Armstrong Complete Hot 5 and 7
14 Duke Ellington Blanton-Webster Band
15 Mahavishnu Orchestra Inner Mounting Flame
16 Albert Ayler Spiritual Unity
17 Herbie Hancock Head Hunters
18 Dave Brubeck Time Out
19 Ornette Coleman Free Jazz
20 Weather Report Heavy Weather
21 Ahmad Jamal But Not For Me
22 Jerry Roll Morton Volume 1
23 Frank Sinatra Songs For Swingin' Lovers
24 Wes Montgomery The Incredible Jazz Guitar
25 Modern Jazz Quartet Fontessa
26 Bud Powell The Genius of Bud Powell
27 Cecil Taylor At The Café Montmartre
28 Art Blakey Moanin'
29 Herbie Hancock Maiden Voyage
30 Getz/Gilberto Getz/Gilberto
31 Pat Metheny Bright Size Life
32 Jimmy Smith A New Sound
33 Jan Garbarek Afric Pepperbird
34 Woody Herman Thundering herds
35 Duke Ellington At Newport
36 Ella Fitzgerald Sings The cole Porter Songbook
37 Charles Mingus The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
38 Cannonball Adderley Somethin' Else
39 Lifetime Emergency
40 Billie Holiday At JATP
41 Chick Corea Return To Forever
42 Stan Getz Focus
43 Miles Davis Sketches of Spain
44 George Russell Jazz Workshop
45 John Coltrane Impressions
46 Andrew Hill Point Of Departure
47 Sonny Rollins The Bridge
48 Sun Ra Heliocentric Worlds
49 Dizzy Gillepsie Shaw Nuff'
50 Lennie Tristano Tristano
51 John Zorn Naked City
52 John McLaughlin Extrapolation
53 Pharoah Sanders Karma
54 Lester young Lester Young/Buddy Rich Trio
55 John Coltrane Ascension
56 Art Ensemble 0f Chicago A Jackson In Your House
57 Horace silver Song For My Father
58 Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet
59 Coleman Hawkins Body And Soul
60 Peter Brötzmann octet Machine Gun
61 Miles Davis Birth Of The Cool
62 Count Basie The Atomic Mr. Basie
63 Archie Shepp Four For Trane
64 Brad Meldhau Art Of The Trio vol.3
65 Gerry Mulligan Gerry Mulligan Quartet
66 Gil Evans The Individualism Of Gil Evans
67 John Handy Live At Monterrey
68 EST From Gargarin's Point Of View
69 Stan Tracey Jazz Suite Inspired By Dylan Thomas
70 Dollar Brand African Marketplace
71 Wayne Shorter Speak No Evil
72 Thelonious Monk Genius Of Modern Music vol.1
73 Roland Kirk Rip, Rig And Panic
74 Herbie Hancock New Standard
75 Oscar Peterson Night Train
76 Charles Lloyd Dream Weaver
77 Art Tatum The Genius Of Art Tatum No. 1
78 Betty carter An Audience With Betty Carter
79 Oliver Nelson Blues And The Abstract Truth
80 John Surnam Tales of Algonquin
81 Eberhard Weber Colours of Chloe
82 Steve Coleman and 5 elements Tao of Mad Phat
83 Diana Krall Love Scenes
84 Anthony Braxton For Alto
85 Kryztof Komeda Astigmatic
86 Steps Ahead Steps Ahead
87 Django Reinhardt Retrospective 34-53
88 Joe Harriot-John Mayer double Quintet Indo-Jazz Suite
89 Jackie McLean Let Freedom Ring
90 Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra
91 MIC MIC
92 Sarah Vaughan Sarah Vaughan
93 Jan Johanssen Jazz Pa Svenska
94 Cassandra Wilson Blue Light Til Dawn
95 Wynton Marsalis Black Codes
96 Medeski,Martin and Wood Combustication
97 Tomasz Stanko Soul of Things
98 Courtney Pine Journey to the Urge Within
"...A pied piper who led British jazz out of the trough of despond after its brilliant flowering in the 1960s..."
99 The Bad Plus These Are The Vistas
100 Polar Bear Held On The Tips Of Fingers

The transition from Love Scenes to For Alto is jarring. I'm assuming Kind Of Blue is #1. I'll update the list if I hear more or buy the issue.

clipsed

Listening to Clipse for the first time. "Mr. Me Too," their current Pharell-enhanced single, is alright, but make sure to check out "WAMP WAMP," which is awesome: the beat is an echo-y one-bar timbales sample and a two-note steel drum riff that spirals out into a little melody at every eight bars. Add a kick booming in the distance, some synths on the chorus and a shaker that resonates particularly well with the s-rhyming third verse. That's about it (no snare, no hi-hat). "Ain't Cha" is more conventional, but the posh accent on the second verse is hilarious.

"Déjà Vu" was a pretty weak single (the highlight is when she says "Jay" in the same way she said "hi-hat"), but Beyoncé's new one, "Ring The Alarm," is great and has the energy of her 2006 BET Awards performance. Can she get any closer to rapping without actually rapping? Is "Ring The Alarm" actually a duet with a siren? Is the lo-fi mic sound the r'n'b thing of the moment (cf. "SexyBack")?

ADDENDUM:
I'm not sure where this anti-Gnarls Barkley article (via Status Ain't Hood) leaves me: I like GB and Goodie Mob, T.I. and The Roots and it was pretty clear right away to me what The New Danger was drawing upon. Just like it's obvious what D'Angelo's Voodoo drew upon. That didn't stop either from being good and great records, respectively. There are a number of points I agree with, but I really dislike the "rap has enough room for experimentation, so do not leave that room, please" viewpoint. Actually, rappers who stop rapping (or hip hop producers who do other genres) are probably more likely to produce something good than, say, a rocker who starts rapping.

Finally, the reason I highlighted Clipse's "WAMP WAMP" is because it seemed refreshingly experimental or progressive, but so is St. Elsewhere. The criticism I don't get is "it's underdeveloped/half-assed." Not that every track is pure brilliance, mind you. Maybe a steady diet of improvised music warps your sense of the fully-assed.

13/4, the meter to the people

Prof. Heebie McJeebie interviews Darc. James Argue.

+

John Zorn's recent appearance at the 2006 Marciac festival (the rural corner of France annexed by Wynton Marsalis) has generated some controversy. In brief, a local reporter took offence to the star of David on Zorn's hoodie, his combat pants and the "assault tank-like" music, in the context of the Lebanon war. Later, a host on France Inter radio raised the issue not once but three times in the space of 20 minutes, during the broadcast of an excerpt of the Electric Masada concert. Libération's Serge Loupien refuted the claims in print.

On his political blog, Samizdjazz explores the issue in some depth. He locates the beginning of Zorn's extensive exploration of his Jewish roots at the death of his father in 1992, notes the near-totla absence of on-record political pronouncements by Zorn and then evokes two varieties of zionism, national and cultural, among many other flavours.

i think i know what it is you need

Enough with the rock saxophone solos (although I'll allow that Darcy's #1 rock sax solo comes from a very good song), let's move on to saxophone-led rocking jazz.

"Thing" is one of my favourite Acoustic Ladyland songs from Last Chance Disco. It's unfortunate that the sound here doesn't do justice to the sheer gorgeousness of its slow bridge. "Iggy" is another cool one. Both featured on their Later! With Jools Holland appearance:

a week of getting laid

A home improvement diary (12-16/08/2006).

Days 1 & 2



I feel so hip and trendy: bamboo, baby! Of course, I didn't feel either when rushing to the hardware store to make some last-minute purchases, sweaty and hair caked with saw dust. Seeing the pretty and well-dressed (or, at least, clean) young couples who had the foresight to buy everything they needed before DIY-ing (or had not yet had the chance to have their lack of foresight exposed), I found consolation by reassuring myself that they weren't cool enough to have bamboo floors.



Trendiness aside, there's the sheer relief of finally getting rid of the horrible tiles and old, sunken wooden floor we inherited from the previous owners.



We're lucky to stumble upon the excellent idea of starting with the kitchen and dining-room, which are tiled (see below). Work continues monday and tuesday, which I have off work. So much for the four-day week-end, this is more tiring (and less blog-friendly) than a day at the office.



Day 3

Disaster strikes. The DIY gods had smiled upon us for two days, but now an ill-intentioned one has taken over (translate the Zeus-Hera relationship to the DIY pantheon). The little that had been done in the living room is torn out when we realise it isn't straight.



Very few of the walls in this house are straight, so a little creativity and grade-school geometry has to be used. Lesson learnt: it's much easier to lay flooring over tiles than old, irregular wood. A long, exhausting and frustratingly unproductive day.



Day 4

Some progress made in the living room, but even more in the bathroom, done in an evening. All that remains is the bath tub's casing, which IVN has elaborate plans for.



Day 5

It's Wednesday and I'm back at work. Work mornings are particularly painful now, as we've removed two radiators and therefore have no hot water. Spraying bone-chilling water on yourself at 6:45 AM is, shall we say, character-building. It reminds me of when we first moved in and there was no running hot water: we'd boil some water in the electric heater in the kitchen and wash in the basement with a bowl and a bucket, next to a hole in the ground (that, fortunately, can be covered) that accesses the sewer.



Actually, that just-moved-in feel is everywhere, from the empty rooms to the late-night huddling in the upstairs guest-room (if you're in Belgium and need accomodation...) to eat Vietnamese take-away or bizarre, bottom-of-the-fridge meals (e.g. half a cucumber, a carrott, half a ciabatta and two yoghurts).



When I get home I help IVN finish the living room (we finally got the hang of the nail gun and irregular floor. The nail gun is hardly the effective monster-killer Doom would have you believe). The kitchen and dining room have been sanded and given their first layer of oil. It looks stunning. I stand back and admire our handiwork.



Then I remember that we need to apply three layers of the stuff and each layer needs 12 hours to dry and that the radiators won't be back in place before that happens. At best, I'll only have one more cold shower morning.



Measuring and cutting a bunch of little planks to fill gaps along walls, chimneys and inside door frames stretches the job well past midnight. I'm yawning as I saw. Meanwhile, IVN spends a huge amount of time cleaning dry glue-encrusted tools. A necessary, yet thankless, job.