Rolling Jazz Thread 2019

wrt Greg Foat, definitely corny and self serious at times but given the UK folk they are touching on that's kind of appropriate

digging it

Oh, I really like the sound of this Mehldau so far.

Currently liking the new dave douglas trio album with andrew cyrille on drums and someone good on piano.

Yeah, that's a good one - it'll be in my Stereogum column on Friday. Uri Caine on piano - it's a sequel to a Douglas/Caine duo album from 2014, but Cyrille really adds to the mix (more so than he's done on some of his own recent ECM work, honestly - Manfred Eicher encourages him to underplay to the point that he's barely present).

https://davedouglas.bandcamp.com/album/present-joys

could imagine Eicher just wanting every drummer to sound like Paul Motian, which is probably quite unreasonable despite the fact that he was pretty great.

Kevin Whitehead on Branford Marsalis Quartet's latest---first excerpt is ho-hum, but others get better and better: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/22/725697470/branford-marsalis-revels-in-jazzs-timeless-challenges-on-new-album

Suffering a bit from LDN Jazz fatigue, but the Cykada album is great.

Thinking about jazz recording, I put on Phineas Newborn's 'We Three' after listening to some modern records, and was struck more than usual by how fucking amazing it sounds (in addition to the playing being amazing), then went down a rabbit hole of Rudy Van Gelder articles & interviews.

This one in particular stood out, with this quote from Steve Hoffman (lol):
https://www.wbur.org/artery/2016/09/01/rudy-van-gelder

Take three or four expensive German mics with a blistering top end boost, put them real close to the instruments, add some extra distortion from a cheap overloading mic preamp through an Army Surplus radio console, put some crappy plate reverb on it, and record. Then, immediately (and for no good reason), redub the master onto a Magnatone tape deck at +6, compress the crap out of it while adding 5 db at 5000 cycles to everything. That’s the Van Gelder sound to me.

And from that article:

More interestingly, in the '50s Van Gelder couldn't or wouldn't record a piano "properly" to save his life. With much the same gleeful and wanton disregard for the potentially brain-hemorrhage-inducing consequences of sticking a German large-diaphragm condenser mic (made for recording orchestras from several meters away) one inch in front a trumpet, he'd stuff a cloth-wrapped mic in one of the sound holes in the piano's harp. And that's what Van Gelder's '50s pianos sound like -- as though you'd crawled under the piano with stoppers in your ears (which is why I shed a tear listening to the fantastic piano solos on his recordings, wishing I could've had a crack at capturing them.) The distant bass and muffled piano contrast sharply with the sizzling cymbals and the crispy "up-in-your-grille" horns, giving the "Blue Note sound" its curious chiaroscuro.

But many of us are also missing something essential about audio recording for people without dog's ears: human ears don't want “clean” sound. Rather, we’re drawn to harmonic distortion. People don't really want realism or even accuracy; we prefer "larger-than-life." That's what Van Gelder gave the world, to the best of his ability and equipment: the biggest, hottest sound he could form.

That's just so important, it's not just that there was more available analog gear in the '60s, it's that the classics were made with creative & irreverent recording choices that privileged excitement over accuracy. I hate that modern jazz recordings seem to have the same approach as classical music, to be as bloodlessly 'transparent' and accurate as possible. You have to do all kinds of inaccurate tricks in recording to recreate the same sort of excitement of hearing the music live.

I hate that modern jazz recordings seem to have the same approach as classical music, to be as bloodlessly 'transparent' and accurate as possible.

Some labels are worse about this than others. Telarc jazz releases used to be The Fucking Worst. But yeah, without going full-on Guitar Wolf, there's a lot to be said for rough recordings. And even the ECM sound isn't "accurate" in any real sense.

Tidal's Out There jazz playlist (not super "out there" tbh) is a good regular listen for me, find some good stuff

https://listen.tidal.com/playlist/0bfac8e5-4ff8-44e4-b112-5fb71d39bcc1

My latest Stereogum column just went up, and it includes my review of the (amazing) Ahmad Jamal show I saw last week, which caught me totally by surprise. Short version: I went in expecting sedate old-man piano-trio action and got a blow-the-walls-down jam.

Nice. A while back I looked up some videos of that band, here are a couple Poincianas. The original is a second line beat anyway, so Herlin really takes it there.

Higher quality video/sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cytUz9KkK9M

Band hitting a lot harder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFk9tms2E1Q

ahmad jamal was and is my favorite pianist and he's always a joy live. i really hope he comes back to NYC soon.

really loving the mehldau album with the exception of "the prophet is a fool" which is embarrassingly bad

I like mark dresser's music a lot, and his zany album titles( Ain't Nothing But a Cyber Coup & You), the new one is good. His last one Sedimental You grew on me quite slowly - so I'm going to give this one some time as well.

Drummer Lawrence Leathers has died, apparently a suicide. He played with Cecile McLorin Salvant, among a million others.

as noted on the RIP thread; Leather's death appears to be a murder.

Branford Marsalis getting opinionated in Jazz Times about who is jazz and who isn't:

Your two albums in the ’90s with the band Buckshot LeFonque—mixing jazz, pop, and DJ culture—got a mixed reception. What’s your take on artists like Robert Glasper and Kamasi Washington, who are now working at the crossroads of jazz and hip-hop?

Robert Glasper has a limited jazz vocabulary, and that’s not anything he would say is not true. I think it’s in his best interest to do that. Kamasi’s not a jazz player either. He’s a sax player. But his vocabulary is not jazz. It’s some jazz.

This is not something I want to go to war with. But I can listen to a Lester Young record, a Dexter Gordon or Wayne Shorter record, and ask, “Do you hear that lineage in his playing?” If you don’t, what makes it jazz? Improv? We’re back to that illusion again. The success that Kamasi has had—it’s awesome. But the people defending him as a jazz player are not jazz players. They have their own idea of what jazz is, and they are entitled to that. But so am I.

One interesting thing about Kamasi’s rise is the way he has connected on the jam-band and rock-festival circuit. But you first did that in 1990 when you played with the Grateful Dead at Nassau Coliseum in New York.

That was different. I was playing in their band. Buckshot played with [the jam band] String Cheese Incident for a while. We could have been in that. But at no time would I have accepted the notion that this was jazz. We had influences from jazz, from rock. It was a hybrid thing.

But you fit into the Dead’s aesthetic so well they invited you to join them at later gigs.

The first time, some of the guys were like, “Oh, no, another jazz guy.” Because they had David Murray and Ornette come in, and they just did their David Murray and Ornette thing on the tunes. But I never bought into the genius thing. The modern definition of genius is not about adaptability—it’s about a singular idea that you thrust and bogart on every situation. If I’m going to play with the Grateful Dead, I’m going to play with them, not on top of them.

https://jazztimes.com/features/interviews/branford-marsalis-secret/

That's more or less what he said when I had him on the podcast. At that point, though, he argued that Kamasi's band didn't swing because the drummers were too up-and-down. As though Duke Ellington's drummers were constantly dicing up the beat like Tony Williams, right?

Greg Tate going off on Marsalis on Facebook was making me laugh hard this morning

Don’t think I brought it up here, but I recently learned about/had been blissfully ignorant of a Wynton beef with Arturo O’Farrill.

Maybe they’ve made up since then, but you can read about it here

I want a battle of the bands on a South Bronx playground.

was only ever vaguely aware of Horace Tapscott as someone who played with Arthur Blythe before I listened to The Dark Tree the other day - which is a fucking great album.

Sure is. Would also recommend 'Sonny's Dream' by Sonny Criss, where Tapscott did all the writing and arranging.

oh thanks.. I'll check that out.

jazz wars will outlast all other wars & war itself

"jazz wars" makes listening to Marsalis beefing sound like fun... even when he isn't beefing and waxing lyrical about musicians I find myself screaming NoOOOO! in an anguished voice.

The Dark Tree is magnificent. Flight 17, the album he did with the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra is spotty but pretty great.

going to have to get everything by Tapscott now. Strange that it has took me so long to find out about him - cos ticks just about every box.

There's a huge amount of archival stuff released on the Nimbus West label that I nabbed off a blog back in the day. Patchy, too, but some real fire in there.

I was lucky enough to see a solo Tapscott performance in 1992. Really stunning.

Nimbus West has a Bandcamp page:

https://nimbuswest.bandcamp.com/music

ahmad jamal's Macanudo newly available on spotify today; this shit goes

new brandee younger album is predictably great

https://www.facebook.com/nightmemer/photos/a.438988833149338/834871306894420/?type=3&theater

Lol

"Would also recommend 'Sonny's Dream' by Sonny Criss, where Tapscott did all the writing and arranging."

finally got round to this one today and it is so fucking good.

going to see The Comet is Coming tonight, very excited,

listening to + digging Getz at the Gate

The Comet is Coming was SO MUCH FUN
packed club, party vibe, people dancing...band seemed really happy and into it...Hutchings is great so is Analog Dave or whatever the synth dude's name is, drummer great as well
so glad I went, glad it was packed so maybe Sons of Kemet comes

Glad you were into it. They really were a blast in NYC, and I'm glad to hear they were able to draw a good crowd. I wonder if they're the kind of act that can bridge the gap between the jazz world and the jam-band world.

Shabaka is out of this world good - feel so lucky I got to see him. Weirdly their Philly show was v poorly attended but there were people there who had just seen him the night before in NY and loved it so much they travelled down to see him again.

the crowd was definitely not the typical mpls jazz crowd, it's not a great city for jazz really but def a lot of rock, hipsterish types mixed with jazz people

i think it's partially the kamasi washington effect, he's had a couple of really well received club shows here and gets a bit of token play on the local mpr indie rock station the current...so maybe some new people are getting attracted to some of this newer jazz that way, kamasi went from when i saw him at a small club to headlining and i believe selling out the first avenue mainroom which is about 1300 or more

This year's festival isn't exciting me as much as last year's (and I also probably have less money) but I am hoping to see both Jakob Bro and a Joelle Leandre/Lori Freedman duet next Tuesday.

Very much enjoying Mobilisation Generale, a compilation of 70's spiritual and free jazz from France, mostly played by members of communes, anarchist collectives, etc. Almost every track features some spoken word declamation on top of it and I'm sure many of them must be super cringey but while I speak ok French I can easily tune them out.

the Fabian Almazan Trio album is quite a standout Cuban influenced piano trio album, some really powerful music on there and not your average trio at all.

Listening to Rajna Swaminathans album 'Of Agency and Abstraction' and I like it a lot. Chamber-jazz/Indian carnatic music hybrid, very beautiful.

Oh, thanks. That's right up my alley and it's sounding pretty good so far.

yeah .. same.