Rolling Jazz Thread 2021

Checking back, can confirm that the Iyer trio is a.) a jam, and b.) my jam. Great conversational back and forth between all three, lots of energy.

Listening to the Vijay Iyer record, hating the drum sound (bc it's the same anemic close mic'ed sound as 98% of modern jazz records)

xp lol

Oh right, forgot it's on ECM :)

I like the drums! What don't you like?

Too much skitter, not enough thump?

Tum and RogueArt are two labels I can think of offhand that do not do downloads or streaming. No idea why. Even the anti-streaming classical labels have make FLAC downloads available.

Listening to the Vijay Iyer record, hating the drum sound (bc it's the same anemic close mic'ed sound as 98% of modern jazz records)

Having seen this trio live, I agree about the drums. Sorey's been ECM-ized. Live with this band, he sounds like a cross between Billy Cobham and Gene Hoglan.

Close-mic'ed, no room sound, super-separated, compressed either not enough or in a very bland way.

I compared against Now He Sings, Now He Sobs and it was like night and day, but that's not fair. So I pulled up a few more recent jazz records with drum sounds that I like, and all of them sound much more like a whole drum kit and are much more exciting to hear:

-Joshua Redman record from last year w/Brian Blade
-Mark Turner 'Dharma Days' w/Nasheet Waits
-Christian McBride 'A Family Affair' w/Gregory Hutchinson
-Nicholas Payton 'Relaxin' with Nick' w/Kenny Washington

I hear what you mean, tho I wouldn't say there's no room sound. I think there's a fair amount of space in the mix, his cymbals have a lot of shimmer. I feel like it's a good companion to Iyer's kind of precise, staccato playing. It's a bit of a mathematical vibe, but that's his thing.

No prob w drums x perc sound on xpost Damon Locks - Black Monument Ensemble's NOW---although, as tends to happen in my bandcamp streaming experiences, I have to turn it up more than elsewhere to get what I want, but once I do that yeah this is good---that link one more time: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/now (Should spring for the flac no doubt).

Oh and was startled by bold drums & percussion (& everything else) of Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah's Axiom last year---also on bandcamp, but no need to turn that one up: https://christianscott.bandcamp.com/

Axiom is excellent, yeah.

I guess I didn't notice Sorey's playing much, which is not something I would have expected.

I might personally write Tum and tell them that they will continue to be irrelevant past a certain demographic unless they begin to offer digital downloads.

(Just a note that I do not use any streaming services...if it's available digitally or on vinyl, I try to buy it... If not, well, slsk it is...that this happens more with jazz releases says something IMHO. It's like how Underground Resistance could be making bank on an mp3 site, but...alas, none is emerging, it seems).

Really don't get this CD hate. They're a perfectly good format and often better for lengthy jazz sets. And they're cheap, especially when it comes to reissues. If you've got a hi-fi set up for vinyl, then adding in a CD player isn't a big deal - you can get good ones pretty cheap these days.

Rogue Art's old school approach is admirable in certain respects, but they are missing a trick by not offering DLs. Their stuff is beautifully curated and produced - deserves to be heard more widely.

Rogue Art goes one step further by (as far as I know) not having a publicist, either. Matt Shipp and I have had rueful conversations about this in the past. They seem to have zero interest in the issue of whether anyone hears their records or not.

They sent me their stuff for a while, which was lovely, but lately I've tended to have their stuff sent directly by the artists.

x-post Tend to agree about the Iyer. Strong music, but the ECM tastefulness comes into the composition/performance as well as the production. Would love to hear this band live and hear the difference. Saw Iyer's Sextet a couple of years ago and while it wasn't exactly ragged fire music, it had more bite than on record.

CDs are a good high-quality format, wtf.

In some defense, Tum releases are beautifully packaged, but I definitely need fewer physical “things” and I still want to support the artists/label.

That's fair - my romantic attachment to physical media has taken a hit after moving house recently. I love having a good collection in the flat, but limited space means it needs regular pruning. Now we're coming out of UK lockdown, I'll be taking a fair bit of stuff to my local record store and charity shops. The jazz ain't going nowhere though.

perhaps i'm a boring fucker, but I can't understand how someone can listen to that incredibly good new Vijay album and their main takeaway is: meh, too much ECM!

lmao a convo about ecm tastefulness in 2021, interesting

not sure i even hear one iota of anyone’s problem with the drum sound on the iyer

I interviewed Seth Rosner and Yulun Wang of Pi Recordings for my podcast. Wanna know how to keep an independent jazz label running for 20 years? Here's how. Links to listen:

Osiris - https://bit.ly/3toETtQ
Apple - https://apple.co/3dmbHOi
Spotify - https://spoti.fi/32iCOnf

It just feels like the recording & mixing (for piano too!) doesn't serve the music, by making it less exciting than it actually is. Works for those more ambient & less busy Eurojazz ECM records, not for something like this.

Still been thinking about that Rudy Van Gelder interview I found awhile back, and how people think those old Blue Note records are some sort of neutral document, but he talks about all these things he did to specifically hype up the sounds, to simulate the excitement of seeing the music live.

Anyway I'm glad people are enjoying the record, wish I could enjoy it more!

Also the Damon Locks album is cool, although it satisfies something other than the 'jazz' part of my brain (more like listening to electronic music). I saw Dana Hall with the Saturday night band at the Green Mill once (fka Sabertooth?), with a ton of all-stars in the audience (Kamasi, Makaya, etc), and he sounded amazing.

Looking forward to the new Joe Lovano/Dave Douglas Sound Prints album...the last one was great

My latest Stereogum column is up. I wrote about the new Vijay Iyer, Wadada Leo Smith, and Floating Points/Pharoah Sanders albums, among others, but I also wrote a whole long thing about Louis Armstrong.

The other day I listened to Bobby Hutcherson's last album, with Billy Hart, Joey DeFrancesco, and (wait for it) David Sanborn. It's...really good! Particularly DeFrancesco.

christ almighty Axiom is an incredible album!!

ph1l i want your column as a newsletter :)

christ almighty Axiom is an incredible album!!

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, April 21, 2021 5:02 PM (ten minutes ago)

Assuming you're talking about the Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah live album, I've been getting obsessed with this lately myself as well as Stretch Music (plus I just ordered the Centennial Trilogy)

yes indeed.

just imagining being in the room while this music is being played makes me lowkey freak out!

Ha, I actually slept on listening to Axiom for a long time because I saw him on the Ancestral Recall tour; it was really incredible. He's a powerfully magnetic stage presence. Also the drums were insanely loud lol

also thanks Jordan for mentioning "Relaxin With Nick" - kind of other end of the spectrum from Christian Scott but it totally hits my spot. It's on by default in my house for the last couple of days and there's always something that makes me perk up and go 'huh'

Payton's an interesting character in general

It just feels like the recording & mixing (for piano too!) doesn't serve the music, by making it less exciting than it actually is. Works for those more ambient & less busy Eurojazz ECM records, not for something like this.

this makes sense to me!!!! unfortunately i like to remain really ignorant about production details (cf. the recent conversation about '70s jazz production making no sense to me whatsoever). on repeat listens however i have been sorta noticing that the atmosphere around sorey's drums is v tight and a little airless... but i still love the sound of the record, the ambient eurojazz production applied to a piano trio record, for whatever it sacrifices in room sound, makes it feel like they're all playing at least a few inches above the ground. also really appreciate pretty much all of iyer's solos on the record, something about his playing feels v... syntactical to me, like it has the rhythms of an improvised speech, in a good way. this is something i noticed while stoned and falling asleep to the record so it could be way off

I think syntactical is a good description of Iyer's playing, with the caveat that he's somebody with pretty precise diction. Improvised, but like one of those friends who's able to conjure whole paragraphs with elegant metaphors out of thin air. I'm totally a dilettante, but I can almost always recognize his playing when I hear it.

"Relaxin With Nick" - kind of other end of the spectrum from Christian Scott but it totally hits my spot.

Nice, it's pretty amazing how he makes playing trumpet and keys at the same time so natural and non-gimmicky. If you haven't checked out that Tiny Desk concert, it's fantastic.

I do like his writing too, wish I liked his more r&b/electronic records more, but oh well.

Payton annoys me, but in a "I have chosen to ignore this person" way rather than a "Grr, I hate that guy" way.

he definitely seems to have made it his business to be annoying in a certain way and I too don’t like his R&B records but his ornery sense of humour really works for me in those Relaxin songs.

Re: Louis Armstrong, I never got it until I started spending time in New Orleans and heard a ton of other great New Orleans trumpet players. Then I realized, oh, he was a great New Orleans trumpet player, and he wrote the playbook.

(I wrote a bunch more about chops and brass band and Miles Davis and deleted it)

The Hot Fives and Sevens box from the '90s was the key to me. It helped that it came out when I was spending a lot of time digging into '20s and '30s music, and it was just so obvious what a blaze of talent and inspiration he was. There was one point in my infatuation where I would have told you Satch was the most important American artist in any field in the first half of the 20th century. I wouldn't go that far these days, but he's on a shortlist for sure. I even have a lot of tolerance for his corny stuff, just because I feel like he was such an important cultural presence. (And a hell of a jazz singer, too, but definitely his playing is the magic stuff.)

(I guess that box was actually 2000, not the '90s.)

https://jamesbrandonlewis.bandcamp.com/album/jesup-wagon

the new JBL quintet is looking like a top notch band (inc William Parker on two tracks)

The JBL is gorgeous. Really strong writing and the combination of players/instruments is inspired. Particularly dig the cello/ngoni grooves on a couple of tracks. Lewis has been building up a really impressive catalogue, but this feels like a real breakthrough.

Sorry, guimbri not ngoni!

it sounds fucking tremendous on my first listen. I got it off slsk but will pay for it when it's officially available.

The self-titled Broken Shadows album (Tim Berne, Chris Speed, Reid Anderson and Dave King playing tunes by Ornette Coleman, Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden and Dewey Redman) that was originally part of a super-expensive vinyl box from the Newvelle label a couple of years ago is being reissued on CD by Intakt, with two extra tracks. I saw Broken Shadows at the Jazz Standard and had a blast; glad this is gonna reach a slightly larger audience.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EzqGM30XEAE-Gor?format=jpg&name=small

there is this lost album by the "Legendary" Hasaan as well.