It’s time to draw lines. Here’s the actual difference between Doom Jazz, Dark Jazz, and Jazz Noir
It’s time to draw lines.
Dark Jazz, Doom Jazz, and Jazz Noir; each label is more evocative than descriptive at face value, yet all conjure a similar abstract image of foreboding, morose, and somber sophistication.
The term one prefers to use tends to come with a stylistic preference or sonic expectation within the genre. But simply using these terms interchangeably to refer to two or perhaps three distinctive compositional styles is growing old.
I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time listening to Dark Jazz, Doom Jazz, and Jazz Noir playlists, reading Youtube comment sections and Reddit threads of recommendations when I could’ve been doing something useful with my life.
Here’s the actual difference between Doom Jazz, Dark Jazz, and Jazz Noir:
Doom Jazz
Rooted in Post-Metal, Doom Metal, and/or Ambient Music
Lyrical and aesthetic elements are more likely to contain Twin Peaks iconography, Horror iconography, and/or shock elements
Jazz Noir
Music that is first and foremost rooted in 20th century Jazz subgenres including (but not limited to) Avant Garde Jazz, Cool Jazz, and West Coast Jazz
Includes selected songs, albums, and film scores from the 20th century that have been retroactively catalogued
Lyrical and aesthetic content is more likely to elicit idealized notions of Film Noir and Neo-Noir film and literary genres
Dark Jazz
The most pervasive of the three distinctions
Seamlessly blends Jazz composition and modern Ambient in dark and somber ways
Simultaneously a crossover genre and an umbrella genre that encapsulates Doom Jazz and Jazz Noir
There you have it. If you can be bothered to make a distinction (and I think you ought to), there it is.
Which one will become the dominant strain or if any of them carry any momentum over the next few decades is yet to be seen. There’s still plenty of room for fresh and interesting work within the three distinctions.Keep an ear out! And support the artists you believe in!
Released on the Italian label Vollmer Industries in 2015, Innerworld is the 2015 debut album by the Eunice, Louisiana-based recording project Lower Level Bureau.
Recorded at Reverb Studio in Cuneo, TX, Innerworld kicks off with the massive 10+ minute track Rose’s Theme. Taking its Badalamenti influence straight, Lower Level Bureau otherwise connect the ominous link between Doom Jazz and Southern Gothic. This instrumental album is incredibly cinematic, with an impressive faux-natural drum machine sound, thick layers of synth strings, and audio samples serving as an effectively haunting human element.
Innerworld more or less exists as a Lynchian representation of the JFK-conspiracy within music. The album artwork and opening track Rose’s Theme refer to Rose Cheramie, a somewhat tangential character in the mythology surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination. The music across the album is scattered with samples of the event’s news coverage.
A younger me, deeply into anything remotely spooky and arguably ‘real’ (unlike, say, creepypasta), would have fawned over Innerworld without hesitation. But now our societal climate lacks any practical social cohesion.
Since the album’s release in 2015 we’ve seen first hand the political manipulation, the tearing of societal fabric, and its devastating toll that have become the real world baggage to an interest in conspiracy theories, something that years ago could have been considered the interest of the gumshoe’s hubris, oddity nuts (such as myself), or just plain old weirdos.
Speaking of Twin Peak’s influence and conspiracy theories, does anyone remember X-Files?
All of this said, the JFK assassination and its mythology are, to put grimly, as American as apple pie. Perhaps Innerworld is a last call for our more playful collective interest in such topics. It’s a beautiful album, and one that expands upon both Noir and Southern Gothic themes within music. Maybe one day we’ll come to find it ‘fun’ again.
For fans of: The Killmanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, Angelo Badalamenti, Dale Cooper Quartet
Funeral for A Friend is the 2021 EP release by Belarusian Dark Ambient and Doom Jazz project Unseeing. Funeral for A Friend is an incredibly dreary and visceral album, “[a] story to tell in the dark” as described on the album’s Bandcamp page.
Not for the squeamish, Funeral for A Friend’s opening track My Suicide is an incredibly gory audio play of final moments and self-inflicted death by knife. Accompanied by light and clean Post-Rock guitars, My Suicide is foley straight out of a horror film. The track’s minor dialogue may push My Suicide’s imagery a step too close to cheesy, but ultimately remains the visceral opener this album needs.
The band’s use of sound design is reminiscent of Krypto Grotesk’s Post Urban Exotica, exploring the man-made’s relationship to the human. A notable example is third track Death Coming, which incorporates distant sirens (an ominous warning peaking our biological nature) and hospital monitoring sounds as transitioning fills in the track.
Enacting a Post-Rock approach to Doom Jazz’s solemn sound, Unseeing substitutes Doom Jazz’s more sleazy qualities for pure romantic-nihilism. The jazz aesthetics integral to Doom Jazz are subdued. Lightly brushed drums and MIDI ‘standup’ bass are only a light skeletal structure which Unseeing builds off of with lush synth strings and Post-Rock guitar tones. It’s a sonic distinction from the Doom Jazz milieu which sets the band apart and allows Unseeing to achieve their compositions’ greatest potential on the album.
For fans of: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mount Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, Nortt
Smoke is a doom jazz duo hailing from Toulouse, France. Their self-titled EP was released on November 19th, 2018 and as of now remains their only public release.
While the trappings of doom jazz are certainly there, the duo approach the emotional and cinematic palette of doom jazz from a very different angle. There is an almost industrial feel to Smoke’s use of synthesizers. Stripped of the doom metal elements of doom jazz, its mid-tempo swagger is fairly fast for the genre. Layers of droning organ and harmonica crawl out from under each other, gliding along side shuffling drums and musique concrète texture samplings.
At times, the album comes across as more triphop or post-rock. Cinematic mystique is achieved first and foremost with textural sampling; trickling rain, distant trains, and the creaking and squeaking of traffic all play parts as important as the meandering Moog synthesizers and haunting saxophones snippets.
While it might not be the crème de la crème of the doom jazz genre, I don’t believe it is trying to be. Smoke is a creature of its own nature, and in doing so they help expand the boundaries of the small circle we call doom jazz.
For fans of: Dale Cooper Quartet, Mogwai, Bohren & der Club of Gore
Twin Peaks inspired music is everywhere. By now, you’re probably well familiar with David Lynch’s 1990’s cult-classic turned pop-culture phenom. Whether searching for classic shows or just minding your damn business, Twin Peaks iconography is everywhere. Composer Angelo Badalamenti’s score would go on to influence the creation of doom jazz, inspired parody and thousands of musicians. Much like David Lynch, Resident Sound doesn’t like to be too obvious. So while you won’t see Xiu Xiu’s tribute album or the doom jazz stalwarts Dale Cooper Quartet here, get ready to strap in and hear 5 Twin Peaks inspired albums worth your time.
If you’re looking for a refresher, or better yet for someone to explain the entirety of Twin Peaks’ meta-narrative, well, Youtube channel Twin Perfect has you covered:
Now with that out of the way, here’s 5 Twin Peaks Inspired Albums Worth Your Time…
1: Messer Chups – Twin Peaks Twist
Saint Petersburg, Russia’s Messer Chups are the campy horror surf scene’s crown jewel. Often interchangeable with Messer für Frau Müller, the band they originally spun-off from, Messer Chups’ Twin Peaks Twist is a 4 song EP of campy surf tracks. Starting with a slow then fast, off-and-on reworking of the Twin Peaks theme, the EP culminates on Eduard Artemyev’s theme from the 1974 Soviet Russian epic Siberiade.
2: Liquid Rainbow – The Blue Rose Sessions
In reference to Lil in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,The Blue Rose Sessions are a synth-heavy, spaced-out, post-rock extravaganza. Outside of just being Twin Peaks related (and tolerable), the album blends strange elements in a masterful way. Track Morning Joe mixes heavy vocoder-esque synths, jazzy drums and guitar, organ and banjo in such a way as to make itself almost as distinct as Angelo Badalamenti’s original iconic score. Pulled from the album’s listing on Bandcamp, “This album is inspired by the Art and visionary Genious of David Lynch and Mark Frost… …We’ll keep on dreaming and scrutinizing the Mysteries.”
3: Côte Déserte – Dale Cooper’s Case
Having more in common with its doom jazz predecessors, Dale Cooper’s Case is a piano heavy noir triumph. The half Saint Petersburg, half Moscow based duo Côte Déserte originally released Dale Cooper’s Case in 2011, and followed up the album with Strange To Look At Her. It Seems That…in 2014. Like the best (and all the rest) of doom jazz, the Côte Déserte Bandcamp page has remained more or less abandoned since 2014.
4: Silencio – She’s Bad
It says it right there on the tin, folks: “more music inspired by the works of David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti.” But all you need to do is press play and the influence is immediate. She’s Bad is part Portishead, part April March, part Messur Chups, part… um… huh… Actually, the album is stylistically all over the place, and if there is any one thing it can be called it’s Twin Peaks-y. Get ready for some twangy guitar.
To pick a Twin Peaks song so notoriously hated and farcical and then decide to to record and press it to vinyl as a single has to be one of the more interesting choices within Twin Peaks inspired music circles. But what else is there to say? It’s a good record. If you ever wanted to hear a version of Just You that didn’t include Twin Peaks most-hated character James Hurley’s high-pitched awkwardness, well, this record is for you.
Honorable Mention: Black Market – Welcome To Twin Peaks
Suffocating the listener in a liminal world drenched in fog, the dampened sound of a pumpjack groans on under a layer of reverb. Rarely about what is, almost entirely about what isn’t, the doom jazz genre has been the go-to for our inner Agent Dale Coopers since Twin Peaks first went off the air in the summer of 1991. Without further ado, here is Resident Sound’s Guide to Doom Jazz…
In many ways, it is anything but jazz. Post-rock at its lightest, doom jazz is a post-metal, dark ambient blend of avant-garde and film-score influences, with jazz aesthetics and associated instruments. Brushed drums and stand-up bass drag us slowly into a shadow in which the only recognizable feature may be the occasional saxophone drudgery. The rare vocal not sung in giallo horror tongues speak is a rare find. So where do we get started?
Bohren & der Club of Gore
An early influence and common theme within doom jazz is composer Angelo Badalamenti’s score for David Lynch’s cult-classic turned pop culture phenomenon Twin Peaks. Debuting in August of 1990, Twin Peaks had only gone off the air the previous year when Bohren & der Club of Gore was founded in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany in 1992. For a long time its members, former hardcore punk musicians, were seemingly the only individuals of this dark ethereal genre-to-be. There was no fashion, no statement pieces, no major-label deals or infamous underground record collecting stories. In a decade defined by x-treme cool ranch and Limp Bizkit, doom jazz’s shadowy grip on dark music would grow slowly over the coming decades.
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The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble
TKDE, initially a duo, formed in Utrecht, Netherlands in 2000 as a project for scoring silent films. By 2007, the ensemble had grown to seven members with instrumentation consisting of cello, violin, guitar, trombone, and more. Unlike their peers, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble would have a sparse discography, culminating in the 2011 crowd-funded From The Stairwell LP and a live album that same year before quietly disbanding in 2014.
Denovali Records
Being the fractured scene that it is, it can seem as if these groups are destined to return to the shadows from which they once came.
Since the dissolution of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble there’s been no word of them returning, but in 2016, Denovali Records (the closest thing to a scene anchoring point) began to release the TKDE discography on their digital label, allowing for greater accessibility through Bandcamp.
Denovali Records may be the closest we see to a subcultural anchor anytime soon. Started in 2005, the independent label has seen itself curate and release a roster as sonically diverse as ambient, electronica, drone, jazz, and sound art. Thanks to them, doom jazz has become accessible to those who wish to get involved. Denovali is now home to The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, and one of my favorite groups; The Dale Cooper Quartet.
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Dale Cooper Quartet
Formed in 2002 at a jazz improvisation night, The Dale Cooper Quartet (occasionally styled as DC4tet) came together over a love of Angelo Badalamenti and doom jazz predecessors Bohren & der Club of Gore. Their first and perhaps most recognizable release came in 2006 with Parole de Navarre on French electronic label Diesel Combustible. DC4tet’s explicit Twin Peaks reference and the accessibility afforded to ambient music and Twin Peaks fans alike in the second half of the naughts helped put them at the forefront of what is now a somewhat-google-able genre.
You can read an interview with DC4tet at Welcome to Twin Peaks, a Twin Peaks fan site.
The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation
Described by Denovali Records as the “much-noticed free-form, drone metal / jazz alter-ego of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble,” The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation is the improvisational spin-off of TKDE. Started in 2007 only as a live project, their early performances were recorded and eventually released as Doomjazz Future Corpses! in 2007 on the Ad Noiseam record label. This was followed up in 2009 by Succubus, arguably the most visually recognizable album in the genre, then three more albums. Mount Fuji disbanded in 2012 having put out more work than the original Kilimanjaro ensemble.
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Is that all there is…?
Maybe doom jazz has reached a logical conclusion. An early pioneer of the metamodernist practice of oscillation between modernist and postmodernist ideology; doom jazz oscillates between many of theorist Jonathan Kramer’s proposed characteristics of postmodernist music and the modernist techniques and styles proposed by musicologist Daniel Albright, such as expressionism, abstractionism, and hyperrealism. As more metamodernist approaches to music are explored, doom jazz has a chance to be reignited by newer groups, but perhaps it will be left alone as new styles emerge from the same school of thought.
In a time when nearly all artistic ideas can be easily shared, the legitimacy of an idea isn’t held hostage to any regional scene’s ability to create the cultural cohesion previously necessary (think of the social climates that lead to the formation of punk, grunge, or even free jazz) to catapult a band into any degree of national attention or audience. Neither immediately positive or negative, the loss of this necessity mixed with the hyper commercialization of all niches has lead us to a post-subcultural way of living. In a world increasingly focused on quantitative consumption of content oriented media and a lowered barrier of entry (lower stigmatization, higher accessibility), it could be said we live in a niche-aesthetics cultural society, no longer held together by community ties.
So in keeping with its metamodernist leanings, where does doom jazz go from here? For a genre whose first wave rose and crashed as slow as its tempo, what will it take for second wave to distinguish itself? It may be another 20 years before we see it in full swing. But now as we speak, the 2030s/40s are already doomed.
The Resident Sound 