Tag: jazz

Sounds from Colorado: The Centennial State is a Hole

After the death of Ron Miles in 2022, Colorado has little to offer. Local networks are deficient, show spaces generally relegated to Denver, with the state as a whole treated as an after-thought on bloated touring schedules needing to check-off the western market.

Trying to get to the heart of any local scene since I first arrived in Colorado has been fruitless. My long time go-to’s for finding local acts is through mom’n’pop record stores. Whether I’m on tour or visiting family, if you’re looking for ‘the good stuff’ in a local music scene there is no better place to turn than the town’s record shops. Yet, here ‘local’ sections in record stores are usually limited to 5 lackluster CD-rs and/or include bands from a fair share of any non-coastal, non-southern states (Illinois in one instance).

There is nearly no-point in talking about music outside the sprawl that is Denver because the state itself seemingly refuses to acknowledge it- exceptions for legacy acts playing at Red Rocks and the occasional rumblings of a house-show once had in Fort Collins, of course.

Talk is guarded in Boulder county, fair. The Boulder PD have raided shows before. Yet there is a heightened culture of individualism which is conducive to scene-killing. Is it pretension? Is it cool detachment? 

Atop this is the transient nature of Colorado residency (eg. college students, tech industry diaspora). A vicious cycle to cultural growth efforts, few people ever seem to live in the state longer than 5 years. How can local scenes and sounds grow organically in such a high turnaround environment?

Detached from significant touring networks, Colorado isn’t a feasible touring option for smaller acts from outside the immediate region. Those who can make it are more significantly backed, big enough to draw festival spots and bigger guarantees.

So it’s been everywhere in all facets of music that instagramable moment-making approaches to showmanship triumphs over solid musical performances or artistic ingenuity. Cost of living in Colorado has been and continues to be incredibly high, making the travel to shows even more costly. All of this discourages new and old residents alike from going to smaller shows in neighboring towns with bands they haven’t heard of before.

Given Colorado’s general inaccessibility and the internet age’s low bar for content, jam music- whose devotees are seemingly always willing to have an excuse to drop out for a few hours- and legacy acts have conquered the public sphere of music in Colorado. This proliferation of established acts only contributes to the nagging feeling that Colorado is culturally 10 years behind the rest of the country in many, many ways.

Colorado is a destination for musicians no more. The 1970s are over, yet it still clings to the past. Unless the guards of local scenes adopt a militant ‘high tide raises all ships’ approach to growing Colorado’s internal and regional music networks, The Centennial State’s music scenes will remain under a doomspell.

The Centennial State is a hole.

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REVIEW: Samara Joy – Samara Joy (2021)

An excellently recorded album, Samara Joy’s self-titled 2021 debut album brings mellow vitality in a way that only Jazz can. Joy’s vocals are dutifully in-line with the album’s study of vocalists Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, yet it’s this display of taste and artistic values shown through cultural touchstones which is more or less ‘the point’ of many records nowadays, within and outside of Jazz. This fixation with the past, in this case Vocal Jazz greats, has many a times become a trap of banality. But the musicianship of Pasquale Grasso (guitar), Ari Roland (double bass), Kenny Washington (drums), and Samara Joy create an incredibly playful and impassioned performance across the album’s curation of material.

In recent readings of both Byung-Chul Han’s The Disappearance of Ritual and Simon Reynold’s Retromania, I found both authors touching on ideas of ‘vertical time’ and French philosopher Roland Barthes’s musings of Japan as the ‘empire of signs’. In The Disappearance of Rituals, Han explores the imbalanced modes of play and work within the “genealogy of [rituals’] disappearance”, while Reynolds’s Retromania investigates the rise of retro-fetishism and the wane of modernist Western ideals of artistic innovation and displays of emotional urgency within art.

It had all just fallen in my lap, a book I had put off for years (Retromania) and one I bought on a whim (Rituals). Completing this coincidental trifecta was that Samara Joy had finally made its way to the top of my ‘to review’ folder; an album I had never heard before, so deeply entrenched in a musical tradition, igniting vague ideas of the ritual-esque nature of ‘standards’ within various music cultures and practices.

‘Work’, Han argues, is an increasingly dominant force in our modern times. “Because of the compulsion of work and production, we are losing the capacity to play. We only rarely make playful use of language; we only put it to work. It is obliged to communicate information or produce meaning. As a result, we have no access to forms of language that shine all by themselves. Language as a medium of information has no splendor. It does not seduce.”

As an album, Samara Joy is a playful experience. Its tonality, recording quality, and study of musical touchstones is symbol-rich. It is decidedly Jazz- recognizable, in a sense historical. There is no original compositions on the album, no overt dialogue espoused. But it is within this framework which play thrives, as there is nothing to be extracted, no ‘work’ to be done. The music is there to enchant the listener and then move on.

Highlights of the album include renditions of Stardust, (It’s Easy To See) The Trouble With Me Is You, and Let’s Dream In The Moonlight. Pasquale Grasso’s magnificent guitar playing blankets the audible spectrum with vast swaths of color, reinforced by Kenny Washington’s densely textural drumming. Ari Roland’s bass playing gleams with character, refusing to be resigned solely to functionality. As a whole, the record is greatly enjoyable, perhaps magical in the right ears.

Still reading Retromania at time of writing this review, I find myself investigating (and interrogating) my own values in regards to art and culture.

Is the value of artistic innovation outmoded? Too individualistic to allow for play? I don’t believe so. I would argue there is increasingly less individuality and originality within our atomized cultural climate of work. Mining the past (our own garbology) has been a function of production, an efficient way of ‘up-cycling’ material. This stands in contrast to both structured playfulness and innovation through emotional urgency. Only ‘additive innovation’ (as in innovation for the sake of creating innovation) has a cancerous snuff effect on art- cutting off an intrinsic function (this sense of ‘play’) with excess matter. For proof, simply look at the irrelevance of contemporary self-identified Avant-Garde artists. ‘Additive innovation’ is academic exhibitionism at its most flaccid, most soulless, and forgoes the playfulness of music which enchants and enthralls the listening audience.

In contrast, Samara Joy and company commit to playfulness within a musical standard, a ‘ritual’ of sorts. Going forward, I would love to see what this line-up of musicians could achieve if egged-on outside of the comfort zone of Jazz familiarity. The album is delightful, and worth the time for any fan of Vocal Jazz.

For fans of: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae

Like Samara Joy? Give these a listen: Cécile McLorin Salvant, Luke Stewart, Nubya Garcia

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TAKE VIBE: An Interview with Laurence Mason

Laurence Mason is the mastermind behind Take Vibe, a reworking of the Strangler’s Golden Brown (a post-punk meets baroque pop ode to heroin) in the style of Dave Brubeck’s Take 5 (written by saxophonist and composer Paul Desmond and first released in 1959 by Dave Brubeck Quartet). A demo and later de facto music video for the single reached viral status clocking in multi-million views and sparking interest in the opposing bands’ work within their counterpart’s audiences.

The original demo video, uploaded May 11th, 2020.

The following interview with Mason took place over email on April 21st, 2021.

The original demo was a hit, now with a little over 4 million views. Then the 7” is pressed and sells out. Did you know there would be such a strong audience out there for a Take Vibe type concept? What would you say is the make up of Take Vibe’s fanbase?

The only reason I thought people might click on it is because it’s the sort of thing I’d want to watch. That’s what an audience is really though isn’t it, a group of like-minded people who share a common interest with the creator. What I didn’t realize, and still struggle to comprehend, was how large that audience would be. The whole thing was very much a case of right place, right time – people seemed to be finding my video from lots of different places. There were visitors who had found it from searching for Dave Greenfield pretty early on, which of course was the initial reason I’d made it. Golden Brown had been used in an episode of a Netflix series called Umbrella Academy, and also in a film called Baby Teeth round about that time too. Then later on in the year it would have been Dave Brubeck’s 100th birthday so people were finding it through that.

In a roundabout manner of reaching out to you, I spoke with Jazz Room Records “Head Honcho” Paul Murphy. What was it like getting to work on the album? Could you run through the process of how the record was made?

The entire thing was done at my dining room table. I was moving house at the time of making it so I had limited equipment I could use, with most of it being packed away. This lo-fi setup was great because I wanted it to sound like it had been recorded 60 years ago, the idea of studio quality went out of the window and I was adding effects to make it sound grainy and old. For the release, the drums and bass were re-recorded so we weren’t using any samples as I had done on the original video, these were played by John Settle and Josh Cavanagh-Brierley. I ended up playing baritone sax for the B-side, “Walking On The Moon”. I’d been listening to Gerry Mulligan’s Night Lights album so it was a little nod to that. 

The jazz and post-punk connection has been made before, most notably with certain No Wave adjacent groups like Lounge Lizards, James Chance, and later with the lounge group Nouvelle Vague. Even then, I don’t believe there’s ever been a more direct connection between the two worlds, especially recently. Is this new terrain you’re hoping to explore further, or has the statement been made?

The connection I made was between the two songs (Take Five and Golden Brown) rather than looking at it from a perspective of connecting two genres. For a long time I’ve heard musical similarities between both tracks, and I’m not the first person to have done that, but the way I presented those similarities was the way I was hearing them. There’s definitely more terrain to explore in that field, but I’ve not yet found a pair of tunes that click together as well as those two did.

The idea of working with other people’s material, covering it, or of there being music ‘standards’ has really fallen out of popularity. How does a musical piece as a commercial entity transition into the greater cultural narrative, especially surpassing the original writer or performer?

Wow! Right, I’ll have a stab at that one… My thoughts are that it comes down to purpose versus right. Whether or not a statement (be it music, art, a campaign, etc.) has a right to exist in culture is entirely up to the individual who is on the receiving end of that statement, but its purpose to exist (and ultimately its success) is decided by society. The best example I can think of is Tracey Emin’s bed. On one side of the room you’ve got the people who say it really strikes a chord, the people who nominated it for a Turner prize, the people who actually bought it… Then on the other side you’ve got the people who say “Well that’s rubbish, I’ve got one just like that at home.” But its purpose in culture transcends what any individual thinks of it because society has decided that it has a place to exist in conversations, discussions, and arguments. So much so that on the mention of modern art, most people will bring up an image of an untidy bed in their minds. On the subject of using other people’s material for their creations, I think its use needs to be justified – what purpose does it serve in its new setting? Its right to be reused is up to the opinion of the consumer, but the decision of society on how well it has served its new purpose will govern its success in culture. That got deep.

Punk can in many ways be referred to as the great reset on music. With lower bars of entry, for both artists and consumers, how does jazz with a relatively high bar of entry stay relevant and keep forward momentum with younger audiences?

Look no further than YouTube for that – creators like Adam Neely, Aimee Nolte and Charles Cornell cater for young people wanting to learn about jazz, particularly jazz music theory, and it makes up an incredibly large audience on YouTube. Making something that previously seemed untouchable available to the masses is probably about as punk as it gets.

A little question I like to ask people I’ve just met, what are you listening to? No cool answers!

At the moment I’m listening to a lot of 90s RnB but that’s for a project I’m working on with someone. I’ve got Radio 6 on whenever I’m driving, I love Mary Anne Hobbs’ show.

Last but not least, ‘run what ya brung’ as they say where I’m from. Let the people know what you’re working on and where they can find you!

My next project involves a 100-year-old bass saxophone and some Leeds-based brass players. If that’s whet your appetite just type Laurence Mason into YouTube to find my channel, there’ll be some stuff up there soon about it.

You can find Laurence Mason’s Youtube account here or head on over to Jazz Room Records.

Wanting more strange jazz pastiche? Well you should check out Resident Sound’s Guide to The Fast Paced, Lighthearted World of DOOM JAZZ.

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The Fast Paced, Lighthearted World of DOOM JAZZ

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.

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.

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.

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 subcultural 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.

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