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November 2004:
There is a musical fusion
happening today. The popular dance music of the 1990s is being blended
with jazz. Electronica is in full bloom today, and pioneers such as
Amon Tobin, DJ Spooky, DJ Olive, and DJ Logic are working with jazz
players on many of their projects.
Amon Tobin is the jazziest
of the drum n’ bass DJs. This Brazilian born, previously British-based,
electronic composer samples everyone from Charles Mingus and Wilbur Ware
to Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. The opening track from his first
album, Bricolage, samples the April in Paris intro from
Charlie Parker’s Strings session and then leads the way to Sonny
Rollins’ Softly As In a Morning Sunrise from his Live At the
Village Vanguard Volume 2 recording. ‘Bricolage’ was a concept
developed by French structural anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (who taught at my
alma mater the New School for Social Research in New York City's
Downtown Manhattan) meaning the blending of
different stimuli into one cohesive whole. Tobin is also a
multi-instrumentalist who samples himself and mixes the sounds into his
luxuriant, dreamlike sound sculptures. His second album is called
Permutation, and this one is the jazziest in his catalogue. There
is a track called Nightlife that features an out-of-time bebop
piano line that is mixed with cymbals -- it makes you think what is must
have been like jamming all night on 52nd Street when the new
music was hot. Tobin’s third and most popular album is named
Supermodified. He reinvented himself with this project that focused
more on sound morphing (the title of the album is the perfect
description to his approach within). The first track features a free
jazz tenor saxophonist blowin’ hard -- it was used for a 2001 BMW
commercial (just as Lee Morgan’s Blue Note album The Sidewinder
was used for an automobile commercial in the 1960s). This DJ's fourth
project is titled Out From Out Where and combines jazz with
classical strings. The last track features a trippy guitar ‘lick‘
repeated over and over again accompanied by different harmonies.
Listeners should also check out his album under the alias ‘Cujo’. On
this session there is a classic track called The Brazilianaire
which samples some great Brazilian-style drumming beneath a beautiful
piano line. Tobin is signed to a UK record label called ‘Ninja Tune’.
This company has a techno roster that includes many jazzy projects. Amon received the music contract to create the score for the
continuation of the Xbox/PS2 game Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell.
The music of this previously Brighton-based, currently Montreal-based DJ
has been used in Coca-Cola commercials and in the ‘Adult Swim’ late
night television program on the Cartoon Network (not to mention as
background music to BBC World News features). During the late 1990s
he was written about in a British magazine called The Wire (a
great starting point for anyone who is interested in experimental
music). In recent years his tracks have also been used on trailers to
motion pictures like Spike Lee’s 25th Hour and Al
Pacino’s The Recruit. The composer’s next project will deal with
classical reissues, but I’m sure it will include some jazz.
DJ Spooky and DJ Olive are the
co-founders of New York City’s ‘illbient’ music. It is a more urban take
on the ambient music of Brain Eno, and a jazzier version of the
experimental chamber music of John Cage. ‘Illbient’ music is one of the
truly original artistic creations of late 1990s urban spaces.
Spooky, a.k.a. Paul D.
Miller, got his name from a character out of the William Burroughs novel
titled Nova Express. In the book, ‘that subliminal kid’ goes
around secretly placing mini microphones in bars and public spaces and
then uses the recordings as samples. Miller is also a social
commentator and theorist who double majored in Philosophy and French
Literature at Bowdoin College in Maine. He has written articles on Deleuze and
Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia as well as pieces on
technology and music sampling. Spooky teaches at the Swiss-based
European Graduate School’s M.A. and Ph.D. programs in Media and Communication. His new
book called Rhythm Science is out on The MIT Press. Paul works with
many jazz musicians -- his album Optometry features free jazz
players Joe McPhee, Daniel Carter, William Parker, Matthew Shipp, and Guillermo Brown.
He is in fact a long time collaborator with Matthew Shipp (I actually
was the lead organizer in the planning and booking of their 2000 Vision Festival performance
in New York City's East Village of Manhattan). Their first
performance together was at ‘The Gathering of the Tribes’ Benefit at the
Knitting Factory in Lower Manhattan's Tribeca in December of 1999. (Spooky is the honorary editor,
and now co-publisher, of Tribes’ publication of poetry, creative writing,
and literature. I used to jam on tenor saxophone at the beatnik-style open mic
poetry sessions that founding publisher Steve Cannon held weekly at
Tribes gallery
in the East Village). Shipp also mixed it up with UK electronica
producer A Guy Called Gerald during the Tribes benefit in ‘99 at the
Knitting Factory. Spooky
and Shipp were featured together on the cover of an experimental music zine called Signal to Noise, where they interviewed each other
and talked about the state of jazz today (including Shipp’s take on
Wynton Marsalis. It also included Miller’s take on Amon Tobin -- whose
song he mixed on his Under the Influence album. Note: The two
DJs recently brought down the house one after the other at a Viennese
rave, giving the Austrian kids a little taste of authentic techno jazz). Spooky’s Optometry band still tours Europe, playing at jazz
festivals in France and Italy. This band is a perfect example of the
new, cutting edge jazz that is being produced by lesser known artists
today. The 1996 album Songs of a Dead Dreamer introduced him to
the creative music world and was used in the Soundtrack to the
award-winning Motion Picture Slam. It was issued on San
Francisco’s Asphodel label (the same label singer Diamanda Galas is
signed to.) On one of this album’s sci-fi inspired tracks, Spooky
also samples The New
York Art Quartet’s Sweet-Black Dada Nihilismus (originally
recorded for the ESP label with Leroi Jones a.k.a. Amiri Baraka reciting poetry). His
manager also manages a prominent Brazilian-born jazz guitarist named Arto Lindsey. Jazz minded Miller also performs with rock legends
Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth) and Yoko Ono. He in fact also has a strong
interest in the creative ‘conductions’ of jazz musician Butch Morris,
since these conductions use some semiotics theory in context.
Olive has worked with free
jazz drummer William Hooker and experimental pianist Uri Caine.
Recently he has also been hired by the well known trumpeter Dave
Douglas. His best recorded work is with Hooker. The two of them
recorded the album Mindfulness (on the Knitting Factory’s own
label), the result of a 1996 West coast tour. Their guest for the
Bay-area session was the amazing tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman.
The last track from the Slim’s nightclub performance is called Archetypal Space
--
the drumming and sampling from this piece completely blew my mind (and
changed the way I thought about so called ‘reality’) when I first heard
it in high school. Anyone interested
in the fusing of techno and jazz should check out this album. (I
was given the opportunity to tour London and Scotland with Hooker and
a DJ. We would have played Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Stirling Jazz
Festival.) Olive also has a super-impressive electronica group called
We™ which features wonderful beats and vocals. This group opened up
for a sold out Amon Tobin New York concert during the fall of 2000 at
the Knitting Factory. The DJ’s music has also been featured in multimedia exhibits at the
Upper-Eastside’s Whitney Museum of American Art. Today Olive tours Europe frequently
and has a residency at the sub-lounge of the Lower Eastside’s Tonic
nightclub.
Bristol-based Roni Size
has a popular group out called ‘Reprazent’ that combines jazzy sounds
with drum n’ bass. There is one track on his 2001 album In the Mode
called Ghetto Celebrity that features Method Man rapping over a
rapid tenor saxophone line. ‘Liquid Sky’ founder DJ Soulslinger has an album
out with experimental guitarist Elliot Sharp. Turntablist ‘I-Sound’ has
also worked with Sharp. Bronx, New York native DJ Logic has a band called
‘Project Logic’ that includes jazz horn players like Joshua Redman,
Daniel Carter, and Elliot Levine as well as the hot rhythm section of Medeski
Martin & Wood (he also works with Living Color guitarist
Vernon Reid). His lush soundscapes shouldn’t be missed. All of these
DJs are paving the way for a new musical fusion. Their collaborations
with avant-garde players are the future of jazz. Techno jazz is
practically the continental music of Europe. In the Scandinavian
nation-states, especially in Norway, young new music enthusiasts wait in
long lines outside clubs during the harsh winters so they can hear
these sort of musicians bend the barriers of jazz and techno for one hour at a time.
I wish American fans were that devoted.
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