What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Stanfordian]

'Matador' – Kenny Dorham
with Jackie McLean, Bobby Timmons Teddy Smith & J.C. Moses
United Artists (1962)

[Joseph K]

Andrew Hill - Judgement!

[Serial_Apologist]

Andrew Hill - Judgement!

That's a coincidence! - I've just cited Andrew Hill in another context entirely over on the Experimental etc thread!

[Joseph K]

That's a coincidence! - I've just cited Andrew Hill in another context entirely over on the Experimental etc thread!

No coincidence. Twas reading your post that made me decide to listen to something of his.

[Serial_Apologist]

No coincidence. Twas reading your post that made me decide to listen to something of his.

[Ian Thumwood]

Taking the whole notion of "Fusion" to it's utlimtate conclusion, I hve been listening to Donny McCaslin's 2012 album "Casting for gravity" which features the likes of Jason Lindner on keyboards, Tim Lefebvre on bass (now with Tedusci / Trucks band) and Mark Guiliana on drums. About ten years ago the ikes of Calum and Charles would regularly post their enthusiasm for McCaslin and I would have to admit that he was a player who looked certain to inherit the crown from the late Mike Brecker. I was really enthused by his acousitc material but this album followed up the earlier "Perpetual Motion" where he edged towards a more plugged in experience. "Perpertual Motion" was a grower and struck me as striking the right kind of balance. The follow up "Caxting for gravity" was a point at which the music became more extreme. The quality of writing seemed to diminish and the new quartet was far denser than anything else he had worked with. Guliiana's drumming is a real issue for me. He is massively popular amongst a younger generation of jazz fans yet I think his drumming is too machine-like and unswinging.

I tend to be a bit negative towards Fusion but this album strikes me as taking the concept to a point where all the life is squeezed out of the music. Having seen McCaslin's latest, post- Bowie band perform live, the tenor is the latest element of this band to be miked up and the concept now seems like an update on the kind of stuff Chick Corea's "Electrik Band" did in the 1980s albeit the cues are taken more from EDM than was the case back in the earlier decade. I really disliked McCaslin's music as a live experience as much as I felt the same when I saw Corea reconvene the Electrik band in 2002 with Frank Gambale. The volume in both cases was too late but it is the brutish element of what is produced that puts me off.

It is a shame that McCaslin followed this musical course as his work in the 2000s was really decent.

[Serial_Apologist]

Taking the whole notion of "Fusion" to it's utlimtate conclusion, I hve been listening to Donny McCaslin's 2012 album "Casting for gravity" which features the likes of Jason Lindner on keyboards, Tim Lefebvre on bass (now with Tedusci / Trucks band) and Mark Guiliana on drums. About ten years ago the ikes of Calum and Charles would regularly post their enthusiasm for McCaslin and I would have to admit that he was a player who looked certain to inherit the crown from the late Mike Brecker. I was really enthused by his acousitc material but this album followed up the earlier "Perpetual Motion" where he edged towards a more plugged in experience. "Perpertual Motion" was a grower and struck me as striking the right kind of balance. The follow up "Caxting for gravity" was a point at which the music became more extreme. The quality of writing seemed to diminish and the new quartet was far denser than anything else he had worked with. Guliiana's drumming is a real issue for me. He is massively popular amongst a younger generation of jazz fans yet I think his drumming is too machine-like and unswinging.

I tend to be a bit negative towards Fusion but this album strikes me as taking the concept to a point where all the life is squeezed out of the music. Having seen McCaslin's latest, post- Bowie band perform live, the tenor is the latest element of this band to be miked up and the concept now seems like an update on the kind of stuff Chick Corea's "Electrik Band" did in the 1980s albeit the cues are taken more from EDM than was the case back in the earlier decade. I really disliked McCaslin's music as a live experience as much as I felt the same when I saw Corea reconvene the Electrik band in 2002 with Frank Gambale. The volume in both cases was too late but it is the brutish element of what is produced that puts me off.

It is a shame that McCaslin followed this musical course as his work in the 2000s was really decent.

I actually agree! When one reminds oneself of the imaginative use of electronic add-ons to acoustic and existing electronic instruments jazz rock went in for at the start of the 1970s (eg Jan Hammer's ring-modulated Fender Rhodes, Miles's wah-wah, Elton Dean's and Lol Coxhill's Gibson Maestro), it seems such a shame that such maximisation of limited possibilities and sonorous blending became standardised to the point of impersonal blandness; but this was down to matters of standardisation and profitability (no pun!), and one appreciates how some of the most creative improvising musicians, notably drummer percussionists such as Tony Oxley and Paul Lytton, turned to manufacturing their own electronic devices, taking their cues from real-time electronics in experimental and avant-garde performance works by the likes of Cage and Stockhausen.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

The McCaslin outfits over the past decade are really good examples of where Fusion ultimately ended up. The electronic instruments are not the main issue I have with this musician's bands rather the fact that the jazz element is squeezed out to the point that it doesn;t really matter what McCaslin is playing. It is a million miles away from a group like Weather Report yet it strikes me as being the natural evolution as to where Fusion would land. At the time I was given the album, I was shocked by what had happened to his music but it was also symptomatic of the issues jazz was having at the time when it tried to cross over into the then popular idioms. You can perceive it as being an Industrial-strength adoption of this approach.

Oddly, the album was produced by David Binney who seemed to have found a solution in the 2000s of blending an acoustic approach on his own music with the kind of writing that have evolved from Fusion without losing the jazz integrity. I really rate Binney's music - a fine improviser and a creative composer. I had a number of of his releases when he was on CrossCross and loved his output sufficiently to buy some of his leadsheets to work out what was happening. He made a great album called "Graylen Epicentre" which was much admired by Pat Metheny at the time. The Criss-cross material was very much in a cooler idiom and I felt was overlooked albeit he was a musician not too favoured in the board's original incarnation. For my money, Binney was really on to something.

[Joseph K]

The McCaslin outfits over the past decade are really good examples of where Fusion ultimately ended up.

No - you can't take one example and say it exemplifies an entire sub-genre of music! That's just silly.

Go listen to Holdsworth's Sixteen Men of Tain or McLaughlin & Corea's Five Peace Band.

[Stanfordian]

‘Mobley’s Message’ – Hank Mobley
with Donald Byrd, Barry Harris, Doug Watkins & Art Taylor.
Jackie McLean guesting on single track.
Prestige (1956)

[Ian Thumwood]

No - you can't take one example and say it exemplifies an entire sub-genre of music! That's just silly.

Go listen to Holdsworth's Sixteen Men of Tain or McLaughlin & Corea's Five Peace Band.

There is a 12 year gap between the Holdsworth album and the McCaslin disc. The former sounds more like a genuine jazz album than the McCaslin record - largely due to the drumming of Gary Novak. It is an ok record even though the guitar synth sound Holdsworth uses has aged badly and the record has slick, 1980s style production values. If anything, it reminds me a bit of Weather Report and would have seemed quite retro in 1999 when it seemed that players like Bill Frisell, Pat Metheny, John scofield and John Abercrombie were dominating jazz. I would have must prefered to hear him use a more traditional guitar sound. A lot of players flirted with the Synth-axe in the late 1980s but by 1999 musicians like Abercrombie had stored them away in their loft. The music is not offensive and at least it sounds like jazz. The only issue is that the snyth sounds used now sound very old-fashioned indeed. It really detracts from the music.

The issue with the McCaslin disc is that the technical levels are extremely high but that the lightness of phrasing is non-existent. It is too machine like and I dislike the musculine brutality of the band's sound. My point was that , if you consider Fusion to be a bad thing, the marriage of jazz with EDM probably marks a point at which the music can get no worse. The music is just too intense to be enjoyable, even before you get over the problem I have with the drumming of Mark Guiliana....

This is one of the more listenable tracks!!

[Joseph K]

This is one of my very favourite jazz ballads. Holdsworth's harmonic palette is utterly exquisite.

[Serial_Apologist]

Third Eye, with Wilton Gaynair

German bassist Ali Haurand's 1977 album Connection

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCucnlLTCe4

[Stanfordian]

Gigi Gryce Orch-Tette – ‘Reminiscin'’
Gigi Gryce with Richard Williams, Richard Rylands, Reggie Workman, Eddie Costa & Bob Thomas
New Jazz (1960)

[Joseph K]

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (first disk)