What are you listening to at the present? (genres helpful)

[Luke]

Miles Davis is 90% awesome, 10% terrible.

That's a great percentage of incredible music, but a lot of his atonal music is too abstract for me.

Listening to a lot of Madonna lately. She still holds the lock.

[Sano]

The Lonely Island - The Wack Album

[noiseredux]

Miles Davis is 90% awesome, 10% terrible.

That's a great percentage of incredible music, but a lot of his atonal music is too abstract for me.

Davis' music is hard to talk about generally, since he went through so many phases so quickly. Like, the whole cool jazz phases was what? Two years for him? And then a whole scene came out of that and he was onto something else already.

But I agree, his huge discography is mostly great.

I'm not sure which eras you're talking about when you say 'atonal,' but I hope you're not sleeping on In A Silent Way & Bitches Brew. That shit blew my teenage mind, man. I love that fusion stuff hard.

Then again, I'm also weird enough to have a soft spot for his later albums like You're Under Arrest where he's just soloing over what's basically drum machines and MIDI loops. So taste is subjective, haha.

[noiseredux]

so today my wife and I went to go see this saxaphone player Marcus Monteiro who's a bit of a local jazz fixture. Anyway, I found this video of his quarter doing some Mega Man 2 music if y'all are interested:

[Stark]

Yay! So fun.

[Sano]

Micro Tools - La Triomphe de L'amour (original club mix)

[TSTR]

later albums like You're Under Arrest where he's just soloing over what's basically drum machines and MIDI loops

this sounds kind of amazing

[Sano]

Enrique Iglesias - Noche Y De Dia ft. Yandel, Juan Magan

[noiseredux]

The Philadelphia Experiment
The Philadelphia Experiment
2001, Here's a trio I was really excited about when this album was released. Ahmir Thompson is of course a bit of a hero to me. So when it was announced that he'd (finally) be recording a jazz record, I was all kinds of excited. The core trio here is rounded out with Uri Caine on keyboards (not piano, keyboards!) and Christian McBride on bass. McBride has worked with folks like George Duke, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner as well as a whole slew of smooth jazz players. What I'm saying is that this trio is pretty damn diverse - coming from many different sides of jazz. There's a ton of promise here. Let me start by saying that the record as a whole is disappointing. But wait! Don't stop reading yet. See, it's also a really good album. Beginning to end, there's nothing bad here. Instead my disappointment comes from the missed opportunity to really do something special. Thompson finally has a vehicle to show his chops as a jazz drummer outside the context of a hip hop band. And he mostly does that - the workout on the title track being a great example. But it's kind of a bummer to hear him in a group with such a usually experimental keyboardist and a bass player who has done far funkier things. It just sort of feels like this record is a little too safe. A little too nondescript. But having said that, I'd still recommend you give it a spin. As I said earlier there's nothing bad here. It's mostly a pretty straight-forward down-tempo record for chilling. And even if there's not a lot of risk being taken with the instrumentation, there is in fact a rather interesting sampling of cover songs being performed here. Marvin Gaye and Elton John rub elbows with Sun Ra for example, and that same straight-forward down-tempo music for chilling vibe that I referenced works to the advantage of these songs. Disparate sources sound comfortable together thanks in part to that aural unity. The take on Grover Washington, Jr.'s "Just The Two Of Us" is by far the most adventurous thing here surprisingly thanks to the many overdubs by McBride. Interestingly this is relegated to hidden track status. Perhaps the group just wasn't ready to showcase their more far-out impulses. So while the musicianship is strong and the tracklisting solid, I can only wish that the trio reunite and give themselves permission to get a little more daring.

[noiseredux]

ok, I have to assume you guys have heard this one and we can talk...



The Dave Brubeck Quartet
Time Out
1959, Time Out is one of those records that is so widely praised that it becomes almost an obvious album to name-check. Because of this there's maybe a sort of hipster knee-jerk reaction to just ignore it or pass it off as 'overrated.' But the truth is that doing so is overlooking just why it's so widely praised to begin with: because it's a really great album. In fact it's to my memory the first jazz album I ever bought with my own money; picked up at a second-hand shop while on vacation in Martha's Vineyard when I was sixteen. A music theory teacher had played our class "Take Five" that semester to illustrate the use of non-standard time in popular music and I had become a fast fan. (It would take me years to develop the guts to explore Frank Zappa at that same teacher's suggestion however). Having said all this I think that even if this personal importance were stripped away completely, I'd still be an awe at just how incredible this record really is. When put into perspective you have to admire the balls that the quartet had to release an album (much to the label's reluctance) of jazz tunes in such strange time signatures. But I love a concept album such as this. In attempting to explore these weird timings that band is only pushing themselves to be better musicians. And it pays off. The odd thing is that even playing compositions that should feel jarring to Western ears, somehow these seven tracks are actually more comfortable and inviting to non-jazz heads than many of the standards that came before. "Blue Rondo A La Turk" starts off in super weird 9/8 time - inspired by a Turkish folk song - but who cares? It swings! The classic "Take Five" (actually Paul Desmond's composition) is of course in 5/4, and is actually a showcase for Desmond and drummer Joe Morello. In fact all Brubeck does is play the same short motif for the length of the entire track. Though it's Desmond's solo that stays in your head, you owe it to yourself to go back and revisit Morello's explosive drum solo. Elsewhere the band plays with the waltz. Brubeck himself gets a chance to showboat on the intro to "Strange Meadow Lark," and majestic closer "Pick Up Sticks." This is a svelte and solid record that I believe belongs in the collections of anybody who claims to enjoy music at all.