Kamasi Washington - The Epic

No thread dedicated to this album? My 3xLP box set just arrived today months after pre-ordering it so making do with the autorip mp3's and it really is a brilliant album.

https://boomkat2-prelive-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/spree/products/296287/large/kamasi-washington_si_01.jpg
https://boomkat2-prelive-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/spree/products/296288/large/kamasi-washington_si_02.jpg
https://open.spotify.com/album/4CyxLQLru2I7ZTJXZsGSq5

"The Epic is a 172-minute, three-volume set that includes a 32-piece orchestra, a 20-person choir, and 17 songs overlaid with a compositional score written by Washington. Pulsing underneath is an otherworldly ten-piece band, each member of which is individually regarded as among the best young musicians on the planet – including bassist Thundercat and his brother, drummer Ronald Bruner Jr., bassist (yes, there are two) Miles Mosley, drummer Tony Austin (of course there are two), keyboard player Brandon Coleman, pianist Cameron Graves, and trombonist Ryan Porter. Patrice Quinn’s ethereal vocals round out the ensemble. The band are all from Los Angeles, mostly South Central, and its members – who call themselves variously “The Next Step” and the “The West Coast Get Down” – have been congregating since they were barely teenagers in a backyard shack in Inglewood. Washington, 32, has known Bruner since he was two. The rest met, at various stages, by the time they were in high school. The hours they have put into the music, playing together and practicing alone, total cumulatively in the tens of thousands."

i still need to check this out! something about it seems to good to be true, but i know plenty of people who have said it's the real deal.

It's a great record, and if the band comes through your town, be there.

ha i just missed them last week D:

yeah been waiting for the vinyl of this

I like the album a lot, live show completely blew it out of the water, kinda been hard to go back

am down with this record

(dunno if the black, red and gold sleeves are symbolic but they make a nice german flag there btw)

this album reminds me of the 70s axelrod/adderley groove ..

i.e. its fucking brilliant.

Ah crap, I see that he played Boston way back in August before I knew the album. Album is great though!

love this & the Debussy cover is so pretty, didn't know there was a vinyl edition out

The thing that this reminded me of was the McCoy Tyner 'Extensions' album, but I only have a narrow frame of reference here. actually I feel pretty self-conscious that I'm praising this but I haven't actually listened to all that many contemporary jazz records since the whatever the last indie-crowd breakthrough one was, but that says more about my lazy listening habits than the music itself

ha yeah, that is probably why i've yet to check this out yet -- it feels "aimed" at me in some sense (like retro soul for sun ra fans?). but if it's good it's good.

Don't hold back tyler, it is truly stunning in places

nickb tells the truth.

They crammed 82 minutes on a 3lp gotta be a terrible pressing

I'm sorry 170 minutes! I'm not sure how that's physically possible

yeah seems like 150 minutes would be pushing it... isn't 25 minutes about as much as is wise to put on one side of vinyl?

yeah

and even that's pushing it depending on the type of music

does "half speed cut" mean anything to you guys?

3 x black 180g 12" in artworked 3mm spined sleeves all housed in a rigid board outer slipcase. Half speed cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering. Includes 2 x 12" poster inserts featuring exclusive artwork by KC Woolf Haxton and story adaptation and calligraphy by Kenturah Davis. MP3 download code also enclosed.

I have no idea about technical stuff but my 3xLP sounds absolutely fine

This is my favourite album of 2015 so far. Seeing him in London in a few weeks, for his first UK show. If it's anything like the NPR YouTube of his album launch gig, I may explode with joy.

mike this is the first time you & i ever agreed on anything musically I think ;)

Ok I'm listening to this RIGHT NOW. I like it.

It's definitely my album of the year even if I am one of those who doesnt listen to much jazz after the 1970s

it is a pretty impressive album, aptly titled for sure imo, just very cool that someone put out an album full of this much ambition and with such a large scope, and to have it received so positively especially for a contemporary jazz album. i have to admit i haven't really absorbed the entire thing enough to get a sense of it, 170 minutes is so much music! i've probably only played the whole thing once, though particular pieces of it more than that.

interesting to hear about the 3-lp set, curious to hear whether or not they pull it off in terms of sound quality. i think i maybe mentioned it on the jazz thread but this is an incredibly dense album musically -- i mean a 10-piece jazz band, 20-person choir, 32-piece orchestra -- that is a lot of sonic information to convey in a recording especially one informed by the chaos of free jazz and ime this album really showed the limits of my modest stereo. i didn't even bother playing it on my car stereo beyond a track or two, it was just too dense and i felt like i was missing a LOT of what was happening. i mean i feel the same way about ascension, that's not for the car or my ipod, but that was recorded beautifully and also it is only what a double quartet?

Def my album of the year too

Can someone report back definitively on the vinyl pressing? I have this on hold at the store here and don't wanna drop $40 if it sounds worse than the CD I already have. Sure does look awesome though

Ive not heard the CD but its fine to me, but I appreciate my ears aren't one to trust

I agree it's initially a lot to process. I ended up working backwards: CD3 is perhaps the easiest to digest, so I stuck with that for a while and left CD1 to last. I also streamed "Re Run Home" and "Miss Understanding" over and over again until they became familiar, later doing the same for "Changing of the Guard" and "Askim". Hacking off little chunks and chewing on them, basically.

Cosmic Slop, have you also heard the album he's put out this year with Throtlle Elevator Music? Jazz sax over rock/punk/thrash, if you will. I also love "Them Changes", his track with Thundercat.

Awhile ago I put together a Spotify playlist of all his non-Epic material that I could round up - not just the Throttle Elevator Music albums (there are three), but the Young Jazz Giants album from about a decade ago and his sideman appearances on albums by George Duke, Stanley Clarke, Harvey Mason, etc. Here's the link.

the organ playing on "Isabelle" is one of my favorite things ever.

Mike I havent but will now thanks to phil's link. thanks!

i dunno about the vinyl, but i got to see him and his band up close in a tiny horse barn at Pickathon and it was life-changing, man. if you have a chance to see 'em, do so.

Only a couple songs in and now kicking myself for not catching his show at Icehouse on Eat Street a month ago.

Dude they were supposed to play until 12, I left at 1:30 and they were still going strong

didn't realise until reading this thread that there was a London gig imminent - sold out obv :(

this album reminds me of the 70s axelrod/adderley groove ..

sold

yeah and parts of it remind me of New Grass and other jazz goes pop thread touchstones

OK, bought the vinyl version today. If it sounds crummy I'm holding ILX responsible

Just kidding, I don't care that much, especially since the packaging looks so cool. Will report back

well, this is some moderately pleasant background music

truly remarkable in how it combines total wallpaper inoffensiveness with showboat egocentrism hero auteurism. and they said it couldn't be done!

They said it about your posts, mainly.

yeah its also what they said about banging your mom

well, this is some moderately pleasant background music

Lester bangs on 'a love supreme' amirite?

The emperor has no edge!

I tried to listen to this the other day but I couldn't really hear it through my tmi earwax storm (ongoing) - in this state all music induces the sensation of longing

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IdgfFbvipsI/maxresdefault.jpg

imago what the hell kind of earwax problem do you have a couple visits to the doctor can't fix

sold on the cover alone

It's basically an ideal of how you want a jazz dude to look

yea cover art is what drew me in even before I heard his name, I th k it was actually on that noteworthy album covers thread

my pals who are not mere dabblers re: the past 40 years of "jazz" —which is what I am and I suspect every single poster here is— seem to be indifferent to this guy. I'm gonna listen, but this does seem like "oh yeah, I'm way into Kendrick and Dangelo, I'd like to listen to a current jazz dude and this is familiar enough…"

imago what the hell kind of earwax problem do you have a couple visits to the doctor can't fix

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp),

they dont like to syringe your ears here incase they damage the eardrum so they give you a bottle of almond oil and you wait 3 or 4 weeks for it to work.

or I could pour some smooth, smooth cosmic jazz into my ear; that should work more quickly

this is like the black crowes of "a Love supreme": this guy not only cops Coltrane's tone but arrangements of that record…

my pals who are not mere dabblers re: the past 40 years of "jazz" —which is what I am and I suspect every single poster here is— seem to be indifferent to this guy. I'm gonna listen, but this does seem like "oh yeah, I'm way into Kendrick and Dangelo, I'd like to listen to a current jazz dude and this is familiar enough…"

I don't think I'm a dabbler (been listening for 30 years, written almost as much about jazz - including 2 books - as about rock/metal over the last 20) and I think the album's great. Went out of my way not to mention Kendrick Lamar when reviewing it for Jazziz, precisely to avoid that whole co-signing phenomenon.

cool, man! see above for what I think so far. I never read Jazziz, but I was still amused to learn that some wags called it "jazzisn't." probly wynton/stanley conservatives who coined it…

what would stanley think of this? it seems to be premised on the last pre-Wynton era that he approves of…but maybe by now, he's like "fuck youngsters, particularly them who play with those horrible rappers"

well, this is some moderately pleasant background music

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Sunday, October 4, 2015 12:26 AM (19 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not sure how anyone with even the slightest understanding of jazz could call this "background music" of any kind, pleasant or otherwise, but I guess it takes all kinds

1# this guy's book is far from written yet
2# if you haven't seen him live I think there a lot you are missing
3# he's not a great soloist yet but there is a lot of potential
#4 it's OK to be excited that a jazz album is reaching out to regular folks!

#4 otm x a million

well, this is some moderately pleasant background music

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Saturday, October 3, 2015 11:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

truly remarkable in how it combines total wallpaper inoffensiveness with showboat egocentrism hero auteurism. and they said it couldn't be done!

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp), Saturday, October 3, 2015 11:28 PM (Yesterday)

yeah guys i dunno i played through some of this and it was just too boring to stick with, i had a hard time not hearing it in terms of kendrick's backing band and other recent LA-sound stuff that sometimes bums me out for its mushy studio muso-ness.

thomp otm iow

I've ignored this so far bc I assumed it was the latest iteration of spiritual hat jazz

"spiritual hat jazz"

What is it that is "reaching out to regular folks" other than its cool rapper friend marketing? Sincere question

"spiritual hat jazz"

― Wimmels, Sunday, October 4, 2015 8:52 PM (3 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a ref to a jazz poll thread about rockist jazz history rewriting

What is it that is "reaching out to regular folks" other than its cool rapper friend marketing? Sincere question

Lamar isn't on the record. There are no hip-hop elements to the music at all. It's a big, sprawling spiritual jazz record in the vein of early '70s Pharoah Sanders. If seeing the name "Kendrick Lamar" in every other review and feature on Washington gets this record into the hands of the curious, where's the harm? And if some of those people wind up throwing it behind the couch after a single listen, that won't be a big surprise - plenty of people who took Thurston Moore's word about Sun Ra back in the '90s were disappointed, too. But a lot of them weren't. And I think a reasonable number of people who buy this record because Washington worked with the rapper everyone simply must give a fuck about this year (disclosure: I hate the sound of Kendrick Lamar's voice and haven't made it through either of his albums) are gonna wind up liking it. I know for sure that the audience at his NYC shows was substantially younger and less jazz-knowledgeable than any crowd I've ever seen in a jazz club, and they came away converted.

Every once in a while, people wake up to the idea that jazz is actually enjoyable music that you can listen to for pleasure. Right now, the focus is on Kamasi Washington. Good for him.

i appreciate 誤訳侮辱 and ums's moderate takes itt

I've only listened to a couple of songs off of this so far, and frankly I'm not sure I'll ever listen to all of it, but it reminds me of an album I liked a few years back, Build an Ark Dawn, another LA-based soul-jazz project featuring New Age-y vocals.

i'm actually somewhat relieved to read ph1l's take, i've enjoyed it a great deal but it seemed so pitched to a specific kind of jazz i love (that's not esp contemporary) that i couldn't gauge what blindspots i had w/ it (ie black crowes comparison above stung) so i'm glad that someone who i'd trust to call bullshit on this is saying 'this isn't bullshit'. i listen to maybe ten new jazz albums a year so when something goes down this easy and owes such a clear debt to a lot of albums i already loved and gets reviewed by alot of outlets that generally don't have time for contemporary jazz (note: this is NOT a request that pitchfork review more jazz) there's a part of me that nags 'you're gonna find this pretty embarrassing in a few years'. i LOVED wynton marsalis' blue interlude when i was a kid so i'm speaking from experience there.

(note: this is NOT a request that pitchfork review more jazz)

lol

oh man

d-40 i had never looked at your performance on the jazz poll thread before. sterling work

I hope you're being sarcastic. Deej was in 100% wounded narcissist identity politics posturing mode. As someone who listens to a lot of unfashionable trad jazz and loves eg Mary Lou Williams, and as someone who can see how reissue culture and rockist revisionism has skewed perceptions of the jazz canon, I still found deej's self-aggrandizing tantrum annoying and alienating. I can far more relate to the neophyte with 5 Sun Ra records than the guy who lets the tastes and mores of the contemporary jazz audience influence how he feels about the music he loves.

i think part of my resistance w/ Ra too is that like when i was learning abt jazz i was the only person i knew who really fucked w/ his stuff really heavy, & i kind of liked that about it? that he was a weird, outside artist for ppl who identified w/ weird, outside artists. but seeing him shifted to the center of the canon is just weird

― D-40, Friday, 2 September 2011 19:34 (4 years ago) Permalink

^^^Like this is a guy for whom music is beside the point.

It is? I'm still a sun ra fan, obviously where it stands in the canon doesn't impact whether or not I enjoy something. I just think it's corny when ppl act like record collector music was more central to jazz as a great recorded art than duke Ellington

At any rate I didn't even coin "spiritual hat jazz" but it's a fair critique of a trend in criticism not of music itself. Reading reviews of this album has been frustrating, as I feel as if they rarely dive into what it does rather than adding it up as a collection of influences that just so happen to be extraordinarily trendy. I'm willing to believe this project is totally great! Just that I'm not sold by the writing it's inspired. When I have four hours to finally give it a real listen I'll do that

Also I do wish pitchfork reviewed more jazz. I think. I don't keep up with it much any more, maybe most of it sucks, but If it doesn't I'd like to read anyone writing about it regularly

I think that 'record collector jazz', 'Sun Ra in the centre of the canon' thing is probably a big part of the reason why most 'normal' people turn their nose up at jazz.

Anyway, that aside, 'spiritual hat jazz' is the perfect description for this, and doesn't need to be read as a pejorative. It's great, but it does strike me as absolutely being to jazz what The Black Crows are to rock. Or maybe Primal Scream. (Actually maybe it's Wilco, and this is like Being There; a sprawling summation of all sides of a particular American music form, that celebrates them but doesn't really push them forward overtly.)

I buy maybe half a dozen new jazz albums each year - I'm a dilettante but my tastes are modernist and fusion-y by and large, and this does feel like revivalism and review. That said, it also feels like great fun, because it is.

As far as jazz in 2015, I much prefer, for instance, the Polar Bear, which does something completely different and unlike anything else I've heard.

I've convinced a couple of other people to buy this, and they both love it. Which is awesome.

I'd like to see any 'mainstream' alternative music writing venues cover more jazz.

What is it that is "reaching out to regular folks" other than its cool rapper friend marketing? Sincere question

― TheFatSJW (D-40), Sunday, October 4, 2015 8:52 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the live set was very different than the record in parts, more hip hop feel in parts, much more Meters-style funk, there was trad be-bop, more free stuff, etc but there was def a hard dancing vibe the whole time. the local NPR music station sponsored this so the crowd was probably 75% young white indie fans and older indie dues like myself and they KILLED it, it was a 4-hour party people were going nuts for this.

but the crowd was far more just a typical mpls indie rock show crowd than a jazz crowd

nobody wore a hat of any kind fwiw

you think "black crowes" stings? howzabout "this is the ryan adams of jazz"?

what was the last jazz record that made much a dent outside that particular eco-system…Vijay Iyer's?

it doesnmy sense is that the general influx of young guys and girls coming up through the jazz academies in the past 10-20 years tend to have incorporated hip-hop and…(deep breath) Radiohead. the first because it tends to be lingua franca of culture outside of school, the latter because it signifies proggy if default non-commercial notions of "good music." like I think Iyer and Brad Mehldau have recorded "exit music" or some shit…

also yeah is a 182 MINUTE TRIPLE CD album a little uneven...uh yeah..

is there at least about a great album and and half in there? I think so

is he a great live performer? yes, I also should note he's a tremendously democratic bandleader, his keyboardist/jack of all trades guy was really on equal footing, his father actually kind of stole the show when he came out fromp behind the t-shirt booth and sat in on soprano sax for the last hour and a half of the show...both drummers, the one who looked like the weeknd and the older dude who looked like he should run a pizza by the slice place in Queens, were great...the vocalist who frankly i don't love on the album was realy a nice presence and the bassist while not a great soloist (he might be TOO democratic a bandleader) was a hell of a funky dude and really in tune w/both drummers

so who knows is the the next coltrane? i don't fucking know but this felt more alive than any jazz show i've been to in recent years, it was a party and also spiritual at times. Honestly if you claim to love jazz and are going to sit around pissing on this little mini-phenomenon you should ask yourself if you really WANT jazz to be a healthy, living music or just your own little fiefdom.

also saying the dude is a Love Supreme Black Crowes is a little hard to believe when the keyboardist spent more than half the show torturing crazy Bernie Worrell sounds out of this:

http://www.oldtech.com/synth/MoogLiberation.jpg

what was the last jazz record that made much a dent outside that particular eco-system…Vijay Iyer's?

colin stetson?

was trying to say that hip-hop and radiohead seem to be common elements that jazz artists of the past 10-20 years have added, which is to say that making music that seems to ape the 1920-1965 canon the way Wynton and Stanley seem to demand has nt been the only option. In fact, now I remember that Nate Chinen talked about some manifesto or other that some well known player made making the case that fusion and other idioms is no longer verboten. was it the bad plus guy who does the well regarded blog?

Colin Stetson strikes me as not jazz

what was the last jazz record that made much a dent outside that particular eco-system…Vijay Iyer's?

Iyer got a pair of Pitchfork reviews, but that's because he's got a really, really good publicist. I don't think it translated into sales or a much higher public profile. (In jazzworld there's a snarky joke that Iyer's publicist should have gotten a percentage of his MacArthur money.)

Fire Orchestra! also had good crossover success afaik

Matthew Shipp

is he a great live performer? yes, I also should note he's a tremendously democratic bandleader, his keyboardist/jack of all trades guy was really on equal footing, his father actually kind of stole the show when he came out fromp behind the t-shirt booth and sat in on soprano sax for the last hour and a half of the show...both drummers, the one who looked like the weeknd and the older dude who looked like he should run a pizza by the slice place in Queens, were great...the vocalist who frankly i don't love on the album was realy a nice presence and the bassist while not a great soloist (he might be TOO democratic a bandleader) was a hell of a funky dude and really in tune w/both drummers

this was pretty much exactly my experience (I'm not much of a jazz guy, fwiw) except the dad was out front from the beginning, and this is hilariously otm:

the older dude who looked like he should run a pizza by the slice place in Queens

(( as long as we have a knowledgeable jazz thread going, if anyone can point me to more stuff - new or old - like the Greg Foat Group's Girl and Robot with Flowers, please do: https://thegregfoatgroup.bandcamp.com/album/girl-and-robot-with-flowers ))

This is what has got me so excited for the London show: https://youtu.be/0YbPSIXQ4q4

Here's a performance taped on the same tour I caught:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrcoUKohf6k

no idea the stature of christian scott, but he's another jazz dude who's covered thom yorke lol, but he draws a bunch of disciplines together in a really captivating way. I've seen him live several times too, and the explosive interplay between him and his band occasionally gives me second quintet vibes, my favorite vibes. i just reviewed his new album, which should be up this week

Please post a link - I like his stuff, and didn't even realize he had a new album coming since he's not on Concord anymore. I think I might grab it from Bandcamp this week.

it's really good!

Ken Vandermark has a lot of ties to Chicago rock stuff

shit watching that video forgot the trombone player was great too

wait deej you didn't even listen to the album? lmao

very busy guy, those 100 hottest sluts on instagram slideshows don't write themselves you know

torturing crazy Bernie Worrell sounds out of this:

oh man one of my bandmates had one of those!! and the craziest thing about it (and the reason we could never get it to work) was that the audio output and the power supply are incorporated into a single cable, it's bizarre.

that's crazy, were there feedback/ground problems?

There's a custom Moog cable that you need to run from the keytar to that little box in the top of the picture - the little box has a power cable that you plug into the wall, and an audio out jack to send the signal to an amplifier. It's like a custom pre-amp. But we could never find the cable required, it was some random 13-pin thing made only for that Moog model.

I was v sad we couldn't even get a sound out of it.

very busy guy, those 100 hottest sluts on instagram slideshows don't write themselves you know

― balls, Monday, 5 October 2015 15:43 (2 hours ago) Permalink

you have no idea what i do

but the crowd was far more just a typical mpls indie rock show crowd than a jazz crowd

― Ma$e-en-scène (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, October 5, 2015 8:25 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nobody wore a hat of any kind fwiw

― Ma$e-en-scène (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, October 5, 2015 8:25 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's exactly the crowd that has driven the pharaoh sanders >>> duke smellington historical revisionism i'm talking about though lol

i mean, i get it, once ken burns & wynton & crouch deify "trad" jazz (the idea that it's any more 'trad' than '70s fusion is a trick of perspective obv, there was a time when bebop was radical and a time when spiritual hat was radical and neither are true today) then someone needs to come along & find the 'jazz that seems cool still'. and so you end up w/ these alternative canons. that's good! my argument in the other jazz thread was merely that we should acknowledge that was happening, that when it comes to how people actually experienced the time things were a little different

wait deej you didn't even listen to the album? lmao

i said that in my very first post in the thread, from the beginning ive been criticizing its the way its covered not the music itself.

again this is a failing of the writing/marketing of this stuff...the only piece i read about kamasi that gave some of the real-world-context was Ben Ratliff's which at least goes into a little more depth on the scene he's emerged from in Los Angeles.

pharaoh sanders >>> duke smellington

is there anyone that actually sez this, pics or it didn't happen

the ilx jazz poll says that

there's a difference between saying what you like vs. saying what is historically important. I am more often in the mood for spiritual hats than Duke, but no way would I say that the former is more important or central to the jazz canon than the latter.

i mean, i get it, once ken burns & wynton & crouch deify "trad" jazz (the idea that it's any more 'trad' than '70s fusion is a trick of perspective obv, there was a time when bebop was radical and a time when spiritual hat was radical and neither are true today) then someone needs to come along & find the 'jazz that seems cool still'. and so you end up w/ these alternative canons. that's good! my argument in the other jazz thread was merely that we should acknowledge that was happening, that when it comes to how people actually experienced the time things were a little different

Wellll...As someone who just recently packed his iPod full of Weather Report (pre-Jaco only), Jean-Luc Ponty, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, George Duke and Al DiMeola albums, '70s-style fusion really hasn't become a "tradition" in the way you can still hear dudes making brand-new albums that sound like hard bop circa 1959. Part of this is because players who gravitated toward fusion tend to update with newer synths rather than continuing to use old equipment, they adopt contemporary production techniques (with the usual jazz musician's time-lag of being 5 years or so behind R&B producers, of course), etc., etc. And even "free" jazz, while you can still draw lines from Ayler et al. to what's happening now, has changed quite a bit. The biggest change came in the '90s, when players started exploiting CD storage capacity to release 60- and 70-minute pieces that never would have made it to vinyl in the old days. But the music has also gotten even more assaultive and unremitting - I mean, Ayler had melodies; Charles Gayle doesn't. I think contemporary free jazz is still "radical" in the sense that it'll send most people out of the room faster than any other form of jazz.

Hey deej you asked me how he was reaching out to non-jazz audiences, shit tons of indie rockers have zero idea who the fuck pharoah sanders is, this was that crowd

you also ignored all my posts about the actual show and how it was a lot more funk & rnb at times than pharoah sanders

Shakey he means JAZZ IS LIKE HEROIN TO ME ! ! ! ~~~~ ILM POST-1945 JAZZ ALBUMS POLL - THE RESULTS COUNTDOWN (now counting top 25!) but i do not recall anyone saying it

I know what he means! I voted in that poll

even as a pharoah sanders fan it wont surprise anybody to learn that it was the funky stuff that drew me in.

xp

i couldnt remember if you did or not. Phil did you vote? (i know deej didn't)

Nah, I don't vote in those gigantic-ass polls. I get 1/16 of the way through the book of nominations and my eyes glaze over.

I love when people who vote in polls complain that the results aren't canonical enough, never gets old

people who DON'T arggh

A lot of these jazz cannon type lists always seem to feature Ellington at Newport and omit at least 6 or 7 of his masterworks, at least this is an impression I get.

haha both groups complain! its what ilx polls are about! Theyre never dull thats for sure

xp

man, do you guys talk to each other like this based purely on opinions expressed on this fucking board? or did somebody fuck another guy's wife? sheesh…

on the last song, and the only thing I hear that seems outside of the 'Trane playbook is the persistent use of heavenly chorales, a la the end of the first side of what's going on.

i think the axelrod influence is just as big as coltrane

honestly guys, no matter what you think of washington he's a human being and doesn't deserve to be dragged into bickering about an ILM jazz poll, have a little decency

http://payload187.cargocollective.com/1/12/402674/6056932/WE_GOT_THE_JAZZ.jpg

do you guys talk to each other like this based purely on opinions expressed on this fucking board?

lol this is nothing you should see Whiney and deej go at it

Poll of SPIRITUAL HATS

i listened to this whole thing over the weekend! some great moments in there, and yeah some uneven-ness. i actually liked the vocal tracks! added a nice element i thought. i'm not entirely sure what everyone is arguing about here ...

does anyone?

its like the metal thread arguing that deafheaven are spiritual hat metal and not proper metal

hahaha

huh, well i don't know who deej is, I do know who the other gentleman is. I would say that it's peculiar that grown-ass men act like this, but I guess it isn't.

D-40

He has a point, I don't know why people have to get all personally offended. It's not unhealthy to interrogate one's own preferences and how they relate to a bigger picture. The people who respond with "it's all just music, man" don't get it.

is it too much to ask to actually listen to the fuckin album is my point. no shit there's cultural and critical elements to how music is received i'm not 12 yrs old

D-40 has a point, I mean

it's a facile point

Holy cow he already told you he's talking about the "reception" of the music, not the music itself. Maybe that's not valuable to you, I don't know I think it's interesting

How is it facile? Because it irritates you?

because it's a position he trotted out several years ago and has done so repeatedly, whether its relevant/accurate or not

Is it an appropriate avenue for discussion? Jeez.

I've ignored this so far bc I assumed it was the latest iteration of spiritual hat jazz

I mean c'mon this post is just a) I am ignorant and then b) am dispensing a handy, readymade argument I have against it anyway

and then c) basing that assumption on my own assumptions about the album's audience

Oh come on how many people bought/listened to this thing NCAA of the cover????

lol NCAA equals because

what's wrong with the cover?

It looks like a space rock album... It looks like a hipster album.. It does not look like most jazz album covers that are released these days

are you literally arguing for judging an album by its cover

brave, critical appraisal there tell me more

I'm saying if people were more inclined to listen to this because of the cover, why is it bad for someone to reject it based on the cover?

two groups of idiots that deserve each other imo

No no no Never mind, you sound grumpy.

You must be really special. You've never been inclined to check out an album because of the sleeve artwork? How is is bad? Or "idiotic"?

still not sure what the argument is -- people *should* check out an album if they think the cover art is cool? people *shouldn't* check out an album if they think the cover art is cool?

I'm not arguing that "people only like this album because it looks cool", I'm just acknowledging that it happens and that it's a worthwhile thing to discuss. Ppl getting all mad seem to think they're being accused of being racists or squares or something???

this thread got stupid

Fuck you

afaict the people who checked out the album based on the cover are doing so for the wrong reasons and don't actually like jazz, they just like spiritual hats, and should be judged accordingly as apostates before the altar of canonical jazz cats like Duke Ellington who btw is much better

this whole line of argument is stupid, it has nothing to do with the album in question and everything to do with D-40's tendency to engage in audience strawman ad hom criticism, which should be beneath us tbh

I preferred the posts on why people liked/disliked the music.

I like the cover - it looks great.

don't get me wrong the whole spiritual hat thing and associated threads are very funny

but indulging the readymade opinions of someone who hasn't bothered to listen to the record isn't really in anyone's interest

xp

A friend wants to know if they have been selling the 3xLP at the gigs?

man this place used to be the one place where i wouldn't have to read page after page of people backpatting for agreeing w/ critical consensus now you can't even talk about how it's covered ??

i'm quite interested in this world but I don't see anyone else, including fans of it, really talking about it in ways that get at what makes it unique or now or whatever, i'm looking for the discussion to sell me on it & no one is doing that here, and then its like "LOL YOU HAVENT EVEN LISTENED TO IT" and its like, no, because i don't make it a mission to keep up w/ jazz generally and as someone who did for many years i'm definitely not about to do so again just because a bunch of rock critics decided this is the one time you should

esp from people who are like "no i don't want pitchfork reviewing more jazz!!" yes that would be the worst, if jazz started getting coverage from places people actually read sometimes!!

jazz is not a closed circuit of boring shit that once in a long while shits out a genius auteur, it's a genre in which there are peaks & valleys and many artists doing lots of different things and i like to read criticism that acknowledges this fact instead of touching on the one thing that gets lots of attention as if that is a self-fulfilling rationalization for that attention.

Ayler had melodies; Charles Gayle doesn't

This has gone unchallenged for over four hours?

Gayle's piano stuff in particular is full of melodies. It's true he rarely played a "head" or anything like that, but his lines are full of quotes, repeated melodic motifs, etc. You talk like he's in Borbetomagus or something.

considering the ppl who read, write for, and edit pitchfork yes, w/o qualification, it would be a bad thing if they reviewed more jazz.

also jazz already gets coverage in places ppl actually read (which doesn't really describe pfork nowadays anyway)

Not everyone on this thread has been positive and the dialogue was actually pretty measured prior to this but again I feel like you read what you want to read

i bought this awhile back but haven't even opened it yet. my main reason for buying it was wanting to support current spiritual hat, being i am a big fan of spiritual hat, main reason i haven't listened to it is because there's already enough og spiritual hat to listen to for a good long time not sure why i'd want to listen to revival spiritual hat

he's not even wearing a hat on the album cover ffs

the hat is implied by the afro

also jazz already gets coverage in places ppl actually read (which doesn't really describe pfork nowadays anyway)

― balls, Monday, October 5, 2015 7:00 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

such as? no mentioning ny times or new yorker

or similar prestige pubs

Not everyone on this thread has been positive and the dialogue was actually pretty measured prior to this but again I feel like you read what you want to read

― Ma$e-en-scène (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, October 5, 2015 7:00 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its not about posi or negative I'm not looking for 'balance' its more about answering the question TLG poses, what is this doing that is NEW as opposed to MARKETABLE

Haha, ironically, the guy who wrote about this album for Pitchfork is a writer for the New Yorker, who covers jazz there! lol
http://www.newyorker.com/contributors/seth-colter-walls

one thing i think is missing I'm looking for is something about washington as a soloist which isn't really addressed in these reviews, which mostly stick to the macro sound of the album, as opposed to his strengths as a soloist, at least beyond the 'you'll hear a little coltrane, a little kenny garrett' like someone telling you the whiskey has an oak finish

Just admit you like arguing on the internet more than jazz. I bet your first post was more than 182 minutes ago.

i went to the gym and listened to lil herb

i find it hard to judge a lot of the solo playing on this record because a lot of the time there's either i. some really chops-heavy rhythm section playing which is not really reacting to the solo other than just being there and keeping on keeping on or ii. a celestial choir oohing and aahing at the wonders of the solo or iii. both

this kinda sets up any solo for INSTANT BATHOS

anyway i would like to thank this thread for making me get around to listening to charles gayle

such as? no mentioning ny times or new yorker

I'm not gonna pretend I get significant numbers of readers (we're talking triple digits on a good day), but I write about jazz pretty regularly.

People absolutely should judge albums by their covers. It's why covers exist.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5092/5401581533_547d300597_b.jpg

What explains the left-field success of the Tijuana Brass? Certainly some credit goes to the album's cover, which features a sultry model swathed in whipped cream. (Alpert, who co-owned the creative, independent A&M Records with Jerry Moss, recalled, years later, that this was the album where he "realized how important it is to be visual with instrumental music.")

http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-ve-had-experiences-where-people-say-i-hated-jazz-before-i-heard-you-guys-i-m-like-kamasi-washington-106-64-22.jpg

love the lushness of this recording but none of the actual music has gotten a foothold in my brain yet

love the lushness of this recording but none of the actual music has gotten a foothold in my brain yet

To try and get meta about this discussion for a minute I wonder if part of the reason ppl are resistant to dismissiveness towards something like this is the nature of the Internet economy where there is seemingly such a huge gulf between truly popular ever present superstars and everything else, that even the most acclaimed records are treated as marginal and can't really drive a headline or garner much traffic. Like, "why are you picking on..." I can't imagine there is a single venue that would want to be known as the place that panned this record, in part just because it feels like you're picking on dudes who really aren't even making that much money in the grand scheme of things and who wants to be that asshole anyway

D, you should read the review I published on Burning Ambulance. It's not by me, it's by Anthony Dean-Harris of Nextbop.com, and it's simultaneously more negative than I would have been, and more in line with what you've been saying in this thread. I'd be interested to read your response.

I'm w/ d-40 on this

I agree w/that Anthony Dean-Harris review. kudos for pointing out the Makaya McCraven album

I'll check it out

a few thoughts:

1) i love all kinds of jazz (though admittedly pretty behind on contemporary (~past 30 years) jazz w/ a few exceptions and i agree with discussions itt and other threads that the centrality of ayler-pharoah-sun-ra-spiritual-free jazz in the "record collector" jazz canon is a little weird. i think d-40 is otm here even if i think he should listen to the album.

2) checking out or not checking out an album based on its cover art is a perfectly valid practice imo. i've been turned on to a ton of new music from the "noteworthy album covers" thread.

3) i am not sure what brimstead means by saying the cover art denotes a "hipster album" or "space rock"?? afro-futurism is a pretty established aesthetic in black music and anyone w/ a passing familiarity with idk black of the past 60 years would probably have no trouble seeing this album art as fitting pretty cozily in an afro-futurist tradition. maybe not a lot of contemporary jazz artists are doing much w/ afro-futurism but it is alive and well elsewhere that it does not necessarily code as retro to me to see an afro-futurist album cover in 2015. lol dude "space rock"??? i'm giving brimstead the benefit of the doubt here bc i think he is a good poster but "hipster as pejorative" has been discussed a lot obv and dismissing something as "hipster" often has the subtext that "hipster=white" and needs a little more unpacking when you are calling a creative work by person of color "hipster art," it is a fucked up imo and a little dangerous without more explaining what you are talking about. it is fine to talk about why white folks graduate toward some black artists but not others but just saying oh this codes as hipster is tricky imo.

2) i did play this whole thing a few weeks for a close friend of mine who is a professional jazz musician. we were hanging out cooking for a few hours so it was perfect to play it straight through for him, he was already a little familiar with it. he's around 50, been doing jazz gigs for a long time, teaches jazz at a university and is well-established in the local music scene where he lives. we've always talked about jazz a lot and i've always dug talking to him about it bc i'm not a musician and he is and it is always cool for me to break out of my "music listener" bubble and talk to people who make music. he's pretty opened minded about jazz, he's not a crouch-marsalis conservative, he loves even the farthest-out electric miles but is skeptical about ayler, pharaoh, etc but loves andrew hill and ornette. he dug the kamasi album but basically felt what upper mississippi shakedown said upthread -- "this guy's story isn't written yet" -- he felt like kamasi is fairly young and kind of an ambitious rookie and that is cool but that he has a long way to go towards maturity. he then played me some ambrose akinmusire and got very very excited about telling me what ambrose was doing. this is really just a "token musician's take" that i am offering here but he is a very close friend of mine and is godfather to one of my boys and i love his music so i valued his opinion a lot.

3) speaking of akinmusire, who also played on the kendrick album, it is a little interesting that kamasi is the jazz player who is getting all the attention while i've heard very little about ambrose in the aftermath of butterfly. (maybe bc ambrose album came out last year, before butterfly, and kamasi's album came out this year? idk whatever).

Ambrose got a lot of very favorable press when his first Blue Note album came out in 2011, but his second album for them, in 2014, was kind of a disappointment (I thought) and wasn't really as well received.

Also, Ambrose's music is generally a little more abstruse, more likely to appeal to musicians than average listeners. I'm not at all surprised that your friend would be into him.

there's a part of me that nags 'you're gonna find this pretty embarrassing in a few years'. i LOVED wynton marsalis' blue interlude when i was a kid so i'm speaking from experience there.

― balls, Sunday, October 4, 2015 11:30 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also i've let this sentiment guide some of my listening in the past (i.e. am i going to be embarrassed by this in the future?") and i think i've learned two things:

1) it does not matter in the slightest if in a few years i am embarrassed by something i'm enjoying right now
2) i am not even a very good predictor of what i will be embarrassed about in the future

macy gray syndrome

marcos otm

macy gray doesn't seem particularly embarassing really

Just the big hit, really.

whiney has mentioned this in other threads, but there is a very real trend among primarily white critics of raving over a black artist who is (in some way) an alternative to the mainstream, only to totally ignore that artist's later output and act embarrassed that anyone listened to it. Primary examples include Tracy Chapman, Terrence Trent D'Arby, Arrested Development, honestly any number of "alternative" rappers.

found the post here, hard not to agree with it.

Tracy Chapman, Terrence Trent D'Arby, Arrested Development, honestly any number of "alternative" rappers.

not saying this is inaccurate but maybe some examples from within the last 25 years would bolster yr case

feel like this even sort of happened to public enemy to an extent.

xp

Other artists mentioned in the thread I just linked: Tricky, Wyclef, late '90s backpacker stuff, Def Jux, grime. I'd probably include late De La Soul in there too.

It's not always exactly how everything works, but it was brought to mind by the sentiment that we may all find listening to Kamasi Washington embarrassing in a few years.

macy gray syndrome

― Cosmic Slop, Tuesday, October 6, 2015 12:21 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

poptimist syndrome

- Some Guy Posting From Outer Space, October 7, 2031 (16 years from now) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ilx syndrome aka Big N Rich

otm

can't front I like the new Janet though

feel like this even sort of happened to public enemy to an extent.

― nomar, Tuesday, October 6, 2015 11:58 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't know I think Public Enemy's musical quality, critical acclaim and popular appeal declined at about the same rate (if anything I think they get a break from some critics like I actually read some decent stuff on the new one which is hideous)

feel like T-Trent D'arby has a lot of cult defenders of his later stuff but that might be an ILX thing?

I agree on those points abt PE but I think there's some of that syndrome whiney described as well.

marcos truly otm upthread.

wynton marsalis has multiple albums better than this kamasi album i haven't listened to, probably

to be clear I don't have a problem with people making value judgments based on record covers (I do it all the time!) I just rankled at the notion/projection/inference that people were buying the album because they were shallow people in search of spiritual hats\

xp

wynton marsalis has multiple albums better than this kamasi album i haven't listened to, probably

insightful

I've listened to a half dozen or so of Wynton's albums, including that 7CD Live at the Village Vanguard box from the mid '90s. The only ones that really made a strong impression on me were some from the mid '80s like Black Codes from the Underground and J Mood. He's a really talented player, but one of the most faceless composers I've ever come across - I don't think he's got a single memorable tune.

his live version of 'knozz moe king' on the village vanguard set is pretty undeniable imo

but yeah never was about his compositions per se, but as a soloist i think he transcended his early miles influences pretty readily

black codes from the underground is a great record

hey i feel like wynton put out something like this ("the epic") maybe 15 years ago? a sprawling 3 disc set, lots of vocals, some orchestration, lots of political overtones

"Blood on the Fields"

Oh come on how many people bought/listened to this thing NCAA of the cover????

― brimstead, Monday, October 5, 2015 5:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol NCAA equals because

― brimstead, Monday, October 5, 2015 5:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is an especially hilarious accusation because album cover art is like at least 1/3 of the appeal of Blue Note

wynton marsalis has multiple albums better than this kamasi album i haven't listened to, probably

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 12:24 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cosmic slop when is our "Greatest Jazz Albums D-40 Hasn't Bothered to Listen To" poll?

feel like this thread is now the They Live sunglasses fight scene except m@tt et al is Rowdy Roddy, D-40 is Keith David, and the sunglasses are a spiritual hat

xxxp to d40 yes! blood on the fields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_on_the_Fields

"Blood on the Fields is a three-and-a-half-hour jazz oratorio, by Wynton Marsalis. It was commissioned by Lincoln Center and concerns a couple moving from slavery to freedom."

wynton marsalis has multiple albums better than this kamasi album i haven't listened to, probably

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 10:24 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hard not to admire the bold pivot from "what, i'm just talking about the album's reception and what's been written about it!" to "i am indeed evaluating the music on this album that I will never listen to."

so its ok to be totally dismissive of wynton marsalis but not kamasi washington. got it

i don't remember dismissing wynton marsalis but whatever

fwiw I'm not familiar sufficiently familiar with Marsalis's work so I can't even guess how it compares to Washington's.

maybe you should listen to it!!

poll of wynton marsalis albums intheblanks hasn't heard

wynton's hat game is just a little off
http://www.jazzhouse.org/jpg/franckling/5Wynton.jpg

lol not being sufficiently familiar with someone's work = dismissing it, ok dude

deej you realize you are actually the one doing what you are accusing intheblanks of doing or have you gone full hongro?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOa5-ZN2tWg

i love the transition from wynton's furious double time solo to eric reed's cool, relaxed one

deej you realize you are actually the one doing what you are accusing intheblanks of doing or have you gone full hongro?

― Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, October 6, 2015 1:51 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thats the point

i'm listening to blood on the fields by wynton right now, i guess i don't see many points of comparison to kamasi. reminds me of the more complex later ellington stuff if anything
pretty good deej you should listen to this!

McCraven album is amazing

yeah blood on the fields is more of a concert piece kind of thing -- jazz-classical. actually a point of comparison for kamasi might be that christian mcbride live at tonic thing from a little while back, at least in terms of sprawl.

cosmic slop when is our "Greatest Jazz Albums D-40 Hasn't Bothered to Listen To" poll?

― Ma$e-en-scène (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

Maybe that was the poll from a few years ago?

I like Black Codes From the Underground and Wynton forms an indelible piece of my childhood because of his PBS special introducing children to jazz and I've never gotten that into spiritual hat jazz and I still want to listen to this because of the awesome cover art.

deej is a real idiot in this thread

I remember that show...was it Marsalis On Music? I thought parts of it were incredibly informative and effective for the audience he was aiming at. But one bit that stood out for me was when he had his wind players play a tone cluster. Wynton winced (wynced?) and waved them off in mock pain going, "No! No! Arg! Terrible! Stop! That's enough!"

I thought, yep, DISSONANCE = BAD. THANKS, WYNTON, NOW WE KNOW. HEY GANG, LET'S WRITE OFF WHOLE MAJOR MOVEMENTS IN THE MUSIC! HOORAY!

That said, he's an unbelievably skilled and consistent player but, like Quincy Jones said, "no trumpeter in America wants to play like Wynton in his style. Every great trumpeter - Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Miles - borrows from someone before him and adds his own thing. But nobody wants to play like Wynton."

Like, honestly, whether this dude is ONE GOOD JAZZ is really besides the point.

Until, like, 2013, fusion jazz was regarded as square, wack, lame beardo shit, and Kamasi and Thundercat made it SUPER COOL AND ACCESSIBLE enough to HELP CHANGE THE SOUND of Flying Lotus (who, like him or not, is making some of the most important and influential electronic music today) and Kendrick Lamar (who, like him or not, is making some of the most important and influential hip-hop music today). Kamasi and his crew, through sheer force of their abilities, have literally changed the sound of popular music in a small but perceptible way. The fact that this jazz record has the look and feel of contemporary records like, say, D'Angelo or Gonjasufi or the Roots or Shabazz Palaces or whatever only helps.

otm

That said, he's an unbelievably skilled and consistent player but, like Quincy Jones said, "no trumpeter in America wants to play like Wynton in his style. Every great trumpeter - Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge, Miles - borrows from someone before him and adds his own thing. But nobody wants to play like Wynton."

I never really gave it much thought, but yeah, he really is kind of an aesthetic dead end.

square, wack, lame beardo shit

wow at that quincy quote

Miles went in on Wynton too iirc

o yeah definitely but that's way more expected. i guess i should check out black codes again cuz this is at least the second time i've seen it repped for on ilx, the last marsalis album i listened to was blood on the fields. always preferred branford anyway tbh.

Blood on the fields was never my thing but it's alright

fwiw I greatly dig what the musicians offer Kendrick Lamar, tpab is one of my favorite albums of the year

I wanted to play like wynton lol but more in the sense of his technical command and fluency than in his production of good ideas. That's probably pretty common

This 2012 compilation gathers up some recent Wynton stuff; I remember thinking it was pretty decent at the time.

i remember liking citi movement alot also, i might listen to that sometime this weekend. i usually concur w/ any criticism or insult thrown the guy's way but he played a huge role in me checking out duke ellington in high school.

i saw wayne shorter at lincoln center a few months ago, where his songs were rearranged for a bigger band which wynton led. it was weird and tasteful. still pretty cool

"Until, like, 2013, fusion jazz was regarded as square, wack, lame beardo shit, and Kamasi and Thundercat made it SUPER COOL AND ACCESSIBLE enough to HELP CHANGE THE SOUND of Flying Lotus (who, like him or not, is making some of the most important and influential electronic music today) and Kendrick Lamar (who, like him or not, is making some of the most important and influential hip-hop music today)"

you are saying here that those guys rendered fusion fashionable in changing what those guys had done. how did they do that? in what way specifically? I do not hear any such thing in the works of Flying Lotus or Kendrick.

I think of spiritual hat jazz and proggy fusion dork jazz as different lineages, although obv there was overlap. Like the Return to Forever records I grew up on are a very different thing (and much less hipster-cool) from the free-er/spacier stuff I associate with spiritual hats.

Until, like, 2013, fusion jazz was regarded as square, wack, lame beardo shit

uh

imo the kind of fusion integrated into the flying lotus and kendrick lamar records has always been super cool

also doesn't wack fusion constitute the sample source of 100000000000000000000 rap songs

Fucking the Numa Numa song was used in a rap song, that doesn't make it cool

Numa Numa was fusion jazz? I knew.

well right, bob james isn't very cool yet either and is v distinct from the fusion that is embedded in flylo and kendrick records

or actually maybe i'm just getting really confused by the use of "cool" in this conversation

Like the Return to Forever records I grew up on are a very different thing (and much less hipster-cool) from the free-er/spacier stuff I associate with spiritual hats.

Yeah, I think of RTF, Mahavishnu, even Billy Cobham's Spectrum as instrumental prog-rock more than jazz.

Kamasi isn't really free jazz at all though! He gets a little out in parts but I think people are projecting a lot of this free jazz stuff based on the album cover... Ppl talking like he's Albert Ayler, he's way more funk than that

bob james isn't very cool yet either

Bob James' first album was on ESPDisk and features lots of 'out' electronic effects - ie he's way cooler than fucking Wynton Marsalis will ever be

Also Taxi theme song & the Nautilus break

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV0wTtiJygY

i fucking love bob james ofc

I keep meaning to buy this Bob James compilation.

i am soooooooooooooo all for this whole thing. you watch that NPR live concert thing on youtube and you can actually see african-american people under the age of 60 in the crowd. actual young people! and that's all i need to know really. sounds cool too.

plus, big bands rule. they are exciting to see live. and more people should experience that. can do without the laptop scratching though.

Huh, well, this thread has persuaded me to give this album another shot, which didn't really resonate with me when I listened to it earlier this year. My favorite jazz album is 2015 is the Joshua Redman/Bad Plus joint, I think, though I still haven't heard Vijay Iyer's Break Stuff, since ECM isn't on Spotify.

I bought the new Christian Scott on Bandcamp this morning. I'm only about halfway through it, but so far it's pretty good. Very electronic, even glitchy in parts. There's one track that makes me think Scott likes '80s Miles. Just the way he plays when he's got the mute in, and the way the synths kind of slosh around him.

oh yeah i really love "perspectives" and "tantric" where the background gets really amorphous around his trumpet playing

btw http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21105-stretch-music/

There is way more energy and range and funk to Kamasi than Bad Plus or Vijay; they're operating under completely different rules. Kamasi doesn't feel anywhere near as sophisticated (or hipster, actually, if we're going there) as either of those, and it's patchy (it's 3 fucking hours long, of course it's patchy) but it's way more fun and I've listened to it (broken up in chunks) way more.

Polar Bear for best jazz album I've heard this year though.

i've spent way too much time debating whether to check out an artist named "polar bear" in 2015

the thing I like about Kamasi in general is that he seems young enough where the whole Wynton/Crouch camp vs. free jazz vs. fusion vs. whatever wars don't seem to mean much to him, during the show they went all over from stuff that felt like trad be-bop to more wild freer stuff to Meters funk workouts to P-Funk synth shit....there's also a certain way he's "post hip hop" in the way he relates to music even when he's not doing anything that's explicity "jazz hop" or hip hop influenced

like the show felt really wide open in a good way where they just follow it where it leads and don't feel the need to join a "side"

yea otm 30 years on "the whole Wynton/Crouch camp vs. free jazz vs. fusion vs. whatever wars" seem very old now and not particularly relevant esp wrt kamasi but in general maybe too

imo the kind of fusion integrated into the flying lotus and kendrick lamar records has always been super cool

― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Wednesday, October 7, 2015 12:09 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and i think this is very true too

"like the show felt really wide open in a good way where they just follow it where it leads and don't feel the need to join a "side"

welcome to the 70's! in a good way.

yeah, i was reminded as much of the big CTI productions of the 70s as anything (much moreso than any real "free jazz").

New Christian Scott is really solid. It lacks the stiffness that I think characterizes a lot of jazz albums that dabble in electronic textures.

bonus to this thread has been getting a few current jazz album recommendations

the Makaya McCraven album that was mentioned in the Kamasi review on burning ambulance is pretty good so far

the thing I like about Kamasi in general is that he seems young enough where the whole Wynton/Crouch camp vs. free jazz vs. fusion vs. whatever wars don't seem to mean much to him, during the show they went all over from stuff that felt like trad be-bop to more wild freer stuff to Meters funk workouts to P-Funk synth shit....there's also a certain way he's "post hip hop" in the way he relates to music even when he's not doing anything that's explicity "jazz hop" or hip hop influenced

like the show felt really wide open in a good way where they just follow it where it leads and don't feel the need to join a "side"

― Comme Si, Kamasi (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, October 7, 2015 9:47 AM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think you nailed it here. I think maybe the only thing that does feel conspicuously retro to me is the cover (not to bring it back to that). The album itself feels very postmodern in its refusal to "be" a "thing." I mean, half of these songs have a choir on them fer chrissakes.

That said, I'm definitely ready for the Kamasi Washington Trio or Quartet or whatever. Would be cool if he follows Matana Roberts' lead and continues to make these sprawling albums occasionally punctuated by the odd blowing session.

Oh yeah and that Makaya McCraven album is indeed very nice, though I will confess I bought it because Josh Abrams played on it.

I've got the McCraven album sitting at home, need to check it out.

Polar Bear thoughts, for those interested: http://devonrecordclub.com/2015/09/22/polar-bear-same-as-you-round-84-nicks-choice/

Not familiar with Polar Bear at all. The review makes me want to hear them. I was confusing the name with Panda Bear, which was causing a visceral revulsion - "No fucking way am I listening to one of the assholes from Animal Collective's fucking 'jazz album'!", like that.

Ha! Yes, I can understand that instinct. They're pretty well known in the UK (London based) but I have no idea what their profile is in the States.

if you like that, the Sons of Kemet album from a couple of years ago is also amazing: two drummers (including the bandleader from Polar Bear), clarinet, and tuba (playing basslines, basically).

lots of thoughts on this thread, but instead i'll just post this video which showcases his sound in a nice minimal duo setting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPnpEEj9siU

would be curious to hear your thoughts Jordan!

my fav jazz albums of the year are :

milford graves & bill laswell - space-time redemption
&
matana roberts - COIN COIN chapter three river run thee

This kamasi album is cool, but i think i'd rather listen to original 70's jazz albums.

oh yeah i really love "perspectives" and "tantric" where the background gets really amorphous around his trumpet playing

btw http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21105-stretch-music/

― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Wednesday, October 7, 2015 8:57 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hey i dug your review brad

enjoying the album too

1) I'm pretty tired of the idea that Wynton is synonymous with square & embarrassing. The jazz wars are over, he's made a ton of music, and a lot of it is good. I came around to some of the septet music through the back door after getting immersed in New Orleans music for a long time. It's not always my favorite take on it, but he comes by it honestly and it's mostly about hearing Herlin Riley play:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nayYQXtddXE

And really, N.O. brass band music ruined me when it comes to most jazz. There are no questions of who it's for, what's the point, is it cool, (a lot of the questions being discussed in this thread) etc because it's a living music with a clear cultural function, and it bangs super hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TviGgyEGDFs

2) I like the Kamasi Washington album but haven't heard the whole thing. Love the parts with strings & vocal backgrounds like 'Askim'. It reminds me of Alice Coltrane, Mwandishi, etc which definitely seems of a piece with Flying Lotus's taste in jazz (which is why it makes sense on Brainfeeder). And this is why there's a minor backlash, right? Because it's a pretty referential & retro album, except it's being done in 2015 by musicians who have absorbed everything. And it's on a cool electronic label and has gotten a lot of attention, but I get why people that are deeply invested in modern jazz might get grumpy about this being the one jazz album that non-jazz people hear all year.

3) The last FlyLo is the version of this that really sounds like 2015 imo. A lot of the same players but chopped up & compressed (in more ways than one) in a new way. This is like the flipside where you get to hear everyone play uninterrupted (and maybe for too long?).

4) I kind of like the super-dense, maximal sound of this album that has the drummers hitting really hard at times to cut through. I also kind of don't like it because one of the nice things about jazz is when the instruments are all given lots of room to breathe in the mix. It definitely sounds like a lost ambitious '70s record at times though.

Yall seriously have me adding Wynton albums to my Amazon cart. These are strange days.

That Herlin Riley guy is great.

I'm pretty tired of the idea that Wynton is synonymous with square & embarrassing. The jazz wars are over, he's made a ton of music, and a lot of it is good.

otm

1) I'm pretty tired of the idea that Wynton is synonymous with square & embarrassing.

I don't think anyone's saying that. His music never struck me as squarebarrassing, but his and Stanley Crouch's (ultimately failed) attempts to erase from history whole movements in the music is indeed something they should be profoundly embarrassed about.

i was responding to this mostly:
there's a part of me that nags 'you're gonna find this pretty embarrassing in a few years'. i LOVED wynton marsalis' blue interlude when i was a kid so i'm speaking from experience there.

wynton's a great player who's made some excellent records! i think his status as the "authority" on all things jazz (as in the ken burns doc) is a little unfortunate, but you take that away, the dude's music is very much worthwhile. and really, i feel like a lot of that "authority" thing is more the way burns presented him rather than his own vibe. the interview on do the math from a few years back is great: http://dothemath.typepad.com/dtm/interview-with-wynton-marsalis-part-1.html

I hated the way he would talk about dudes that were either old or dead by time he was even born like he knew them in Ken Burn's Jazz thing....

"Man...now when Bird would come in the club, you just knew no one had that tone he had" blah blah blah "it was like this" *takes out trumpet and plays some riff*

haha i kind of loved that tbh

burns doc had a lot of problems obv but ultimately i really enjoyed it (though lol i think i only saw the first 5 parts, i don;t think i made it past bird)

Huh I'm really surprised by how much I'm enjoying this Christian Scott album. Never liked him before (and there's nothing about him that sounds like a New Orleans trumpet player) but this is really nice. It incorporates production/electronics really naturally and has a cool take on the two drummer thing (one of them, who I first saw play with Donald Harrison when he was like 12, is always on percussion & sample pads it appears).

yeah this thread is turning out some nice recs. Haven't checked out new jazz in some time. listened to the Christian Scott last night after reading brads review.

ok i completely respect the ambitiousness of this record, but its boring af. the chord progressions are pretty standard jazz and nothing really stands out about the arrangements. it seems like a genre exercise and doesn't really have any of the *magic* of a later mingus, sanders or alice album. good effort though.

Of the people not completely enamoured with this album, that is the most incisive post so far on this thread so far.

I'll just say so far again...

also it doesn't groove at all.

Of the people not completely enamoured with this album, that is the most incisive post so far on this thread so far.

Because he said "chord progressions" instead of being more general? Lol

"the most ambitious jazz album go arrive in ages,..." -Apple Music

*to arrive

Sometimes people can be more succinct with less ego

also it doesn't groove at all.

uh y'all were describing this as funk pls explain

Just tried to listen to his version of Cherokee and had to turn it off tbh

I'm sure I'll like some of the stuff on here when I dig in more but blech

ha i kinda liked "cherokee" but it might've been that it provided a little breather from all the heavier stuff.

That version of "Cherokee" worked better live than on record, but yeah, it's definitely weird and semi-out of place.

bringing back that vocalese

Xpost - Brad I've been referring to the love show he's currently doing. It's a lot different from the album

Live show

Making a playlist of all the songs that don't feature Patrice Quinn. Nothing personal, I just think I've decided after a few semi-regular listens that the lead vox on this thing are serious vibe killers.

One thing I really like about this thread is that it has a lot of new jazz recs, which is something I've been out of the loop on.

That's what I said :) thread success.

Yeah, good call on the Ambrose Akinmusire.

I really like this Makaya McCraven but it's got really annoying fake crowd noise

Just bought the new Christian Scott after listening to a couple of tracks. Nice.

if you like that, the Sons of Kemet album from a couple of years ago is also amazing: two drummers (including the bandleader from Polar Bear), clarinet, and tuba (playing basslines, basically).

Their new one is great.

Sons of Kemet have a new one?!

new video by sons of kemet :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPFRBTS39Vo

Hot damn they do.

Fucking love that first album. Will pedal home via HMV on the off chance they have it.

That track is awesome.

for folks who are interested in retro '70s-style prog-jazz from this year I recommend Escondido Sessions by the Brian Ellis Group: http://open.spotify.com/album/4bd3e1VbBFLGkPFOtLbiDk

re cover art :
was an eyebrow raising moment when i found out that the picture is kamasi standing in front of a graffiti/wall mural.
i thought the art had been done specifically for the release.
(or was it ?)

Yeah, good call on the Ambrose Akinmusire.

― o. nate, Wednesday, October 7, 2015 9:29 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cool! glad you like ambrose.

also appreciated 誤訳侮辱's thoughts on him upthread

Davu Seru is well worth checking out everything he does in interesting tho he's def improv/free/spiritual hat

http://www.davuseru.com/

well if you guys like that Sons of Kemet thing then you might like this (cool video though):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KsxTgYdQNM

was an eyebrow raising moment when i found out that the picture is kamasi standing in front of a graffiti/wall mural.
whaaaat that's crazy (cool)

shadow photoshopped out or something I assume

spiritual hat too

This was cool but not really worth three hours of my life. Good playing, ehh compositions, the choir needed to go away. I feel let down.

Holy shit the new Sons of Kemet is great.

Just saw them in Istanbul! Good show

I am enjoying this album; it is fantastic commuting music.

I wish the choir was mixed just a hair louder, and that a couple of the bigger voices in it blended a little more.

A twelve minute song from this album appeared in the middle of my Spotify discovery playlist. It was good, but didn't particularly fit in there.

I am enjoying this album; it is fantastic commuting music.

Yeah, I've been listening to this more lately (mostly because of this thread), and it's been growing on me -- and I've particularly enjoyed it while I'm out walking around. Still feels sort of exhausting, though.

I love it. The choirs are a great throwback and I think work very well. That said, it's hard to sit through for three hours or so, and instead pick a disc and listen to it by itself.

I wish the choir was mixed just a hair louder

Hah, I was thinking I wish they were further back in the mix, ghostlier.

The thing is, they often double a horn so they kind of blend in as it is; I want them a hair louder so the points where they do go off in another direction jump out at the listener more.

more in 'the jazz group + real producer' vibe, like that Dave Douglas group with Shigeto, but judging off one track this is more fun:
https://soundcloud.com/brainfeeder/kneebody-daedelus-drum-battle

New album by Matthew Halsall + Gondwana Orchestra is really nice - spiritual/Alice Coltrane/Dorothy Ashby/Theme de Yoyo vibes. Maybe a bit Gilles Peterson, depends on how allergic you are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syxfpcmhlUc

finally digging into this - pretty good if kinda generic spiritual hat. choir stuff reminds me mostly of A New Perspective. tbf I'm not all the way through it yet, maybe it'll hit some more peaks I just haven't gotten to yet. Playing is all uniformly good.

Superb UK debut tonight at the Barbican; just seven performers, until K's dad Ricky Washington joined in on flute for the last few songs.

He's cancelled Paris tomorrow (Sunday), so has just added an extra date at London Scala - http://scala.co.uk/events/kamasi-washington/ - highly recommended.

Video footage of last night's London show still streaming at https://boilerroom.tv/session/kamasi-washington-live-from-the-barbican-at-the-efg-london-jazz-festival/

...also some audio here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p034hxyg

okay, i'll quit posting this everywhere but: free NYC show this summer
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/kamasi-washington-jazz-summerstage/

feeling pretty lucky! I am going to see him play tonight at the new Blue Note that just opened in Waikiki :D

The last part of the sentence should be enough to make you feel that way.

True dat. Waikiki has been lacking decent places to hear music, so Blue Note opening is v welcome.

Oh, yeah that too. Lots of good things in the sentence.

Yee :)

Got damn does his band kill it live! Listening to The Epic a few times did not prepare me.

got tix to see him at the montreal Jazz Fest, super pumped

Got damn does his band kill it live! Listening to The Epic a few times did not prepare me.

― davey, Tuesday, March 15, 2016 5:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah honestly i hope they are recording some dates over this last year's touring, would love a live album

i have really been getting into this album lately

surprisingly i am finding the vocal stuff to be some of the most engaging work on here.. henrietta, the malcom x song, cherokee

and clair de lune is so gorgeous, what an amazing piece

yeah, it's the vocal tracks I tend to turn to most. I usually hate vocal jazz, but those are the highlights. The Rhythm Changes is also gorgeous.

saw him last night

amazing show. first jazz show i've seen not at a jazz bar and also first fusion jazz show i've ever been to

only thing i didn't like was two drummers... they did some cool stuff with it but it was overall just dumb. plus it was at a big venue so obviously they mic'd the kick so it sounded beefy and cheezy as hell

Anybody go to the Central Park show? I thought about it, but ultimately didn't.

Going to see him tomorrow!

new EP the harmony of difference

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hear-kamasi-washingtons-expansive-winding-truth-from-new-ep-w476357

new song "truth"

digging it

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hear-kamasi-washingtons-expansive-winding-truth-from-new-ep-w476357

oops

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtW1S5EbHgU

good stuff, guy't got style

guy's....

The Axelrod vibe that someone mentions upthread is very evident on Truth, I think. There's a Wrecking Crew feel to the playing; when the strings come in at about 9 min it could be a Glenn Campbell session.

new "EP" Harmony of Difference is out!
Sounds great so far

though it's funny this is an EP in today's bloated mindset, it's 6 songs including a 13+ minute epic and 31 minutes, that could easily be an old jazz LP

Truth is so brilliant and epic, definitely one of my favorite tracks of the year

yeah i really like this a lot and honestly with its brevity i could see throwing it on more often than the epic

Yeah this is a little closer to the live show, loving it

This did not get a happy review in the Graun: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/sep/28/kamasi-washington-harmony-of-difference-review

I like the EP a lot; the short songs have a strong CTI/early '70s vibe to me - Hank Crawford, Stanley Turrentine, the good early Grover Washington Jr. albums, like that.

a series of vapid Kenny G numbers.

WRT to the Guardian piece, there should be a Godwin's Law for bringing up Kenny G in a jazz review IMO

like the minute you bring up Kenny G, it's a failure of writing and failure to really engage with anything or think about it, it's just an easy line

otm

unperson: otm wrt those 70s CTI records

man for a spiritual hat thread this got kind of fighty

I still like The Epic but have already played Harmony of Difference more often ... I'm really looking forward to seeing him tonight

You won't be disappointed. I've seen him twice, and both shows were A++.

Live he is so great
I'm totally with you on the new
In so many ways it just feels like a fat free distillation of what I liked about the Epic, and I think the production/engineering is way better

yes, mix is much clearer!

They were excellent, of course -- with seven players + one vocalist, their sound wasn't quite as dense as on the albums, but it was hotter, funkier, and louder than I expected ... Patrice Quinn is a force of nature

i still haven’t unwrapped my copy of “the epic”

i’m just always like ... three hours??

did they still have these guys?

both drummers, the one who looked like the weeknd and the older dude who looked like he should run a pizza by the slice place in Queens

I think I never checked out this year's album because I'm still digesting The Epic but, yeah, live show was fantastic.

the two drummers last night were Robert Miller and Ronald Bruner Jr. ... Kamasi introduced them with lengthy, funny stories about how he'd met the former in kindergarten and the latter at a third-grade birthday party

Kamasi's father Rickey Washington played on most numbers and had one soprano sax solo that really fired up the crowd

the warm family vibe was pretty amazing

yeah his dad was selling t-shirts at the show i was at, then jumped up on stage and played for some songs

I loved the live show I saw but was sad that the vocalist for some reason had been turned down to background levels during the last big song

I was such an epic dumbass on this thread

Was posting at a bar iirc

I'm not a Kamasi believer. Everything is exactly in the right place but I just don't get the jouissance from it. And I wonder if that 'exactly' is the point: it's too on the money, inhabiting all the right forms without the content. Truth feels like a lesson in how to make an epic: 13-minutes of telling, not showing. Maybe seeing them live is the key. But I think even then the dashikis would make me grumpy.

I know that's hardly an original take and who gives a shit anyway but it's that thing when you know everything's lined up for you to love something and for some reason it leaves you blank and that's what intrigues me.

how much of the silence over the new ep is cos its not on ninjatune.
suspect most people throwing love at EPIC got to hear it via their digital mailing list ?
i have had nothing in my inbox re the new ep at all.

it would be harder to market, no element of surprise, it's not 3 hours long, the cover is poor imo

but "Truth" is a great jam

Agree with everything Chinaski said.

Surprised by that Guardian review, I must admit: I think it's the only bad review for a contemporary jazz release I've ever seen them publish. They review one a week, after all.

I agree with Chinaski too but somehow Kamasi works as jazz junk food to me. Nowhere near as fulfilling as the jazzers of old but somehow not unpleasant to puton now and then

New album due on June 22. Press release here: https://www.normanrecords.com/press/index.php?item_id=170512

Two tracks from the new one are up on Spotify:

"Fists of Fury": https://open.spotify.com/track/1Etl6q0mmPV60TtOCD0uch?si=kn0fPwi7TC2tls18gSjtVA

"The Space Travelers Lullaby": https://open.spotify.com/track/3C9Zbwm1AxCMFDqvyuBQQj?si=d-VPyu59QkuU0nYL7Jyo9Q

I've only listened to "Fists of Fury" so far (each track is ~10 minutes long) but have already pre-ordered the 2CD set.

holy shit @ "Fists of Fury"

https://img0.etsystatic.com/196/0/16650390/il_340x270.1469520110_18v6.jpg

oh yeah fist of fury is amazing, totally different from his usual mode (but retaining a lot of his favorite harmonies and melodic flourishes, of course)

This is so great, and I wasn't that much of a fan of the last one.

Love the choirs & strings on these, really gives it that lost '70s artifact vibe (same for how low the drums are mixed, which I don't love but it works here)

I reviewed the new album for Stereogum. (I forgot to mention that his dad was playing flute at the Forest Hills Stadium show on Friday night.)

Apparently the new album contains a hidden bonus disc, making it 3 CDs or 5 LPs. (The music on the bonus disc was not serviced to reviewers, so now I'm really excited for my pre-order to arrive.)

https://www.discogs.com/Kamasi-Washington-Heaven-And-Earth/release/12135022

5 LPS??? dang

lmao it looks like they did it with the LP version too, requiring you to unearth it?!

The CD packaging is bizarre. The third CD is hidden within the centre section of the gatefold. The only way to free it is to take the extreme tip of a very sharp knife, and slit along the perforations on one side or the other. The CD isn't protected in a slip case, there's just a square sheet of printed paper with it - so you have to take great care not to scratch it while trying to get hold of it. I managed this, but the central section of the gatefold does now look a bit battered. Conceptual.

It's not as bad as all that. I was able to pop the perforations with just my fingers, no knife, and the CD and one-sheet insert came out with no problems. Also, there's a peel-away adhesive strip inside that allows you to seal the packaging up again, making it into a narrow pocket for when you want to replace the third disc.

I've had a close look at the (£43) vinyl sleeve and I can't see a dashiki under the space suit. No credibility.

Is it me or is Heaven & Earth miles better than the older stuff, this shit is awesome

It's great but I don't see it as superior to his other stuff. I like Harmony of Difference the most of all his stuff.

yeah me neither, this and the Epic feel v similar and of a piece

I think there's definitely been improvement from record to record. The arrangements are better on the new record, and the synths are proggier and weirder, which is a plus as far as I'm concerned.

I think that's it tbh

it has a certain zeul-ish-ness for sure

I felt like it had that fusion-y vibe of the 70s, which I liked.

new album coming may 3rd, "prologue" out now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8cKN1rbJl4

Digging both the new songs quite a bit, actually. Can't wait for the full thing.

It's not streaming on Bandcamp yet, but "The Garden Path" from this is also on Spotify (and presumably other services, though I haven't checked).

I haven't listened to the whole thing yet (busy, busy, busy) but I was sent a promo stream. It's a 2CD set, about 82 minutes of music, I think? I've pre-ordered the physical version.

I'm assuming his tour will expand eventually, he definitely owes Raleigh a show, I had tickets to see him in 2022 (or maybe it was last year?) and he canceled the date.

I do respect how hard that tune goes in our time of ambient jazz.

for the fusion lovers not the haters

Surprised it took NPR this long to get him for a Tiny Desk Concert, but here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8WTPgeVPjg

I generally really like when jazz artists incorporate electronics into the music, but there is something about having a "DJ" that really turns me off.

yesterday, in France:

https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/127070-004-A/kamasi-washington/

He also played recently at that crazy new LA County art museum thing.