Jazz or Non-Jazz? Thread for genreless pieces by jazzers, notated jazz that doesn't swing, Suncats etc

Posted a relevant track from "Turkish Women at the Bath" in the controp thread the other day. I have a small but beloved collection of tracks and albums that I've called "jazz that isn't jazz" or similar names. This is probably questionable on a number of levels, but essentially I mean sui-generis tracks by jazz musicians that generally don't swing and often do not feature extensive soloing or improvisation. They have some kind of grounding in a "jazz" tradition but lean into a genreless space as a departure from that tradition.

To hopefully get the ball rolling, this track off Charlie Rouse's excellent, fusion-y "Two Is One" LP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAnoz4CN70w
There's a jazz-rock section that reminds me a bit of "East/West"; other than that, i have no idea wtf this is. The composer and drummer is David Lee Jr., whose album "Evolution" (also on Strata East) is the closest thing.

Kenny Graham and his Satellites, from a suite of originals that approximates style of early Moondog. Early Joe Meek production:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5wKk6s2FB0

I'll embed a couple more YTs later. it's obv not my area and i'm here to ask for recs.
The wonderful "Soft Focus" LP by Jimi Tenor and Lary 7 with the harpist Mia Theodoratus is a good example of a borderline case where I feel it doesn't have enough of a grounding in jazz to fit this conversation, but there's def some overlap with works inspired by early Moondog.

"Genreless music by jazz musicians" is an alright way to think about this.

There's a related thread here:
Recommendations for jazz without horns, piano, drums, improvisation, or good musicianship (or these other tropes)?
but i'm p sure it's a joke thread (and it's given me doubts about whether this is a good idea, as i think it was intended as a parody of the "hip hop without braggadocio" one)

intrigued, following

this is called jazz fusion?

i guess i'm having trouble understanding the thread question

sorry, god i can be rude sometimes. this is fun music.

I'm still trying to think of examples but I'm sure there are some Sun Ra tracks that fit here

i can think of lots of examples that sound like or related to the charlie rouse, but -- my issue is i think of them as jazz pieces.

yeah my definition of "jazz" is super wide.

so this might not be not-jazz enough, but it's the first thing I thought of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkSsAnH8cHk

The Awakening - "The Ultimate Frontier"

maybe also Hannibal Marvin Peterson's "Children of the Fire" album?

"often do not feature extensive soloing or improvisation" ah hmm, maybe never mind

well I mean that first track (which I love) is basically a lot of what I think of as "vamping" yeah?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDOIfdvHIh0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gerLli270Zg

I might be doing this wrong but first person I thought of when reading the first post was Gil Evans, who as an arranger did some singularly great and unique work.

I like those a lot

I think David Axelrod fits here? Songs of Experience, Songs of Innocence, Earth Rot, etc

there are some Bill Dixon pieces that might fit this recipe. thinking of some of the releases with Tony Oxley in particular

but the Dixon may all be improvised? my brain is getting foggy these days, i thought he scored a lot of him pieces

the more Bill Dixon, the better thread gets I say!

carla bley's "a genuine tong funeral" (as performed by gary burton quartet) might fit the bill?

Re: Bill Dixon, this album is completely notated, right down to the sticking patterns for the percussionists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W10eSZDPqcU

As for his work with Oxley, very little, if anything, was said between any of the musicians prior to, or during, the recording of Vade Mecum, his first encounter with Oxley. For the Papyrus duos, there was one piece that had a predetermined outline; otherwise, it was all improvised.

But then, as Bill said, “All music is improvised; you can’t play the same thing the exact same way twice.”

Nik Bartsch's Ronin. Minimal odd-time shit, it's on ECM and has jazz instruments and texture but is mostly all notated.

i can think of lots of examples that sound like or related to the charlie rouse, but -- my issue is i think of them as jazz pieces.

i get it, i tried to acknowledge some of what you're saying in the OP (that "non-jazz" is questionable, that the Rouse track has aspects of "jazz fusion").

so like, "In His Presence Searching" has that intimidating riff- the very rigid, monolithic 2 note figure that's not in any particular key(?). Although the sort of ornamental, funerary vamping around it more fluid and establishes a strong sense of key and a chord change, it's all quite beholden to the overwhelming metronomic tyranny of the central figure: this is not something i associate strongly with "jazz".

the structure is also totally wacky: it stops and starts again after a pause. then it stops a second time and restarts at a much faster tempo with a rock beat, and new changes are introduced. then, after another pause, it goes into a more recognizably "jazz fusion" section that is closely related to the established patterns harmonically, but in an entirely different groove. then, after yet another pause, there's a vey brief outro that calls back to the opening sections, but the 12 string guitar(?) takes on more of the fluid propety of the other parts.

i haven't heard a ton of stuff that does this! it's not really my wheelhouse, though. maybe you have? i think this track is super weird, but I'm down to listen to some jazz, too. There's an otherness about it that I don't find in e.g. "The Ultimate Frontier" which I enjoyed a lot all the same. It has very similar seance-y rattling percussion and other similarities.

I might be doing this wrong but first person I thought of when reading the first post was Gil Evans, who as an arranger did some singularly great and unique work.

The arrangements on both these pieces are insanely beautiful, and the Kenny Burrell one is actually quite close to what I have in mind. I'd never heard them.

"Songs of Innocence" I've thought of as kind of instrumental pop? I need to relisten to the others.

Still haven't listened to all the recommendations but looking forward, thank you.

tell you what, having re-listened to the two examples in op, i'm going to rename the thread in my head "repetitive, drone-y, atonal jazz dirges" :)

here's some tracks i think may fit your criteria:

ronnie boykins - dawn is evening, afternoon
sun ra - lanquidity
byard lancaster - satan
joe zawinul - soul of a village

carla bley's "a genuine tong funeral" (as performed by gary burton quartet) might fit the bill?

― budo jeru, Monday, July 31, 2023 3:27 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

start with track "silent spring"

"repetitive, drone-y, atonal jazz dirges"

LOL

Thanks! I def know Lanquidity, and the Carla Bley might also be familiar but not the others.

Here's the one i posted in controps thread recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GZ2FR-fZAE

I'm also thinking of a track by an Estonian vocal group called Collage but i'm not great with the titles and need to dig around for it.

I ve always loved this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCKO1PGxCNo

There's also a lot of somewhat "world music" stuff from the 70s

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7cbLVZIYTk

wow that joe mcphee hit the spot

There is also a version where he plays sax over the organ, but this version seemed more on topic

start with track "silent spring"

― budo jeru

good call, i wish you could've seen the huge grin on my face when it goes into the repetitive, droney, atonal dirge section.

i think the tracks you listed are a good summation of why my calling the tracks in the OP "genreless" or "non-jazz" grates for you. most of them are doing something kinda similar (the Joe Zawinul one is pretty funky and almost reminds me of Richard Evans productions on Cadet records) but I'm not really hearing any of this as "not jazz". my more limited frame of reference lets me approach it from kind of a weird angle.

and then bbq comes along and says "yep! this is a thing" :)

anyway i've only heard like 3 of the tracks you all have posted or mentioned so far, some are closer to what i have in mind than others as is always the way with these things but i def like all of them a lot and will probably revisit all of them multiple times.

i still need to find Ronin and Bill Dixon with Tony Oxley.

*only heard previously i mean

this is the ur-text, really:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lLgTBkpheXSe28E4_RWXozRsyVP0TQ8QY

This might be it's own sub-genre but there is also the "jazz player hangs out with hippies and tries to write a pop song" These are Charles Llyod and Jim Pepper's efforts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IfqfJ2TFdk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfI4VrY82l4

Nik Bartsch's Ronin. Minimal odd-time shit, it's on ECM and has jazz instruments and texture but is mostly all notated.

I have only got one Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin album, but you can hear the band leader call out when it is time for changes, so I assumed there must still be some improvisational element.

Nik Bartsch's Ronin. Minimal odd-time shit, it's on ECM and has jazz instruments and texture but is mostly all notated.

This ticks all the boxes, yes. With hairless, airless, delicate precision. It feels like the frame of a Paul Rudolph building or something.

There is also a version where he plays sax over the organ, but this version seemed more on topic

i love it, the top YT comment says "I saw Joe perform today. He kissed my girlfriend after the show." Maybe he could give the Nik Bartsch's Ronin record a hug.

really enjoying everyone's selections, please keep em coming.

ok, Modul 58 is the yang to Modul 60's yin.

Some of the tracks on this Bill Russo Orchestra... i think there's some overlap between early Moondog genrelessness, repetitive jazz dirges and dark exotica.

https://archive.org/details/lp_seven-deadly-sins_bill-russo-and-his-orchestra/disc1/02.03.+Sloth.mp3

Cool. Do you know much about Bill Russo?

I don't! Only that he played in and wrote arrangements for Stan Kenton's orchestra.

I don't love this Seven Deadly Sins record as much as i want to, but it's clearly relevant.

He wrote some interesting books about composing and orchestrating jazz. Believe none other than John Barry took a correspondence course with him.

Would the West Coast Chamber jazz stuff fit into this? The Chico Hamilton stuff used in soundtracks is the straightest example. But some Gerry Mulligan or even Clifford Brown stuff is very counterpoint heavy composing that doesn't swing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7t3xc-piKg

yeah, sort of! been thinking about how or whether soundtrack stuff fits in here.

none other than John Barry took a correspondence course with him.

holy shit!

chico hamilton band with the cellist is in "sweet smell of success" with tony curtis, although the music featured is pretty swingin

Def, i thought you might enjoy this mixtape i made a few years back -- kind of a minimalist jazz vibe

https://soundcloud.com/arquivo_fssr/covid-summer-jazz-mixtape

also a couple more things that popped into my head:

don cherry and jon appleton:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxO9_ojEoSY

yusef lateef
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KfVsJwTjlo

Okay so Eastern Sounds was the first jazz album I bought, age 12 or 13. I think I taped A Love Supreme from the library the year before. My first reaction to hearing Plum Blossom was basically, 'is this jazz?' and I've been thinking 'Yusef Lateef must have one of these' with that track in mind.

HOLY SHIT at that Jon Appleton track, this is what I was hoping the Bruno Spoerri album with Betha Sarasin on FKR would sound like based on the press release. I just need to run my life through a ring mod.

Gonna listen to that mix throughout the day, thank you for this.

loved the mix, thank you. everything on it has something interesting or unusual about it. is there a tracklist?

was there a mix posted here? i think i missed it...

soundcloud link slightly upthread, h/t budo jeru

ah, thanks... probably one of the worse parts of getting old honestly, asking about shit that's kind of obvious to others.

here is the tracklist. i didn't originally jot down the tracks, so i actually reconstructed this at a later date (as documented on another thread). if anybody is able to ID track 8, i'd appreciate it!

1. bobby hutcherson - gotcha
2. binder quintet w/ john tchicai - közép-európai zajongások (excerpt)
3. dave holland and sam rivers - conference of the birds
4. chico freeman - kings of mali
5. harmut geerken and john tchicai - invocations for angels and demons
6. don cherry and latif khan - airmail
7. wendell harrison - where am i
8. ?
9. the pyramids - black man and woman of the nile

TY, i wondered if the first one was Bobby Hutcherson

I'm worried Budo Jeru was right in the beginning and this might become a fusion/70's jazz thread. But since someone broke the Don cherry, I will do so with Alice. I still feel there is enough Jazz on the late 70s Alice albums to qualify for this versus the Ashram era albums which are not jazz. This is such a delicate subgenre lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As8vGWnfqBU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J34p_Mr3eU

"Astral jazz" by Cape Town, South Africa-based drummer Asher Gamedze. This is just gorgeous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRNakWlGQm4

And so's this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN0ONgprFeE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNY1F4dOYLE

George Braith "Musart". Not sure if this quite fits, sort of a weird drone-y bossanova-ish track, but I've been haunted by this for years.

^ Adrienne Barbeau of all people is singing on that record!

Jazz musicians reinterpreting Hindu folk songs isn't exactly what I had in mind when I started this thread, but Alice is welcome to pop in whenever she wants, of course.

Yeah, that George Braith track us terrifying. I actually have that album (on my hard drive, not on vinyl). It rules and sort of fits, I agree.

i hadn't heard of george braith before, damn this is my jam. that sound at the beginning sounds kind of like a crumhorn, even though i know he's just playing two saxes roland kirk style. he also invented his own saxophone called the braithophone or braith horn, an alto and soprano fused together into one horn! look at this thing, it looks like something jimmy page would play if he was a sax player. that's a compliment btw!

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

it's pretty awesome

reminds me of the sound that don ellis gets on "tears of joy" (though i'm not sure it's don or how the effect is made)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIaoBwL8UTU

This minimalist Sonny Criss tune made me think of this thread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rqQkOzRtIA
"Daughter of Cochise"

_birth of the new cool_ is such a great record

yeah it's brilliant. I think it was ilxer Ward Fowler who first recommended it to me years ago on here.

thirded