Ambient/post/nu/new-age jazz - S/D

The ashrambient revolution is here, and there will be some patchouli spilt. Discuss the quiet revolution below...

A few relevant articles on this stuff (a canon, perhaps?)

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/ambient-jazz-pharoah-sanders-floating-points-nala-sinephro/
https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2024/02/28/jazz-ragas-for-restless-times/

And an interesting compilation of percursors from Aquarium Drunkard: https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2024/03/25/light-pollution-the-roots-of-ambient-jazz/

Looking forward to that mix! Linking back to my Scandinavian/Eurojazz explorations here - Thread of Jakob Bro (Danish jazz guitarist, maker of floating minimal ballads)

I recently interviewed alto saxophonist Kenny Garrett — it'll be the next BA podcast — and he expressed real admiration for the Pharoah Sanders/Floating Points album, and said he'd love to do something like that himself. (Garrett and Sanders made two albums together, one studio and one live, in the early 2000s, and he's done several other records with non-Western instruments and musical concepts, in spiritual/world jazz territory.)

also some discussion in the postpandemic surge of interest in ambient & new age

the Alice Coltrane resurgence also seems related

I interviewed Shabaka Hutchings, who has given up the saxophone for flutes. It was an interesting conversation, especially when I asked him about the lack of overt rhythm in his new music, and what his shows are like now.

as far as roots go, alice (as mentioned) is important, but what about steve tibbetts? he seems like at least a progenitor of this stuff.

and vini reilly. hi vini. i love you.👋🏻

Very interesting interview!

Lol, I've become aware of the term 'doomer jazz', basically noir-ish ballads, lo fi beats to study to except jazz.

https://jazzvocate.medium.com/screw-it-lets-talk-about-doomer-jazz-f55ce384e8b3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4ygVwbOyJU

ha, interesting... real music, though!

Really enjoying this Ted Poor album that came out on Blake Mills' label in 2020 (Mills guests on various things, Andrew D'Angelo on sax and I think Poor is on piano as well as drums?).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uRWhuMl7iI

Also been absolutely obsessed with Marc Johnson's ECM solo album 'Overpass'.

Thanks for the heads-up, Jordan! Sounds great--v subtly interesting sound to Poor's kit on this on first flip-through impression, nicely dark tone on his toms and some of the other instrumentation, too

yeah that kit sounds great

will check out "Overpass" I used to own "Swept Away" on cd and played it a lot

I think the Paul Horn album Inside the Great Pyramid recorded inside the pyramid at Giza fits here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i-b0o3mDfE

that’s a gorgeous album, the one he did inside Saint Basil’s cathedral is nice too

This Fuubutsushi 'Meridians' album is really nice, definitely veers new age-y at times but has an immediacy to it too.

https://cached.media/meridians

Ben Monder's 'Amorphae' is really doing it for me today (ECM, duets with either Paul Motian or Andrew Cyrille, a synth player, or guitar/drums/synth trio).

good find, thanks

Very ECM-core but I've been listening a lot to Anders Jormin's album Xeiyi, solo upright bass broken up by brass quartet miniatures.

bremer/mccoy — danish bass keyboard duo — extremely nice: https://bremer-mccoy.bandcamp.com/album/kosmos
my lame comparison: if The Necks did a Vince Guaraldi tribute album

Sam Wagster Relaxed Standards https://samwagster.bandcamp.com/album/relaxed-standards

Pedal Steel and Bass playing, uh, relaxed versions of Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Rodgers and Hart jazz standards.
More ambient pedal steel than jazz, but they do play the changes

bremer/mccoy — danish bass keyboard duo — extremely nice: https://bremer-mccoy.bandcamp.com/album/kosmos
my lame comparison: if The Necks did a Vince Guaraldi tribute album

great album, all their work is good - personal fave is Utopia - new one I'd lamely call Jan Johansson goes cosmic

Reissue of a 2001 record by Skuli Sverrisson & Oskar Guojonsson that had been unavailable, more incredible sax + acoustic bass guitar duets, I could listen to their music forever.

https://skulisverrisson.bandcamp.com/album/after-silence

Benjamin Lackner 'Spindrift' on ECM (w/Mark Turner) is hitting the spot today

is this the new all-purpose ambient thread?

richard skelton is new to me, this album is like wow wowowow

https://aeolian.bandcamp.com/album/the-old-thrawing-crux

has anyone heard the simon posford/raja ram album? improvisations for piano and flute?

i wasn't sure where to put it but this thread prob is the place. i didn't know posford was involved in shpongle and have only really heard of them tho i know that scene. but to me this is sounding something like a more melodic the necks, a less doom-laden bohren und der club of gore, with a kind of deeper ambient feeling beneath.

can't remember where i read about it but put it on this evening and am blown away, just the deep and expansive nature of it in particular.

here's a track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0ief-2Z6LU

this is sounding great!

Yep, it is fire!

the new Cole Pulice album is great

The piano/flute one is a bit too yoga class/spa-core for me.

I hear you, maybe at the border of that, but cranked up I genuinely felt it has more heft than that vibe, quite considerably.

Fair enough, I think I have a distrust of ambient music that relies too much on beautiful reverb, or rather with that much space the depth & qualities of the reverb are a huge part of the effect.

I've been going back to a lot of Taylor Deupree and 12k stuff over the last couple days...

I know what you mean, the specifics prob get v subtle at a certain point between one record and another.

From person to person I mean

i know a flute has those overtones but i've never heard them drawn out like that. it's not just reverb i hear, but embodied playing and spatial awareness. i liked the track! definitely has some heft to it. i'd have to spend a little more time to discern what's going on in a structural sense.

that skelton album i quickly bought based on a few minutes being wowed by the sounds but after listening to more i'm not gaga over it tbh - a little too samey for me.

i keep bumping the kevin drumm thread to crickets - maybe ilm ambient fans aren't aware of just how great his ambient side is? there is a very rich 'nothingness' he achieves that is nourishing for both deep listening and background 'i'd like to dissolve' purposes imo.

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

As mentioned passim I've been slowly checking out the expanded universe of Brian Eno's Ambient Whatever: Something Something Something albums, which drew me to Jon Hassell - specifically Dressing for Pleasure, which was released as part of a band project called Bluescreen in 1994. It's aggressively early-1990s and reeks of Pro Tools and Eric Serra's Goldeneye soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S92bNvS2gl8

It has surprisingly little Jon Hassell on it. It has Flea! Who plays bass on one track. And Buckethead. The CD inlay notes - it was only released on CD - are vintage 1990s in the sense that there are masses of credits and the record label obviously spent a lot of money on the project. Which makes me wonder if they were trying to ride the ambient revival of the period, or if they were targeting the trip-hop market, or what. I still remember seeing the video for the Spice Girls' "Say You'll Be There" for the first time and thinking "they aren't going to be one-hit wonders after all". It was special to be alive back then, to experience the thundering juggernaut of The Spice Girls as they conquered pop. It could have ended straightaway, but they kept on keeping on. "Penetrating".

I find Jon Hassell frustrating. I can see what he was going for. Distant trumpet echoing across the River Nile. But he just seemed to have a really narrow range, and I just can't enjoy the sound of the trumpet.

Btw there's still this thread for more electronic-leaning ambient -
Rolling ambient/chill out/drone/moodz thread: from 2010s 'til infinity!

that skelton album i quickly bought based on a few minutes being wowed by the sounds but after listening to more i'm not gaga over it tbh - a little too samey for me.

I'm a fan of what I've heard. I have two of his albums and will probably buy this one after listening to it after you posted about it. I definitely have a huge appetite for the kind of drone music that sounds like it could be used to score scenes of breathtaking aerial footage of some beautiful but hostile landscape.. possibly used to set the stage for the final doom of the protagonist in a documentary about a missing hiker, or a massive manhunt. Definitely not relaxing mood music, though.