September 2023 - People Grow, People Change, and Sometimes They Change Back (Like How I’m Into Jazz Again)

Albums

Yussef Dayes - Black Classical Music

If you had asked me a few years ago, I would’ve told you that I had pretty much zero interest in jazz, even though it was almost the only thing I was into until about the time I hit college. It just felt like it was something from another era - in a bad way - old. It was a genre which was originally defined by openness and experimentation, but became hamstrung by tradition. Everything had to use traditional instruments, traditional head/solo/head structures, and was too intellectual to have much vitality.

I think a lot of people would still say that, and it’s too bad! Even leaving aside all the technical prowess and vitality of live improv, jazz strikes certain vibes that just don’t exist anywhere else in music. When I lost interest, it was because I got bored with it (and because I got totally swept into the electronic music explosion of the 2010’s), but I definitely felt the loss.

I don’t feel that way anymore though. There’s a new world of jazz out there, led in large part by the London scene. You have bands like The Comet is Coming going on atmospheric forays into electronic territory, guys like Theon Cross experimenting with bass-heavy hooks, Kokoroko doing afro-fusion, Ezra Collective pulling in hip-hop and calypso… the list goes on. Dayes is a vet from that world. This is his debut studio album, but he’s been around for awhile now.

What we have here is a breathtaking tour of jazz subgenres, including a dizzying array of appearances by contemporary jazz badasses. It’s a real tour de force. Over the course of its whopping 19 tracks, it strikes just the right balance between technicality, complexity, groove, approachability, and crucially, it manages to be fun.

Frankie and the Witch Fingers - Data Doom

I have to tell you guys, I finally saw Frankie and the Witch Fingers a few weeks ago. It was exactly what I thought it would be, and it was amazing. It was basically non-stop adrenaline, and a giant mosh pit from the first notes all the way to the end of the show.

Also, the setlist was just this album from beginning to end. I love when bands do that. Obviously, it’s very satisfying to hear it exactly the way I hear it in my head, but also, I think it shows that they think of their album as a single work.

I have to admit that I’m not quite as hooked on this album as I was their previous, Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters..., but it’s still pretty great. Especially since every time I hear it I imagine a giant mosh pit.

While we’re here, I have to mention that Frankie and the Witch Fingers has the best merch I’ve ever seen in my life, and most of it isn’t even available online. Those tie-die shirts are so freakin’ good.

Weval - Dreaming

I love how round Weval’s textures are. Their music is beautiful and soothing, even when it’s intricately composed. They also do a really beautiful job of incorporating vocals, which I often find really jarring and sometimes irritating in electronic music. They manage to work them into a swirling landscape where they sound right at home.

They’re a very solid group, and if you haven’t dug into their stuff at all, I’d highly recommend going back and checking out Half Age EP at the very least.

Iguana Death Cult - Nude Casino

I had to put these guys in here because they opened for Frankie and the Witch Fingers at the show I mentioned above, and they absolutely slayed. Coming into it, I had only heard the album Echo Palace, so I was expecting something kind of whimsical and playful, like if the Mighty Boosh Band was actually as good as their hype.

Instead, it was blistering rock music that touched everything from rockabilly to ska-punk, with Jeroen Reek strutting around on stage like a true rock star. It was something else, and the crowd ate it up. By the end of their set, people were moshing, screaming, and throwing horns for a band no one had ever heard of from The Netherlands. It was a helluva night of music.

Royal Blood - Back to the Water Below

If Royal Blood sounds familiar, there’s good reason for it. Their music is huge in the UK/EU-sphere, which means that the US mostly gets it in commercials and film/TV soundtracks. It’s great stuff, though. You can hear a lot of the great rock bands of the last 15 years in here - White Stripes, Black Keys, Queens of the Stone Age… It’s hard, catchy, and a lot of fun.

Tracks

Octo Octa - Late Night Love

So let’s get the basics out of the way. Octo Octa is an electronic producer whose work has largely been in the extremely broad category of house music. She’s done plenty of other stuff as well, though, and in fact got her start mostly doing breakbeats and the “genre” which was unfortunately known at the time as “IDM”. However, she’s a lot more playful than her one-line bio gives her credit for - take a look at her album Resonant Body to hear her playing around with a variety of genres, such as DnB, house, techno, breakbeats, IDM, trap (maybe?), and (we’re getting around to the point now) trance.

Trance is a very odd electronic genre these days. Most producers are now pretty fluid with their genre choices, but trance (and its subgenres - tech-trance, goa, psytrance, gabber, etc) resides in a universe of its own. It has a whole separate legion of fans, whole festivals devoted to it, and artists who seldom explore far beyond its boundaries. If you go to one of those trance-focused festivals (I’m thinking of Fractal Fest in New England, but there’s also Boom in Portugal, OZORA in Hungary, and many others), all the other genres are often relegated to a separate stage that just kind of houses “everything else.”

Trance is also funny in the world of electronic music because it’s one of the four big genres of the 90’s (house, dnb, techno, and trance) but unlike those others, which have very precise technical definitions related to precise beat patterns (house music has its famous boots-and-cats-and-boots-and-cats, and dnb has a kick on the “1” and “3 &” beats, plus a snare on the “2” and “4” beats), trance is mostly just described as being “four-on-the-floor, above 120bpm.”

The moment I put on this track I thought, “Oh! Trance! Huh!” and what I was responding to was the tempo, in part, but mostly I think it was that characteristic “eh-eh-eh-eh, uh-uh-uh-uh, oh-oh-oh-oh, uh-uh-uh-uh” buzzing sound on every upbeat, and the fact that the textures are all so gentle. Most of what’s happening here is broad-spectrum waves with long sustains, long decays, and long releases. It kind of feels like you’re swimming, or maybe in a daze, dancing with dandelions or something.

Now, I won’t lie to you. For the most part, I think trance is… really boring. It’s called “trance” after all. You know what drugs you’re supposed to be on for this. But what makes Octo Octa such a genius is the way she uses percussion. There’s plenty happening in the front of her sound, with the big sweeping synth patches, but what really keeps it fresh is the ever-evolving percussion, delay effects moving in and out, and decorative drum hits adding little flourishes that appear and fade and return throughout the 11min track.

Report: as I was doing research for this post, I learned that Octo Octa once had a band called Horny Vampyre. I haven’t found any of their music yet, but I will.

The South Hill Experiment - Chameleons

God, I love the growling textures on this. They just swell up to engulf you.

The South Hill Experiment is a collaboration between Baird and Goldwash. I don’t know either of those artists well, but they have more music for me to dig into. The album from which this track was taken is called MOONSHOTS - I didn’t fall in love with it as an album, but there’s some pretty interesting stuff in there. I especially like “DREAMS!”

Patriarchy - I Don’t Want to Die (Geneva Jacuzzi Remix)

This is an unusual case. Typically, when you like a remix of a song you haven’t heard, the original song turns out to be garbage and the person who remixed it is the winner. This case is unusual in that I don’t really like either of them :)

ShitKid - Sugar Town

Look, I don’t make up these stupid band names, ok?

This track channels a lot of the girl rock energy that was happening back in the 60’s-via-90’s (see April March’s “Chick Habit”), by way of some much more modern pop-punk, by way of The White Stripes.

She’s got a number of pretty great tracks out there if you have an appetite for this kind of brash, intentionally trashy version of loud. I’m a big fan of “Örnar Över Amerika” as well. Poke around, she’s got a lot out there.

Oliver Sim - Romance With a Memory

Many words have been written on the lyrics and intent of this album, and rightly so, since Sim himself described it as a cathartic experience - a reckoning with the experiences of being queer and HIV positive since very young. A lot of what’s written is critics being frustrated with the lyrical vagueness - they want more concrete imagery and direct recounting of his experiences. I think that’s fair. Critics also inevitably compare it to Sim’s old band, The xx. That’s also reasonable, since his collaborator on the album is Jamie XX, and together they make up 2/3 of that band.

But, I think there’s a couple of things working here: first, of course, is the wonderful production by Jamie XX. He’s a brilliant producer, alternately providing sultry, danceable productions and spare, minimalistic guitar accompaniments. Really, anything Jamie XX puts out is worth a listen. And the second thing is just that Oliver Sim has a beautiful voice.

This is by far my favorite track on the album. It has a fantastic piano vamp and a gravelly accompaniment by Jimmy Sommerville from Bronski Beat. It’s a little bit like a Talking Heads song. There is something weird about it, though, as though the music and the vocals don’t really want to be in the same song. They really lean into it, though, so maybe it’s intentional?

Genesis Oswusu - Leaving the Light

This takes me to a moment in electronic/hip-hop in which it looked like maybe they could become one thing - driving, hypnotic Prodigy-esque instrumention and rap. Well, history didn’t go that way, but we did get some great music out of it. This is a nice callback to that.

Oh and I have to mention that this album, Struggler, is a concept album about the tortured life of a cockroach.

Olivia Rodrigo - bad idea right?

We live in a pretty good era as far as pop music goes. We’ve got Billie Eilish, who’s just fantastic, but even people like Halsey, Demi Lovato, and Rosalía have flashes of inspiration.

This Olivia Rodrigo track isn’t very representative, but it is a lot of fun. I love the kind of eyeroll delivery on “sheeeeets” as though she doesn’t like her own joke, and the increasingly chaotic instrumentation.

Ice Spice - Princess Diana

If you’re not aware of Ice Spice, she’s the new breakout female hip-hop talent. I’m always impressed when someone takes the spotlight via social media (in this case her video for TikTok’s “Buss It” challenge) and proves to have enough staying power to release a hit album.

As often happens, though, Ice Spice’s talent seems to be under question. A lot of the discussion around her is about how hot she is, so there are plenty of detractors, but there are also a lot of people pointing out that she also has an effortless flow, and a good ear for catchy beats. The latter group includes people like Erykah Badu and Taylor Swift.

Myself, I think this track is pretty fun, but I have to admit that I don’t see how she’s all that different from all the other rappers out there right now. It’s early in her career, though, so she’s got time to grow.

Pigeon - Yagana

My understanding is that this EP was basically a jam session in which a Guinean transplant to the UK named Falle Nioke collaborated with some UK vets and turned out this great fusion of Afro-disco, jazz, and grunge. It’s a pretty cool EP! I hope these guys become a more permanent thing.