Medeski Martin & Wood have been together for a long time - almost twenty years - so you can forgive them from shaking up their routine to keep things fresh and keep themselves interested. Whether that means bringing John Scofield into the fold for an album and tour, or releasing varioussideprojects, these forays outside of the standard (if you could use that word to describe anything they do) MMW ouvre allow the trio to both pursue outside outlets of creativity and expand the repertoire that each member brings to the group.
This is the same process out of which sprang Radiolarians 1, the latest offering from the group. Foregoing their standard recording technique (relentless studio jamming edited into a group of tracks), the trio spent the first part of this year composing rough sketches of some new tunes, then let the compositions grow organically on tour before returning to the studio to record the newly-fleshed out tunes. Radiolarians 1 is intended as the first in a three-part series (you can imagine what the next two albums will be called). They named the album after a marine organism of the same name. According to the band's website, radiolaria "grow their intricately beautiful patterned skeleton around their soft core in defiance of normal biological process, similarly to Medeski Martin and Woods latest creative cycle."
The results of this process are quite satisfying. Like many other works from the trio, the tracks on Radiolarians 1 represent not only individual parts of a coherent whole but also captivating standalone pieces of music. The trio covers wide territory in each of the tracks, from the spacy New Orleans funk of "Free Go Lily" to the Jack Johnson-era Miles Davis back beat of "Cloud Wars." The process of slowly developing the individual songs in this album plays up some under-appreciated traits of the group. Medeski reminds us on "Free Go Lily" of how percussive his acoustic piano-playing is, lending extra rhythmic force on the tune – his percussiveness is easy to forget since he sticks to electric instruments so often. Wood is paradoxically light on his electric bass on the decidedly-heavy tune, "Reliquary." Martin displays his impish wit on "Sweet Pea Dreams."
This new recording process has served Medeski Martin & Wood well, allowing the three much time to dig in, explore, and develop their parts before putting them to record. The result is an exhilarating, fresh effort for the veteran trio, proving that theire well still produces after so many years together.
Track Listing: First Light; Cloud Wars; Muchas Gracias; Professor Nohair; Reliquary; Free Go Lily; Rolling Son; Sweet Pea Dreams; God Fire; Hidden Moon Personnel: John Medeski, keyboards; Chris Wood, bass; Billy Martin, drums
Like any other art, jazz has had its fair share of artistic controversies. Think of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and the creation of bebop. Or Ornette Coleman's 1959 debut at the Five Spot in New York. No controversy compares, though, to the one that greeted Miles Davis when he decided to incorporate electronic instruments and rock-and-roll rhythms into his music at the end of the 1960s. It is in this context that filmmaker Murray Lerner presents Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue. Lerner, through interviews with former bandmates and footage of Davis' performances, seeks to examine Davis' shift from jazz titan to rock star, pairing his short documentary with a complete take of Davis' 38-minute performance at the 1970 Isle of White festival.
The film opens with two opposing views of Davis the Rock Star. Carlos Santana describes Miles as the ultimate searcher, looking for new avenues of "musical orgasm," as he quotes Davis. He is followed by Stanley Crouch, who essentially calls bullshit, and argues that Miles turned to jazz-rock fusion simply for the money and popularity. After presenting the controversy that surrounded Davis at the time and afterwards, Lerner largely leaves this narrative behind, instead focusing on the ins and outs of Davis' then-new style. The film is littered with interviews with a variety of Davis associates from that era: Santana, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Dave Liebman, Gary Bartz, Dave Holland, and more. These musicians together describe and dissect different aspects of Davis' music at this time. After 35 minutes of dissection, Lerner concludes the film with Davis' Isle of White performance.
Clip from Davis' Isle of Wight Performance
The film is at its best when Lerner's interview subjects discuss what it was like to play with Miles at this time. Hancock, Corea, and Keith Jarrett all describe their experiences as Davis forced them to play electronic instruments in his band; Hancock remembers that he had never seen an electric piano before Miles brought one into the studio for him one day. Santana describes Davis' relationship with himself, Jimi Hendrix, and other young lions of the late-sixties rock world as a symbiotic one, noting that just as Hendrix intrigued Davis with his sprawling psychedelic rock, so did Davis shake up Hendrix when he recorded A Tribute to Jack Johnson. All these musicians describe Davis both as an astute, if laconic, teacher, who guided their development of a new sound and instilled a necessary sense of fearlessness into their artistic selves.
Davis in 1973 with Dave Liebman, left, and Michael Henderson, background
Where this documentary falls short, however, is in its incomplete portrayal of the uproar which accompanied Davis' turn to jazz-rock fusion. Aside from two clips of Crouch (Crouch entertainingly tells of how he listened to Bitches Brew in various states of consciousness in an effort to like the music), Lerner does not include any critical commentary on Davis' music from this period. This poses two problems, the first being that the film assumes the viewer already knows about both the controversy and Davis' own stature and history up to the late sixties. Lerner could do better by explaining how Miles had come to represent the epitome of sophistication and cool by the mid-sixties, both through his music and style. There is no context relative to the rest of the jazz world in the film. Is it not too much to ask for even a cursory discussion of the state of jazz in the late-sixties?
Secondly, Lerner's skimping on the Miles Davis controversy presents to much of a dichotomous depiction of Davis' music: it is either groundbreaking art, as Santana argues, or pop-shlock, as Crouch argues. A more nuanced portrayal would have served Lerner well here. Many people (including Crouch) have noted that Davis was wary of turning into a nostalgia act, but as John Szwed notes in So What, it is tough to charge Miles Davis with trying to make a quick buck when he was releasing albums with tracks that would stretch on for ten minutes or more. Davis' Isle of Wight performance consists solely of a 38-minute long jam that ebbs and flows in and out of tonality and melody. Were he totally selling out, surely he would have presented less challenging music on stage than that. Also, unlike the Tony Williams Emergency, John McLaughlin's Mahvishnu Orchestra, or other fusion bands of the era, Miles spliced songs together out of different group improvisations cut in the studio, tunes which did not translate into a stage repertoire. Of course, you would not know that from watching Miles Electric.
Lerner also does himself a disservice by presenting Stanley Crouch as the stand-in for all criticism of Davis. While he presents an important vantage point in the jazz wars (his essay on the post-Bitches Brew Davis is a must-read for the student of jazz history), by no means is his view gospel for the anti-fusion factions in the jazz wars. We also don't hear from any of his associates from the sixties who avoided fusion and electronic jazz; there is no Ron Carter, for instance. Certainly, the debates that still rage about Davis' turn to fusion are one of the reasons his music from this period remains so captivating today. At an hour and thirteen minutes, there is certainly more time in the documentary to hear more of the critical take on Miles Davis.
Before we begin, I would like to share one of my more mundane conundrums (or is it conundra? Wait, there's another one...). I have a minor compulsion to categorize and label my music collection on iTunes. This compulsion is especially acute when it comes to my jazz collection. All my music is classified, besides the usual artist and album fields, by genre, subgenre, and year recorded. When I can find the information, I also list recording personnel in the comments field. I spent the better part of a year (in 15-minute sessions whenever I had a free moment at home) recording this information on my pre-iTunes music. I tell you this to introduce this review because, when I first got Stanton Moore's new album, I had no idea how it fit into my categories. Is it Jamband/Jazz or Jazz/Fusion? Perhaps there is some other category that fits better (Funk?), I'm not sure yet. I have yet to assign this album any labels, and it is killing me and my perfect little system.
Since Miles Davis began infusing his music with rock and funk beats, hiring guitarists, and playing the Fillmore in the late 1960s, the debate over jazz fusion has evolved into a somewhat fruitless series of accusations, in which more traditionally-minded musicians and critics label music that strays too far from The Jazz Tradition as nonjazz, while more inclusive observers argue that boundary-stretching artists like Medeski Martin & Wood are just as much jazz musicians as Dave Holland or James Carter. Enter Stanton Moore. As drummer for the popular New Orleans band Galactic, as well as a leader of side projects like Garage a Trois, Moore sits firmly in the New Orleans funk tradition typified by the Meters. However, his mostly-instrumental solo albums frequently veer into jazz territory, evoking the more groove-oriented soul jazz of the early 1960's (think Jimmy Smith and The 3 Sounds) while retaining the hard-driving backbeat of Moore's work with Galactic.
Such is the backdrop of his latest solo offering, Emphasis! On Parenthesis. Moore teams up with frequent collaborators Will Bernard and Robert Walter to lay down some groove-oriented acid jazz (to use a somewhat outdated term). Moore and his band lean heavily on a series of riffs which, stitched together, comprise his tunes. This method of composition is similar to the riff-based blues of the early Count Basie band. It is there that the similarities end. Bernard's style is more dependent on Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and other blues-rock guitarists. Walter, as well, takes his cues from the blues-rock tradition which influenced bands of both the British Invasion and the post-Grateful Dead jamband scene. It probably makes more sense to classify this group as a jamband, rather than a jazz trio. Both labels underscore the significance of improvisation to this group, but to call the trio a jazz band would imply a certain sense of sophistication and adventurousness that Moore and company lack.
Simply put, this album lacks adventure. After listening to it multiple times, I was left with more than a few melodies stuck in my head, but with few, if any, of the moments of surprise and joy that I hope a new jazz album will bring. This is not a swipe at the skills of these three musicians. Moore has an outstanding sense of rhythm, and can lay it on thick while still keeping the sound of the band light. Walter and Bernard follow Moore's cues, and keep the sound of the band from plodding into the ground. Despite their technical skills, though, the music seems a little tired. On my first listen, I felt like I had heard these riffs before. In the hands of artists, though, familiar melodies can lead to new and intriguing possibilities - think of Jason Moran's reworking of James P. Johnson's "Modernistic" on the album of the same title. Here, though, Moore's well-worn funk licks fall short of ecstasy, residing instead in the limbo between transcendent jazz and contrived funk.
Track Listing: (Late Night at The) Maple Leaf; (Proper) Gander; Wissions (Of Vu); (Sifting Through The) African Diaspora; Over (Compensatin'); (Smell My) Special Ingredients; (I Have) Super Strength; (Who Ate The) Layer Cake?; Thanks! (Again); (Put on Your) Big People Shoes; (Here Come) The Brown Police Personell: Stanton Moore, drums; Will Bernard, guitar; Robert Walter, keyboards
It's back to Blue Note this week for the Friday Album Cover, with Larry Young's seminal 1965 album Unity. Whereas our previous Blue Note covers (A New Perspective and Out to Lunch) utilized photography to give a visual representation of the music on the respective albums, on this cover Reid Miles eschews photographs for simple text and geometric figures. A few years after making this album, Young would team up with Tony Williams and John McLaughlin to form the Tony Williams Lifetime, a major force of the jazz fusion movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. By 1965, Young had not fully developed the driving sound that would characterize his work with Lifetime, but on Unity, he shows off a new conception of jazz organ which was free of the (by that time) clichéd groove-oriented sound pioneered by Jimmy Smith. Thus, the figure of the U with spheres rising out of the top is fitting, evoking a overflowing test tube. Young shows his mettle by leading a reknowned group of sidemen, Woody Shaw, Joe Henderson, and Elvin Jones, all the while demonstrating new possibilities for the Hammond B3 organ.
Medeski Martin & Wood have been together for a long time - almost twenty years - so you can forgive them from shaking up their routine to keep things fresh and keep themselves interested. Whether that means bringing John Scofield into the fold for an album and tour, or releasing various side projects, these forays outside of the standard (if you could use that word to describe anything they do) MMW ouvre allow the trio to both pursue outside outlets of creativity and expand the repertoire that each member brings to the group.
, the latest offering from the group. Foregoing their standard recording technique (relentless studio jamming edited into a group of tracks), the trio spent the first part of this year composing rough sketches of some new tunes, then let the compositions grow organically on tour before returning to the studio to record the newly-fleshed out tunes. Radiolarians 1 is intended as the first in a three-part series (you can imagine what the next two albums will be called). They named the album after a marine organism of the same name. According to the band's website, radiolaria "grow their intricately beautiful patterned skeleton around their soft core in defiance of normal biological process, similarly to Medeski Martin and Woods latest creative cycle."
