It’s A Jazz Thing Newsletter
George FM – Sunday July 28 2 – 4pm
Feature Album: Flying Wonders – Homelife
Hi,
Another good bunch of new and interesting stuff this week, as well as a bit of a flashback – for me, at least. Also – no poetry. Promise. I’ve got that out of my system now for a couple of weeks at least…
I teach a new class called Music Industry and Technology at AUT, and one of the class exercises I’ve set the students is to compile a ‘desert island discs’ consisting of three tracks. They are to bring them to class and explain their choices, and the reason for the songs’ significance. A dreadfully hard thing to do, you’ll agree. Of course, I wouldn’t ask them to do anything I’m not prepared myself, so yesterday afternoon, I played three songs to a tutorial class, and justified my decisions.
I’m not going to tell you what those tracks were, but suffice to say that to get the list down to just three tracks involved an awful lot of listening. In the process, I revisited some stuff that I knew was important in my life, but wasn’t sure had stood the test of time. Nothing I’m playing today made my final list – but I couldn’t let the week go by without including an On-U Sound cut. I used to collect that label in my early 20s, and I hadn’t heard any for at least 6 or 7 years. There’ll be other trips down memory lane in future shows – I now have a pile of sadly overlooked classics that deserve a dusting off, and I’ll dripfeed them into the show.
The feature album today, as you see above, is one by an outfit called Homelife, who are interesting, mainly because they don’t really exist. There’s no band. There’s not even a collective of musicians. Homelife could be described as the gravitational pull that exists between a likeminded category of musicians. Nearly every track has a different lineup, and really the only thing in common is that the tracks are all recorded at one musician’s house – but even he isn’t involved in everything on the album. It’s a real do-it-yourself project. Small bunches of musicians would turn up, play for a bit, edit it together with other bits, and then trust others to take it and run from there. And you know what? It’s surprisingly coherent. You get the sense of listening to the sound of a vibe that was going on in a certain time and place that wasn’t restricted to, or defined by, the individuals involved. It’s a really nice album too.
Local material from the Brassouls (good track this one) and it’s time to play Kim Paterson’s ‘Kabir’ again. I think of all the jazz I’ve recorded over the past 5 or 6 years, that one track is what I’m most proud of. Fantastic solos throughout, the band was really cooking, and I think I was able to capture that in the studio in a way that did it some justice. Nick McBride and Cameron Undy are just an astonishingly good rhythm section.
There’s a bit of a reggae flavour in some of the jazz this week: Jamaican jazz guitar legend Ernest Ranglin makes an appearance, as does Laurent de Wilde. Now, he’s an interesting character. He had two choices in life – study music or study philosophy. He chose philosophy, and went quite some distance with it. Fortunately for us, he had the good sense to join trumpeter Eddie Henderson’s band in 1983. Hopping back between France and the USA, he likewise hopped between academia and playing the piano. Along the way, he wrote a rather good book about Thelonious Monk and recorded a couple of pretty good albums. Here, he’s teamed up with Monty Alexander, and displays the taste for reggae he developed as a result (Monty’s a big Sly and Robbie fan).
Speaking of Monk, the opening track this Sunday is an extraordinary take on Monk’s classic ‘Epistrophy’. At first it comes over as gimmickry – a cheap hip-hop-meets-Monk outing – and I have to say I wasn’t overly impressed by Russell Gunn’s first album ‘Ethnomusicology Vol. 1’, but I have to say there’s some great playing in here, and Gunn’s developed a harder edge that really seems to suit him. ‘Ethnomusicology Vol. 2’ might just be worth a serious look. I’ll keep you posted.
As usual, the playlist for this Sunday’s show is below. I’ll talk more about all this then. In the meantime, I really recommend that desert island discs thing as a game you can play among friends. Great conversation / debate / argument -starter… and it really encourages you to go back and listen to things you haven’t heard for a long time. Three songs is a real challenge… but show me your list, and I’ll show you mine.
Cheers,
Dubber
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It’s A Jazz Thing
Sunday, July 28, 2 – 4pm
George FM: Auckland 96.8FM / Queenstown 90.4FM / Waikato 107.3FM
Streaming: http://www.georgefm.co.nz
Sky Digital Nationwide: Channel 104
Feature Album: Flying Wonders – Homelife (Ninja Tune)
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Epistrophy – Russell Gunn (Justin Time)
All Or Nothing At All – Karrin Allyson (Concord)
Out Of This World – Laurent de Wilde (Warner Jazz)
Surfin’ – Ernest Ranglin (Island)
Wet Skin – Dave Weckl (Stretch)
On Chano’s Track – Toby Fichelscher & Gunter Wilk (JCR)
Something Wicked (Bossa remix) – The Herbaliser (Ninja Tune)
Buffalos – Homelife (Ninja Tune)
Listen Here (Guru remix) – Eddie Harris (Blue Note)
Kabir – Kim Paterson (Tap Records)
Mysterious Sound – New Sector Movements (People)
(Used To Be A) Cha-Cha – Jaco Pastorius (Epic)
Good Woman – Brassouls (Pacific Echoes)
Get Another Plan (Extended Mix) – Abstract Truth (Island)
Seedpod – Homelife (Ninja Tune)
Too Fast – Homelife (Ninja Tune)
Moonlight – Charlie Haden & Gonzalo Rubalcaba (Verve)
Ride On – Little Axe (On-U Sound)
It’s Hot As Haiti (Modaji remix) – Derf Reklaw (Ubiquity)
Flying Wonders – Homelife (Ninja Tune)
