Microchip jazz
Mouse On Mars, Cinematic Orchestra and Bullfrog highlight New Groove Series
All too often, jazz is defined as the noodling pastime of bearded college students in berets and black turtlenecks. Diluted by the likes of Kenny G, Diana Krall and Harry Connick Jr., the popular audience’s preconceptions of jazz as music better suited to elevators than a cathartic Saturday night out has seen an unfortunate number of highly talented and forward-looking musicians left on the fringe.
Jazz Festival Calgary’s New Groove Series (slated to take place this year at The Warehouse, from June 22 to 30) consistently pushes the boundaries of the classic definition of jazz. Past years have seen brilliant, nearly life-changing performances from the likes of Japan’s abstract New Music Trio and avant-garde clarinetist François Houle. This year, the lines are being blurred even further with a series of performances including the Ninja Tune recording act Cinematic Orchestra, Germany’s Mouse On Mars, and Canada’s very own Bullfrog, featuring Kid Koala.
These performers not only update jazz for the modern age, but they are also among those making the next great leaps in modern music as a whole. While fully embracing the musical potential inherit in computers in the creation of their work, both Mouse On Mars and Cinematic Orchestra balk at being defined as anything other than jazz.
Mouse On Mars’ Andi Toma insists, "We don’t even know what it means to be an electronic band, as what we do is much more jazz than electronic music."
Idiology, their latest album for Chicago’s Thrill Jockey label, combines an improvisational jazz esthetic – captured with the use of traditional jazz instrumentation – with distorted beats and loops composed on laptop. Particularily on the likes of "Fantastic Analysis" and "Catching Butterflies With Hands," the combination of traditional and digital instruments displays incredible potential. To those purists who turn up their noses at the inclusion of computers in the world of jazz, Toma points out that all music is, in some way, produced digitally now.
"Even guitar bands produce their music with computers, recording on digital devices, and that’s what we do," he says.
Mouse on Mars have performed at several other jazz festivals throughout the world, including Switzerland’s prestigious Montreaux Jazz Festival (this year featuring performances from the likes of Roni Size & Reprazent, Kruder & Dorfmeister and Zero 7, alongside Herbie Hancock, Joshua Redman and Keith Jarrett). The result is that Mouse on Mars has developed an onstage routine of playing both live instruments and hardware sequencers, all connected to one another through computers – and usually they receive a positive reaction from the gathered crowds.
"By the end, they’ve never had problems with us at any of the jazz fests," says Toma.
It’s surprising then, considering their somewhat more traditional approach to jazz through computers, that the U.K.’s Cinematic Orchestra has dealt with some jazz fundamentalist snobbery during previous appearances at jazz festivals.
"Many in the jazz press would not even entertain it, and their reasons for not liking it is because we don’t really fit in with the formula," says Jason Swinscoe, the Cinematic Orchestra’s founder and composer.
Starting with in-studio improvisations and composed pieces, Swinscoe takes the finished recordings and then re-edits and remixes the sessions into new compositions. Isolating and capitalizing on the natural grooves discovered while improvising, the Cinematic Orchestra also alienates the jazz establishment through Swinscoe’s restructuring and control of the player’s performances. In taking only particular segments and merging them with dance-friendly beats, some classify Swinscoe’s compositions as lacking the intrigue of spontaneous jazz improvisation. What is often not considered by the traditional jazz press (whom Swinscoe excuses as "up their own ass, really"), is the undeniable presence of vision in Cinematic Orchestra’s rewriting of the rule books. While many may dismiss Cinematic Orchestra, there are those such as Miles Davis’s guitarist John McLaughlin lining up to work with the group.
Perhaps the simplest integration between jazz and dance culture appears in the form of Bullfrog. Featuring the prodigious, manic turntable talents of Kid Koala, the group offers otherwise conventional funk-jazz fusion, more concerned with danceable rhythm and groove than difficult scales and complex time signatures. Incorporating the use of Kid Koala’s turntables as just another instrument, the effect is complementary rather than distracting.
Considering Mouse On Mars, Cinematic Orchestra and Bullfrog, alongside Herbie Hancock’s recent sojourn into the studio with Brian Eno for the creation of "Remix Kits" – musical pieces suitable for remixing, released as-is for restructuring by the listener – and Medeski, Martin, & Wood’s acknowledgment of this new union on their Combustication Remix release, further incorporation of digital technology in the largely-analogue world of jazz is not a trend on the distant horizon but a quickly developing aspect of the form.
In the words of Cinematic Orchestra’s Jason Swinscoe, "Jazz has become very interesting again."
The New Groove Series takes place at the Warehouse with Bullfrog (June 23), Mouse On Mars (June 24) and Cinematic Orchestra (June 27), among others. |
