| · Another instalment of Thirsty Ear’s Blue label series, featuring legendary pianist Matthew Shipp squaring off against hip-hop trio the Antipop Consortium.
Under the direction of Thirsty Ear executive producers Peter Gordon and Matthew Shipp, the Blue series proves that presenting challenging conceptions of jazz is itself an arduous journey. Shipp’s collaboration with the Antipop Consortium comes one step closer to creating a convincing synthesis between free jazz improvisation and electronica.
Unfortunately, the beats supplied by the Consortium never seem to come to terms with Shipp’s modern jazz style. The beats are too stationary, too bland to fully integrate themselves into the texture set by Shipp and his quartet of bassist William Parker, drummer Guillermo E. Brown, trumpeter Daniel Carter and recently rediscovered harmolodic vibist Khan Jamal. "Places I’ve Never Been" starts promisingly, but the groove gets in a rut and remains there for the rest of the album.
More interesting things happened with Shipp’s work on Spring Heel Jack’s Amassed and DJ Spooky’s Optometry, two of the best jazz-electronica collaborations of 2002. Here, the fusion of free jazz and hip-hop is not entirely successful and the resulting effort is diluted in both style and content.
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