Sixty years after Ornette Coleman released The Shape of Jazz to Come, contemporary musicians continue to challenge and expand upon the core tenets of the genre. Besides its notable anniversary, I mention Coleman’s breakthrough specifically due to its embodiment of disruption. The reception for his playing style has softened considerably…
If not for the fact I was browsing in Bandcamp’s “Jazz” section, I probably wouldn’t have approached Wandering Monster expecting an intricate, infectious style of jazz fusion. At first glance, the album cover and name looked like it belonged somewhere under the “experimental electronic” umbrella. Often times, jazz artists represent…
While our Post Rock Post series may suggest otherwise, several of us on staff not named Nick or Eden also keep up on the genre’s latest offerings. I still remember being blown away by Mogwai’s Come On Die Young back in college and slowly pulling back the layers of post-rock’s back catalog of…
During my freshman year in college, a friend and I were hanging in my dorm room and listening to BADBADNOTGOOD’s BBNG2. After a couple of songs, he turned to me and mused “What ever happened to jazz? I wish we lived in the days of nights on the town hitting up…
“Modern” has always been one of my least favorite genre prefixes. With the myriad of stylistic tags at artists’ disposal, it seems like an odd choice to fixate on the recency of a piece of music as a means of describing its sound. As is demonstrated by any number of revivalist movements operating in the current music landscape, “modern” music isn’t always a guarantee of fresh, forward-thinking ideas, and in my experience, the tag is often used to posture standard genre fare delivered with a newer sheen as something new and revelatory. Of course, there’s an exception to every rule, and when it comes to this particular pet peeve of mine, I’ve never been happier to have a band prove me wrong as wrong as COAST do with their phenomenal self-titled debut. Every aspect of COAST embodies what “modern” jazz should represent. Over the course of the album’s six brilliant tracks, the quartet executes jazz’s greatest traits with precision and agility. In short, COAST offers everything jazz fans love about the genre, except this time, it’s simply performed at a better, higher level.
We’ve charted out quite the trajectory for Jazz Club over the past few years. Initially, we launched the column as a means of dissecting key albums from throughout the year, starting with what I still fervently believe to be the greatest jazz album of the decade thus far. Then the…
We’re back with more fantastic jazz from the second quarter of 2017! Unfortunately with the departure of staff writer and our friend Jimmy Mullett from Heavy Blog, it’s left a hole in our Jazz Club trifecta. Thankfully we were able to fill that void quickly with our buddy Dave Tremblay of Can This Even Be Called Music? Dave is constantly finding interesting and original stuff in the way of jazz and elsewhere, and we’re excited to have him join and help us recommend jazz of all stripes that demands your attention.
