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…
As a fan of forward-thinking music, it’s been thrilling to watch Travis Laplante grow into an essential experimental artist over the past several years. As both a saxophonist and composer, Laplante has created and contributed to some of the most exceptional releases in modern classical and avant-garde jazz. In between his incredible…
Welcome back to Jazz Club! It’s been a while since the three of us (Jimmy, Nick and Scott) sat down to dissect the one of our favorite genres, which was most recently a conversation about BADBADNOTGOOD’s excellent 2016 album IV. In that discussion, we tossed around the idea of pooling together a list of some of our favorite new jazz releases, something we’re excited to finally begin today with our first installment of Jazz Quarterly. This is also offering us an opportunity and excuse to get ourselves back in the habit of listening to new jazz regularly, which, if you’re anything like at least a couple of us (namely Nick) has been something we’ve been meaning to get back into for far too long. There are a few places now that offer some great monthly curated lists like Bandcamp, Stereogum, and more, and you’ll likely notice that a bunch of these selections are pulled from there because they provide a valuable resource for even supposed “curators” such as ourselves. As each of us prefers different flavors of the genre, you’ll find an eclectic list of recommendations below, ranging from more traditional offerings to experimental blends of jazz with Indian classical music, doom metal sensibilities, electronic music, progressive rock and much more. We’d be genuinely shocked if you can’t find at least one release worth your time from this list, so without wasting any more time, feel free to dive in to the best the genre’s had to offer so far this year.
Just this past week we saw how important the ACLU still is. One of the first to confront the so called “Muslim ban” enacted by the indifferent pen of Donald Trump, it began the long and arduous legal battle against this administration. With not only the presidency but also Congress and Senate painted in the most extreme and reckless red imaginable, their work will grow seven-fold; now they must take on the legislative branch instead. Thus, and despite of the already remarkable success their fundraising has seen in the past week, Bandcamp’s contribution to the ACLU is admirable. We’re here to do our share; below you’ll find a list of artists that are worthy of your support on this Friday.
As summer comes to its annual, unfortunate end, it’s understandable if your attention span for new releases has slipped in favor of last-minute vacations and weekend escapades. Unfortunately, you picked one hell of a month to slack off, as August provided us with some of 2016’s most phenomenal releases yet. We don’t say that lightly – August has truly bestowed upon us an eclectic array of musical triumphs that had our staff scrambling for the time to digest it all. Our editors certainly share this sentiment and have compiled what may be our strongest group of Editors Picks to date. We’ve got recommendations ranging from post rock to trap-rap and doom metal to avant-jazz, so prepare to empty your wallets on your new favorite albums of the year.
Way back in 2015, Nick, Ryan and Scott kicked off Jazz Club with an in-depth discussion of Kamasi Washington’s phenomenal album The Epic, easily the greatest jazz album of that year and (arguably) the decade thus far. We’ve ventured in different themes since then though, opting for discussions ranging from current events (Ornette Coleman’s passing) to genre starter kits. Today we’re back with a conversation focused exclusively on a recent release that many of us view as a potential jazz AOTY for 2016. This time, Nick jumps aboard with Jazz Club dynamic duo Scott and Jimmy Two for a dissection of IV, the latest offering from Canadian quartet and overall jazz powerhouse BADBADNOTGOOD. The band has leveraged hip-hop, electronic music and jazz to create some of the most exciting music in the genre, so needless to say, we were stoked to see what their fourth proper release had to offer.
For those who missed our last installment, We post biweekly updates covering what the staff at Heavy Blog have been spinning. Given the amount of time we spend on the site telling you about music that does not fall neatly into the confines of conventional “metal,” it should come as no surprise that many of us on staff have pretty eclectic tastes that range far outside of metal and heavy things. We can’t post about all of them at length here, but we can at least let you know what we’re actually listening to. For those that would like to participate as well (and please do) can drop a 3X3 in the comments, which can be made with tapmusic.netthrough your last.fm account, or create it manually with topsters.net. Also, consider these posts open threads to talk about pretty much anything music-related. We love hearing all of your thoughts on this stuff and love being able to nerd out along with all of you.
