April 2000

By Jim Vajda

Miles Davis started it (get used to hearing that), Herbie Hancock organized it, Weather Report and other fusioneers gave it mainstream acceptance, but unfortunately, since these leaps of the late 60s and 70s, electric jazz has survived in a lifeless and dull form known as “Smooth Jazz.” For about a decade now, jazz has retained its freshness on the turn tables of hip hop artists paying respect to their roots. Such artists include Digable Planets, A Tribe Called Quest, and GURU’s Jazzmatazz. Today, jazz is once again being “electrified,” but not simply by amplifying standard instruments and adding electric guitars and basses. Jazz is taking its first tentative steps in the digital domain of synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, sequencers.

You probably haven't heard of them, but Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher), Carl Craig (Innerzone Orchestra), Roni Size, and others are the premier artists of this new electric jazz frontier. They’re pioneering work has brought the same brilliance to the current music scene that Miles did when he first plugged in. These musicians are exploring the potential the new technologies have for jazz, just as Miles did in the late 60s. The difference, and most exciting notion, is that these new technologies will provide for an infinite sonic potential. In other words, any sound that can be conceived by the mind, can be recreated with computers, the only limit being the mind. Imagine how different Coltrane might have sounded if he wasn't limited to the sonic potential of his horn. I hate to say that Coltrane was “limited” in any respect, because his sound truly transcends definition, but my point is that there is a limited amount of sound that can be generated by a saxophone no matter how good you are. I believe that he would have sounded drastically different. Look at how much Miles Davis’ music changed when he incorporated electric instruments into it. The same thing is happening today, except on a much broader and more radical scale than you might have been lead to believe.

Jazz is not a thing of the past. It does apply to our time because jazz is timeless. It will always have meaning. These jazz explorers, if you will, are just showing us how. Consider the beauty of Coltrane’s sax, Miles’ trumpet, Ellington’s piano, Jaco’s bass, Max Roach’s drums. Now consider how unimaginable this music would sound had these great artists not been limited by the sonic potentials of their respective instruments. I believe that the difference would be startling, and that this is what the jazz of today will evolve into.

I must make a point in saying that these technologies are not new. Samplers and drum machines were popularized in the 80s with the advent of hip hop, synthesizers were popularized in the 70s, but the technologies have existed since at least the late 60s. Case and point, Kraftwerk. So until now, jazz musicians have stuck to their traditional acoustic and electric instruments rather than break their own traditions.

In the process of bringing the latest technologies into jazz, these artists also bring hints of purely electronic music along with them, just like as the pioneers in fusion brought electric guitars, basses, and pianos into their music they “fused” elements of rock, soul, and funk (the styles that use these instruments) into jazz. This phenomenon is easily observable by comparing the jazz of Tom Jenkinson to his beat crazy, but not jazz oriented, compadre Richard James (Aphex Twin).

Do not compromise this music by labeling it “Acid Jazz,” a form of techno that, like too many others, is dependent on a single drum pattern and generally limited to that pattern in order to be accepted into said genre. To the true spirit of free jazz, this is an unacceptable limitation.

The jazz pioneers of today are successfully reinvigorating the old spirit of jazz with a digital twist. They have created a new species of jazz that is unlimited in its potential, unorthodox in its sound, and transcending in its beauty the same way the music from the jazz giants of the past is. Because this music can be so radically different from its predecessors, it can only be labeled with the broad term “New Jazz.” “New” because it's been a long time since we've been enlightened by jazz of this caliber. It has been over twenty years since jazz has been this experimental and spirited.

Recommended Recordings:

1. “Music is Rotted One Note” - Squarepusher. Nothing Records.
2. “Feed Me Weird Things” - Squarepusher. Rephlex.
3. “Programmed” - Innerzone Orchestra. Astralwerks, Planet E.
4. “New Forms” - Roni Size. Polygram.
5. “Black Market Gardening” - Fila Brazillia. Pork Recordings.
6. “Bitches Brew” - Miles Davis. Columbia.