July 2001

From the Inside Out
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By Chris M. Slawecki

Part of the enjoyment of Jazz – and simultaneously part of the frustration of enjoying Jazz – is the debate about what Jazz is and what Jazz is not. You might not get two people to agree on any one definition of what it IS. But most people might agree on this definition of what Jazz IS NOT: Whatever Jazz is, it most assuredly is not the same thing over and over and over again.

So the next few installments of “From The Inside Out” will stretch out a little bit and honor that feeling of freedom that summer seems to inevitably bring by exploring music that may be just outside of the mainstream of Jazz. Wherever the mainstream of Jazz is – or is not.

Soulive: doin’ something (Blue Note)
Soulive is brothers Alan (drums) and Neal Evans (Hammond B-3, Wurlitzer organ, and piano) with guitarist Eric Krasno. Alan previously beat skins for the Greyboy All-Stars, under the direction of Acid-Jazz DJ extraordinaire Andreas Stevens (known as DJ Greyboy), and also for groove saxophonist Karl Denson, while brother Neal studied under pianist Jaki Byard. On doin’ something, their Blue Note debut, they’re joined on several tracks by a horn section led by trombonist Fred Wesley, one of the founding fathers of James Brown’s legendary funkateers The JBs.

“We started Soulive,” Alan explains, “because we wanted to play the soul-groove-jazz music that we’ve loved listening to our entire lives, and because we wanted to interpret it in our own way.” Though it consists entirely of Soulive originals, it’s really not the tunes that make this set swing. It’s the way that this trio plays. It ain’t what they do, it’s the way that they do it that amplifies the heartbeat of the “new school” of the “old school” groove.

The tunes “Cannonball” and “Shaheed” encapsulate the Soulive be-bop meets hip-hop (hip-bop?) sensibility: The former is a tribute to soulful bop saxophonist Adderley, the latter pays props to Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, founding members of the Hip-Hop Nation. “Cannonball” repeats a funky blue figure at breakneck speed, guitar and keyboards doubling up the melody as guitarist Krasno snuggles deep in its soft, funky pocket. In “Shaheed,” Alan kicks the snare drum delightfully just behind the beat to create a hip-hop feel.

Neal on keyboards is a real mother for ya – kickin’ out the backbeat with a thumpin’ bass line, laying down chords to serve as the “horn section,” doubling up with Krasno’s guitar to underscore the melody, then dashing off to set the table for the guitarist’s tasty, groovealicious solos – and that’s just in the first track, “Hurry Up…And Wait.” The keyword for both Alan and Eric is “Boogaloo”: Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, the recognized innovator of the classic ‘60s boogaloo beat, is an obvious inspiration for this Soulive funky drummer. Krasno apparently digs the classic soul-jazz style of Joe “Boogaloo” Jones, and also drinks deeply from the streams of Grant Green, Jimmy Nolen and Wes Montgomery.

Greyboy: Mastered The Art (Ubiquity)
This is the first new album in five years by DJ Greyboy (Andreas Stevens), a true West Coast acid-jazz innovator whose 1994 debut Freestylin’ helped simultaneously put acid-jazz and the Ubiquity label on the pop topography. His third album weaves seamless textures of programmed / sampled music, DJ scratching, crunching beats, and eloquent playing from vibes player Dave Pike and multi-instrumentalist Elgin Park.

Greyboy stands out from among most other acid-jazz DJs in that he uses his technology to generate honest-to-god songs instead of just repetitively looping hooks and beats in pleasant grooves. Furthermore, Greyboy’s music is so tightly woven that it’s impossible to answer that familiar question, “Is it live or is it Memorex?” – it’s impossible to determine what music was sampled and what music was performed and recorded just for this set. In Stevens’ crafty hands, it’s all simply music. (Sidenote: I’m not one of those Jazzheads who automatically dismissing rapping just because it’s rap, but contributions from rappers Main Flow and Muddie don’t seem to add anything fresh to this set. The best cuts here are the instrumentals.)

Deepening the contradictions, somehow Greyboy simultaneously cloaks Mastered The Art in the classic retro “whomp” of 70s Funk and Soul AND in the futuristic feel of ultra-suave, space-age lounge music. This is most evident in the two versions of its title track which bookend this set: The undulating, escalating bassline in the opening version echoes the gutbucket stomp of “Jungle Boogie” and sounds the very definition of “gangsta lean,” while Pike’s gooey blue vibes evoke Roy Ayers’ seminal Funk-Jazz fusion ensemble Ubiquity. The set ends with a “Jet Sounds Remix” of this first track piloted by Italian producer, arranger and DJ Nicola Conte; cool Brazilian percussion, piano and flute tumble and splash like a cool summer cocktail as you glide along its smooth, aerodynamic rhythm (believe it or not, imagine a danceclub version of Pat Metheny’s “As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls…”). Stylish as sipping a Tanqueray and tonic onboard your personal yacht, this distinctively different remix of the first cut as the last cut brings this set full circle.

Other up-to-the-minute lessons in this Greyboy school of the new cool include: “Bath Music,” as tranquil and exotic as a Koi pond with a straight-up R&B bassline bubbling through; the flowing Middle-Eastern “Marrakesh”; and “Polyphonix,” with almost Brazilian wordless vocal coos, bop horn charts, Pike’s crystalline vibes, and Park’s tangy guitar ker-plunked! into the mix like a green olive dropped into a frosted martini.

In retro style, “Logan’s Run” (apparently named after the mid-70s sci-fi film) creates a soundtrack for an imaginary fight-or-flight cinema scene, as off-kilter strings doubled with piano (like Horace Silver’s left hand trapped in a spastic caffeine jag) man the bass pumps seconded by sitar and in counterpoint with layered waterfalls of eighth- and sixteenth-note guitar. Mastered The Art also delivers the two items that a tough DJ’s just got to bring, and that’s lots of whiplash scratching and big, fat chewy beats.

Various Artists: Morricone RMX (Cinesoundz / Reprise)
Every so often, you confront a musical combination so conceptually off-the-wall that you cannot help but be interested. Morricone RMX presents the music of one of the most strikingly original soundtrack composers of the twentieth century, Ennio Morricone, reconstructed by cutting-edge trip-hop, jungle and techno artists dispersed throughout the twenty-first century world.

Morricone’s musical vision was as epic as any Cecil B. DeMille production, liberally borrowed and mixed from every imaginable style and instrumentation. He is most renown for the “spaghetti Western” trail blazed in his musical scenery for films by Italian director Sergio Leone, beginning with A Fistful of Dollars in 1967. More recently, Morricone has composed for such directors as Barry Levinson, Brian DePalma, and Roman Polanski, and received several Academy Award nominations for his work with Roland Joffe on The Mission (1986).

RMX is the first project for which Morricone has granted permission for other artists to remodel his original constructions. The bands in this case, including Apollo 440, Nightmares On Wax, Thievery Cooperation, and Rocker’s Hi-Fi, have advanced the global movement to blur the line between techno, club, acid-jazz and trip-hop electronic music. And it is truly a “global” movement – RMX was recorded, mixed, and produced in the U.K. (London, Leeds, Birmingham), Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and Washington, DC.

“The Man With The Harmonica” by Apollo Four Forty breathes new, modern life into the archetype lonesome wail from Once Upon A Time In The West. And even Terranova’s ambitious reworking is not enough to obscure the dramatic, thundering piano chords and Duane Eddy-style guitar twang in For A Few Dollars More, anchored here by jungle rhythms, echoed by funky clavinet, and bathed in brightly colored electronics. Except for these few tracks crowned with obvious “classic western” sounds, it’s almost impossible to distinguish Morricone’s original music from what’s been built around it. So this enterprise as a whole sounds almost entirely new.

New and yet within the still-evolving acid-jazz and techno tradition: Tommy Hools lifts “Doricamente” (The Secret Picture of a Respectable Woman) into deep Morcheeba trip-hop space, its soft rolling clouds of indigo-shaded Fender Rhodes and guitars interrupted by lightning bolts of screaming electric guitar blues, all tucked in the pocket by a persistently thumping acid-jazz drumbeat.

Co-founders of Rocker’s Hi-Fi, and specialists in smoking electronic music into thick Jamaican dub, Bigga Bush and DJ Dick each takes his own separate graceful turn with Morricone’s Clan of the Sicilians. Bush sets his like a watch against a single-note metronome, then it simply disappears like a wisp of smoke. Dick ends this set in the cool, dark shadows of Brian Eno; softly strummed acoustic guitars keep time in a soft, padded jungle pulsing with acid-jazz drums, pierced with dramatic strings and sprinkled with electronic stardust.

Fantastic Plastic Machine’s “Belinda May” (The Alibi) hopscotches moods and styles in a sweeping cinematic approach similar to The Propellerheads’ James Bond scores and remixes. Its native Japanese tribal drumming and Latin piano and percussion interludes are particularly fetching; they’re even cooler when you consider that this band from Japan is reconstructing, with Latin piano and percussion, music from a three-decade old Italian movie, with post-production done in a studio in Germany.