Jazz Articles

Brian Eno: Reflection

by Nenad Georgievski
January 14, 2017

Composer and producer Brian Eno's ambient record Reflection truly goes to the mind and the heart in a quiet and seductive way. This hour long intriguing and captivating tapestry of carefully interwoven sounds conjures up landscapes of internal emotions that reflect the warmth and quiet of the first day of the new year when it was released. Eno's records have always been a fascinating blend of aesthetic, emotions, careful strategy and technology and as such have always functioned on many ...

Squarepusher: Ultravisitor

by AAJ Staff
March 16, 2004

Tom Jenkinson, better known as Squarepusher to the listening public, has always lurked in a realm of abstraction that makes his electronica/fusion impossible to pin down. As an early pioneer of highly programmed drum-n-bass, he placed his electric bass alongside frenetic and ever-changing beats. You simply could not afford to get lost in the details, because the shifting, insisting whole begged submission.

When he crossed over to the jazz world with Music is Rotted One Note (Warp, 1998), ...

Prefuse 73: One Word Extinguisher

by AAJ Staff
April 21, 2003

Born in the era of vinyl grooves, hip-hop declared every record ever made to be its own. With such massive resources at its disposal, the movement quickly became a revolution. But as those grooves have worn down, hip-hop has lost some of its luster. That, along with the music being snapped up and mass-produced by industry deaf-mutes, has drawn it into great peril.

Of course, those who aren't stuck on old school thinking have adapted to the digital ...

Aphex Twin: Drukqs

by AAJ Staff
January 1, 2002

Richard D. James, with his caustic sense of humor and more intelligent than thou demeanor has often been a magnet around which the electronica community polarizes, usually falling into two categories- avid worship or scathing ridicule. Druqks will do nothing but fuel that polarity. 30 tracks across two discs of Jekyll and Hyde tempos and images will test your listening endurance to its limits. Drukqs juxtaposes maniacally precise, twisted breakbeats that are at times so fast and tightly packed they ...

Autechre: Confield

by AAJ Staff
December 1, 2001

From the first two minutes of the opening track, Confield reveals a new stance for Autechre. Reverberant high-end detail, dense but logical, surrounds a characteristically restrained melody. This record represents a step forward for the duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown: conscious inclusion of the kind of detail and controlled chaos that they have thus far minimized in their work. Up until now, Autechre have focused on shifting loops and stark atmopheric melodies. As Booth once put it, “The ...

Squarepusher: Go Plastic

by AAJ Staff
August 1, 2001

Squarepusher's musical territory has certainly had its hills and valleys. With his first full-length record, Feed Me Weird Things, Squarepusher (aka Tom Jenkinson) launched a series of fine drill-and-bass masterworks on the Warp label. Up until 1998's Music Is Rotted One Note, every single Squarepusher record was a keeper. But at that point, he dumped the sequencer and switched over to a more spacey, acoustic approach involving lots of real instruments. It was a disastrous turn for the worse.

Fortunately ...