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Jeff Parker & The New Breed: Suite For Max Brown
by Jerome Wilson
Guitarist Jeff Parker spent many years in Chicago involved in the city's fertile jazz and experimental music scene, primarily as a member of the AACM and the band Tortoise. In 2013 he relocated to Los Angeles. Since then, his music as a leader has combined a 70's rhythm and blues vibe with the sampling, electronic manipulation and serial techniques he was involved with in Chicago. This album, dedicated to his mother whose maiden name was Maxine Brown, shows just how ...
Continue ReadingChicago Underground Quartet: Good Days
by Karl Ackermann
Of the many Rob Mazurek led groups, his Chicago Underground collective has been the most prolific and adventurous cooperative with seven duo outings and another four trio releases. The quartet version of Chicago Underground, like the 1998 “Orchestra" formation, had issued only one album, the self-titled debut on the Thrill Jockey label in 2001. A one-off quartet project (Chicago/London Underground) A Night Walking Through Mirrors (Cuneiform Records, 2017) featured Mazurek, drummer Chad Taylor, British pianist Alexander Hawkins, and bassist John ...
Continue ReadingJeremy Cunningham: The Weather Up There
by Jakob Baekgaard
The complex landscape of human emotions is still vastly uncharted, but every true work of art adds a little piece to the puzzle. This can be done in many ways, but it is rare that an album connects emotion with complex layers of memory, interpersonal relations, politics and societal structures. Nevertheless, this is what drummer and composer Jeremy Cunningham's album does. In a statement, Cunningham explains the background: “I wrote The Weather Up There to confront the ...
Continue ReadingGil Scott-Heron / Makaya McCraven: We're New Again
by Karl Ackermann
"All the dreams you show up in are not your own." With those words to an interviewer at The New Yorker, Gil Scott-Heron tried to explain a degree of detachment from I'm New Here (XL Recordings, 2011), his “comeback" and the final studio album before his death that year. The project was initiated by the head of XL and was the first album Scott-Heron released in the sixteen years he struggled with addiction and two drug-related terms in prison. The ...
Continue ReadingJeff Parker: Slight Freedom
by Dave Wayne
One is tempted to think of Jeff Parker as the first guitar anti-hero. He's a subtle player, first and foremost, not given to showy pyrotechnics and rapid-fire flights of plectral fancy. His chameleonic, almost self-effacing, presence on recordings by Tortoise, Joey DeFrancesco, Isotope 217, Fred Anderson, the Brian Blade Fellowship, Peter Erskine, Nicole Mitchell, Yo La Tengo, Hamid Drake, Joshua Redman, Scott Amendola, George Lewis and countless others is startling for its sheer stylistic diversity. Yet, Parker, unlike pretty much ...
Continue ReadingJeff Parker: Reinventing Tradition
by Jakob Baekgaard
Is there such a thing as a Chicago sound? Back in the year 2000, a compilation was released that tried to portray a new and exciting musical scene. The album was called Chicago 2018... It's Gonna Change and it highlighted a brilliant mixture of free jazz, electronica, post-rock, art pop and experimental folk music. Of the eighteen different projects on the album, guitarist Jeff Parker was involved in four: Toe 2000, Tricolor, Isotope 217 and Tortoise and one could have ...
Continue ReadingJeff Parker: The New Breed
by Jakob Baekgaard
There are certain artists that you know you can always count on. Whenever they are involved in something, at least it is going to be interesting and often it will be great. Guitarist Jeff Parker is one of those artists. It has been an undivided pleasure following Parker through his many constellations, whether it is Isotope 217, Tricolor, Chicago Underground, Brian Blade Fellowship, Makaya McCraven or Tortoise, just to name a few. However, Parker has also carved ...
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