Phil James

Phil James: Already Gone

by AAJ Staff
August 1, 2000

The integration of electronics with improvisation has taken a short and rocky course. The occasional use of the sampler is about as electronic as jazz usually gets without turning into cheese. But the full arsenal of turntables, loops and effects is successfully applied on Already Gone. From an electronica point of view, this would probably qualify as a form of “trance." From a jazz point of view, things are more complicated. Sparse improvisation motors forward through a thickly textured electronic ...