Home » Jazz Articles » Album Review » DJ Spooky: Optometry

166

DJ Spooky: Optometry

By

View read count
DJ Spooky: Optometry
Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series surges onward in a futuristic mode with this latest installment, featuring turntable guru DJ Spooky’s melding of EFX, rap, funk, free jazz and more. Drummer Billy Martin of Medeski, Martin & Wood notoriety chips in, along with an artist known as “Priest” and a conglomerate of New York City based modern jazz heroes.

We get to hear the great improvising saxophonist Joe McPhee blowing soulful lines atop pulsating rhythms and pianist Matthew Shipp’s three-chord melody on “Ibid, desmarches, ibid.” Essentially, this outing is awash with funkified backbeats, bottom heavy rhythmic sequences, trip- hop patterns, and free-jazz gyrations. The DJ provides emphasis and background treatments throughout, while utilizing his laptop, turntable and acoustic bass. Bassist William Parker injects his signature style via booming ostinatos, while the band melds a complex outlook with densely populated frameworks.

This release also includes some off-color rap that hearkens notions of a dysfunctional urban society. However, Shipp serves as the catalyst as he provides a plethora of memorably melodic motifs and jazzy right hand leads, while violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain incorporates a few sultry themes into the mix. The bottom line is that DJ Spooky and company take late '90s stylizations into the new millennium with a novel approach. Besides all of the fanfare and technicalities, this outing is an absolute blast and signifies one of the more successful excursions for this generally exciting label. Recommended....

Visit Thirsty Ear on the web.

Track Listing

Ibid, Desmarches, Ibid; Reactive Switching Strategies For The Control Of Uninhibited Air; Variation Cybermatique Pataphysic (Part I); Asphalt (Tome II); Optometry; Sequentia Absentia (Dialectical Triangulation I); Rosemary; Dementia Absentia (Dialectical Triangulation II); Parachutes; Absentia Absentia (Dialectical Triangulation III); Variation Cybernetique: Rhythmic Pataphysic (Part I); Periphique; It

Personnel

DJ Spooky
turntable

DJ Spooky

Album information

Title: Optometry | Year Released: 2002 | Record Label: Thirsty Ear Recordings

Tags

Comments


PREVIOUS / NEXT



DJ Spooky Concerts


Support All About Jazz

Get the Jazz Near You newsletter All About Jazz has been a pillar of jazz since 1995, championing it as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who make it. Our enduring commitment has made "AAJ" one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of fans, musicians and industry figures every month.

Go Ad Free!

To maintain our platform while developing new means to foster jazz discovery and connectivity, we need your help. You can become a sustaining member for as little as $20 and in return, we'll immediately hide those pesky ads plus provide access to future articles for a full year. This winning combination vastly improves your AAJ experience and allow us to vigorously build on the pioneering work we first started in 1995. So enjoy an ad-free AAJ experience and help us remain a positive beacon for jazz by making a donation today.

More

Eternal Moments
Yoko Yates
From "The Hellhole"
Marshall Crenshaw
Tramonto
John Taylor

Popular

Old Home/New Home
The Brian Martin Big Band
My Ideal
Sam Dillon
Ecliptic
Shifa شفاء - Rachel Musson, Pat Thomas, Mark Sanders
Lado B Brazilian Project 2
Catina DeLuna & Otmaro Ruíz

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.

Install All About Jazz

iOS Instructions:

To install this app, follow these steps:

All About Jazz would like to send you notifications

Notifications include timely alerts to content of interest, such as articles, reviews, new features, and more. These can be configured in Settings.