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Daily articles carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. Read our popular and future articles.
Throttle Elevator Music: Final Floor
by Chris M. Slawecki
Final Floor marks the last stop of a band that one might say never really was. Throttle Elevator Music was the name given to a jazz-punk studio cooperative project organized and operating from 2011 through 2017 around saxophonist Kamasi Washington, drummer Mike Hughes (aka “Lumpy") and composer and guitarist Gregory Howe. Howe also founded and serves as producer and engineer for Wide Hive Records, the label that recorded and distributed their music. He notes on the back jacket ...
read moreThrottle Elevator Music: Emergency Exit
by Karl Ackermann
The sub-genre of “punk jazz" has existed—on paper— since the 1970s when Patti Smith proposed a collaboration with Ornette Coleman. That partnership did not materialize. When all the moving pieces are pulled together there is little substance to suggest that the category ever shared specific practices or conventions. Then, in 2012, Throttle Elevator Music emerged with their self-titled debut (Wide Hive Records). The original group was a trio posing as a quintet. Drums and guitars were manned by Mike “Lumpy" ...
read moreThrottle Elevator Music: Retrorespective
by Phillip Woolever
Besides being a well-played selection of powerful music, this is an exciting, top-tier timepiece offering insight on the development of star saxophonist and composer Kamasi Washington a few years before he exploded onto the musical landscape. This release is not actually the most recently recorded work by the project's initial group, who played together most extensively around 2011-12. Washington's rise was no fluke, as this effort proves again and again. He developed chops in some fine ...
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