Jazz Articles
Our daily articles are carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page. Read our daily album reviews.
Sign in to customize your My Articles page —or— Filter Article Results
Praxis: Tennessee 2004
by Chris M. Slawecki
Praxis is the operative name of an experimental jazz/rock/funk/dub quartet led by bassist Bill Laswell with drummer Brain (Les Claypool's Primus), guitarist Buckethead and keyboardist Bernie Worrell (wizard of synthesized funk for P-Funk, Talking Head, etc...). They first came to Frankenstein-like life in 1993: because like that mad doctor, Laswell stitched Praxis together from disparate parts of the contemporary music corpse and then animated it into a sometimes powerful, and sometimes hideous, life-form.
In 2004, Praxis hit the ...
read moreJames Chance & the Contortions: Soul Exorcism (Redux)
by Chris M. Slawecki
Soul Exorcism (Redux) is just as much a document of a space and time as it is the triumphant reissue of the legendary live album by James Chance & the Contortions.
Chance & the Contortions (and his alter-ego-band, James White & the Blacks) were focused on probing the outer reaches of the late 1970's black and white musical fringes--Miles Davis' fractious funk-jazz experiments from one side, and obnoxiously loud and aggressive punk rock from the other--and with much ...
read moreBill Laswell: Version 2 Version: A Dub Transmission
by John Kelman
Sometimes music is meant to engage the mind; other times it is meant purely to involve the body. Some would argue that the best music does both, and there may be some truth to that belief, but the reality is that there is room for both as distinct and separate entities. While much of Bill Laswell's work over the past thirty years has been of a more physical nature, there's no denying that a lot of thought and effort goes ...
read moreDub Trio: Exploring the Dangers Of
by Chris M. Slawecki
Dub is minimalist by definition: Reggae music deconstructed then rebuilt in deep echo and reverb (and, one suspects, plenty of thick, gummy smoke) to emphasize the hypnotic power of its repeating, resounding bass and drum.
Dub is almost always a creature of the studio by definition too. But Exploring the Dangers Of dub is played and recorded in mostly real-time by DP Holmes (guitar/keyboards/dubs), Stu Brooks (bass/keyboards/dubs), and Joe Tomino (drums/percussion/melodica/dubs) with minimal overdubs (mostly melodica, for the ...
read moreBill Laswell: Version 2 Version: A Dub Transmission
by Chris M. Slawecki
Bassist, composer, and producer Laswell here reconvenes with several co-conspirators from previous dub and other world-beat projects: Keyboardist Bernie Worrell, drummer/percussionist Abdou Mboup, percussionist Karsh Kale (who served with Laswell in Tabla Beat Science and in the rhythm section for Herbie Hancock's acclaimed Future 2 Future set), and bassist Jah Wobble.
I get Laswell's dub, or at least I think I do. It's Miles Dewey Davis dub: No musical instrument, rhythm, style, or sound is out of bounds ...
read more