I don’t find fred p’s tracks to be particularly jazz-infused in the sense that kirk degiorgio’s are, even though his project is called ‘black jazz consortium’

i don’t even care about his name or anything – his music is intimate, and his mood is own.

this isn’t about the mood of jazz, or miles davis or anyone, it’s about the mood of fred peterkin.

and my pick from this is new horizon, with watching you vogue in second. i think those are the two with the most longevity anyways.

Couldn’t agree with you more, and my comments above aren’t meant to reduce music to any one variable. Chops aren’t necessary to make good music. Rock proved that. You can suck at playing a guitar, but you can be a great band. I did bring this up before, the phish vs. can thing. Both bands evoke a mood influenced by, if not specifically referencing, jazz, both are technically proficient, but only one band (in my opinion at least) wrote good songs. My point is that you can love jazz to death too, but because you’re technically not up to snuff, you’re limited in your ability to play, therefore to create, therefore to communicate. How many postpunk bands lived the culture, but because they sucked at playing instruments, were in the end shitty? It goes both ways. I don’t exclusively believe in or the other. And would you really argue that chops are completely unrelated, because isn’t this the whole problem with music-making means (aka ableton) becoming democratized/ubiquitous/blah blah blah? Anyone has a means now, but isn’t one thing, amongst so many, that separates the wheat from the chaff skill/technique/mastery of these live instruments/drum machines/recording instruments/MAXmsp/studio/etc.? Trust me dude, I’m not someone who believes producers aren’t real musicians because they don’t play “real” instruments.

“To compare anyone to Miles Davis in terms of individual brilliance is going to be a losing proposition. even amongst jazz musicians there are very very few who can really fuck with that guy’s output.”

Hey man, agreed. It wasn’t me who compared this record to miles in the first place! But in the spirit of miles, I brought up the chops thing.

“granted, i think this is a really interesting idea in itself, the act of recontextualizing music to give new meaning to existing musical principles, but it’s also really dangerous because it waters down what essentializes jazz in the first place.
eh, this is the same kind of shit people said about fusion, jazz-funk, free jazz, jazzy hiphop, etc. i didn’t buy it then, i don’t buy it now. jazz has a pretty wide range of approaches in terms of composition, but one thing that ties much of it together is the mood it creates. are you really going to harp on Pete Rock for not being a horn player? how is he not a virtuoso of the MPC and SP1200? yet he creates music that has that feeling to it that you find on jazz records. not all jazz is free improvisation: big band, dixieland, jazz-funk, and other forms of jazz all show different methods of achieving that feeling through different types of compositions.”

I think lots of non-jazz music capture the mood of jazz. I never harped on pete rock for anything. I think he’s great. That “droppin science” LP on blue note is like a seal of approval by jazz dudes for outsiders to appropriate the moods of jazz for other purposes. But there are successes, and there are many failures. For me, I can’t call this black jazz consortium record a success. This probably comes down to opinion, but I don’t get excited about this track. I don’t get anything out of it. I did say that the sounds are good, but in the end, the noodling kills it for me. I have little patience for someone noodling on a instrument, unless they’re really killing it or really adding something to a track, and I don’t think fred p is killing it. This is a sparse track, so unless everything is superlative, it’s gonna stand out. it’s not like the noodling of say Circle, who do similar stuff on the keys as fred p here, to add a layer of depth to a song.

“i think that there are pretty obvious restrictions in the structure and use of dance music that limits how stereotypically “jazz” a record can be before it starts to no longer function as a dancefloor record. lots of artists deal with this in different ways, look at Juju & Jordash for one way, Sleep Walker for another, Theo Parrish for another, etc.”

they’re fine examples. I believe constraints are one of the best way to breed creativity. But look at other groups like the ones I mentioned in my first comment. I dunno if you know of them, but if you listen to them, I think you’ll find them interesting. They can groove, and it’s a different groove than from the artists you mention, but I bet an able DJ can mix them into a set, and people would lose their shit. In fact, sometimes I want nothing more than for them to put out a straight up dance 12”.

“how is a mood ever cosmetic? to me, that is the essence of any piece of music; to dismiss it as something so simple is ridiculous. how can you listen to 1000 dance tracks with a 4 on the floor kick drum and similar structures and instruments used in them and not think mood is one of if not the most important part of composition??!?!”

how about shoegaze, since that is very much a mood-based rock sound? How many bands fuzz out their guitars, drop the tempo, blast their amps, etc., that is, they capture the dark/uplifting mood, the timbres (atmosphere), the emotions (feeling), but then mbv/cocteau twins blow them right out of the water? They just can’t match up to them, so I call what they do recreating the mood cosmetically.

maybe we’re thinking of the word mood differently? You call mood captivating, so maybe you’re considering it as the intangible quality of music that makes it great, in which case, yeah, that’s my benchmark for liking one band over another too.

i just don’t think you can sum up the greatness of Miles Davis’ music by attributing it to his “rigor” and “chops”. the fact is, TONS of musicians are insane about their chops and their particular idea of how a song should sound. some of these artists include such classics as Rush, Dream Theatre, Yngwie Malmsteen, etc. now maybe you like that kind of music, but to me it is nonsense noodling. and it certainly is not the only thing that dictates the overall quality of the piece of music. in fact, i would argue that it is almost completely unrelated.

“it seems like you’re dissociating this process (rigor) from the musical document itself and re-associating it as traits of a dj, and claiming that to be the dynamic at play here.”

you act as if there is no rigor involved in creating your own track all by yourself entirely from scratch, writing each melody, each rhythm, every little variation, mixing it down, adding effects to give it sonic depth, etc. there are quite different skills at being a solo instrumentalist and being an electronic producer, but both take great time, energy, and effort. to compare anyone to Miles Davis in terms of individual brilliance is going to be a losing proposition. even amongst jazz musicians there are very very few who can really fuck with that guy’s output.

“granted, i think this is a really interesting idea in itself, the act of recontextualizing music to give new meaning to existing musical principles, but it’s also really dangerous because it waters down what essentializes jazz in the first place.”

eh, this is the same kind of shit people said about fusion, jazz-funk, free jazz, jazzy hiphop, etc. i didn’t buy it then, i don’t buy it now. jazz has a pretty wide range of approaches in terms of composition, but one thing that ties much of it together is the mood it creates. are you really going to harp on Pete Rock for not being a horn player? how is he not a virtuoso of the MPC and SP1200? yet he creates music that has that feeling to it that you find on jazz records. not all jazz is free improvisation: big band, dixieland, jazz-funk, and other forms of jazz all show different methods of achieving that feeling through different types of compositions.

i think that there are pretty obvious restrictions in the structure and use of dance music that limits how stereotypically “jazz” a record can be before it starts to no longer function as a dancefloor record. lots of artists deal with this in different ways, look at Juju & Jordash for one way, Sleep Walker for another, Theo Parrish for another, etc.

“that organ solo, no matter how you cut it, is decidedly average. i think it’s worth considering how much merit we can give to a record on the basis that it evokes a mood. a mood can be replicated cosmetically.”

how is a mood ever cosmetic? to me, that is the essence of any piece of music; to dismiss it as something so simple is ridiculous. how can you listen to 1000 dance tracks with a 4 on the floor kick drum and similar structures and instruments used in them and not think mood is one of if not the most important part of composition??!?!

you can play with any amount of virtuosity (or lack thereof) but if your music doesn’t have something more to it than that, it isn’t going to be shit. i could easily name 500 records made by technically “unskilled” musicians that are obviously better than 500 records made by virtuoso musicians. how do they accomplish this? in any variety of ways, but their music almost always has a captivating mood to it.

i’m not going to comment on peoples’ complaints about Shuja’s descriptors and comparisons, that’s up to him to defend. but i will say that i always worry first about atmosphere/mood/feeling when i listen to music, and that is what i go by when deciding to buy a record or when i decide to play it in a deejay set.

also…

“DJs will find that mixing the standout “Watching You Vogue” is no easy feat; its unpredictable bass drum is guaranteed to throw you off.”

i think we’re being a bit much here.

these ideas i’m bringing up are not too dissimilar from those i read on ISM and B & S. if i’m wrong, lemme know.