It's Time for a Jazz Odyssey - Bandcamp Explorer

  by Mark Rowland

published: 20 / 3 / 2023

intro

Leading recording artists, such as Takuro Okada, have discovered that there are many iterations within the genre of jazz. Mark Rowland looks at some of them in his 'Bandcamp Explorer' column.

Jazz endures, outside of mainstream popular music. It evolves, it absorbs, but at its core, it’s still the same. It’s also going through something of a renaissance of late, in part due to the interesting and innovative works available through Bandcamp. The jazz on Bandcamp ranges from artists that hark back to classic sounds to those fusing it with more modern sensibilities. Andy Hay sits somewhere in the middle, perhaps slightly leaning more towards classic jazz sounds. His double album, ‘Children of the Sun’, is somewhat a tribute to idols such as John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, though Hay is not out to pastiche those artists. Instead, his album is a joyous jaunt around a selection of melodies that have been forged by Hay’s experience in the jazz scene, and he and his band sound like they’re having a blast. Atlanta, Georgia’s The Flashbulb is doing something distinctly different, fusing jazz melodies and rhythms with electronic glitches and ambient synths. It’s more jazz than it is electronic, but the skittering beats on his album ‘Kirilian Tapes v1.0’ give its tracks a propulsiveness and a freshness that could take its appeal beyond jazz fans. It’s jazz with breakdowns, nice. You don’t get more classic than Barcelona’s Sant Andreu Jazz band, harking back to the big band era of the 1930s and 40s. It’s a relaxing listen, and extremely well played, which is all the more shocking when you realise the age of the performers – young people between the ages of 6 and 21 years old, conducted by Joan Chamorro. ‘Joan Chamorro Presentas Big Band’ brings together musicians that worked on a series called Presentas, all supremely talented and brilliant at capturing a bygone mood. Now for some vocal jazz from New York’s José James, the self-proclaimed jazz singer for the hip hop generation. On ‘On & On’, Jones reinterprets songs by nu-soul/R&B icon Erykah Badu, some, such as ‘Didn’t Cha Know’ sticking fairly close to the original, and others taking them further into jazzier territory. This, he says, follows an old jazz tradition of interpreting great standards of the day. As the source material is strong (Badu is one of the greats of contemporary soul), the album already has a head start, but Jones does an excellent job of making them his own, on an album that offers a very accessible entry point for the average listener. Jeanne Lee was a unique performer on the jazz scene, a singer and poet and a fixture of New York’s underground jazz scene of the 1960s and 70s. She took jazz music into some strange places; her albums, such as 1975’s ‘Conspiracy’, are not necessarily ebay listens. That album takes a minimalist approach to jazz; often Lee’s voice is the only thing you hear, sometimes spoken word, sometimes ethereal singing. Her albums were reissued last year and are well worth checking out if you have a tolerance for the experimental. Finally, we have Takuro Okada, a figure on Japan’s indie rock scene, former member of Mori Wa Ikiteiru, and now avant-jazz composer. His latest release, ‘Betsu No Jikan’ is a gentle, ambient affair, taking the elements of jazz and stretching them into languid soundscapes. He opens with a cover of John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’, taking it in a whole new direction. The rest of the album is made up of Okada’s own compositions, which very much set a hazy, melancholic mood – like sadness on a Summer’s day.

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