davidsrsb
pfm Member
A band whose live album was notoriously reworked in the studio
A bit about AI and the future of music, and that devilish Auto-Tune
- Thread starter tuga
- Start date
I saw this week that the SZA album you tried upthread a year ago has a Grammy Album of the Year nomination, and is Pitchfork’s Album of the Year, Rolling Stone’s Album of the Year, reh teh teh…
No AutoTune, no problem. x
paulfromcamden
Baffled
Down with all this studio trickery by talentless wasters relying on new-fangled fancy gimmicks.
I'm off to listen to Sgt Peppers.
I'm off to listen to Sgt Peppers.
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Tony L
Administrator
Again he’s looking at it through such a tightly-focused dad-rock perspective. The interesting stuff at that time was techno, electronica, rap, post-rock, acid jazz etc. Even the more interesting aspects of shoegaze were on the wane by then (though we still had to suffer through a lot of Brit-Pop). He’s a great interviewer and technical music teacher, but a very bad music historian IMHO.
Quite. I haven’t opened Beato’s above links and rarely see anything from the muso dinosaur, so perhaps I’ve missed his What Makes This Song Great?* for ‘Revolution 9’.
(*Erm, I liked the one he did on Tears For Fears’ ‘Head Over Heels’.)
Tony L
Administrator
I like his deep-dives, e.g. the one on Joni Mitchell was superb. He’s a great interviewer too, one of the best IMO. Get him with someone like Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny or Andy Summers and he gets so much more of interest from them than just about anyone else I can think of. He puts all ego away, gently steers to topics of interest and gives them all the space needed. It’s just his ‘angry rock dad clickbait’ I avoid.
tuga
Legal Alien
Could you give a couple of examples of acid jazz worth investigating?
(can't digest anything electronica/dance/techno/rap or pop)
Tony L
Administrator
It’s a pretty vague term, aside from the Acid Jazz record label, but I guess the main names are Brand New Heavies, James Taylor Quartet, and maybe the likes of Jamiroqui and Blue Note’s Us3. To my mind the more interesting thing about it is where it led, which is to everything that has been happening in London over the past decade. One could argue Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia, Ezra Collective, The Comet Is Coming, Arlo Parks, Alfa Mist, Kokoroko, Str4ta etc are all its decedents at least to some degree, but jazz has always been a vast melting pot so influences are spread far-wider than that. To put it another way I’d describe Acid Jazz as what sat in UK jazz between say Courtney Pine and where we are (in London at least) now. You can throw a bit of ‘70s CTI and soul-jazz in the DNA too.
PS You need to give electronica/techno another go! Is there any electronic music you like, e.g. Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, JMJ, OMD etc? If so linking from there to now is pretty easy via Ulrich Schnauss, Plaid, Boards Of Canada, Squarepusher, Floating Points, Pye Corner Audio etc. There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t banging 909 or face-melting acid, not that that is bad in any way.
I like the funky beats, I like the good herb
Most likely in a blunt, as I roll it real steady
Then I get mentally ready
To play a track from the Heavies and mellow out…
You won’t like that album, but I think it’s the only one on Acid Jazz I still play. The bass sounds particularly awesome.
Perhaps try Young Disciples’ Road To Freedom (on Talkin’ Loud) and Brand New Heavies’ self-titled debut (on Acid Jazz, though not like the above), as they were perhaps the most popular breakthrough records, for good reason.
I don’t think much of that sound has aged very well though. Bands like Corduroy were fun but sounded kitsch even then, while the likes of Galliano were a little over-earnest; and then there’s Jam*******, with one great song on Acid Jazz, before printing money with $ony.
tuga
Legal Alien
I hate the sound of electronic music/samplers/instruments, just can't help it.
Even though I love Radiohead I struggle with Kid A or Hail to the Thief... Will check those you've mentioned.
paulfromcamden
Baffled
I was just a couple of years too young for Acid Jazz so I've only really encountered it retrospectively and I'd agree that some of it hasn't aged well. I'd put it alongside great swathes of nu jazz, broken beat, etc that sounds of it's time but not always in a good way.
It always struck me as a scene that was as much about clubbing (Dingwalls, jazz dance) and mod culture and fashion as much as 'jazz'. Flicking through old copies of Straight No Chaser is a good way to get a feel for it.
I'm not sure I'd really draw a line from Acid Jazz to the current London jazz scene though Giles Peterson was instrumental in both and I guess you can see a similar melding of Jamaican and British Black musics in both.
Tony L
Administrator
You are probably right. I can still see elements of it in the London scene, but everything is in there which is what makes it so good. It mashes up all jazz and club genres into something new. I also agree that Acid Jazz hasn’t aged too well, and I hope the current scene survives better. My suspicion is it will do as the way it is mashing stuff up seems pretty timeless to me.
PS The way music ages is fascinating. In most cases anything good goes from cool, to cringe, to forgotten, to rediscovered, and finally to timeless/classic. I’m old enough to have seen that trajectory a few times now. We are at the point where even naff ‘80s DX7 and D50 presets, Linn Drums etc no longer sound cringe! I suspect the full cycle is typically about 35-40 years. Obviously a lot of bad stuff just gets forgotten for good reason.
paulfromcamden
Baffled
With a Shed Seven album currently at number one I think you might be onto something there : )
Yeah, you could be right there. I was thinking earlier about when it all was… around the time of my clubbing daze in Liverpool, before and after Cream started, which was also when I started getting into hip hop.
Thanks to the above, I never looked like an acid jazz funkateer, and it always seemed like a remote London thing. Though I bought a fair few records (way more BNH, Corduroy, Mother Earth, and so on than anyone needs, lol), I lost most soon afterwards and have never felt like replacing them.
tuga
Legal Alien
Yep, definitely not my thing.
Tony L
Administrator
Definitely agree Acid Jazz was a club thing, in fact I really struggled to think of band names as my memories are manly of nights at Liverpool’s Heebie Jeebies (or whatever it was called before that) and Centre Point in That London back in the ‘90s. In hindsight it was probably more ‘rare groove’ crate-digging stuff than actual Acid Jazz, I just liked it and had no idea what it was!
I thought of Heebies whilst writing my last post, and sometimes used to go with my gf on school nights. I particularly remember Justin Robertson one time playing mostly what was about to be known as progressive house. Small crowd, puzzled, not into it all!
Tony L
Administrator
I remember it as mostly a chilled out place to go and sit at a table with your friends with some great music served up by DJs at very moderate levels. I liked it, certainly not a club in the full-on in your face Voodoo or Cream sense, though I liked those too.