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Reflecting on Your 2021 Jazz Year: New-to-You Favorites


HutchFan

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Some other notes on albums from that Jazz Times list (big thanks @HutchFanfor posting it):

Amir ElSaffar Rivers of Sound - The Other Shore is very enjoyable. The rhythm section is based in what I would describe as North African influence (if I'm wrong on that, please LMK) while the horns seem anchored in the jazz idiom tradition but they're woven together near seamlessly. That separates it from that Ches Smith album, which I found way more Haitian drumming dominant (not much of a bad thing, but doesn't seem to belong on a jazz list...)

I didn't feel smart enough to enjoy the Anna Webber album. Maybe I'll read a book and try again later.

The Metheny Side Eye album is damn good. Lodger is a hard blues track where Pat makes it sound effortless.  

And James Francies, a sideman on that Metheny album, put out his own Purest Form. To me it's derivative of prior Chick Corea work and/or other 70s fusion. I'll listen again because there's a lot going on there but initial reaction wasn't too good. 

Really dug the Irreversible Entanglements album. There's poetry/rapping over the tracks but it really worked. That's in contrast to the Jamire Williams album which was more hip-hop than jazz. Nothing wrong with that, but again - why on a best-of jazz list? 

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1 hour ago, Dub Modal said:

Some other notes on albums from that Jazz Times list (big thanks @HutchFanfor posting it):

Amir ElSaffar Rivers of Sound - The Other Shore is very enjoyable. The rhythm section is based in what I would describe as North African influence (if I'm wrong on that, please LMK) while the horns seem anchored in the jazz idiom tradition but they're woven together near seamlessly. That separates it from that Ches Smith album, which I found way more Haitian drumming dominant (not much of a bad thing, but doesn't seem to belong on a jazz list...)

I didn't feel smart enough to enjoy the Anna Webber album. Maybe I'll read a book and try again later.

The Metheny Side Eye album is damn good. Lodger is a hard blues track where Pat makes it sound effortless.  

And James Francies, a sideman on that Metheny album, put out his own Purest Form. To me it's derivative of prior Chick Corea work and/or other 70s fusion. I'll listen again because there's a lot going on there but initial reaction wasn't too good. 

Really dug the Irreversible Entanglements album. There's poetry/rapping over the tracks but it really worked. That's in contrast to the Jamire Williams album which was more hip-hop than jazz. Nothing wrong with that, but again - why on a best-of jazz list? 

I like that Jamie Williams album, it intrigues me. Agree it's got nothing to do with Jazz.

Irreversible Entanglements is great and the Ches Smith is good too.

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Mark Stryker (of this parish) made an interesting point a few days ago on twitter about how jazz critics polls in the last few years seem to be increasingly skewing away from inside / straight ahead / mainstream jazz and towards more 'outside' stuff, when compared to the strikingly mixed / miscellaneous choices in the 1980s. I think it is a point that is particularly noticeable this year. Even the Jazz Times poll set out above skews heavily avant (albeit a sort of mainstream-ised version of it). Of the top ten, eight fall into the avant garde bracket. 

I'd be interested to see how it compares with the readers' poll, when it comes out.

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12 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Mark Stryker (of this parish) made an interesting point a few days ago on twitter about how jazz critics polls in the last few years seem to be increasingly skewing away from inside / straight ahead / mainstream jazz and towards more 'outside' stuff, when compared to the strikingly mixed / miscellaneous choices in the 1980s. I think it is a point that is particularly noticeable this year. Even the Jazz Times poll set out above skews heavily avant (albeit a sort of mainstream-ised version of it). Of the top ten, eight fall into the avant garde bracket. 

I'd be interested to see how it compares with the readers' poll, when it comes out.

Maybe it's my imagination, but critics polls used to skew, not necessarily "out", but more towards the "forward" than started happening. The assumption was that they got to hear more music than the average listener because they had access to more music than did the average listener. In the days of analog product/distiribution, that was no doubt a safe assumption.

And then, the 80s happened...and that started to include not just a musical reactionary element, but also digital product/distribution, and now people hear what they want to hear, including critics. If you ain't hearing something, the odds are very low that it's because you can't get to it.

I used to think that critics were by nature a curious lot, which explained their generally more "forward" choices, but to be honest, today, I don't know. Or care, really. When I read a review that's 90% adjectives and 10% historical name-dropping....of course I exaggerate, but only in degree. Different experiences, I guess. At least they're trying to live in a form of today, maybe?

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2 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Maybe it's my imagination, but critics polls used to skew, not necessarily "out", but more towards the "forward" than started happening. The assumption was that they got to hear more music than the average listener because they had access to more music than did the average listener. In the days of analog product/distiribution, that was no doubt a safe assumption.

And then, the 80s happened...and that started to include not just a musical reactionary element, but also digital product/distribution, and now people hear what they want to hear, including critics. If you ain't hearing something, the odds are very low that it's because you can't get to it.

I used to think that critics were by nature a curious lot, which explained their generally more "forward" choices, but to be honest, today, I don't know. Or care, really. When I read a review that's 90% adjectives and 10% historical name-dropping....of course I exaggerate, but only in degree. Different experiences, I guess. At least they're trying to live in a form of today, maybe?

I personally tend to like the perceived "forward" choices more. There was a point in the mid 00s when publications like Jazz Times seemed to be skewing in the opposite direction. I don't really think there is anything wrong with a skew either way, unless you get to the point where the critics are talking about one thing and the listeners are paying no attention, which is a risk, particularly with a skew towards the avant.

I doubt it's curiousity or being better versed in the music, at least not in the current publishing world, where content creation and matching your competitor is the name of the game if you want that sad minimum number of clicks. If it was, one would expect to see a diverse range of records in the different polls. In fact they have been quite similar across all publications I have seen this year.

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11 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

There was a point in the mid 00s when publications like Jazz Times seemed to be skewing in the opposite direction.

I have never like Jazz Times, not from Day One. I know they've hung in there, but....too glossy, in both appearance and content, for my taste.

I used to enjoy the Cadence Critics Polls, talk about a diverse lot!!!

As for today's polls, I wonder how much industry lobbying is going on. With the more or less infinitesimally small market share that's at stake, I could see that going either way, maybe even by the musicians themselves, or their publicists. Desperate times call for desperate measures, lol.

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On 1/10/2022 at 10:38 AM, JSngry said:

I have never like Jazz Times, not from Day One. I know they've hung in there, but....too glossy, in both appearance and content, for my taste.

Need to correct the record here, cranial flatulence.

It is Jazziz that I never liked from Day One, not Jazz Times.

I actually used to like Jazz Times in its earlier iterations. But as the OG writers dies off and/or moved on, their replacements seemed to increasingly make an inoffensively neutral blandness their ultimate goal, and at some point (10-15 years ago?) they achieved total success.

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On 10/01/2022 at 4:38 PM, JSngry said:

I have never like Jazz Times, not from Day One. I know they've hung in there, but....too glossy, in both appearance and content, for my taste.

I used to enjoy the Cadence Critics Polls, talk about a diverse lot!!!

As for today's polls, I wonder how much industry lobbying is going on. With the more or less infinitesimally small market share that's at stake, I could see that going either way, maybe even by the musicians themselves, or their publicists. Desperate times call for desperate measures, lol.

Could be. I think a lot is just down to the need for constant content, informed / personal or otherwise, combined with the consensus-generating force of social media, within a relatively small market.

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Any for-profit magazine (hard or virtual) is living on ad revenue. I've heard of publications "encouraging" artists/labels to buy ad space in return for favorable articles/reviews. When that's your model, it can easily turn the other way, that the publication sets a tone of "politeness" of their reviews so as not to disrupt ad sales.

It's all part of the game, but it's also one reason I don't flock to buy the magazine these days. There's people on this board and elsewhere that I trust to shine the light on good stuff, as well as to be objective about it.

and they don't take up any space on my closet, just on my screen! :g

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14 hours ago, JSngry said:

But as the OG writers dies off and/or moved on, their replacements seemed to increasingly make an inoffensively neutral blandness their ultimate goal,

Ha, this reminds me of the complete opposite of sports writing these days. Take a mainstream national pub like USA Today - some good writers have come and gone out of that outfit. Scoff all you like (I mean, it's USA Today, I get it), but they could write some great profiles of athletes here and there. Now - for the most part - it's like they strive to offend not only the reader, but the athlete as well. There's got to be a happy medium somewhere... 

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3 minutes ago, Dub Modal said:

...it's like they strive to offend not only the reader, but the athlete as well. There's got to be a happy medium somewhere... 

We're living in an age of hyper-aggression. I think it's just an inevitable result of Earth having reached critical mass in terms of population and the planet's ability to hold all these people and give them all what they want, so everybody turns into self-contained gladiators hell-bent on being the "last one standing", and THAT'S become the sport today.

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