Rabshakeh

I like this thread, but I do feel like sometimes it all just trundles along, with the present turning into the forgotten past. Whatever happened between 1979 and 2020 is still a dead zone that no one mentions, whether you follow this thread or not. It is right that there is almost no "jazz/improvised music recorded in the last decades" posted on this board. But it is not like the posters on this thread are excitedly reminiscing about the great records of 1987, 1998 or 2012 or anything. It is all 2021/2022. Next year it will be all 2022/2023. And we won't hear about the 2021/2022 stuff again. Twitter is the same (but lamer): endless excitable blurb for the new releases then you generally never hear about them again. That's a real shame. I think that period from the mid 1990s to around 2018 was a bit of a golden age for modern/avant jazz and improv, as currently practiced, and I really would like to actually see more discussion of it.

Marcin Wasilewski Trio / Joe Lovano – Arctic Riff (ECM, 2020)

Great cover. What's it like?

Sex Mob – Dime Grind Palace (Ropeadope, 2003) Haven't heard much from Steven Bernstein recently. I always liked the feel of records like this and Diaspora Soul. Genuinely sleazy music.

Erik Friedlander – Topaz Siam, 1997) A bit of a nostalgia fest here for me.

Paul Humphrey – Supermellow (Blue Thumb, 1973)

This is great stuff! Thanks.

Same. The mainstream of jazz and improv is more interesting to me now than it was circa 2005.

What was the singer? I'm struggling to find it.

Plus, in films, those sequences in Jail House Rock and Blackboard Jungle. Fossilised music for teachers and grown ups.

Sam Gendel – blueblue (Leaving Records, 2022)

Hannibal – One With The Wind (Muse, 1994)

Same as the above. I'd be very interested to hear. I was getting morose on Twitter the other day about how much less interesting this year's jazz releases seem to me to be, in comparison to around three years ago, but I was schooled by a kindly passing Samaritan (a member of this board) who pointed out a number of great releases that seem to have been missed by the social media clout chasers. I'm still not sure that this year's has been quite at the level of when the International Anthem lot or the various younger Braxton alumni were just coming through, but there's clearly been some good stuff and I would like to hear more. I should add that social media is a great way to find out about new releases, but a lot of it is just clout chasing bores. The quality of recommendations on this thread is generally far higher, despite the propensity for the dreaded box sets!

I'm with you there, then. There's always a risk when your genre starts with the geniuses.

Edit: I just looked it up and it turns out it still exists. It changed its name to "Adult Contemporary", which I think fits what people are saying above. The Wikipedia quotation is: "Over the years, the chart has gone under a series of name changes, being called Easy Listening (1961–1962; 1965–1979), Middle-Road Singles (1962–1964), Pop-Standard Singles (1964–1965), Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks (1979–1982) and Adult Contemporary (1983–present)." Interesting in itself.

Weren't there Easy Listening charts in music publications like Billboard until the 1970s?

JD Allen – Americana (Musings On Jazz And Blues) (Savant, 2016)

I agree with the points on lo fi hip hop. "Beats tapes" to work to, etc. I think that circa 2022 there are some very clear analogies to the old easy listening industry. The so-called 'audio wallpaper' phenomenon of generic music produced to fill algorithmic streaming niches being the best example. But I'm particularly interested in what sparked the 'dying time' in Easy Listening in around 1975-1980. Why did adults suddenly turn off the idea of glossy sophisticated background sounds, and switch to e.g. soft rock and disco, and why did soft rock and disco not 'easify' as earlier youth genres had done? Why did all that happen at precisely the point in which aging demographics and more conservative social and musical trends might have led one to expect more easy listening, rather than less? I think that the first glimmerings of a return of the easy listening 'concept' might have been in the 1990s (alongside the revival in the older stuff) with the emergence of new forms of non-pop music "genres": light vocal jazz, ECM, and the marketing niche of 'world music', all of which were designed to appeal to mature adult audiences looking to show off their sophistication. But for the period 1975-1995, the equivalent demographic seemed to have been instead listening to pop, rock and 'urban contemporary'. I'm not really sure of the definition of MOR, but always saw it as an adjective for boring or mature versions of pop or rock, whereas Easy Listening was sort of its own, omnivorous, genre. You don't tend to see an MOR section at record shops, whereas Easy Listening often did, even in my younger days. So, do you think that the collapse of Easy Listening as a genre reflected the late 1970s oil crisis linked collapse of the record industry? Some of it is very sophisticated! Assuming you're including the likes of Dilla, it is hard to think of a more sophisticated production job!

I'm not sure how any of these could be considered easy listening, unless that term is just being used to mean "uninteresting music", which I don't think easy listening music is, necessarily.

Sakhile – Phambili (The Sun, 1989) Just finished: Elton Dean Quintet – Silent Knowledge (Cuneiform, 1996)

Aubrey Dunham – For Lovers Only Fantastic bit of 1980s smooth jazz from the fiercer edge of the genre, with a hard drum machine snare sound.

I should add that I'm aware of some break out hits that certainly were easy listening, like Norah Jones or 80s rock aimed at an older market, which would have played in similar settings to the old easy listening, but that was really just pop hits targeting a middle of the road older demographic, rather than a massive industry in itself.

I'd be interested in people's views as to why easy listening as a concept seems to have gone away in the 1980s (barring the 1990s 'revival'). 50s - 70s there seems to have been a wide appetite for the stuff. I don't just mean the specific genre Easy Listening ( @Teasing the Korean will no doubt have views) but anything that sounds sophisticated, but sits in the background, whether Henry Mancini, George Shearing, bossa, Yma Sumac, Herb Alpert, whatever Gary McFarland's thing was, Muzak, Beatles with Strings, down on their luck cool jazz guys in the late 60s, Singers Unlimited or whatever. Some of this stuff is really great and a lot isn't, but aside from that, you'd think that the concept of Easy Listening would be as permanent as Pop. The question is spurred by a Christmas period spent listening to either George Shearing or dreary Spotify playlists of music that is clearly made in studios, so-called "audio wallpaper", which is arguably a revival of the old Easy Listening concept.

Les Jazz Modes – Les Jazz Modes (Dawn, 1957)

Peggy Lee / George Shearing – Beauty And The Beat!