Rabshakeh

Henriksen is actually one of the names I've been enjoying the most on my icy Nordic deep dives.

I'm incredibly jealous of this one.

Is this Americans in Italy or all American jazz? If the latter that's a huge task!

That's a great record. I didn't know they'd changed the name. Why do they do that? As if his discography wasn't already complicated enough.

Nonlocal Forecast – Holographic Universe(s?)! Quite a nice record this one. A reimagining of 1980s new age Californian fusion for the laptop era.

I was in that crowd too. Big teenaged Zappa fan so Eric Dolphy was always a subject of interest.

That's a good comparison that I had never thought of. The idea of labelling Braxton and CT as "European" is absurd. But that was a successful hit in those days.

That was what I was going for with my "anxiety over US influence" comment. But query why it is that whispery rhythm-less expansiveness is the sign of jazz continentalism. There are plenty of other more obvious European signifiers that they could have picked up on for European jazz: waltz time, brass band traditions and the European classical avantgarde might all have been more obvious contenders. The Nordic folk roots of Scandi jazz get talked up a lot but they can be hard to discern in the 1990s/2000s ECM era stuff. I am always a little unsure about Johansson's actual musical influence on "European" jazz. He is talismanic, and he clearly led the way with the idea that jazz could and should have its own Nordic tradition (similar to Under Milk Wood for Brits), but I don't hear that much resemblance between Johansson and e.g. Tord G. I hear a likelier line of musical influence on the ECM stuff from Giuffre's experiments in removal of rhythm (particularly those European tour records), and Miles Davis' turn towards expansiveness. But fundamentally I think that Jan Garbarek was a just a big seller and, having had a hit, ECM started pumping out product in the same vein, like a more extreme version of every post-Sidewinder Blue Note record having to have at least two boogaloo tracks. Query whether it is right to even talk about a monolithic European jazz tradition. The legendary European records from the 60s and 70s draw on In A Silent Way, Gil Evans, Don Cherry, Stockhausen, dada, Motorik and Mothers of Invention. They're many things but they not whispery and rhythm-agnostic.

I'm reasonably interested in the idea of those festivals. I understand that they went on for decades, with an ecosystem of fan favourite amateur bands, each inhabiting fiercely exclusionary sub-genres, that turned up to them every time, selling records that in some cases were greatly influential on other amateur bands in their particular micro-niches, until with the turn of the decades, they gradually died off. There's a 'great' series of articles about the scene by a writer called Tex Wyndham which are republished at the moment in the Syncopated Times: https://syncopatedtimes.com/tex-wyndham-texas-shout/ The articles are that kind of self-critical but still can't even identify the wood for the trees production that only a deep insider could produce.

Have you ever seen Imagine The Sound? There is a long interview with a ropey looking Bley, who goes on at length about the effect of the Taylor / Murrey band on the idea of rhythm in jazz, as a whole. He thinks it rendered piano or guitar into mixed rhythm / melody roles but drummers into a support harmony role. That's an idea that I have heard before in respect of Taylor's own music, but Bley's idea seemed to be that this process was irreversible and applied to jazz generally. It isn't a great interview, because Bley looks like he's about to burst into tears the whole time. Anyway, I can see the influence from that to the whispery Nordic stuff. It is one influence among many but sure it is a strong part of the mix. Giuffre's 1960s records, new age, anxiety over US influence and Davis' Second Quartet are all obviously in the mix there too.

Herb Geller - An American In Hamburg / The View From Here

Richie Kotzen / Greg Howe – Tilt

Joao Paulo, Paulo Curado and Bruno Pedroso - As Sete Ilhas De Lisboa

Kim Pensyl – Pensyl Sketches #1

Is this Branford Marsalis doing Keith Jarrett?

The hurdy was indeed gurdy. Autocorrect hates folk music. Although fom the context I accept it could have gone either way.

For the past couple of months I have been occasionally joking about the likelihood of Gen Z having a classic jazz revival, following on from the Sea Shanty revival of the pandemic. Well, the joke is on me, because it looks like it was already happening. There is a new club that has opened up behind Kings Cross in London (or moved recently), which specialises in trad jazz and folk nights, and is achieving a measure of success with young people. https://www.jamboreevenue.co.uk/upcoming-events/ Pretty mixed stuff that appeals to Tiktok minded Gen Zers: ceilidh, klezmer and cabaret, but the mainstay appears to be traditional jazz. As jokingly predicted, it all comes wrapped in social media inclusivity-type language that could have been dreamt up by the Babylon Bee or Guido Fawkes blog. The acts look very pastichey, but that's the nature of the TikTok era. And perhaps the original trad jazz revival could be labelled pastichey too. Clearly this sort of stuff is getting bums on seats. My wife accidentally wandered in there last night and witnessed an Irish folk performance (featuring a hurdy furry) with dancing, that she said was pretty abject, but she was impressed at the number of young people in there.

Ethan Iverson, who has an on/off worth reading substack, has done an article with some excerpts from old Downbeat Blindfold Tests. You can find it here if you want it: https://open.substack.com/pub/iverson/p/tt-507-blindfold-tests?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=az9yj Fun stuff. It is amazing how free people were with their opinions in those days. Jazz was a small world then as now and it must have been strange to come out with such aggressive opinions and then have to share a stage with the subject a few days later.

None of these people are a 1/4 as popular as The Roots though.

Colin Wilkie, Shirley Hart, Albert Mangelsdorff, Joki Freund – Wild Goose What a bizarre record. A British folk singing duo and then the cream of German free jazz. It is like a non-parody version of that record Vic Reeves did with Evan Parker.

Mogadon-Bop Edit: Sorry, 'Spiritual Mogadon-Bop'. We want this thing to sell.

This is going to be massive in certain areas of the internet. I can see the RYM lists of micro-sub-genres already.

Nice big boombap sound, please. Give Tord what he needs.

Worth remembering that The Roots are at least adjacent to jazz. Certainly jazzy enough: competent fusion musicians (including ones who dabble in credible fusion side projects: note The Philadelphia Experiment lower down the list) playing behind rappers. Questlove is as close to being a jazz celebrity as anyone in 2025.

Are you serious?! I clicked on this thinking it would be so much worse. There's tones of stuff on here that is unquestionably jazz. A mix of older statesmen/women, younger musicians and some more adventurous stuff. It seems unobjectionable. You should see what Montreux has on.