Music
11 Canadian crossover bands that are innovating with jazz
by Greg Bouchard
March 11, 2014
Photo: LJones, via Facebook
When did jazz get so uncool? At one time, it was a genre synonymous with rebellion. Now, it has turned into a punchline for jokes about self-indulgent musicians who know too many scales and modes. Jazz trance, anyone? Or perhaps a jazz odyssey? While swing clubs were once the equivalent of warehouse raves, today, jazz is often cloistered inside music conservatories, overpriced nightclubs, and festivals aimed at your parents’ or grandparents’ generation.
At the same time, jazz-influenced DJs and artists seem rarer and rarer. What happened to people like St. Germain and Amon Tobin, who brought jazz improvisation into electronic music? What happened to acid jazz and trip-hop? Sure, they’re all still out there, but we don’t hear about them nearly as much as we did during their heyday in the ’90s.
The artists below are proof that jazz is every bit as innovative and full of crossover potential as ever. They’re not jazz purists, but people who are taking jazz instrumentation and musical structures and mixing them with other genres to produce something entirely new.
Adam Kinner
Photo: Adamkinner.wordpress.com
A solo saxophonist based in Montreal, Adam Kinner plays everything from ambient soundscapes to evocative melodic solos. Though he elicits inevitable comparisons with his Montreal counterpart, the masterful Colin Stetson, Kinner experiments with a wider variety of sounds and draws on dance and poetry for inspiration, in addition to musical influences.
Cyrus
Photo: Soundcloud.com
Jarryd Torff, a.k.a. Cyrus, was trained as a jazz saxophonist and then expanded to production and beat making. The New York-Toronto-Montreal DJ’s Transitions EP contains five perfect moments of downtempo and funk meeting improvisation and lush arranging. Few artists manage to create a perfect marriage between the rigidness of electronic beats with the ever-changing nuance of jazz, but Cyrus has done it.
Flash Palace
Photo: Facebook.com
Vancouver quartet Flash Palace describe their music as “group-mind ambience becoming movements of refraction—youth hypnotized by their machines.” This mentality perfectly explains the genre-bending songs on their two albums, which move freely from IDM to post-rock to jazz within a single phrase. Their Ceiling All LP, released in January of this year, is perhaps the freshest sounding recording of the year so far, constantly propelled forward by Flash’s Palace’s skills and lack of inhibition.
Josh Furey
Photo: Bandcamp.com
Calgary’s Josh Furey cites the RZA and Portishead’s Geoff Barro as two of his biggest influences. This makes perfect sense when listening to the eleven impeccably crafted songs on his new LP, Petals, which combine organic hip-hop beats with warped guitar, upright bass, harp, and anything else he feels like throwing in there. As the co-owner of Nocturne Records, Furey is also as much a tastemaker as musician.
LJones
Photo: Facebook.com
Toronto’s LJones is another producer whose music hearkens back to the early-’90s trip-hop and neo soul movements. Where Josh Furey reaches for every instrument on the shelf, LJones feels most comfortable keeping it to drums and piano with flourishes as needed. He has recently started putting new songs from what might be a forthcoming album on his Soundcloud, following a hiatus after his well-received 2012 LP, Soul Below.
Martin Rodriguez
Photo: Facebook.com
A Montreal guitarist who has worked with jazz/R&B artists like A K U A and She’s Got a Habit, Martin Rodriguez revealed the depth of his own creativity and talent with his solo project, Open La Puerta. He performed the sound collage-meets-composition live only once, so we’re still living off of the recordings. Incorporating everything from guitars and drums to handmade electronic instruments and samples, Open La Puerta is as bold as it it is enjoyable.
Not the Wind, Not the Flag
Photo: Exclaim.ca
Not the Wind, Not the Flag’s Brandon Valdivia and Colin Fisher play a rare assortment of instruments, like the oud and gaiti, in addition to the more standard flutes, guitar, saxophone, and mixed percussion. As one should expect, they squeeze a wide variety of sounds out of the mix—2011’s Esoteric Cycle had a series of short, explosive vignettes, while their recent “Conceal” sounds like the 20-minute Jimi Hendirx/Miles Davis collaboration that never happened. Always innovative and energetic, the duo are one of the best things happening in Toronto’s free jazz scene.
Parc X Trio (and Orbit)
Photo: Facebook.com
Anyone who pays attention to Montreal’s jazz, improv, and avant-garde scenes has known the Parc X Trio for a while—and for good reason. The trio of Gabriel Vinuela-Pelletier (piano), Alex Lefaivre (bass), and Alain Bourgeois (drums) have been playing around the city for a while, giving equal attention to loft and underground art gallery shows as to the more traditional jazz clubs and festivals. In recent years they’ve expanded to writing with electronic textures, as on their 2012 album, 3, and their synthed-out side project, Orbit.
Saxsyndrum
Photo: Facebook.com
To say the Montreal-based duo of David Switchenko and Nick Schofield respetively play saxophone and drums is like saying Kanye West talks into a microphone. Saxsyndrum use enough effects, samplers, and other electronics to launch a spaceship, but do so with a punk rock intensity that keeps the music visceral and immediate. Their forthcoming Future Circus remix album features just about everyone in the Montreal music scene.
Taiwan
Photo: Facebook.com
The Edmonton trio of Phil Dickau (synths, compositions), Dave Ferris (drums), and Julee Cruise (vocals) play dark cinematic songs that belong on a Twin Peaks VHS tape collection. Just like Destroyer showed on Kaputt, Taiwan are further proof that the easily-dismissed genres of adult contemporary and smooth jazz can be a vessel for eerily slick, grown-up themes.
THOMAS
Photo: Facebook.com
An ever-changing collection of musicians centred around composer/singer/guitarist Thomas Gill, THOMAS have been on the Toronto scene for a while, producing their unique brand of funky, occasionally quirky, and damn catchy music. Their latest single, “Kissing,” show them entering Prince territory, with breathy falsetto and a groove the size of the Grand Canyon.
Tags: Music, Cancon, News, Adam Kinner, canrock, Josh Furey, Taiwan
