Best Jazz Albums of 2023 - How many do you know?

[Christian Miller]

Actually, one thing that strikes me is how old fashioned a lot of that stuff sounds. The fact that I can pigeonhole it as '80s downtown shit' may say something. Zorn, Branca, Frith, Reich, Berne etc are names that come to mind. Playing freely improvised electric guitar in an art gallery? How very quaint! My grandad did that (etc).

Been listening to this for instance, released in 1978 by a band that is 2/3rds no longer with us.

You could put music out like that today and Pauln would probably still moan about it being 'modern' haha

So what does 'modern' mean anyway?

Compared to the speed of change 1920-1970 the rate of development in jazz 1970-2023 has been glacial. Probably it's because in order to work out what the hell jazz is these days, we define what it is in exclusion to other genres, so inevitably the stuff that passes the 'jazz test' is very much music that sounds like music, even if that is stylistically what SME were doing in the 60s and early 70s. People transcribe old free records now...

OTOH the stuff I remember seeing in the late 90s was broadly the same sort of stuff that's happening now tbh. I remember catching Page Hamilton playing an improvised set with a jazz trumpeter (don't remember who) and a DJ in London, many other eclectic projects that would be similar to those today. The projects that attract funding and press interest etc have a particular shape.

Or perhaps as other have suggested jazz advanced so far in the 1960s, the only possible further steps was a period of consolidation and common practice.

OTOH rock music is also quite static over the past few decades (with the possible exception of nerd metal.)

The most modern sounding jazz has generally borrowed from popular trends like EDM and hiphop. In this it mirrors the dynamic of jazz rock (perhaps hard bop to an extent too.) Maybe jazz's strength is it can act as a bridging space between the 'popular' and 'serious', the Western and non Western and offer a way of organising music and performance that is very adaptable. After all, jazz has always been fusion, since the early days.

Let go of the 'jazz' label? Derek was very keen to do that. He was quite down on jazz in his book. Miles similarly was keen to get away from the label as fast as possible. But jazz was dying at this point. I don't actually feel that's true today.

(NB my dad jammed with Derek once, which means my dad who doesn't actually play an instrument has a better jazz CV that I do.)

It's interesting to me how much today's musicians instead cling to the jazz label and take umbrage at the suggestion that their non-swing and non-blues based music might not in fact be jazz as if its a value judgment. I think there's safety in calling yourself 'jazz', and a cozy little micro economy and scene if you know it and have you place in it. (I can relate to that, the jazz community is nice.)

It's at times like this I wish I'd read Adorno, but not enough to actually torment myself by reading any of it.

[pauln]

You could put music out like that today and Pauln would probably still moan about it being 'modern' haha

So what does 'modern' mean anyway?

Modern means the recent past, which varies in extent back; history figures modern is from 1500 to WWII, some arts figure modern is from 1900 to mid century. Contemporary is the word for the present. Futuristic is what could describe the future.

Apart from older recordings (which bring music of the past to the present) and time machines (which would bring music from the future, but have not been invented yet) we are in the contemporary world window where new music is influenced by the past... and extrapolated into as if from the future.

Imagine a Gaussian curve with an abscissa of time that centers the maximal ordinate over x=0=present representing the "acceptance" of music from before, about, and ahead of the present. The tails extend only so far behind or ahead before resistance becomes rejection.

I like modern music, dislike contemporary music, and generally just don't recognize future music as music. It's the attempts to play music from the future that are the issue. Very few have managed to play futuristic music that still sounds like music.

[Litterick]

Such predictable reactions.

[mr. beaumont]

Actually, one thing that strikes me is how old fashioned a lot of that stuff sounds. The fact that I can pigeonhole it as '80s downtown shit' may say something. Zorn, Branca, Frith, Reich, Berne etc are names that come to mind. Playing freely improvised electric guitar in an art gallery? How very quaint! My grandad did that (etc).

Been listening to this for instance, released in 1978 by a band that is 2/3rds no longer with us.

You could put music out like that today and Pauln would probably still moan about it being 'modern' haha

So what does 'modern' mean anyway?

Compared to the speed of change 1920-1970 the rate of development in jazz 1970-2023 has been glacial. Probably it's because in order to work out what the hell jazz is these days, we define what it is in exclusion to other genres, so inevitably the stuff that passes the 'jazz test' is very much music that sounds like music, even if that is stylistically what SME were doing in the 60s and early 70s. People transcribe old free records now...

OTOH the stuff I remember seeing in the late 90s was broadly the same sort of stuff that's happening now tbh. I remember catching Page Hamilton playing an improvised set with a jazz trumpeter (don't remember who) and a DJ in London, many other eclectic projects that would be similar to those today. The projects that attract funding and press interest etc have a particular shape.

Or perhaps as other have suggested jazz advanced so far in the 1960s, the only possible further steps was a period of consolidation and common practice.

OTOH rock music is also quite static over the past few decades (with the possible exception of nerd metal.)

The most modern sounding jazz has generally borrowed from popular trends like EDM and hiphop. In this it mirrors the dynamic of jazz rock (perhaps hard bop to an extent too.) Maybe jazz's strength is it can act as a bridging space between the 'popular' and 'serious', the Western and non Western and offer a way of organising music and performance that is very adaptable. After all, jazz has always been fusion, since the early days.

Let go of the 'jazz' label? Derek was very keen to do that. He was quite down on jazz in his book. Miles similarly was keen to get away from the label as fast as possible. But jazz was dying at this point. I don't actually feel that's true today.

(NB my dad jammed with Derek once, which means my dad who doesn't actually play an instrument has a better jazz CV that I do.)

It's interesting to me how much today's musicians instead cling to the jazz label and take umbrage at the suggestion that their non-swing and non-blues based music might not in fact be jazz as if its a value judgment. I think there's safety in calling yourself 'jazz', and a cozy little micro economy and scene if you know it and have you place in it. (I can relate to that, the jazz community is nice.)

It's at times like this I wish I'd read Adorno, but not enough to actually torment myself by reading any of it.

If you listen at .75 speed it sounds like Tim Miller.

[mr. beaumont]

Such predictable reactions.

I like it. Reminds me of Marc Ribot.

[Litterick]

I like it. Reminds me of Marc Ribot.

Ribot described her 2021 New Spells album as “a beautiful, powerful and highly original solo electric guitar record – not just another record but a new sound, a new voice”.

[Average Joe]

Sorry to say I didn't know too many of those. The list is a nice opportunity to listen to something I might otherwise not.

The Mendoza one isn't my thing. I can hear that she's obviously accomplished and a few decades ago I would have like it better. I wished it coalesce a little more.

The Kassa Overall album I liked, but then I loved the hip-hop/jazz mashups of the 90s. In that sense it feels like a throwback, stuff I used to be way into and kind of forgot about. The border (jazz)police can argue whether it's jazz or not, I don't care.

[Alter]

Been listening to this for instance, released in 1978 by a band that is 2/3rds no longer with us.

Holdsworth on acoustic! Killing it as usual..

[Christian Miller]

Modern means the recent past, which varies in extent back; history figures modern is from 1500 to WWII, some arts figure modern is from 1900 to mid century. Contemporary is the word for the present. Futuristic is what could describe the future.

Apart from older recordings (which bring music of the past to the present) and time machines (which would bring music from the future, but have not been invented yet) we are in the contemporary world window where new music is influenced by the past... and extrapolated into as if from the future.

Imagine a Gaussian curve with an abscissa of time that centers the maximal ordinate over x=0=present representing the "acceptance" of music from before, about, and ahead of the present. The tails extend only so far behind or ahead before resistance becomes rejection.

I like modern music, dislike contemporary music, and generally just don't recognize future music as music. It's the attempts to play music from the future that are the issue. Very few have managed to play futuristic music that still sounds like music.

OK I think that's indulging a little to much in metaphysics for my liking. Does the future exist? Wherefore the Arrow of Time? Argghhh. I'm going to ignore all that or I'll go into a spiral haha.

So assuming we aren't using the term Modern to mean everything post Medieval.... The free jazz movement is getting on for 60 years old for example. Modern jazz is 80 years old. They are modern in the sense that George Seurat was modern in the 1960s I suppose. You'd put him in MOMA, but they are hardly cutting edge bearing in mind what artists were doing then.

OTOH tell kids today that Led Zeppelin is modern and they laugh at you. Grandad music. In the electric guitar music world a modern guitar is a Strandberg not a Strat - they aren't thinking about 5 course baroque guitars compared to the Torres design or whatever.

I don't think Ava Mendoza sounds modern in this sense. Actually it's quite easy to pigeonhole - fairly or unfairly - in terms of genre. It is very 'music that sounds like music' because, as Matz points out, it sounds a bit like Marc Ribot.

The shock of the new is real. For example, I remember the first time I heard Bjork's Debut, or Drum and Bass music. It seemed like a bolt from the blue, so weird sounding. The way baby boomers talk about hearing the Beatles for the first time... .

Now I rarely get that feeling. Very occasionally from jazz. It does happen though. Maybe it's more familiarity with music in general.. but I do think the culture is dominated by 'music that sounds like other music' be it Olivia Rodrigo, Matteo Mancuso or the Ava Mendoza (or for that matter my music). It baffles me that people compare Guthrie or Mancuso to Holdsworth for example. I don't mean that in a judgmental way, they play amazing, but no-one played like Allan before he came along.

The same can be said of culture in general. I have my theories as to why.

[Litterick]

Modernism is a movement in the arts that arose in the early years of the twentieth century and dominated western culture until the late 1970s. Modernism includes abstract painting, concrete poetry and jazz. To say something is 'modern' is not to say it is 'recent', 'contemporary' or other temporal designations. A cultural artefact is modern in the sense that it was made under the influence of that movement, that it was of its moment, not nostalgic or retrogressive. The jazz of Wes Montgomery is modern; the jazz of Pasquale Grasso is not.

[tramline]

I listened to about half of this list in the course of the year, but the Kassa Overall record was really something that stuck with me. I've seen him live a couple of times, and while it's definitely fair to connect his thing to that 90s jazz-rap sound, I think his arrangements are so exciting and unexpected that its really not fair label him that way with all of the connotations around looping and 4-bar drum breaks that implies. He's a really exciting drummer, and he's got a great band, particularly Tomoki Sanders on sax who is not to be slept on.

The KEXP session he did a little while ago really captures the vibe:

[TAA]

It's been awhile since I paid attention to the Grammey's. Looking through the 2024 nominees list there is not a jazz category.

Wes Montgomery's Going Out of My Head won the 1967 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Intrumental Album, Individual or Group.

There were other years after that where jazz was recognized. But then I drifted away.....

But what the heck, we now have several nominations for Taylor Swift!

Tom

[ARGewirtz]

[QUOTE=TAA;1313860]It's been awhile since I paid attention to the Grammey's. Looking through the 2024 nominees list there is not a jazz category.

It's not that there is no jazz category for the Grammys; actually there are quite a few, which I've listed below. Unfortunately, they don't make it to prime time so they're not listed on the lineup for the Grammy show:

-Best Jazz Performance
-Best Jazz Vocal Album
-Best Jazz Instrumental Album
-Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album
-Best Latin Jazz Album
-Best Alternative Jazz Album

[TAA]

An old goal of mine.....always learn something new every day.

Thanks AR!

Tom

[BWV]

Think this is the only 2023 release in my listening rotation.

this, from 2022, has been the only thing in recent years that sounded really new and fresh to me (even though it has its roots in 70s fusion)

[RLetson]

The Orcutt Quartet material reminded me immediately of some of the electronic music I listened to in the late '60s/early 70s, which in turn seemed to echo a lot of modernist material from the first half of the 20th. Kassa Overdrive also reminds me of some of the modernist music I listened to at that time--the singspiel (or is it sprechstimme?) of Schoenberg's "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" keeps coming to mind. Actually, I think it's the hip-hop angle that triggers the Schoenberg memory. But I doubt that I would listen to Kassa Overdrive often enough for it to lodge in my memory the way the Schoenberg has been for the last fifty-odd years.

I suspect I have become a kind of moldy fig*, since most of what's seen as cutting edge or really-new strikes me as a less-interesting version of something I sampled decades ago. I'm particularly uninterested in the kind of deliberately-noisy/annoying textural stuff that young people find interesting (Ava Mendoza's distortion)--though I recall vividly how snazzy I thought fuzztone and wah-wah were in 60s rock, and how overused it got to be. (I think hot-pepper-eating contests are a waste of tastebuds, too.) But then, by the time jazz-rock and fusion and such came around, I'd settled on the textures and traditions and crossovers that I could live with--not even Miles could persuade me to follow where "Bitches Brew" pointed.

On the other hand, that big-band-Latin "Cry Me a River" grabbed me hard, especially when Elizabeth Rodriguez took her violin solos, though the whole arrangement was as propulsive a reimagining as I could want. And Sulllivan Fortner's piano is very nice indeed. Though I realize that "nice" is along an aesthetic vector that The New does not much value.

* Turned 79 a few weeks ago. I figure I'm allowed a bit of mold.

[Bop Head]

Think this is the only 2023 release in my listening rotation.

this, from 2022, has been the only thing in recent years that sounded really new and fresh to me (even though it has its roots in 70s fusion)

I hear rather 90ies drum and bass than fusion.