been at it again on listening to jazz outside of the usual formula that people know jazz for. while i like the poppy and and prog jazz that musicians have made over the years i was curious to see how others would experiment with the genre in other territories.

listened to an album by Bennie Maupin that i saw years ago in a review article about it via a pitchfork article but didn't pay much attention to it other than that. spiritual jazz seems to have the most experimentation in terms of orchestration and sound, only seeming to get more of that through things like jazz fusion or some shit like that. its a good listen if any of you are finding this sort of stuff interesting. pretty calming too honestly.

also went back to listen to pharaoh sanders (RIP) collab with the london symphony orchestra on his last album which is less jazz (albeit still there) and more of minimalism "third stream" stuff that they call it i guess. it certainly is an interesting and kinda beautiful album the more i went deeper into it as it went on. the death of sanders kinda made this album have a lot more weight on it too. i'd say i recommend it if you have the time and energy for this but this only stretches that far until you need to take a brake from it or put it in the background to go along with it further.

latest album im listening to is soaring by don ellis and its the album with the most going on here compared to the last two. it definitely still has its out there moments at times but thats what make it memorable for sure. it has the experimentation you'd want to make it stand out but also has enough of the usual big band sound to attract the average listener as well. its pretty damn good really.

if anybody else is a fan of jazz, i'd like to hear about it cause its an interesting genre to dissect and discover artists from.

outside of whiplash being my all-time favorite movie, I don't consume a lot of jazz, but it doesn't stop me from watching some drummers on youtube play.

One really interesting video I watched recently was this jazz musician's review of Whiplash, and he had his buddy who's currently teaching jazz music in new york citycome on and was talking about how jazz is really mis-represented in media, since a lot of young jazz players are listening to hip-hop/jazz and other flavors of that mix of genres, rather than the traditional stuff you'd expect.

(relevant part starts at 17:41 if the embed doesn't work right)

There's been some really cool songs that have popped up on my Spotify over the years, but I never really went out of my way to keep listening to them and create a jazz playlist, but I always feel like i should

e: the embed timecode didn't work, but it will in the next release

Not a jazz aficionado, but love these guys, and these tracks in particular. ⬇

James Blood Ulmer claims to have gotten his guitar tunings in dreams. Also, his music has been known to precipitate spontaneous out-of-body-experiences. So, if you start feeling a tingling sensation, pulsing or inner vibration, hit pause. Here be dragons.

And this is such a lovely tune from Louis Moholo. Cool drums, chunky bass, trumpet, mmmmmmmm.

I keep trying to get into Sun Ra because his work defines "far out". He was doing Afrofuturist music decades before Parliament dropped Mothership Connection.

One of his sidemen has a YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@sunramusicchannelofficial3316

I'm debating whether or not to take out a mortgage and buy his album cover book.

https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/sun-ra-art-on-saturn-the-album-cover-art-of-sun-ras-saturn-label

Since I live in a country with a weak currency, $75 is a lot of money.

I live in the US, my day job pays six figures, and the cost of buying copies of all of Sun Ra's albums is fucking daunting even for me.

Maybe if I didn't buy the new Hiromi album, Sonicwonderland...

man i really need to listen to sun ra. i have a habit for listening to stuff outside of the more famous acts and albums that people are aware of first. dont know how i would tell people that i never listen to people like thelonious monk in my life...

Like Starbreaker, it was Sun Ra's extreme oddness that led me to investigate his music. It's hard not to be intrigued.

Okay, it doesn't count as pure jazz, not even close, but I've long loved a strange little album of musical theater put together by bassist Danny Thompson and featuring folk guitarist Richard Thompson (no relation). While Danny is best known for playing stand-up for Pentangle, the British folk rock group, he's always been more of a jazzbo at heart, and it shows in his output. Anyway, the album is a eulogy to British industry, and, if you can stand Richard Thompson's singing, it's pretty interesting.

Was he the start of that whole ancient Egyptian, space alien thing? I was quite surprised to learn some people take it all quite seriously, and not as some kind of art practice.

Shit, now that's what I call prolific!

yeah i can imagine. a lot of that is what makes the experimentation of jazz so interesting and challenging at the same time.

yeah i can probably dig this. its reminding me of a slower version of billy bragg really.

Ah. I needn't have added the explanation, then. Except, I was wrong to call the album a eulogy to industry, it's more about the destruction of the industrial working class than anything else.

Believe it or not, the 1954 Thelonious Monk Trio album was one of the first albums I got into when I started listening to straight-up jazz and not just prog or fusion.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp1OjP0tJn_ECjFmCN0gE7zJtvCGJ3YeX

I tend to like jazz piano best, and I think somebody had suggested Sun Ra to me because I was into Hiromi Uehara.

I think so, but I can't prove it.

listened to sun ra for the first time today with his album Lanquidity. ill be frank i thought it was going to be a lot more than i thought from ive come to know of jazz fusion and prog as this point but that doesn't stop me from saying its a great album. it has its moments that i normally expect from i heard before when i started this thread like the ending of the first track lanquidity to the entirety of there are other worlds (they have not told you of) but its generally a great album to put on that has some great sound and buildup as i progressed through it all.

Favorite Tracks: Lanquidity thats how i feel

Honestly, Sun Ra is someone I try hard to appreciate without much success. Same goes for jazz as a whole, I suppose.

It's probably why I like that James Blood Ulmer album so much. There's an identifiable thread running through the thing that a rock fan can follow. Guitar, drums and electric violin is also an interesting combo.

Not wanting to come over all evangelical, but you should give it a spin.

This one's a ripper, too. Wild gittar!

Putting it out there, I find Piero Scaruffi's album guides immensely helpful when exploring unfamiliar artists.

https://www.scaruffi.com/index.html

For example, Sun Ra:

https://www.scaruffi.com/jazz/sunra.html