OK first thing's first : You better not get into an Ibizan Jail, the ingenious ways of torture they use are of a psychological nature but still : Nina Hagen again surprised her public by putting on a free performance for the inmates at Ibiza's jail. The singer declared that "music is a symbol of peace and union." September 30, 2001 Article in the NY-Times :
Techno Dances With Jazz By MIKE RUBIN Arts & Leisure (Sept. 30, 2001) YIELDING samplers and laptops instead of saxophones and pianos, electronic musicians are increasingly borrowing from - and aspiring to make - jazz, and now they have a new ally in the pianist Herbie Hancock. While Mr. Hancock's electronic forays into the outer reaches of jazz, as well as his experiments with pop, funk and disco, have mostly been scorned in the jazz world, they've won him a following among techno producers. Mr. Hancock is revered in electronic circles less for his 1960's acoustic piano work - both on his own albums and those of Miles Davis - than for his prescient early 70's records like "Head Hunters" and "Sextant," which helped introduce synthesizers to jazz, and his 1983 hit single, "Rockit," which featured percussive turntable scratching and was an MTV staple when many current electronic musicians and D.J.'s were children. Mr. Hancock remains an icon. Drum-and-bass artists have prolifically sampled his work, while the British techno producer Kirk Degiorgio released a record called "The Message in Herbie's Shirts," which suggested that the clothes Mr. Hancock wore in the cover photos of his 70's albums offered clues about the merits of the music inside. In the case of Mr. Hancock's new album, "Future 2 Future" (Transparent Music 500112), Mr. Degiorgio's hypothesis proves accurate: the cover shows Mr. Hancock wearing a clear plastic windbreaker like those that are popular in the techno subculture. The transparency hints at some of the insubstantial music contained therein. The album's flaws are readily apparent, especially compared with recent releases by others that have striven to create a techno-jazz hybrid. "Future 2 Future" is notable for bringing together a jazz musician of Mr. Hancock's stature with contemporary electronic artists (though they make only token appearances on the album). They include the British acid house and drum-and-bass innovator A Guy Called Gerald (Gerald Simpson), the New York turntablist DJ Rob Swift, and the Detroit techno standout Carl Craig, one of the black musicians who developed this soulful, heavily percussive electronic dance music more than a decade ago. "Kebero," the collaboration with Mr. Craig, is inexplicably broken into two segments on the album; female vocals float ethereally amid his loops of African percussion, over which Mr. Hancock layers keyboard textures. But just as the song seems as if it might swirl into something interesting, it's over, segueing into an inconsequential spoken-word track. Mr. Swift and Mr. Simpson's contributions don't fare much better. Mr. Swift displays more dynamic scratching work in his current Gap commercial, and while Mr. Simpson's hyperkinetic drum-and-bass beats strive to stake out a groove, Mr. Hancock's keyboards are too soggy and saccharine to enhance it. The rhythmic clatter of drum-and-bass pervades the record. "The Essence" sounds like an outtake from Roni Size's 1997 album, "New Forms," right down to the rapid-fire beats, acoustic bass lines and diva vocals (in this case from Chaka Khan). But 1997 hardly qualifies as the "future" anymore. The album's most successful track, "Alphabeta," is built around sturdy drumming from Jack DeJohnette, with the refrain provided by a muffled sample from Derrick May's landmark 1988 Detroit techno single "Strings of Life." A gently funky collage of acoustic and electronic elements, the track heralds the possibility of a true techno-jazz fusion that the rest of the album fails to deliver. But even as "Future 2 Future" disappoints, Mr. Hancock is, as usual, onto something that other artists have been more adept at attaining. While jazz and popular dance music have intersected since the days of disco, dance music has usually been drawn more to the sweet, uptempo soul grooves of Roy Ayers than to the spikier electronics of Mr. Hancock's "Sextant." But as dance music itself has become more electronic, its creators' interests have expanded. Electronic producers of all stripes are now inspired by a broader jazz palette, whether as fodder for samples, as part of the search for rhythmic diversity, or as a reference point for their own artistic aspirations toward a cerebral sophistication removed from the sweat of the dance floor. Among techno-jazz fusion endeavors, Mr. Craig's Innerzone Orchestra project is noteworthy for having taken its cue from the more abrasive sounds of records like "Sextant" rather than from the treacly tones favored by the acid jazz movement (a glossy mixture of 70's jazz, soul and funk) and drum-and-bass artists like Goldie and LTJ Bukem. Innerzone's 1999 album "Programmed" features Mr. Craig matching his samplers and drum machines against live drums and piano played by veterans of Sun Ra and the saxophonist James Carter's groups. The British producer Jason Swinscoe, who records under the name Cinematic Orchestra, takes a different approach to live instrumentation. On his 1999 album, "Motion," he lifted samples from old jazz records, had musicians reinterpret those samples, then sampled from those new recordings to piece together each composition. The components mesh with mechanical precision while maintaining a feeling of improvisation. Most attempts to meld jazz and techno have not worked quite so well. In some ways it's an impossible marriage. While both genres are largely instrumental and futuristic and share roots as dance musics, attempts to blend them usually can't reconcile the improvisational freedom and rhythmic spontaneity of a live jazz group with electronic dance music's reliance on repetition and solitary computer-assisted production methods. Given the obstacles, when electronic producers embrace jazz, they most often wind up turning their backs on the dance floor entirely. Consider Tom Jenkinson, a fusion bassist who makes ungainly drum- and-bass under the name Squarepusher. On albums like "Music Is Rotted One Note," he defiantly resists settling into a groove long enough to tap a foot to. For "Masses," the British drum-and- bass duo John Coxon and Ashley Wales (a k a Spring Heel Jack) presented backing tracks to distinguished avant-garde improvisers, including the saxophonists Tim Berne and Evan Parker and the pianist Matthew Shipp, to play along with in real time. The result is sometimes pretty, more often squawky free jazz that is frequently as invigorating as it is dissonant, but listeners would be hard pressed to find much techno there. Despite such seeming incompatibility, cross-pollination between genres continues. Mr. Degiorgio, Mr. Hancock's fashion critic and perhaps the most tireless crusader toward a techno-jazz fusion, offers one possible solution on his forthcoming album, "21st Century Soul," recorded under the pseudonym As One. Blending warm melodic washes of 70's-era Fender Rhodes piano with funky drum patterns - both programmed and played - Mr. Degiorgio's retrofitted approach might best be described by another of his recording aliases: Future/Past. The British house producer Matthew Herbert turns back the clock even further on "Bodily Functions," this year's most successful combination of electronic beats and jazz. The album is a tribute to 40's standards in which Mr. Herbert builds supple house rhythms underneath torchy female vocals, using piano, acoustic bass and beats culled from sampled anatomical sounds (including blood, teeth, bones, and laser eye surgery) to reveal electronic music's human pulse. Like the best techno-jazz fusions, it's a merger of man and machine that sounds satisfyingly organic and new. Mike Rubin is a senior writer at Spin magazine. -----Original Message----- From: mkb [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 6:25 PM To: 313@hyperreal.org Subject: RE: [313] Herbie Hancock & Carl Craig article Blarg, use my account! login: f*cknytimes10 (with a u, not a *) Password: bleepbloop -- Cafard, [EMAIL PROTECTED] qu'est-ce que tu penses? 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