Back With Jazz!

Hello readers! It's been a while since I last posted...winter break got ahead of me, and I got a bit preoccupied. Now school's back! That (paradoxically) comes with free time. Despite my Operating Systems assignment due tomorrow. Anyhow!

Jazz! Though I haven't been posting, I never stopped listening to music. In the true spirit of this blog, I decided to expand my own tastes. I still love electronic music; its freedom from conventional instruments and energy is tough to match. Still, I've started to find it a little bit inorganic at times. Jazz, on the other hand, is a very human genre. It often has electronic elements, but with a more personal feel, and of course there's the sax, trumpet, live drums, and such. Also, I find that while electronic music is almost always confined to 4/4 time, jazz has more freedom with time signature.

Jazz isn't entirely separate from electronic music! My first real entry to the genre came last year when I discovered Kyoto Jazz Massive's album Spirit Of The Sun. Give those links a listen! It's electronic music, but with a very different energy. In that vein, I started listening to Kaidi Tatham and Reel People. That's not jazz, but that is a stepping stone.

What really got me into jazz was a band called The Five Corners Quintet. Hailing from Finland, these guys are part of a 21st century jazz genre called club jazz. It is highly structured, with few or no improvisational bits. It's pretty easy to take in coming from something as rigid as electronic music. Not that this music is rigid or uncreative (nor is electronic music)! It still has a vibrant feel, and can get pretty complex at times. Now, these sounds are not new, and all these songs show strong influences from jazz's history, but the club jazz movement is more of a revival than a subgenre.

After that, I heard a bunch of other artists I can recommend to you. Check out The Stance Brothers, Jazzanova, Quasimode, Koop, Timo Lassy, and Jabberloop. All of them are good! Other than that, I've been listening to Dave Brubeck and maybe a couple others.

This post might seem a little off-topic considering this blog's almost entirely about electronic music, but this one subgenre of jazz, club jazz, is absolutely worth a listen. Give it a try!