"You have to create yourself a new language": Gorguts' 'Obscura' at 20

 

It was well received, but it was a very small audience. It took a while. And people were like, 'What the fuck is this?' Now, when I say 'Obscura,' everybody has their fist in the air, it’s like, 'Yeah, bring it on!' [laughs]. It's time, you know? It just happens with time. The sound was able to find its right place. —Gorguts' Luc Lemay on the band's 1998 album Obscura

It just keeps coming back to Obscura. During the past 10/15 years, as I've moved through interlocking communities of forward-thinking New York musicians (metal, jazz and beyond), both as a writer and as a player, the third album by Quebecois death-metal band Gorguts — released 20 years ago today — has become sort of gold standard for stubborn individuality, for the idea of placing absolute trust in one's muse, even if it leads you to a place of what seems at first like pure insanity.

As Lemay explains in the above interview with Metal Assault (well worth your time in full), the album came about through a process of sort of forced experimentation, with the band deliberately walling itself off from its trusty methods of writing and composing.

['Obscura'] came about because we made a very clear decision, everybody together. The three writers in the band [Lemay, his late fellow guitarist/vocalist "Big" Steeve Hurdle and bassist Steve Cloutier], of course the drummer included, Steve MacDonald, was writing with us in the arrangement department and everything. [Note: MacDonald helped compose 'Obscura,' but it was actually Patrick Robert who played drums on the album.] But the thing is, we did some kind of [manifesto] together. This was right after 'Erosion' [a.k.a. the band's more-conventional 1993 album 'The Erosion of Sanity'], so we said okay, writing a new record: no fast-picking riff is going to be accepted in the music, no scat beat, which ‘Erosion’ is all about. So none of those mentioned were going to be allowed, everything else, but none of those other ones. And then we’ll start from there, and see what happens. The band also decided to do both vocals as well, so those were the main lines.

I believe no tremolo picking as well, as you mentioned in an interview a long time ago.

Exactly! Good point, that was another one.

Why were those ‘limits’ set in place?
Because, if you stay in your comfort zone, it takes forever just to incorporate a new thing in your sound. But if you force yourself not to use everything that you’re comfortable with, then you have to create yourself a new language that you’re happy with. So it forces you to explore, to touch the instrument differently, and approach the music differently as well, to get new sounds out of it.

The results speak for themselves. The album is so perverse, so chaotic and discordant, yet at the same time so logical and deliberate within the parameters it sets for itself, that it achieves sort of strange counter-intuitive serenity.


This is in some ways an ascetic sound, the product of walling one's self off from the world outside and creating a new, insular one within. But it's also the sound of pure, unfettered discovery, of a kind of seething, ecstatic creativity. (During an intense period of Gorguts immersion, I once described the record as "...one of the most pungently progressive albums ever made, in or out of metal. Obscura didn't just register as technical; it sounded downright excruciating, as if its shuddering blastbeats, doleful bellows, and deliriously inventive guitarwork were being torn straight from the chests of its makers.")

As fans know, Gorguts are in the midst of a glorious renaissance, which kicked off with 2013's outstanding Colored Sands and continued with 2016's equally impressive Pleiades' Dust. The gradually snowballing influence of Obscura helped set the stage for this moment, when one of extreme metal's most challenging bands could also be one of its most beloved.

In honor of 20 years of Obscura, here are a few thoughts on the record drawn from interviews in my Heavy Metal Bebop series, which began as the result of seeing pianist Craig Taborn (who would eventually meet and collaborate with Steeve Hurdle) at a Gorguts show.

Ben Monder (2017)

How would you describe what's happening on Obscura? I'm not a guitar player, so I can't necessarily verbalize it?

It's not about guitar at all. There's nothing really virtuosic on that. It's just like, there are sounds that he was getting — I don't know technically what you would even call it, like pick-scraping type things. I had never heard that before. It was more about the mystery of what was happening. I had never heard those elements put together in that way before. You know, when you first heard a record like that, you just don't know what's going on; there are all these novel ideas swimming around and colliding. And it almost seems like it shouldn't even work, but it's perfect. And it's also very integrated. It doesn't sound clever or contrived; it sounds like this integrated language that is just natural, but it's the result of all these technical elements. I like that aspect in music where it's mysterious and sounds correct and yet you have no idea how or why it works. And of course it has the darkness, and it's got "Earthly Love" with the violin. Where else is a death-metal song going to have a prominent violin feature that sounds perfect, you know? That's one of my top five metal records.

Matt Mitchell (2016)

Man, Obscura came on the other day. I've had that album for almost 20 years, since it came out, and it struck me how totally [crazy] that album is. It's so bizarre. [Laughs] It's really out there, man. And I basically live off of weird music, and that's, like, still... even in metal, there's nothing that quite goes that far.

Craig Taborn (2011)

There are a few metal albums that really intrigue me, and Obscura was one because it kind of came out of nowhere for me. That was such a weird little blip when it came out. Nobody knew what it was. It was too out. A lot of metal guys hated it. It was all wrong. The doom thing wasn’t big, and it had these things that were super-slow, and everybody hated that. Not everybody – obviously people liked it. But it was so dissonant and so dense; it was like Beefheart-metal.

Dan Weiss and I also talked about Gorguts extensively, during the first HMB interview back in 2011. He has some fascinating things to say about the drumming on the band's masterful fourth album From Wisdom to Hate.

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I'd like to thank Chuck Stern, Tim Byrnes and Colin Marston (now a member of Gorguts!), fellow travelers in the NYC scene, for introducing me to Obscura sometime in the early 2000s. I had heard The Erosion of Sanity in the '90s, but it didn't really stick. When I caught up and heard how completely the band had transformed itself, I was stunned and amazed.

HMB 14: Ben Monder + The Starebaby outtakes

I'm proud to present the 14th installment of Heavy Metal Bebop, a series of conversations about the intersection of jazz and metal. The subject this time around is guitarist Ben Monder, who I've been wanting to speak to about this topic for some time now. A big thanks to him for a great, in-depth interview. Check it out here.

I've also posted extended conversations with Dan Weiss, Matt Mitchell and Trevor Dunn, outtakes from reporting I did for the aforementioned Times feature on Dan's Starebaby project. (I also spoke with Craig Taborn for the piece, and I hope to be able to post that interview soon.) Enjoy!

Photo: Stephanie Ahn

Starebaby in the Times

Just a brief note to say that I'm happy and proud to unveil this New York Times feature on Dan Weiss and his fascinating Starebaby project.

You may be hearing more from me on this topic. In the meantime, check out the record below (it's officially out next Friday, April 6) and don't miss Sunday's show at Nublu.

Heavy Metal Be-Bop #2: Craig Taborn

I'm happy to announce that the second installment of Heavy Metal Be-Bop, my jazz/metal interview series, is live at Invisible Oranges. Once again, a big thanks to site honcho Cosmo Lee for hosting and for lending his editing and layout expertise to the project.

My guest this time around, Craig Taborn, is more or less the main inspiration behind the series, and I speak a bit about that (specifically Taborn's connection to the Gorguts universe) in the intro. I also mention Taborn's seemingly boundless metal knowledge, but I feel like I ought to note that this knowledge extends way beyond a single genre. Taborn has his iTunes hooked up to his TV, so I got a chance to check out his music library; I have to say, it might be the most diverse and comprehensive collection I've ever seen. I hope he won't mind me listing a few of the artists I spotted in there: Springsteen (Nebraska), This Heat, Thelonious Monk, Arcade Fire, Stravinsky, Sonic Youth, Henry Threadgill's Air, the Walker Brothers, Shudder to Think, Muddy Waters, Descendents. (He even had craw in there, which—as any regular DFSBP reader could guess—absolutely blew my mind. It turns out he went to college with their early-period drummer, Neil Chastain!) Looking at that list now, it doesn't scan as terribly unusual (everyone's got a world of music on their iPod these days), but the point I'm trying to make—a point hopefully illustrated in our conversation—is that Taborn is an especially deep listener; he really gets inside all of these different areas. That may be one reason so many different bandleaders call on him regularly. Dan Weiss, my first Heavy Metal Be-Bop guest, made all this explicit during a recent appearance on WKCR's Musician's Show. Listing the personnel for the new Dave Binney album, Graylen Epicenter—on which both Weiss and Taborn appear—he shouted out Taborn's insider nickname: Encyclopedia Tabes. Having spent time with the man, I assure you that it's an accurate moniker.

I hope you enjoy this installment of Heavy Metal Be-Bop. I have another interview in the pipeline, which I hope to publish soon, but I'm definitely on the lookout for future subjects. Can you think of anyone who might be able to shed light on the jazz/metal connection? If so, please let me know via e-mail or the comments.

Heavy Metal Be-Bop #1: Dan Weiss

I'm pleased to announce the debut of Heavy Metal Be-Bop, a new interview series dealing with the intersections of jazz and metal. Cosmo Lee, the editor of Invisible Oranges—my favorite place to read about metal on the internet—has kindly agreed to play host.

The mission statement of the series could be expressed colloquially as, What's the deal with jazz and metal? As any reader of this blog knows, the two styles form the main pillars of my music consumption. I'm far from alone here: In addition to Ben Ratliff and NPR's Lars Gotrich—both of whose jazz/metal examinations I cite in the intro to HMB #1—Phil Freeman and various others have written extensively and intelligently about both genres and the ways in which they reflect one another. In terms of this series, though, my intent is to focus on musicians—more specifically (at least for starters) jazz-loving metal musicians, and still more specifically, jazz-loving metal musicians whose work might not reflect an obvious metal influence. ("Moving beyond Naked City" might be a good subheading for the endeavor as I see it.)

The brilliant drummer Dan Weiss—who made my favorite jazz album of 2010 and who used to play in doom-metal outfit Bloody Panda—is my first guest. As you'll read, we talked jazz and metal for a while and then listened to some music together (his choices): Gorguts, Metallica, Meshuggah. Dig, especially, Weiss's attunement to the emotional trajectory of the riff. The next installment of HMB (which will post as soon as the transcribing gods will allow) is a chat with jazz pianist and scarily knowledgeable metalhead Craig Taborn. I'm psyched to have HMB out there—do let me know what you think.

P.S. I can only view it as auspicious that the Times has just published a Brad Mehldau playlist that cites Cancer Bats.

P.P.S. A few of Dan Weiss's listening selections got edited out for space, and I wanted to list them here for the record:

1) Cardiacs - various songs, including the phenomenal "Dirty Boy". Insane British "pronk" (prog-punk) band—had never heard them before. It's like King Crimson gone Rocky Horror! Weiss: "For me, this is their anthem. I think I listened to this 10 or 15 times in a row one night. It just keeps going the whole way. And the harmony is almost like Renaissance, Medieval music, the way the harmony moves. Very strange. Beautiful stuff. So weird, fuckin’ weird melody. They just lay on this; they hang on it. I love the way they lay on that."

2) Ustad Rais Khan - "Raga Marwa." Weiss drew several parallels between the complex beat cycles in Indian classical music and extreme metal. Weiss: "Classical Indian music: Could it be equated to blast-beat metal? It’s just all groove to me."

3) Miles Davis - "Directions" (live at Antibes, 1969). Weiss: "Just the way [Jack DeJohnette] opens this shit up. He’s playing as hard as he can. Hear those crashes… He’s bashin’. That kills me."

Top ten of 2010, etc.

A list of my top ten albums of 2010 is up now on the TONY site, along with choices from my esteemed colleagues. Following are a few thoughts on my selections and some haphazardly culled multimedia.

1. Francis and the Lights It'll Be Better

Francis Farewell Starlite and his ever-evolving "and the Lights" enterprise had a phenomenal year careerwise, opening shows for MGMT, Ke$ha, La Roux and Drake, and even contributing a tune to the latter's pop-radio-warhorse debut. But for whatever reason, people seem to have slept on Francis's own first full-length, It'll Be Better. It didn't grab me at first—I was initially pretty down on it, actually. Where was the sleek, cheeky funk that had made previous Francis releases like A Modern Promise so very much fun? And what was up with that loping, countryish opening track?



When I revisited the record, though, it all clicked into place. A lot of people are going to (if they haven't already) misfile Francis as a purveyor of kitsch. I think he's a dead-serious soul man, one whose sizable eccentric streak only accentuates the emotive power of his music. My favorite track is "Knees to the Floor" (stream it above, along with the rest of IBB). Dig the Steely Dan–level lead-guitar wizardry of "Jump Back" Jake Rabinbach on the pre-choruses (1:07, e.g.) (if you're feeling that, there's tons more to be found on the album). And dig the nocturnal sizzle of the whole song, its chilly warmth.

I guess in a way, It'll Be Better as a whole does have a certain retro appeal, almost Miami Vice–ish and certainly extrapolate-able to the realm of kitsch, but to me, it's a release unmoored from time and unfiltered by irony or any other kind of aesthetic distance. It's just a record that makes you want to drive and think and feel and live and love. It's that unbeatable combination of melancholy and dance-floor fuel that you find in the best, say, Michael Jackson. And then there are these odd twinges of borderline-corny humor that leave you scratching your head in delight. (Dig this show-tune-ish nugget from my second-favorite track, "Going Out": "If you've ever seen a movie alone / Then you know what I'm sayin'.")

I must have listened to this record 100 times in 2010, and I don't anticipate the play count diminishing in 2011. For some context, here's a TONY profile I wrote on the man behind the Lights.

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2. Drake Thank Me Later

As mentioned above, Francis also wrote a song ("Karaoke") that ended up on Drake's Thank Me Later:



This track tears me right up. "Put the tea in the kettle and light it / Put your hand on the metal and feel it / But do you even feel it anymore?" See what I mean? No wonder Francis thought twice before letting it go. Thank Me Later as a whole sustains this murky yet lucid late-night-ness—it's a killer record on which cocky hits ("Up All Night") sit beside ultra-ambitious postsoul sound poems ("Shut It Down").

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3. The Bad Plus Never Stop



Never Stop placed at number nine on my year-end jazz list, but as I prepared my pan-genre top ten, the album just wouldn't quit—I realized I'd underestimated it, and it shot to number three. There's an openheartedness to this album that really grabbed me, once I lived with it for a while. So much feeling, tunefulness, groove, abandon, refinement. It's great jazz, but more importantly, it's great music. "People Like You," a devastating ballad, is above. The more uptempo/energetic material ("Never Stop," e.g.) is every bit as impressive. You'll be humming these songs in the shower and carrying their sparkling, autumnal beauty with you.

*****
I think my blurbs on the TONY page—and the attendant links you'll find there—do decent justice to the rest of my list, but here are some breathless reflections:

4. Buke and Gass Riposte



Folk-prog champions emit a joyful noise on the 21st-century urban backporch.

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5. Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy



Just about as worthy of your time and attention as everyone says it is.

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6. Graham Smith Accept the Mystery



He's always brilliant, but this might be the most streamlined, re-listenable KGW album I've heard. (Full details via kgw.me.)

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7. Ludicra The Tenant



Sad, grueling, epic and heavy as fuck.

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8. Sia We Are Born



The hooks on this album will not go away.

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9. Charred Walls of the Damned Charred Walls of the Damned



I've never been a huge power-metal guy, but this subgenre-straddling rager sounds to me like the perfect send-off for the late, great Ronnie James Dio.

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10. Dan Weiss Trio Timshel

Dan Weiss - Timshel EPK from AhnFilm on Vimeo.

Graceful, enchanting and stubbornly odd piano-trio-ism.

*****

RUNNERS-UP: ALBUMS

Following are a handful of full-lengths I was heartbroken to have to leave out. (The first three are annotated with blurbs I'd composed for possible TONY-list inclusion.)

Kayo Dot Coyote



Postmetal mastermind Toby Driver released the latest, greatest chapter in his own beautiful dark twisted fantasy.

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Killing Joke Absolute Dissent



British veterans unleashed an industrial-goth juggernaut, firing a warning shot at their buzzy descendants.

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Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth Deluxe



Seven years after his last album as a leader, a jazz bassist issued this rapturous set of wordless songs.

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Atheist Jupiter



I thought Atheist's comeback effort, Jupiter, ruled. Some were not sold, but I adored the manic spazziness on display here—it seemed like a expertly calibrated updating of the band's classic death-fusion vibe, i.e., what they might have ended up sounding like in 2010 had they never left.

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Deathspell Omega Paracletus



I will definitely be going back to Paracletus, a consuming monster of an avant-garde metal album. The guitar playing on this record falls somewhere between horrifying and exalted—to hear what I mean, listen to the riff that breaks through at 1:32 in the track above. The album is filled with moments like this: mournful, gemlike melody floating above a high-tech musical firestorm.

*****

SONGS

Look for a best-singles-of-2010 round-up once Pazz and Jop rolls around—for now, I'll nod to a few stand-alone tracks not shouted-out there.

Free Energy - "Free Energy"



This song destroys, plain and simple: instant-classic neoclassic rock.

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Katy Perry - "California Gurls"



Despite the lame Snoop guest spot, "Calfornia Gurls," with its glimmering neodisco sheen, was another bubblegum favorite.

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Janelle Monáe - "Oh, Maker"



Janelle Monáe's The ArchAndroid dazzled me on a first listen, but lost a bit of luster as the year wore on. Nevertheless, "Oh, Maker" stuck with me throughout 2010. It's a masterful soft-soul song, tender and bittersweet, with a strange, appealing halo of British folk-pop.

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Danzig - "Deth Red Moon"



There was no getting around the spottiness of Danzig's Deth Red Sabaoth—there are just too many skippable tracks on there. But the standouts, "Hammer of the Gods" and "Deth Red Moon," were truly great, easily fit to mingle with the highlights of Glenn's stellar back catalog. "Deth Red Moon" in particular is shockingly good—a brooding, midtempo goth-blues wail that ranks with sleeper Danzig favorites like "Dominion." (Check out my exceedingly brief Danzig Q&A here.)

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Nicki Minaj - "Right Through Me"



And lastly: Nicki. My 2010 round-up wouldn't be complete without at least a name-check. You know the story by now: She ruled other people's hits (Drake's "Up All Night" and Kanye's "Monster," e.g.), but didn't deliver once the spotlight was on her (the Pink Friday full-length). I can't say I disagree too much with this now-pat narrative—it's pretty much how things have gone down. All the same, Pink Friday's "Right Through Me" is a beautiful song, an undeniably genuine portrait of the twisted love/hate matrix. (Interviewing Ms. Minaj was definitely one of the highlights of my journalistic year.)

2010 jazz top ten

A list of my ten favorite jazz CDs from the nearly bygone year is now posted at the Jazz Journalists Association website. An annotated log of my choices is below. Links lead to various locales (labels, artists, CD Baby, Amazon, iTunes, etc.)—in each case, I simply chose the site with the most previewable music.

1. Dan Weiss Trio - Timshel (Sunnyside)
I reviewed this record for Time Out New York back in March, and I still don't feel like I have a handle on it, which, to me, is a great thing. You can know a lot about Weiss (that he used to moonlight in the doom-metal band Bloody Panda and that he has adapted tabla techniques to the drum set) and still not scratch the surface of what makes Timshel special. This is music—jazz, I guess, but that's beside the point—of stillness and mystery and rapturous beauty. I hope I never get to the bottom of it.

2. Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth - Deluxe (Clean Feed)
There's a picture of a schmancy old car on the cover of this record, which might lead you to believe that the music inside would be gaudy. Instead, Deluxe is all subtlety: Taut, vampy rhythms undergirding a mist of saxophones. Craig Taborn's keyboards and Gerald Cleaver's drums provide lift and color. It's a lush, pillowy sound, but full of mood and intrigue. Again, I need way more time to wrap my head around this one and I can't wait to do so.

3. Harris Eisenstadt - Woodblock Prints (NoBusiness)
Drummer Harris Eisenstadt made my favorite jazz record of 2008, the West African–inspired Guewel. I think this new one—a limited-run LP release and download—is even better. Like the Lightcap, this is an extremely lush record and a tender one. It's not even close to a "drummer" record—it's basically a chamber outing, marked by a carefully chosen instrumental palette, featuring clarinet, bassoon, French horn and tuba. Eisenstadt knows exactly what he wants out of the players and he gets it—a deep sense of stateliness and composure in the ensemble passages (and there are a lot) balanced with gutsy passion from the soloists. To me, Eisenstadt is easily one of the finest young bandleaders in jazz and Woodblock Prints testifies to that fact. (P.S. I saw this entire album performed live and it was gorgeous.)

4. Jason Moran - Ten (Blue Note)
This album is bulging with magic and mastery. Over the past few weeks, I put together a lot of iTunes playlists, culling all my 2010 top-ten candidates, jazz and otherwise, for shuffled consumption. Every time a track from Ten came up, I'd stop whatever I was doing and marvel at Moran and his Bandwagoneers—their ability to convincingly express both the core of the blues and the flurry of modernism within the same piece is breathtaking. If ever an artist has done right by his teacher, Moran is making the late, great Jaki Byard proud.

5. Mike Pride's From Bacteria to Boys - Betweenwhile (Aum Fidelity)
As I noted when contributing to this invaluable From Bacteria to Boys video roundup at (((unartig))), I'd primarily understood Mike Pride up to this point as a connoisseur of the jarring gesture. Betweenwhile offers something quieter, a place to really get lost. Airy jazz filled with smoke and funk and fire and simmer. The whole album plays like a loving showcase for the talents of Pride's sidemen: the bite of altoist Darius Jones, the sumptuousness of pianist Alexis Marcelo, the patience of bassist Peter Bitenc. There's so much sublimated deep feeling in this record that no sudden movements are necessary. It's corny to talk about artists "maturing," but you can't hold Betweenwhile up to Pride's back catalog and not feel that he really and truly has.

6. The Cookers - Warriors (Jazz Legacy Productions)
There's a lot of glitz, and even cockiness, in the work of this all-star band, a pack of hardbop lifers. Billy Hart was the draw for me, but I grew to love what they all had to say: Billy Harper, Eddie Henderson, George Cables and the rest. This is about taking what went on in, say, the early- to mid-’60s and really getting inside it, luxuriating in the tried-and-true forms and the warmth of modern recording and digging into some absolutely fantastic original tunes that stick with you just like your old Blue Note favorites. This is PRO jazz, conventional jazz, but jazz driven by a pulsating heartbeat. Besides, a record that features Billy Hart is disqualified from the realm of boringness.

7. Weasel Walter Septet - Invasion (ugEXPLODE)
In a past DFSBP post, I praised the evolution of Weasel Walter's improv chops. But to make a great, replayable record, you've got to offer something extra and the Weas has done that here. Each of the five tracks has its own identity, from bouncy Mingus-gone–No Wave ("Flesh Strata") to disarmingly sensitive Company-style free play ("Cleistogamy"), and most importantly—as with the Pride record—all of the performances flaunt the gifts of Walter's supporting cast. Henry Kaiser is an absolute star here. I've never been a huge fan of his before—or, to be fair, dug too deep into his catalog—but he's spellbinding on Invasion, offering a crackly electric zone-out on "Nautilus Rising (part 1)" and eerie distended folk on "Cleistogamy," his contribution to the latter sounding more to me like Robbie Basho than Derek Bailey, Kaiser's avowed "sensei." Overall, Invasion is a great example not just of experimental music-making but of experimental RECORD-making. The compositional (yes, there is bona-fide writing/direction/structure at play here) variety, the excellent recording quality and the brilliant auxiliary musicians all add up to an album you want to hear again when it's over.

8. The Bad Plus - Never Stop (E1)
One thing I love about the Bad Plus, and about this album in particular (definitely the TBP record I've enjoyed most) is how little the band's output squares with Ethan Iverson's unfailingly perceptive and eloquent jazz criticism. After reading Iverson, you might think his band might fixate so much on its jazz-history obsession that it would have a hard time forging ahead and developing its own vibe. That is so not the case, though, and you really hear that on Never Stop. It's just a record of MUSIC, so disarmingly alive and emotive and hard-grooving and fun to listen to. The band's image has a certain archness to it that again can be misleading. You might even take a track like "Never Stop," with its pounding disco groove and twinkly melody, as a slice of ironic nostalgia. But you listen harder, to that track and to the full record, and you realize you're entirely mistaken. The Bad Plus goes straight for simplicity and directness and feeling, and if it often ends up sounding more like pop or indie rock than jazz at a given time, then so be it. For all of Iverson and his bandmates' obsession with jazz, they're thrillingly game for jettisoning its baggage (traditional swing, say, as Iverson pointed out in an interview I read or listened to but can't re-locate now) whenever it suits their compositions. A piece like "Beryl Loves to Dance" here could move anybody—it truly doesn't matter what you call it, and that's rare. It's that wide-open quality that made Never Stop one of the year's most refreshing listens.

9. Jon Irabagon - Foxy (Hot Cup)
I've spilled an insane amount of ink on this record, and Jon Irabagon in general, in 2010. A Time Out profile is here, and a much more in-depth piece is on the way via Burning Ambulance. The salient fact is that Jon Irabagon shocked me in 2009 with I Don't Hear Nothing but the Blues, and then he turned around and shocked me in a whole different way with Foxy. Instead of expressing his perverse, almost maniacal improvisational idiosyncrasies on their own weird terms, as he did on Blues, he decided to apply them to straight-ahead jazz here, and the results are, in their own way, ten times weirder. Sure, Foxy something of a gimmick, something of an endurance test, but it's also an absolute joyride. Just ask Barry Altschul.

10. Chicago Underground Duo - Boca Negra (Thrill Jockey)
Like the Moran, another album that grabbed my attention every time the iTunes roulette wheel landed on it. Like the Bad Plus, another album that orbits jazz without using it as a crutch. Like the Walter, another extremely weird release—the handiwork of an ensemble that's as resolutely unconventional as the Cookers are by-the-book—that nonetheless invites repeated listens. Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor are going for mood, for soundscape, and they've got that part down, down, down. There's a late-night murk to this album—surely inspired by Bill Dixon, Mazurek's frequent collaborator in the years prior to his recent sad passing—that you just want to live in. But there's also that now-classic Chicago post-rock vibe, executed as appealingly as I've heard it done in quite a while. Boca Negra is a surprising blend of the stylish and the substantive.

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My list also included ten honorable-mention releases, many of which nearly made the top ten:

Newman Taylor Baker - Drum Suite Life (Innova)
Solo drums: unadorned and extremely tasty. Time Out preview.

Amir ElSaffar and Hafez Modirzadeh - Radif Suite (Pi)
Loosey-goosey, Ornette-ish freebop, some of the best I've heard that doesn't involve Ornette or his right-hand men. Time Out blog post.

John Escreet - Don't Fight the Inevitable (Mythology)
State-of-the-art inside/outside jazz with a good-kind-of-ridiculous supporting cast.

Tomas Fujiwara and the Hook-Up - Actionspeak (482)
A shrewdly uncategorizable statement: too elegant and meticulous for "outside"; too thorny and restless for "inside." Instead, just really good.

Fred Hersch Trio - Whirl (Palmetto)
Impossibly delicate and songful piano jazz.

Sam Newsome - Blue Soliloquy (self-released)
Ear-bending sound experiments, but with tons of feeling.

Mario Pavone: Orange Double Tenor - Arc Suite t/pi t/po (Playscape)
Another inside-outside winner, brimming with vigor and constructive quirk.

Kurt Rosenwinkel and OJM - Our Secret World (Word of Mouth)
Postfusion concertos, sleek and radiant.

Rova Sax Quartet and the Nels Cline Singers - The Celestial Septet (New World)
Draped in Rova's edgy finery, the Singers sound handsomer than I've ever heard them.

Greg Ward's Fitted Shards - South Side Story (Nineteen Eight)
Happy, hyperambitious prog-fusion-funk-jazz, spiced with charmingly ’80s-ish synths.