Robert Glasper interview

I had a great time interviewing Robert Glasper about his new Miles Davis remix album, Everything's Beautiful—which stemmed from his work on Don Cheadle's Miles Ahead film—and a bunch of other stuff (Prince, Erykah Badu, Kamasi Washington, etc.). It's been a little while since I've done an in-depth Q-and-A, so this was a total pleasure.

I'll admit I initially regarded both Everything's Beautiful and Miles Ahead with some wariness. There are honestly not a lot of remixes, tributes, etc. that mean all that much to me—I tend to prefer it when influence and inspiration manifest themselves in less straightforward ways. But I do think there's some great material on Everything's Beautiful, particularly the tracks that sample Miles' voice (e.g., "Talking Shit," built around several remarkable minutes of Davis studio chatter, presumably from this session, during which he's playfully getting on Joe Chambers' case), the Erykah Badu "Maiysha" and the track "Violets," which features a Bill Evans piano sample from a "Blue in Green" false start. Overall, it's a very lush, listenable album with a coherent through-line.

I liked Miles Ahead less. Picking up on my comment above about remixes and tributes: I guess, in the end, I'm a primary-source guy. Mainly what I want to engage with is a) the music itself and b) what the people who made it said about it. I'd have a tough time naming a biopic that I felt illuminated the work of the artist in question; mostly I feel like the genre invites caricature, and I don't think Miles Ahead transcends that tendency. I didn't feel like it was some kind of sacrilege—Cheadle's performance is strong, and there are some funny and poignant moments sprinkled in. I also think the movie makes a very good case for '70s Miles functioning as the perfect action-movie music. In the end, though, I'm just not sure what the movie contributes to the Miles Davis legacy. For me, the best side effect was that it sent me back to the music, specifically the amazing '70s material on discs 3 and 4 of The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4, which has been blowing my mind lately.

But really Miles Ahead just made me yearn for a serious, full-on Miles documentary. So many of his collaborators are still around, and there's just so much footage. Could be a beautiful thing. I realize that this desire places me squarely in the camp that Don Cheadle was not aiming to please—and was maybe even aiming to piss off—with Miles Ahead, but I'm just being honest.

Back to Glasper for a second. I've had his 2015 album Covered on heavy rotation in recent months. I like the Black Radio albums—I heard one over the speakers in a Mexican restaurant the other day, and I loved how it sounded in a public setting—but the trio with Vicente Archer and Damion Reid speaks to me more directly. I'd enjoyed Covered last year but totally forgot about it in the year-end rush. Spinning it over and over recently made me realize how fundamentally arbitrary the year-end list thing is. Anyway, the following (filmed during the recording of Covered) needs no commentary; it's just gorgeous.


Also, don't sleep on Glasper's earlier, shockingly great trio with Derrick Hodge and Chris Dave.

Moment's Greatest Hits

A while ago on Twitter I used to roll out what I called Weekly Greatest Hits—a round-up of anything new or old that was currently hitting me hard. In that spirit, here are a few current faves. (This may or may not become a regular DFSBP feature.)

James Brandon Lewis  
Days of FreeMan



As I indicated in my 2015 round-up, I slept on a lot of music last year. Here's a late-breaking head-slapper. Days of FreeMan would've been an obvious, high-ranking inclusion on my jazz top 10, at the very least, if I'd heard it in time. (Seems like this flew under a lot of folks' radars; Phil Freeman and Seth Colter Walls were among those looking alive.) Little needs to be said—the appeal is immediate. Lean funk- and hip-hop-informed jams with tons of swagger and soul. I'm not sure I've heard backbeat-oriented jazz done this well before. Missed JBL at Winter Jazzfest last night, but I plan to remedy that soon.

David Bowie 
Live 1973 (from D.A. Pennebaker's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars)



Speaking of swagger. The level of charm, charisma and peacock-ish sass oozing off this man in this performance is basically terrifying. I'm not a Bowie completist, but I am a fan, and I've been filling in knowledge gaps during the past sad, intense week. My Rolling Stone colleague Andy Greene is a real Bowie authority, and I learned a lot from this list, which tipped me off to the above.

P.S. Blackstar is a trip as well.

Iggy Pop
"Some Weird Sin" (from Lust for Life)



This Bowie-co-produced track is just staggering. (Note: It also sounds exactly like the Strokes at their thickest and most sensual.) I'm not crazy about what I've heard from the Idiot album, but Lust for Life lives up to its audacious title. Nasty, glammy brilliance; rough, sneering conviction. Listening to this, you can hear Bowie reckoning with Iggy's genius and framing it in just the right context where it can shine in a new, post-Stooges way. It's feral but theatrical too.

Tony Williams
New York Live (1989)

 

More on the idea of swagger... Tony Williams is one of my very favorite drummers, but I know less than I should about his later years. I've read a lot about his brash attitude and confidence (in Bill Milkowski's essential interview compilation Rockers, Jazzbos and Visionaries, the author describes Williams at a mixing session for the 1992 Story of Neptune album: "Pacing around the control room with a fat cigar jutting out the side of his mouth, Tony Williams is a portrait of swaggering intensity"), and those traits are on full display in this outstanding video. The effect is very different to hearing him during his '60s heyday. There was a brashness at play during that period, too, obviously, but here it has ripened into a sort of bullish, cocky, unabashed, Muhammad Ali–like badassery. This is hardbop as take-no-prisoners combat, the embodiment of what Damión Reid calls the "[showing] up to crush" mentality.

P.S. It's downright pathetic that much of the recorded output of the band in the video above is out of print. I've been scouring the 'net for days looking for Neptune and its predecessor, Native Heart.

P.P.S. Vinnie Sperrazza is all over this period of Tony's output.

Mark Turner Quartet
Live at Winter Jazzfest 2016

I'm currently under the weather so I'm sparing myself the full-on marathon WJF experience, but I have to call out the outstanding set I saw by this band at the ECM showcase last night. Lathe of Heaven, from 2014, is a great record, but this group has apparently been gigging a lot since then because the set I saw last night made that album sound tame and undercooked. If there's another current working small group that can rival this band for attunement among the members, high-wire interactivity, and overall poise and alertness and excitement, I'd really like someone to tell me about it. They just sounded so dialed-in. And Marcus Gilmore, dear God... It's been no surprise for years, since he works with so many great bands, but this guy is simply operating on an elevated plane.

Bonus tracks:

Chris Dave with Robert Glasper





Thanks to the aforementioned James Brandon Lewis for reminding me that I need more Chris Dave in my life. What starts to happen—percussively, and with the entire band, really—around the 6:00 mark here is simply obscene.

There's all kinds of hoopla re: the jazz/hip-hop crossover thing. Robert Glasper is obviously a key conduit and has been for some time. I'd love to see him get the kind of attention Kamasi Washington has gotten, but for his trio work like this (and this), which speaks to me way more than his Black Radio output. The message I get from a performance like this is that you don't have to "cross over," in blatant genre-splicing ways, to engage meaningfully across traditions.

P.S. Contrary to the title, this video was not filmed at the Village Vanguard.

Krallice 

This band is still getting tons of plays around these parts. Not just the amazing Ygg Huur (discussed here) but also its predecessor and brand-new follow-up (which was actually, confusingly, recorded before Ygg Huur). You need to be paying attention to Krallice if you care about what is called the "progressive" spirit in music.

Joe Maneri Quartet

This group—the late Joe Maneri on various reeds, piano and the occasional vocal, with his son Mat on violin and viola, Randy Peterson on drums, and a revolving cast of bassists—had such an unmistakable sonic fingerprint. Jazz smeared into near-oblivion, unfolding in a slo-mo Butoh dance that can feel both tortured and whimsical. My favorite album is the hard-to-find Get Ready to Receive Yourself, but was digging In Full Cry recently.

P.S. Hearing Randy Peterson live last week with Tony Malaby's Apparitions band is what got me thinking along these lines.

Heavy Metal Be-Bop #8: Damión Reid

The eighth installment of my jazz/metal interview series is now live in both extended and abridged versions. I've loved Damión Reid's drumming ever since I first heard him with Robert Glasper (it was either 2005's Canvas or 2007's In My Element), and more recently, his work with Steve Lehman and Greg Ward has been blowing my mind. But I had no idea he was a metal fan until Matt Merewitz, who had been keeping up with Heavy Metal Be-Bop, suggested that I talk to him for the series. So a big thank you to Matt for the tip, and to Damión for being so generous with his time. I had an awesome time working on this one.