Industrial Jazz Group
PERFORMING AT SOMEDAY
Wednesday, March 7 › 8pm › $7
Reptet with Industrial Jazz Group
About the artist
A Brief History of the Industrial Jazz Group
Formed by composer / pianist Andrew Durkin in the spring of 2000, the Industrial Jazz Group has frequently been accused of confounding innocent listeners. And no wonder: in addition to its perplexing name (the group could never be confused with, say, Nine Inch Nails), the IJG seems to change shape—aesthetically and physically—every year or so. Sure the music is always fun (and it should here be noted that many of the group’s fans aren’t exactly jazz fans per se). But can’t these guys keep a consistent stylistic vibe together for more than one record?
In the old days, the group produced “edgy melodic jazz,” clearly (though somewhat irreverently) situated in the bop / postbop tradition. “Thelonious Monk goes to the circus drunk” is how one listener (who at the time was probably drunk himself) described the group’s debut album, Hardcore (2001).
Then came the septet era, and the critical success of City of Angles (2002), an aural homage to the group’s hometown, Los Angeles. Clearly indebted to the ghosts of Mingus, Ellington, and especially Zappa, Angles featured substantially more, er, involved charts (“Eleven beats to a bar, the eighth note gets the beat? Are you kidding me?”), with nods not only to bop and free jazz, but baroque counterpoint, musique concrete, and minimalism.
The Star Chamber (2004) followed Angles with a more-or-less “live” (in-studio) document of what was by that time a nonet. Starker than its predecessors, Chamber was, in Durkin’s words, “our attempt to make an ECM record that we knew ECM would never release.” But it also marked a transition into a sound that had become orchestral and cinematic.
Outtakes from the first three records were collected in the limited fanclub-only release, Industrialjazzwerke, Vol. I, also released in 2004. (With a little tweaking this could have been the fourth “official” IJG album. Maybe someday.)
Of course, anyone who has heard the group lately (circa 2005) knows that it has significantly added to this early fascination with jazz and “high art” genres. Though the music still riffs on free improvisation, minimalism, Bach, and bop, it is not so much Monk who is going to the circus drunk these days, but Ray Charles, Elmore James, Celia Cruz, and other illustrious denizens of the variegated worlds of classic soul, R&B, blues, reggae, salsa, mariachi, gospel, doo wop, and rock n’ roll. Sound eclectic? You bet. In fact, the stylistic shifts are so abrupt in this latest (eleven piece) version of the group, that while listening to rough mixes of the forthcoming album (tentatively titled Industrial-Jazz-a-Go-Go) one listener exclaimed of the music that “it never lets you relax!”
Amen to that, brother.
Performer links
, , | ©2006–2008 Someday Inc. All rights reserved.