He has participated in Joxxx, Bundle of Joy Division, and the Patrick Jonestown Massacre as guitarist, vocalist, and bassist.
He listens to Boris, Orlando Julius, Mac DeMarco, Bill Evans, Dirty Projectors, Red House Painters, and Gram Parsons when he runs out of ideas.
1: As a jazz enthusiast and performer, what are your favorite sub-genres? How are they differentiated from one another?
For jazz, definitely post-bop, which I feel is a pretty token answer given it’s probably the last “great” era of jazz. It spans the late-50s through the 60s, every legend seemed to hit their peak around this time. Stylistically, this was stripping down bebop to smaller bands with an emphasis on solos and expression via improvisation.
My favorite of this era would be pianist Bill Evans, who is definitely his own subgenre unto himself given his emphasis on expressive chord work and group interplay. He usually played in trios, which I love. I think big band jazz can get a little schmaltzy by nature. He’s an interesting figure though; like a sort of jazz Kurt Cobain, his personal life was legendarily tragic in spite of his huge influence and ability. I’ll spare the details because his music just sounds like a very hurt person peering deep into themselves, especially his ballads and slower pieces. He’s not without criticism though: basically, Bill’s style removed everything black from jazz. Miles ended up liking Sly and the Family Stone. Evans liked Debussy. Both are brilliant at what they did. So it goes.
I also love Latin jazz, which has been unfairly demonized since the 80s due to its crossover into Carlos Santana radio pop territory. I think our generation’s wholesale embrace of 70s West African funk/highlife is maybe a reaction to the Santanafication of Latin jazz, which I am all for. But even going back to bossa nova there is plenty to treasure.
Stylistically, Latin jazz has very “straight” rhythms, which is why sometimes it sounds very “rigid” compared to stuff like bebop, which is “swung.” It can lean back on the beat a little more. Latin jazz never really downsized from the big band era and features large horn sections and often a much larger rhythm section. I’ve always felt it’s a bit heavier than bebop – solo sections are usually just a few chords repeated until the solo is over, with no key changes. It’s more fun to play from a rock background, most people could keep up with it with some effort.
2: What is the best decade of music and who would provide the zeitgeist for this era?
One of my number one pet peeves is idealizing the past. I always like to think and hope that I am living in the best decade, year, month, and day for music, you know? If I have to, though, I’d probably vote the 1970s. Restless experimentation, great guitar tones, the birth of electronic music, generally excellent production values. The death of all that “If You’re Going to San Francisco” hippie bullshit. My parents were in their early 20s-30s for the 70s, so it was their musical prime and generally what I was raised on. I’m particularly fond of Gram Parsons and all his projects, Nick Drake, Led Zeppelin, disco and funk… Even Miles was dropping some very odd stuff, like “On the Corner” and “A Tribute to Jack Johnson,” which push jazz so far into rock and deep funk territory that you’d never believe it was the guy that recorded “Kind of Blue.” Great albums, all of them.
I love that so much music from the 70s sounds like the West binged hard on psychadelics in the 60s and woke up with a hangover for a decade that they fought with cocaine and alcohol. The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin embody this better than anyone else. Big props to the Faces and the Kinks as well. I do think the late-90s through mid-2000s were a particularly fucking awful period for American music though. The Bush Era was bad times, man…
3: Who are your closest musical allies and why?
Haruomi Hosono, an utterly fascinating figure in post-war music. He’s incredible, inquisitive, and frequently fucking hilarious. I love that the dude had a massive hand in inventing and reinventing electronic music but always had a sense of humor and adventure in his music. His solo albums “Paraiso” and “Cochin Moon” are Japanese electro-exotica. He’s by turns super tongue-in-cheek, like with an English cover of chintzy American pop song about Japan called “Japanese Rhumba,” and beautifully endearing, like his arrangement of Okinawan folk song “Asatoya Yunta.” “Cochin Moon” is Japanese produced Indo-exotica. Utterly fascinating.
He worked with a pop singer, Miharu Koshi, in the 80s, whose work is unbelievably forward-thinking. Maybe Grimes, who I think is brilliant, is the closest you can get to his work with Koshi. It’s electronic and sinuous and sexy and often very weird, a mix of Western classical music with then-bleeding edge technology and a very strong pop sensibility.
Hosono also did the soundtrack to one of my favorite films of all time, “Night on the Galactic Railroad,” which mixes electronic music with Mediterranean folk and classical. It’s a great film. Not a date film. It’s slow, dark, and surprisingly heavy. All the characters are cats, though. I’d say he’s an ally, or someone I ally/align myself with, because he makes incredibly rewarding pop and electronic music while always keeping his sense of fun and adventure close. I like Mac DeMarco for similar reasons in a squarely Western pop sense.
Miharu Koshi – Parallelisme
Haruomi Hosono – Shimendoka
Bill Evans Trio – Emily
K. Frimpong and His Cubano Fiestas – Hwe hwe mu na yi wo mpena
The Flying Burrito Brothers – Wild Horses
Red House Painters – Cruiser
Dirty Projectors – Cannibal Resource
Boris – Farewell
Mac Demarco – Rock and Roll Nightclub
Orlando Julius – I’m Back To My Roots
Born In The Wild 