Jazz exists on a personal and spiritual plane for ex-Digable Planet, King Britt, telling us there’s something cosmic about the genre’s deeply African American heritage. Me, I just find it boring. It doesn’t go anywhere. It promises so much – but never quite delivers. Like a milkman with empty bottles, or the Postman without a stamp. Course it’s experimental, improvisional, the output of a creative dialogue between two or more individuals but then so too is a drunken conversation. And as for a long and distinguished heritage, well so have the Royal Family – and when was the last decent tune they came out with, eh? The sad truth of the matter is, no matter which way it’s thrown together, and no matter what the ingredients – deep house, hip-hop, broken beat, jazz, funk and afro-tech – it’s an acquired taste, the summation of endless detours and digressions, each pursuing an infinite line of trajectories. An even though the kitsch retro touches and the rich, throbbing eastern elegance of tracks like ‘Conviction’ from Dane Belany certainly elevate this collection of cosmic odds and sods, it’s anticipated magic still manages to elude me. Occassionally it transport me to that ‘deeper, almost subterranean level’ Mister Britt hints at in his liner notes (Flora Purim’s light fingered astral walk ‘Encounter’, Doug & Jean Carn’s really rather healing ‘Naima’) but too often do I find simply find myself buried beneath a weight of expectation that never quite manages to materialise.
Pioneering DJ famous for his remixes for Macy Gray, Tori Amos, Yoko Ono, Femi Kuti, Curtis Mayfield, The O Jays, Gamble and Huff, Destiny’s Child George Duke, Everything But the Girl, Chic, Edwin Star and Ursula Rucker. And for having one absolutely HUMUNGOUS and slightly frightening jazz collection.
If jazz exists on so many levels – why can’t I find just one level that’s reasonably entertaining?