Bill Barrett regularly sends me records he plays on. One of the most odd yet interesting things he sent me in the last couple of years is the two records he did with Steuart Liebig's Mentones, Locustland and Nowhere Calling. The Mentones are an odd jazz outfit. These days, jazz tends to be about harmony, but the mentones feature no harmony instrument: drums, bass, harmonica and sax is the outfit. That makes for a strange music where groove is predominant and harmonic exploration is more or less without boundaries. It's not music for the faint of heart, but once in a while it is nice to push one's own enevlope and listen to something a little challenging. I prefer Nowhere Calling to Locustland, I find it more coherent and accessible - despite remaining challenging.
Anyway, Steuart has just opened a Myspace where you can listen to their stuff: find it here.
"these days jazz tends to be about harmony" : I believe one can say that "these" days starts with the big band era some 80 years ago... ;) Jazz without harmony, on the other hand, is the main idea behind free jazz.
But anyway the Mentones are very interesting, somewhere between Hendrix's blues rock and hard bop or free jazz...
Posted by: Seagull | July 17, 2007 at 11:42 AM
Fair point. I should have been more explicit: "these days, exploration in jazz seems to focus on the harmonic side" is what I meant. Big Band Jazz was undoubtedly harmony based, but it didn't explore the possibilities and limits of harmony much.
I'm sure there are exceptions (Mingus, for one) but on the whole I find a lot more harmonic exploration in contemporary jazz. That being said, I'm no expert on the topic...
Posted by: Benoît FELTEN | July 17, 2007 at 03:20 PM