Why hasn't anyone heard of Jazzanova? I know, I know, this is my second column about them in almost as many months. But I just purchased The Remixes 1997-2000, and my CD player has not been able to part with it for weeks now. Maybe a review of it will serve as a kind of exorcism, and make way for another album in my boom box.
In case you don't know, (and you probably don't, unless you're from either Munich, Berlin, or Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the people seem to know everything about good music) Jazzanova are a DJ collective comprised of six men with entertaining names like Jurgen von Knoblauch and Roskoe Kretschmann. They began playing and remixing records together in 1995. They describe their music as a hybrid of jazz, bossanova, (hence the name) soul, disco, R&B, and a little bit of everything else. They radically reinvent other artists' tracks, giving them the unique Jazzanova sound.
If I have any complaint about this album, it's that the aforesaid sound can get a bit samey. As background music, it's peppered with standout moments where you lean in and listen, curious to hear exactly what's going on. If you're playing it on your Discman/Walkman/MP3 player, you might find yourself skipping some tracks.
The two-CD set starts off with 4 Hero's We Who Are Not As Others. Eerie synth chimes immediately give you the feeling that what you're about to listen to is going to kick ass. It does, but with a whisper, not a scream. Jazzanova turn the track into what sounds like a robot band playing fusion. It's calm, intricate, and undeniably electronic.
Marschmellows' Soulpower is pure pop-funk, complete with slap-bassline, hand-claps, and squelching synths. They even break it down and add whooshing Seventies sounds at the end. Jazzanova manage to replicate an entire decade's worth of music in one song, and still make it their own cool blend.
Truby Trio's Carajillo melds Afro-pop with drum-pad beats and a simple, jazzy house piano line. The singers' voices call and answer to each other. It's music you want to turn up full volume and clamp headphones over your ears, but it's also perfect as background.
High Priestess, by Karma, has a big-band-shuffle feel that swings even when it turns into a bongo-ridden ¾ voodoo beat. Lazy upright bass and blasts of brass punctuate this swampy mire till it sounds like there's a full-on tribal ritual going on somewhere in the bayou. Every so often the heat breaks, but it always comes back full force before long.
Azymuth's Amazon Adventure starts with a beat that sounds as if it came straight off a Casio pre-programmed selection. It's soon accented with more organic instruments; a high piano, another upright bass, live drumming. It's intelligent hold music.
Absolute Space, by Koop, is more of the same Casio-on-ecstasy spasmodic jazz drumming and chiming piano, this time with a fair Bjork impression over the top. Although the drumming occasionally breaks the monotony by leaning toward an exhilarating Brazilian beat, this isn't one of my favorites. The same formula's applied in Ian Pooley's What's Your Number, but now something other than nonchalance is in the mix, as a woman's voice declares emotionally that "things change". This is one of the only songs in a minor key on the two-disc set.
Visit Venus's Planet of Breaks takes the frenetic jazz pace down to a nice steady dub. The drums flow, every once in a while broken by a little eddy of beats and beeps. Toward the end, however, the drummer once again gets carried away with himself. He might try listening to some Metallica, change the mood a little.
I have both a gripe and a rave about this record, and they're one and the same. As I began to review this album, sometimes I would let a track play, begin to write about it, and turn to my CD player to find another track had started playing without my being aware the song had changed. This is disconcerting if you're trying to listen to the album as a collection of songs, which is how it's presented. I think it would sound fantastic as a continuous mix, without the usual two or three seconds of silent space separating songs. Chill-out music, which is what this is, sounds better without interruptions. I'd like to experience a Jazzanova live set to see if I'm right about this album sounding better as one huge song. Because if I view it that way, it's stellar.
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/electronica/68643/1
