“Most radical (and most indicative of Don’s nascent intentions) is the insistence that the music be communal and solo-free.”
Every week or so, your average music writer will get about twenty emails from a publicist claiming that this or that artist has made “a new spiritual jazz classic”. What this usually means in 2021 is that someone heard Karma or Journey in Satchidananda in a sativa-addled haze a couple years ago, looked up an article on the internet about how modes work, and made some slowish boom-bap shit in Ableton with an old schoolmate blurting saxophone all over it. Some of it sounds fine, but almost none of it has any of the weight of its purported forebears. It’s modal muzak, background for a mellow Tuesday at the coffee shop.
Originally published by The Quietus.Read it on The Quietus