The Quixotic Engineer

Jazz is a fascinating genre of music. Born out of slavery in the Mississippi Delta along with its sister the blues and defined by complex melodies and improvisation, it became the framework for some of the greatest musical minds of the 20th century.

To those of us raised on three chord rock and 2:50 pop songs, however, jazz can seem a tad impenetrable. The songs often lack a traditional structure, and change rhythm and melody on the fly. Lacking a paradigm within which to understand the music, it can be difficult to pursue the active, focused listening required to properly grok it.

I don’t pretend to have any kind of jazz credentials; I wouldn’t even call myself a serious enthusiast. However, if you’re a rock music fan interested in exploring jazz but unsure of where to begin, I may have a few suggestions. By finding parallels between rock and jazz artists, I hope to make bridging the gap a little easier.

If you listen to Frank Zappa, you might be interested in…

Charles Mingus – Better Git It In Your Soul

If you’re a fan of Frank Zappa, you’re probably already comfortable with strange melodies, large horn sections and improvisation. While he experimented with jazz fusion on many of his successful mid-70′s solo albums (such as Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo) the influences in his music can be heard as early as 1969′s Hot Rats. Conversely, it’s not uncommon to hear a modern jazz band perform their own interpretation of “Inca Roads” or “Peaches en Regalia.”

Charles Mingus’ music greatly influenced Zappa’s sound. Indeed, he’s one of the few jazz composers name checked in the liner notes of Freak Out!, listed under “These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them.” Mingus shares Zappa’s affinity for punchy, energetic and strongly emotional music. I would highly recommend his seminal recording Mingus Ah Um, widely considered to be one of the greatest jazz albums of all time.

If you listen to Van Halen, you might be interested in…

Oscar Peterson Trio – Tristeza

This is a bit more of a stretch than my last recommendation. One of the signature elements of Van Halen’s sound is Eddie Van Halen’s virtuoso guitar work. Famous for popularizing tapping (using both hands on the guitar’s neck to play notes extremely quickly), Eddie is considered one of the greatest rock guitar players of all time. In that respect, he has quite a bit in common with Oscar Peterson, a man once named the “Maharaja of the keyboard.”

The late Oscar Peterson grew up in the Afro-Caribbean district of Little Burgundy in Montreal. His prolific career spanned over 50 years, in which time he produced literally hundreds (!) of albums. It’s difficult to know where to start exploring his music; unlike many jazz artists he didn’t have a single magnum opus that defined his career. However, the Oscar Peterson Trio’s 1970 release Tristeza on Piano is a definite highlight.

If you enjoy Animal Collective, you might be interested in…

Thelonious Monk – Straight, No Chaser

Not necessarily Animal Collective per se, but any band that’s actively involved in pushing the boundaries of music and sound. I’m talking about experimental bands such as Battles, The Fiery Furnaces and The Mars Volta. If you enjoy artists who explore new ways of thinking about rhythm and melody, then Thelonious Monk’s innovative sound might appeal to you as well.

Wikipedia had a surprisingly insightful description of what exactly made Thelonious Monk’s music so revolutionary: “His compositions and improvisations are full of dissonant harmonies and angular melodic twists, and are impossible to separate from Monk’s unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of silences and hesitations.” I particularly enjoy his exploration of dissonance, you can hear it used to great effect in the audio sample embedded above. His fast tempos and jumpy piano playing set the foundation for the subset of jazz known as bebop. If you’re interested in exploring his music, I would begin with the 1957 collaboration Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane.

I hope these three recommendations have given you a potential starting point for exploring the genre. Of course I’m still green when it comes to jazz, so please educate me by leaving your artist and song suggestions in the comments below.

For whatever reason I was introduced to an astounding number of terrific new artists this month. Perhaps having my headphones on 8 hours a day at work has something to do with it. In any case, here are this month’s Musical Box picks.

Ladytron’s new album Velocifero came out at the beginning of June, and it quickly became one of my favourite albums of 2008 so far. I’m not always big on electropop, but their heavy beats and thick synth layers really won me over. Helen Marnie’s haunting voice probably had something to do with it as well. If you like this song I recommend checking out “Tomorrow” off the same album.

I was introduced to The Young Knives by Boing Boing of all places (follow the link, they do a terrific acoustic set.) The lyrics to “Turn Tail” are very evocative; I particularly like the “head in my hands / hands in the soil” bit and the chanting of “I will turn tail and run” towards the end. Truth be told, I don’t think any of their other songs are quite as interesting as this one. Apparently the band is quite big in the UK, but mostly due to their pop-ier singles.

The video below contains graphic and disturbing historical footage, please click with caution.

I discovered this protest song by Phil Ochs via Bill Harris. I’m a casual fan of 60′s folk music, but I somehow missed Ochs up to now. I’d never before heard someone sing and tell a story in equal parts so majestically before. The message of his music is still incredibly relevant today, be sure to check out “Cops of the World” and “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” as well.

Brazilian Diamonds – DJ Earworm [download]

I’ll leave you with a rather clever mash-up of Django Reinhardt’s “Brazil” with Paul Simon’s “Diamonds On The Soles of Her Shoes” by DJ Earworm. I hadn’t intended to include this song, but Dan and Michael got a kick out of it so I thought you all might as well. Enjoy!

I’d heard from friends and other video game enthusiasts that Video Games Live was a fantastic experience and well worth going out of your way to see. Unfortunately, life got in the way when they came to Montreal a few months ago, but yesterday I was given a second chance. They were putting on a free show at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto, no more than a hour or two away from my current residence in Waterloo. I thought I’d do a little recap of the evening’s events, and hopefully convince you to check them out if they’re playing near you.

The show was scheduled to start at 8:30, but we got there at 7 to ensure a good spot (it was a free show after all.) There were Wii and Xbox 360 stations set up for people to play, as well as a Guitar Hero competition that went on throughout the day. There were a few cosplayers, including a troupe of Jedis and a dude in a fantastic Phoenix Wright costume. There were also hordes of people playing DS while they waited, so it was a good opportunity for me to take advantage of The World Ends With You‘s mingle mode feature.

Before the main event, the two finalists of the Guitar Hero competition were invited to play a final match on the unreleased Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, playing the Run-D.M.C. cover of “Walk This Way.” The winner got a free copy of the game, and an Xbox if I recall correctly. They also had a costume competition, and someone in a pretty good Kid Icarus costume won (Phoenix Wright was robbed! Objection!)

Once conductor Jack Wall bounded onto the stage in an outfit that would make Ian Anderson proud, the show began with a medley of arcade music. Accompanying it were short video clips of the games in question, as is the formula of the entire show. The crowd loved it, often shouting out the names of their favourite games as they appeared on screen. I would say that there were approximately forty musicians on stage, including a full choir and two or three solo opera vocalists.

Host Tommy Tallarico then took the stage, telling the crowd a little about the history of Video Games Live and the programme for the evening. Apparently they have roughly forty different game sets prepared, but only play fifteen or so every show. He also explained that they employed local musicians, which I thought was rather commendable.

The next set featured music from the Metal Gear Solid series, which included an audio introduction by David Hayter and a video foreword by Hideo Kojima. As the music played an MGS guard walked across the stage, pursued by a cardboard box. When he became suspicious, an exclamation mark appeared over his head and the band began to play the “warning” music. It was terrific fun.

This was followed by music from God of War, Final Fantasy, Sonic, Mario, Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, Myst, Metroid, Civilization IV, and World of Warcraft. There were several solo performances by Martin Leung, of blindedfolded piano YouTube fame. They also included two small contest segments. The first pit the winner of the Guitar Hero competition against Space Invaders, with a motion sensing shirt that had him running across the stage to control his ship. Unfortunately the controls were sloppy at best, and he was eliminated very quickly. The second had two contestants randomly chosen from the crowd go head-to-head at Frogger, with the orchestra playing music for their game in real time.

The show lasted approximately two and a half hours, with a 20 minute intermission. They played the music from Halo for the finale, with Tommy Tallarico picking up Steve Vai’s part on the guitar. The crowd, predictably, demanded an encore, so they came back out with Final Fantasy VII‘s “One Winged Angel.” Finally, they closed the show with the music of Castlevania, which was really terrific.

Video Games Live was a tremendous experience and I’m thrilled to have travelled out to see it. Beyond the show itself, it was just really nice to be among a crowd of fellow geeks, a sub-culture coming together to relive their experiences with video games. Whereas most “gatherings” of gamers greatly depress me (Xbox Live, Internet forums, etc.), watching hundreds of people waving their DSs and PSPs in the air to the Castlevania theme song truly warmed the cockles of my heart.

[Photos by Sam Javanrouh, who was standing next to me at the concert and very kindly released his pictures under Creative Commons.]

Here’s to another month of recommended listening!

I was linked to Los Campesinos! by Derek Tallon’s blog To Be Determined (he summarizes the video pretty well, with observations about “Big Eared Yellow Shirted Guy With A Fun Singing Accent” and “Shy Guy Who is Probably The Drummer.”) When I first heard them my inner cynic was cringing at the fake cheerleader sounds in the background, an effect that’s really overused in indie rock. Once I got over that, I really enjoyed their debut album Hold on Now, Youngster…, which includes highlights such as “Death to Los Campesinos!” and “You! Me! Dancing!” (it would seem that they’re rather fond of exclamation marks.)

Icelandic band Sigur Rós have had worldwide fame for nearly a decade. I’d probably heard the name bouncing around somewhere before, but never actually bothered to sit down and listen to them until they decided to give away a single from their new album as a free MP3. The song is called “Gobbledigook”, and it has a crazy dream-like quality that I absolutely love. I’ll definitely be digging through their back catalogue in the near future.

The Bird and the Bee got a fair bit of Internet attention this month from a Mac enthusiast’s video that featured one of their songs. I was introduced to them a few months ago by my friend Tiff, and rather enjoyed their eponymous debut LP. Their sound has a certain low-fi charm that’s both catchy and subdued, so it’s great computer background music.

Listening to the same music at work every day is getting boring, so please help relieve my boredom by dropping me a comment with suggested listening.

This month’s Musical Box is brought to you by Second Cup, who very kindly allowed me to leech their free wireless Internet without buying anything. *cough* Well, here’s last month’s musical discoveries (one week late.)

(If I keep posting Nav‘s musical suggestions, I’m going to have to rename this series “The Copy/Pasted from Google Reader Box.”) The Internet tells me that Santogold (Santi White) is a music industry veteran, and there was a great deal of anticipation leading up to her debut release. I’m not hip enough to have caught a whiff of said hype, but I really like the album. Santogold has been compared to M.I.A., and the comparison is apt. It’s extremely hard to categorize her sound, she blurs the lines between pop, electro and alternative. The album has hits and misses, but the whole is well worth checking out.

I was linked to British indie rock band Guillemots by Save The Robot. The video above is of them playing “Get Over It” live on Jonathan Ross. Great track, isn’t it? What a shame that the album version is TERRIBLE. Ok, minor hyperbole. It’s not THAT bad, but I really dig the rocked out version they played. I can’t speak too highly of their latest album Red, but I recommend their 2006 release Through the Windowpane.

I’m cheating a little, I didn’t actually discover the Yoshida Brothers this month. The Beatles introduced the West to Sitar-enhanced rock ‘n’ roll, could these guys spark a new trend of shamisen rockers? Wikipedia tells me that their style of music is inspired by Japanese Tsugaru-jamisen music. If you enjoy this song, I suggest checking out their 2003 debut release.

Finally, I was linked by Dubious Quality to a video of Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones hanging out backstage. The song in the background was a rough take of jam between Hendrix and Brian Jones, and you can hear both takes (take 1 [WMA] and take 2 [WMA]) at RocksOff.org.