Let’s get this out of the way: Flying Lotus is not from here. “Here” being Earth. Or the solar system. Or possibly even linear time. I mean, just listen to Los Angeles. It’s like someone spliced the DNA of J Dilla, Aphex Twin, Sun Ra, and that weird dream you had where a toaster was DJing in a velvet-walled spaceship. The result? A genre-melting, neuron-frying sound casserole that makes you […]
Some music slides into your life politely. Other sounds arrive like mysterious artifacts—half-remembered dreams, or transmissions from a place you’ve never been but somehow recognize. Jon Hassell’s work belongs squarely in the latter camp: uncanny, enveloping, and oddly intimate, like the voice of a friend whispering in a language you don’t know. Hassell wasn’t just a trumpeter, or even merely a composer. He was a cartographer of phantom geographies. His […]
When speaking of trailblazers in electronic music, the name Edgar Froese rings with a resonant, otherworldly clarity. As the founder of Tangerine Dream, Froese didn't just contribute to the genre—he helped invent a new language of sound. His work pushed the boundaries of what music could be, treating synthesizers not just as instruments, but as vessels for cosmic storytelling. Born in 1944 in Tilsit, East Prussia, Froese studied painting and […]
Let’s get this out of the way first:Giovanni doesn’t like Chet Baker. He says Chet’s trumpet playing sounds like it’s apologizing for existing, and that his singing is “what a ghost would croon after breaking up with another ghost.” And you know what? He’s not wrong—but that’s exactly why we love him. 💉 Beautiful Wreckage in a Tuxedo Chet Baker wasn’t just a jazz musician—he was the human version of […]
There are bands you put on while doing the dishes.There are bands you put on while driving at night.And then there’s Ash Ra Tempel—the band you put on when you want your soul to detach from your body, cruise past Saturn, and politely ignore time as a concept. Founded in 1970 by guitarist Manuel Göttsching, drummer Klaus Schulze, and bassist Hartmut Enke, Ash Ra Tempel was Germany’s answer to the […]
Let’s talk about Ethan Iverson—a pianist who looks like he might shush you in a library but actually wants to blow your mind with a Monk tune, a snarky tweet, and a five-paragraph essay on Stravinsky’s posture. He’s not your average jazz cat. He’s not even your average jazz dog, if that’s a thing. Iverson is the kind of guy who can play like a bebop demon, write like a […]
For jazz fans paying attention over the past decade, the name Shabaka Hutchings has become impossible to ignore. The British-Barbadian saxophonist and bandleader isn’t just part of the conversation—he’s leading it. Whether it’s through the swaggering horns of Sons of Kemet, the Afrofuturist psychedelia of The Comet Is Coming, or the spiritually charged depth of Shabaka and the Ancestors, Hutchings has positioned himself at the nexus of innovation, tradition, and […]
Mary Halvorson doesn’t play the guitar so much as coax it into alternate dimensions. Her sound lives at the crossroads of jazz, avant-garde, and dream logic—a place where notes bend like clock hands in a Dali painting and melodies unravel just as you think you’ve caught them. She's like a musical origamist, folding harmony into improbable forms, sometimes with elegance, sometimes with delicious awkwardness. And somehow, it always lands. Listening […]
Herbie Hancock didn’t just play music. He hacked into the mainframe of sound itself and rewired the whole interface to groove harder, glitch weirder, and swing smarter. If jazz were a video game, Herbie would be the cheat code that unlocks secret levels in five different genres at once — plus an intergalactic bonus round. Let’s begin in the early ‘60s, when Herbie showed up on the jazz scene like […]
Some jazz cats blast through the air like lightning bolts — fierce, fiery, untamed. But then there’s Gerry Mulligan, who’s more like a mischievous breeze whistling through the alleyways of sound. He didn’t just play the baritone sax; he romanced it, coiled his long limbs around it like a dance partner, and whispered secrets into its brass heart that still echo in smoky corners of old clubs and restless record […]
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