Hagans - Animation + Imagination
Hagans
Animation Imagination
1999 Blue Note Records
Tim Hagans starts this release off with a deceptively sly bop lick that makes you think this will be a possibly pretty straightahead gig, and as the first few bars of the opening The Original Drum and Bass kick in, there is nothing to really suggest otherwise; high speed, tasty bop...which comes grinding to a halt a minute and 19 seconds in as the title track deconstructs into a Miles-like series of snaking trumpet bursts while Bill Kilson starts a driving drum pattern, and Kurt Rosenwinkle rips through some very McLaughlinesque guitar fury. It's jungle, but from a jazz perspective. Where the traditional instruments and programmed parts collide or transmute from one state to another is almost seamless. The album is pretty ambitious, and stays on point throughout, instead of falling into the tokenism of what many attempts at cross-pollination do.
All kinds of interesting treatments are used; both DJ Smash and DJ Kingsize lend their talents to constructing some soundscape magic, there is some phat (dumb word but appropo) Fender Rhodes (replete with occasional use of a ring modulator as far as I can tell) in a few spots from Kevin Hays; both veteran Ira Coleman and new low-end soldier David Dyson pull some paramilitary level acoustic and electric bass discipline, and Belden himself drops a little sax and reversed acoustic piano (although I am not exactly sure what it is, based on the results it would appear to be cool). And of course there is Tim Hagans himself, who cuts across the melee with his crisp trumpet tone.
While much of this album has a Miles like experimental stamp to it, and some of his phrasing could be seen as ripped wholesale from the Dark Princes fusion-era playbook, his tone and much of the more brash solos lend themselves to driving players like Freddie Hubbard in 28 IF, and late period Lee Morgan in Trumpet Sandwich. Hagans is a very sharp in terms of technical execution, which is a strength when trying to drop bursts of notes on the really uptempo sections, and his sense of swing adds some human element to the otherwise cold processed backdrop of I Heard You Were Dropped. Are You Threatening Me? starts off like a track from one of LTJ Bukem's various Ingredients comps, but rapidly shifts to something akin to territory mined by Nils Petter Moelvar and Erik Truffaz, to equally good effect.
Given the denseness of some of the performances, this album has a surprisingly shifting sense of space, with breathing room given either in the tracks themselves, or in terms of track order (i.e. the sole ballad, Love's Lullaby, is near the middle, and tracks with more spartan rhythmic treatments such as Slo Mo, get placed strategically so as to prevent listener fatigue. Otherwise, one could get drained by the often furious playing of the uptempo cuts.
This could easily fit into both Miles Davis early fusion heads and modern followers of LTJ Bukem's various labels and London Elektricity. Fans of the jungle experiements of Bill Laswell and Nils Petter Moelvar will also most likely be pleased. Even better is the live album, called Re-Animation, of mostly this same line up showing an even more muscular interpretation of the material. Both received Grammy nominations, which I find shocking for such a staid trapping of the music biz.
Animation Imagination
1999 Blue Note Records
Tim Hagans starts this release off with a deceptively sly bop lick that makes you think this will be a possibly pretty straightahead gig, and as the first few bars of the opening The Original Drum and Bass kick in, there is nothing to really suggest otherwise; high speed, tasty bop...which comes grinding to a halt a minute and 19 seconds in as the title track deconstructs into a Miles-like series of snaking trumpet bursts while Bill Kilson starts a driving drum pattern, and Kurt Rosenwinkle rips through some very McLaughlinesque guitar fury. It's jungle, but from a jazz perspective. Where the traditional instruments and programmed parts collide or transmute from one state to another is almost seamless. The album is pretty ambitious, and stays on point throughout, instead of falling into the tokenism of what many attempts at cross-pollination do.
All kinds of interesting treatments are used; both DJ Smash and DJ Kingsize lend their talents to constructing some soundscape magic, there is some phat (dumb word but appropo) Fender Rhodes (replete with occasional use of a ring modulator as far as I can tell) in a few spots from Kevin Hays; both veteran Ira Coleman and new low-end soldier David Dyson pull some paramilitary level acoustic and electric bass discipline, and Belden himself drops a little sax and reversed acoustic piano (although I am not exactly sure what it is, based on the results it would appear to be cool). And of course there is Tim Hagans himself, who cuts across the melee with his crisp trumpet tone.
While much of this album has a Miles like experimental stamp to it, and some of his phrasing could be seen as ripped wholesale from the Dark Princes fusion-era playbook, his tone and much of the more brash solos lend themselves to driving players like Freddie Hubbard in 28 IF, and late period Lee Morgan in Trumpet Sandwich. Hagans is a very sharp in terms of technical execution, which is a strength when trying to drop bursts of notes on the really uptempo sections, and his sense of swing adds some human element to the otherwise cold processed backdrop of I Heard You Were Dropped. Are You Threatening Me? starts off like a track from one of LTJ Bukem's various Ingredients comps, but rapidly shifts to something akin to territory mined by Nils Petter Moelvar and Erik Truffaz, to equally good effect.
Given the denseness of some of the performances, this album has a surprisingly shifting sense of space, with breathing room given either in the tracks themselves, or in terms of track order (i.e. the sole ballad, Love's Lullaby, is near the middle, and tracks with more spartan rhythmic treatments such as Slo Mo, get placed strategically so as to prevent listener fatigue. Otherwise, one could get drained by the often furious playing of the uptempo cuts.
This could easily fit into both Miles Davis early fusion heads and modern followers of LTJ Bukem's various labels and London Elektricity. Fans of the jungle experiements of Bill Laswell and Nils Petter Moelvar will also most likely be pleased. Even better is the live album, called Re-Animation, of mostly this same line up showing an even more muscular interpretation of the material. Both received Grammy nominations, which I find shocking for such a staid trapping of the music biz.
posted by theloniusfunk at 1:51 AM
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