Nu Bop

Matthew Shipp | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 22, 2002)
• Original Release Date: 2002
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Thirsty Ear
• ASIN: B00005UWLE
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #185,619 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Needs more work, January 23, 2002

By 

Todd Adamson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nu Bop (Audio CD)

Matthew Shipp is one of my favorite pianists. Last year's New Orbit was at the top of my list of best CDs of the year, so I had high hopes for this release. The album continues an electronic experiment that he started with David S. Ware on Corridors and Parallels, but unfortunately doesn't come off as well. Marrying Shipps dense percussive style with electronica seems like a no brainer, and on the opening track it is. Unfortunately, the majority of FLAM's programming seems to be an after thought that just gets in the way of Guillermo Brown's masterful funk drumming. One wonders what the likes of a Tom Jenkinson or Mike Paradinas could do with Shipp's compositions. Hopefully, Shipp will go back to the lab and continue experimenting, because despite this rather mixed affair you can see a foreshadowing of great things to come.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A work in progress, March 24, 2002

By 

Andrew Bisset (Marshall, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nu Bop (Audio CD)

When I heard this album it blew me away. I've been searching a while now for good jazz fused with other styles of music. This disc is an exciting mix that brings an electronica flavor to the music. I give this cd only four stars though for a few reasons. First off, the CD is only 40 minutes long with most tunes lasting about 3 minutes. The other reason is that although the idea Shipp plays with here is a good one, it needs a little more development. The samples used in the first tune are cool but they don't really go anywhere and they are, in my opinion, the only real hip samples on the record. I feel like the other samples used were just kind of thrown together. Another problem which arises with any type of music that is based off of electronics is the limits it puts on spontanaeity. In the first cut there is a section where the drummer, Brown, comes out of a fill a little ahead of the time. In a natural jazz setting this subtle acceleration would hardly be noticed because the other musicians could support it. But the samples can't do that and so it comes out sounding out of time for a few beats. Despite the few shortcomings of this CD, I still suggest it. I feel like Shipp has uncovered something that will have a large influence on future developments of jazz. Just like any other jazz recording though, this album is an experiment. I feel Shipp has a little more experimenting to do and I therefore look forward to seeing what comes next. In the mean time I consider Nu Bop an important stepping stone into a new discovery of music.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A rough but very worthy outing from Matt Shipp, September 17, 2003

By 

Arsophagus Wu (Tlon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nu Bop (Audio CD)

Nu Bop is piano player and composer Matthew Shipp's third album created for the "Blue Series" -- a special collaboration with Thirsty Ear Records (for whom Shipp had already recorded extensively for) that has already produced nearly twenty recordings over three years. He had been a trailblazer throughout the 1990's renaissance in jazz avant-garde, and the Blue Series provided the pianist -- contemplating retirement due to spent creativity - with the opportunity to radically transform himself as a jazz artist, and jazz itself as an entity. The first two Blue Series recordings Pastoral Composure and New Orbit, made with his quartet featuring longtime partner, bassist William Parker, are masterpieces of new jazz. Nu bop continues along this road of exploring jazz as a sonic landscape, while infusing the abstract style with a thicker, urban-esque sensibility. It also finds Shipp incorporating hip-hop beats and electronics for the first time.

Chris Flam (listed as FLAM) joins Shipp's quartet (Parker on bass, Guillermo Brown on drums and Daniel Carter on saxophones and flute) on synths and programming for half the tracks. His production is integrated like another instrument, not simply dropping boom-bops for the musicians to blow jazzy solos over. FLAM's beats are programmed, but the musicians react to them in a similar fashion to Bill Evans reacting to his own recorded piano in Conversations With Myself. There are however, some problems in the mix: while the musicians flow well with FLAM's beats, sometimes they sound constricted. His production skills are also in question, occasionally sounding primitive, even amateurish. The beats you hear on "Space Shipp," while decent enough carry no emotional wallop so that when they are resurrected on "Rocket Shipp," you're left feeling flat. In hindsight one wishes Shipp could have worked someone like Scott Herren of Prefuse 73, though the forthcoming collaboration with premier hip hop producer and MC, El-P, will more then make up for it.

As if electronics weren't enough, Matthew Shipp shifts gears on the overall sound, to a more futuristic urban mix - closer to the styling of William Parker's own groups with drummer, Hamid Drake. Sometimes it works, reminding me of New Orbit's soundscapes reworked with a New York City feel ("ZX-1") while other times his ideas sound underdeveloped ("Select Mode 2"). Most tracks though, while more gritty and grimy, like a New York subway, are still unmistakable Shipp ("D's Choice," "X-Ray," "Nu Abstract").

Overall, Nu Bop sounds like three albums worth of transitional material condensed down to one, and this is the biggest knock, I swear. The occasional snooze with the electronics is forgivable, as the entire band stretches far beyond previous jazz-hip hop collaborations by making FLAM a member of the group, rather than an excuse to hammer two disparate styles together. I may be spoiling the fun too, but FLAM returns on Shipp's latest album, Equilibrium, and he's on his game the entire time - it is a fantastic album. You have to give Matthew Shipp credit too, for really trying to reinvent his style, to absorb hip hop, electronica and even rock music without ever compromising his own art. Shipp reinvents himself but does not recreate. Nu Bop is still a transitional album though, Matthew Shipp's On The Corner so to speak, but it is just as viable and valuable for your collection as any of his other albums, or any other album for that matter.