Customer Reviews

Nu Bop

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

With the talented Matthew Shipp you don't know what to expect. His career has been so all-encompassing that I don't know where to begin. His last outing "New Orbit" was quiet, stark, and minimal; with occasional moments of insanity. His tour of that record had all types trying to figure out what he was up to. It was the extremes of Shipp and Parker wild assaults of space to the quietness of percussion and human beats. Through his range of live and recorded performances and unswerving individual development, Shipp came to be regarded as a prolific and respected voice in creative music. He has paid his dues to the past. Now he seems to be creating a new vocabulary for others to build on. He is grabbing our hands and saying "Let's go!"

Born in the 1960's and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, Matthew Shipp grew up listening to 1950's jazz recordings as well as Jimi Hendrix. Putting on "Nu Bop" for the first time may be a shock. Is this a Chemical Brothers track? What is it? Shipp has left jazz behind and entered into a new field. It seems as if the presence of Guillermo E. Brown is a major factor here. It's like taking LSD as a teenager: the world view has changed and all of sudden films like 2001 are now documentaries. Also Chris Flam seems to figure in somewhere. Flam is a wild card in the deck. He is the feldspar in the mine. He is the boxer punching at infinite space. Shipp is opening up the jazz world to the DJ culture and making interesting bridges. He is naked in the in mental space of one thousand plateaus.

Shipp once said: "I am a product of a certain tradition. Obviously so. I come out of a 1960s avant garde jazz tradition. That whole spectrum of McCoy Tyner, Cecil
Taylor, Andrew Hill, Paul Blake..." We notice that more on previous records. Now it's the spirit continuing on in fields that is unexplored. "Nu Bop" resists categories. This is the music that makes Jason Pierce of Spiritualized cry and bow down. Shipp lets all the walls fall down. There are pieces of fragments of an old world. There are broken bones and chromosomes. He emerges from the end of a century as a wrecker and a creator. His music screams: "No walls!"

Shipp is not ignoring the contribution of someone like Ghostface Killah. Shipp says: "Any aspect of Hip Hop is closer to the Jazz spirit than some of the conservative notions of people like Winston Marsalis. Max Roach said he understood where
Hiphop was coming from. Hip Hop is here to stay. DJ culture is very valid." Shame on you Winston for your limited horizons. I am sending all my albums back to the factory. "Nu Bop" may be this era's version of "Rockit." We love every minute of it.

The problem with labels that are "artist run" is that often the artists are tempted to release material that just isn't ready for public consumption. Particularly if the "artist label" has the backing of a bigger company and major distribution the temptation to release too many albums can be rather great. This recording, released as part of Shipp's self-curated Blue series on Thirsty Ear, is a project that should never have seen pressing. The idea isn't bad, the compositions aren't bad, the individual playing isn't bad, but taken all together the album is an underdeveloped mess.

I have had my struggles with Shipp as a musician. I've never been sure if my lack of enthusiasm for the pianist is real or the product of my own envy, as Shipp is my exact contemporary and plays my instrument (and is much more wildly successful than I am). In fact, concern about my own motives in accessing Shipp has kept me from reviewing any of his work until now, and from reviewing David S. Ware's CDs. I was afraid I would be unfair. However, I've come around to Shipp as a pianist, finding much more to admire in his chunky blend of 60s post-bop and avant-garde than I had first thought. And he has the good taste to surround himself with excellent musicians. This date is basically the David S. Ware rhythm section, with the addition of Daniel Carter on several cuts and programmer Chris FLAM. The attempt is to update the 60s avant-garde sound of the Ware group with heavy hip-hop beats, drum programming and post-production effects.

This attempt fails, basically because Shipp and company don't adapt for the new style. Drum programming is locked in step. Jazz groups aren't. As a result, when Parker and Guillermo Brown mix up the funk rhythms, creating the kind of excitement one would expect from two groove masters, their natural deviations from the mechanical beat pull away from the drum programming. It's messy and effectively creates moments of anti-groove in music that is attempting to be groove music.

When Miles Davis merged jazz with rock in the 70s he rethought both genres. The electronics weren't just tacked on to the old Miles Quintet sound. The sound itself adapted to the new medium. Similarly, when Miles added go-go and hip-hop sounds to his late groups he approached the music in an integrated fashion. This is exactly what Shipp and company doesn't do on this CD. The electronics remain an afterthought. Take them off the disc and you'd have a pretty standard Shipp CD, not much different from Pastoral Composure. The programming at best adds nothing to the CD and at worst gets in the way of the musicians. This is most obvious on the heavy hip-hop tracks, but even on Nu-Bop which features a heavily processed Daniel Carter, one can't help but ask what good any of the processing is doing to the overall group sound.

The album isn't devoid of good spots. Shipp takes a lovely solo piano turn in ZX-1, though some of the processing effects can be a bit distracting. I'd much prefer to have heard the piano without so much artificial reverb and chorus effects. X-Ray is another Carter feature, this time on flute and without Shipp's piano. The piece is lovely, though again, the processing doesn't do much to help things. I'd rather hear Daniel without the delay. And many of the compositions are quite good, particularly D's Choice, which is one of the most engaging Shipp pieces I've heard. Unfortunately, the gimmicky program tracks mar it. Nu Abstract is the closest the CD gets to truly integrating the musical and electronic ideas. It's a spacey tone poem, featuring well though out programs based on Parker's bowed bass from FLAM as well as processed inside the piano effects from Shipp.

But the good spots on the CD don't negate the impression of a work-in-progress that should have stayed in the can until the new elements were more thoroughly digested. All reports I've heard say that Shipp's later attempts at this jazz-electronica mix have been more successful and better integrated. I hope so. I will give them a listen, though maybe I will borrow them from someone first. Because if they aren't significantly more integrated more discs in this vein will be a complete waste of money.

Not recommended.

I've given myself the difficult task of reviewing this album. Just listen to the sound sample of the leadoff track "Space Shipp." It's funky, but not James Brown funky. It's jazzy, but not Bill Evans or Herbie Hancock jazzy. The drumbeats are manipulated, but it's not techno nor hip-hop. The piano melody seems to fit within some minor mode that you don't hear much anymore. It's almost a little antiquated. His piano playing can be both thunderous and lyrical within the same note.

Welcome to the fortunately confusing world of Matthew Shipp's music. The less you read about this album and the more time you spend listening to it, the better off you are. It's avant-garde without being totally "free" and I think this makes Shipp a force to be reckoned with. I really don't know why people like Stanley Crouch need to give him so much lip for experimenting. Shipp is one of those guys that shows us what can be done with jazz if we just relax the boundaries a little bit. New bop indeed.

This is a good CD but the ideas are just a bit under-developed. It's a short album and the songs are short. Just when things get cookin', the song ends. William Parker's contributions are always a treasure... Shipp is very close to tapping into something big. Perhaps his next effort will be THE next big thing... Overall, certainly worth the money. The grooves are just beautiful and the mix is rich and deep - just the way it should be. This msuic could be played with subwoofer(s) for it isn't too far from Hip Hop - minus the vocals/ingnorance....

After years of not getting into Shipps playing too much (a little to much banging for me) I have changed my opinion since Ware's Surrendered and Shipp's work for Thirsty Ear both as a performer and artistic director. LIke most, I was stunned by Corridors and SHipp's involvement with the SPring Heel Jack session and Nu Bop is an even better synthesis of electronics and avant jazz. The tunes are excellent with Brown and PArker simply kicking (when is the world going to realize Paker's greatness!). MAybe after a while this will settle in and not seems as good, but I can't wait to see what Shipp throws at us next.

PS-Check out all of the blue series. Every one is excellent with Shipp's, Berne's and Parker's are a cut above. The only criticism would be the generally short playing time (this one's less than 40 minutes.)

Very exciting and new direction for Matthew. Easy listening.