Customer Reviews

Yesterday You Said Tomorrow

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First off let me say that I'm a devoted Christian Scott fan. I believe Christian is forging a new path in jazz music, one that blends elements of hip hop,alt rock and funk or basically he's a artist who is making music that's influenced by the times in which he lives & in my opinion you can't get much more real than that. Onto the music.
Yesterday you Said Tomorrow is in my mind a slightly different direction for Christian. First off Scott has come with a new bassist & pianist two guys that are new names to me on piano Milton Fletcher Jr & on bass Kris Funn. He's also scaled his band down from a sextet to a quintet & for the first time not recording with Walter Smith iii on tenor sax or any of the musicians who appeared on his last three albums. This album was recorded at the historical Englewood Cliffs NJ studio of the legendary engineer Rudy Van Gelder. Fans of the classic 50s & 60s Blue Note era jazz should recognize that name. The sound of this recording is very live, alot more so than his previous albums Anthem or Rewind That which both feature a more modern & sleek production aesthetic. This records sound is a return to a more live in the studio band sound of the classic Blue Note era albums of the 50s & 60s, which is a welcome bit of nostalgia for me. If I had to describe the music herein with only a few words I would say this batch of tunes has a Miles Davis melodic simplicity & elegance with Radiohead influenced song structures & keyboard textures with a more guitar & drum heavy sound that is intense but never bombastic or overbearing. Starting the album off is my personal favorite K.K.P.D (Ku Klux Police Dept) which opens with drummer Jamire Williams laying down a intense tribal feeling tom tom groove paired along side Matt Steven's atmospheric guitar playing until finally after about a minute Christian enters with a hushed muted simple melodic line that rides the groove & builds in intensity. Next is a cover of Radiohead front man Tom Yorke's Eraser given a subdued muted trumpet statement with Jamire Williams on brushes. After All a tune by guitarist Matt Stevens is a more funky number escalating slightly in intensity with bassist Kunn laying down a playful hypnotic groove with Scott playing on open horn with piano & guitar in three part harmony, which for me is a highlight of Scott's group sound. Isadora is a beautiful ballad which debuted in 08 on Scott's Live at Newport, this melody in my opinion is what a great melody should be, a singable & fairly simple but very beautiful line. This ballad features the pianist with a beautiful piano intro & well paced solo. I won't continue with a track by track overview because I'm a firm believer in something Miles Davis was quoted saying often when asked to give track analysis"Let the music speak for it's self". I hope I have provided the reader with a clear start to this great work. Also I believe this album is more of a creeper in the sense that it takes a few listens to really grow on you because it's a fairly drastic direction change compared to his last two releases. I also think this is some of his best work to date & look forward to his next offering. Check out this great new work!

Have you ever watched a movie that slightly confused you, yet you found yourself thinking about it days later realizing you saw something amazing? Well that's the feeling I got listening to this album. I've just recently got back into listening to jazz. After years of exposure to smooth jazz muzak, I was determined to search out for a little more thought-provoking jazz. I started with the basic, Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue", which I loved. Then I started to find other incredible jazz albums like "Mingus Ah Um" and "Love Supreme". But I wanted to find really good contemporary jazz albums that evoked that feeling I got from listening to those classics. Unfortunately my search was harder than I expected. Even looking at the Top 100 in the Jazz section I found many decent jazz albums but nothing to keep me thinking about them. In other words they were unchallenging.

I think the genre as a whole kind of suffers the way learning did during the Middle Ages, where you have people that reverent the past so much that they never seek to build upon it and take it in new directions. And even when some try to fuse it with more "modern" styles the music still sound stifled because the "styles" seem to take hold of the composition (I guess attempts at being crossover) rather than just influencing the works. Well you can imagine my surprise to see a jazz album in the Top Ten picks for Amazon's Music picks for 2010. I thought: `what is so different about this album from the other recently (and more popular) jazz albums released?'

Just one listen to Christian Scott's cover of Thom Yorke's "The Eraser" brought me to attention. What made it stand out was the way he layered the piece with the electronic/alternative edge but maintains a "jazz" sound and mood. He doesn't play into that attempted crossover pitch. That to me was refreshing. The whole album has a style that resembles what I hear from the jazz greats, but it doesn't copy and it doesn't hold itself within a frame of what is seen as traditional jazz today. This is a very dynamic and I would say important album for jazz to me.

I first heard of Christian Scott, when I saw him play at the Newport JazzFest in 2006. That brief ocean-side set, was one of the highlights of the weekend. Three studio albums later, Scott is still a highlight of the contemporary jazz world. With 'Yesterday you said Tomorrow', Scott takes a more focused approach, and provides a more consistent album, than ever before. The political themes that were brewing in 'Anthem' take a center stage on this album (ie. tracks: "Angola, LA & The 13th Amendment", "The Last Broken Heart (Prop 8)")

The track most people will probably steer towards, at first, is Scott's take on Thom Yorke's 'The Eraser'. This track features some stellar production, and maintains the controlled chaos of the original, while giving it a looser feel. The cover photograph gives much away, looking at it, you can tell this album takes a more simple/ no frills approach than his previous albums. Scott's music is elegant, simple and mature. An instant classic.

Amazing, innovative and forward-thinking music! Aside from the musical material, I especially love the LP-style "warmth" that Rudy Van Gelder achieved in the album's sound.

Christian Scott makes every note count. In his short but impressive career he has developed a unique instrumental identity using his "whisper technique," a method that allows him to smear notes, giving his playing a conversational texture and tremendous dynamic range. When Scott takes off with a high intensity run after a series of soft, thickly textured phrases on "K.K.P.D." his playing explodes like fireworks, or maybe like police car sirens. His understated phrasing is particularly effective when placed against the hypnotic, glistening framework assembled by his outstanding band, a unit that plays with a singular purpose and mood evocation reminiscent of Miles Davis' great '64-'68 pre-fusion quintet. The continuity of the band's sound is particularly impressive considering only drummer Jamire Williams and guitarist Matthew Stevens remain from the last album. Williams in particular is crucial to Scott's sound, playing furious bursts of percussion against the grain of the hypnotic, meditative pulse of the unit's angular propulsive sense.

Pianist Milton Fletcher, Jr. shows outstanding range, from the pensive balladry of "Isadora" to the single note architecture of Thom Yorke's "The Eraser." Scott's reading of Radiohead fits seamlessly into his own work--all he has to do is simplify the complex rhythms that populate the rest of the album--but that in itself is no surprise. Yorke's compositions have been covered by jazz artists from Michael Wolff to Brad Mehldau. What is surprising is the sense that Radiohead could probably record an album of Scott's compositions. There is very little distance between the trance dances of Scott's conception and the ambient sound of much contemporary pop.

There is an unsettling, deliberate disconnect between this music--which can be by turns ethereal, extraordinarily delicate, lush, jagged-edged, otherworldly and narcotic--and the way Scott chooses to define it. These could be exotic landscapes such as Davis and Shorter conjured on E.S.P., but Scott imbues his sonic visions with titles charged with anger and despair--"Angola, LA & the 13th Amendment," "The Last Broken Heart," "Jenacide," "The American't," "An Unending Repentance." These compositions convey complex emotions that could be titled in any number of ways; if one of the brightest young lights in jazz conceptualization chooses to evoke the sense of pain and despair these titles imply, our contemporary zeitgeist must be deeply, deeply pessimistic.--OffBeat Magazine, May 2010 issue

Remarkable. Now, I'm not a jazz-afficionado nor historian. I fell in love with jazz in college while forcing myself to study psychology. My collection holds great jazz pieces such 'Kind of Blue', 'Love Supreme', and 'Bitches Brew'. You know the usuals! Now, it holds Christian Scott's labor of love - Y.Y.S.T. Simply, this is a "genius moment"! Like Albert Einstein's E=MC2 or Michael Jordan's scoring 63 points on the Boston Celtics. Christian Scott journeyed into a lost land where few people go and few people make it back to. Genius.

As to the actual music. Isadora is subtle, sensual, and breath-taking. Angola, LA & the 13th Amendment is searing and profound. Each song stands alone and enhances the overall quality of this album. Y.Y.S.T. is amazing enough to make my 6 year old daughter, whom often states she'll never like jazz, gather her play tea set and diary in living room just to enjoy.

I remember my introduction to Christian Scott. I was in a large record store where the first track from Anthem Anthem was playing over the house speakers. Within minutes, I asked what we were hearing and purchased the CD. I had lost faith in jazz and so Christian Scott opened a new door for me.

Yesterday You Said Tomorrow is all new, fresh and thought provoking. Angola, LA & The 13th Amendment (track 5) is deep.

I am slightly disappointed at the loudness of the disc but there's no need to get into yet another discussion about the loudness wars of mastering and the end of dynamics.

I'D HEARD A TUNE FROM THIS CD ON THE RADIO, AND I THOUGHT IT WOULD HELP ME BE UP TO DATE ON YOUNG AND NEW ARTISTS. I CAN STILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I HEARD " MY FAVORITE THINGS" BY JOHN COLTRANE ! I WAS 17 YEARS OLD, AND THAT TUNE STILL SOUNDS AS FRESH TO ME NOW AS IT DID THEN. ALL THE TUNES FROM " YESTERDAY YOU SAID TOMMMORROW" SEEM TO RUN TOGETHER AND TO THIS DATE I CAN NOT DISTINGUSH ONE TUNE FROM ANOTHER NOR PICK OUT THE TUNE THAT PROMPTED ME TO BUY THIS CD IN THE FIRST PLACE. SOME JAZZ FANS MIGHT LIKE THIS MUSIC, IT FAR FROM THE BEST CD IN MY COLLECTION !

This is a warning to those who love musical jazz. This is not a CD of music. It is more like tone poems or exercises. Some people really enjoy that, some don't. I happen not to. I tend to follow the principle of, "If it ain't got that swing, it don't mean a thing".

This is a dispassionate exercise. It has the heart and soul of a concrete bunker. no matter how well it is played.