Metro Pulse/Platters

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This Week: DJs tinker with some of jazz' greats, with mixed results

Various Artists
Verve/Remixed and Verve/Remixed² (Verve)

Madlib
Shades of Blue: Madlib Invades Blue Note (Blue Note)

In 1960 electronic music composer Vladimir Ussachevsky recorded "Wireless Fantasy," including a previously recorded portion of Wagner's Parsifal and thereby creating perhaps the first of what today would be considered a remix. Forty years later jazz guitarist Pat Metheny posted the following about saxophonist Kenny G's embrace of that same concept when G mixed himself into a Louis Armstrong track: "when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks ... he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and callused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present...." Tell us how you really feel about it, Pat.

Moral outrage at technology flirting with sacrilege is more often associated with stem cell research and human cloning; nevertheless, this particular outburst in the small pond of jazz got the attention of record label executive management. Beginning in the decade before Metheny's screed, labels experimented with releasing archival material to DJs, pop artists, jazz musicians, etc., but in 2002 they opened the floodgates, the most popular example being Verve's 2002 Remixed release, which in 2003 was followed with Remixed2 and Blue Note's Shades of Blue.

Verve's releases focus on assorted DJ interpretations of primarily female vocal artists, such as Nina Simone, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Astrud Gilberto, and Carmen McCrae. A particularly prominent example is the club hit from 2002's Remixed, MJ Cole's mix of McRae's "How Long Has This Been Going On?" — a sonic bombshell that reinterprets the strident vocal to create an irresistible dance hit, adding a surreal dimension to Gershwin's 1928 inquiry. Nina Simone's forceful and dark delivery also stands up exceptionally well to remix manipulations, as for example on Felix Da Housecat's re-working of "Sinnerman" and Jaffa's "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," both from Remixed2. Simone's political inclinations aside, her 21st-century reincarnation finds her to the deep house diva born.

The transformation from introspective torch song to re-mixed dance tune succeeds when a strong vocal characteristic exists to be enhanced in the mix, sampled and repeated for rhythmic effects, adjusted relative to the original accompaniment, on top of which are laid popping bass and drum licks. Ella Fitzgerald fares less well from this treatment, her thinner sound less resilient in the face of such tinkering. Astrud Gilberto, on the other hand, famed for her perennially off-key delivery, offers the option of either pitch-correcting by speeding up the recording, such as on Thievery Corporation's mix of "Who Needs Forever" (on Remixed), or fetishly featuring her pathology on Koop's "Here's That Rainy Day" (on Remixed2).

Several all-instrumental cuts are included on Remixed2, the most successful of which is The Funky Lowlives' take on the Dizzy Gillespie classic, "Manteca". The Latin groove was danceable in the original, but here harmonic elements are simplified and the melody subsumed into the background. Archie Shepp's "Blues for Brother George Jackson" is similarly renovated by Mondo Grosso Next Wave, the relentless rhythmic drive upstaging all but the intermittent Shepp sax riff, the final result a contest between hypnotic and monotonous.

Blue Note's offering, Shades of Blue, authored entirely by one DJ, Madlib, is an overall more aspiring, less catchy affair, but delivers uneven results. Of the 16 cuts, only about half are remixes, the remainder being conventional covers of jazz originals interleaved with varieties of narrative signifying ("Madlib, he da band, dig it!" and similar testifying). For remix purposes, Madlib spotlights Blue Note's funk/soul catalog, represented to best effect on trumpeter Donald Byrd's "Stepping Into Tomorrow," rejuvenated by Madlib's rhythmic and vocal augmentation. The covers on the other hand focus on the hard bop archive, such '60s classics as Horace Silver's "Song for My Father," Wayne Shorter's "Footprints," and Herbie Hancock's "Dolphin Dance." None of these are memorable, however owing to their being covers rather than remixes, perhaps less offensive to those easily offended by the intrinsic nature of remixing.

If these CDs are in any way representative of what should be expected from future offerings, jazz tolerates well electronic fiddling. The results are occasionally compelling, now and then fascinating, and worst case no more than dull, a not unexpected result when classic improvisatory music is distilled for its dance elements.

—Jonathan B. Frey