The New Mellow Edwards (Skirl Records)--Curtis Hasselbring

Our first music pick from Matt Smiley is a record I wasn't familiar with prior to receiving his list. I have about half of the Skirl Records releases (9 total) and love every one of them. When I saw this on the Smiley list I downloaded from emusic and started checking it out. The Skirl releases that I have are some of my favorite records of the past couple years, and this Curtis Hasselbring album fits right in there with the rest of those.

As of late I have come to realize that most of the music that I really love recently can't fit into a specific genre box, or be easily identified as any one particular "type" of music. I've been drawn to musicians who are more concerned with producing great music, without any concern with how it would be marketed, or if it is considered jazz, or rock, or classical, etc. This brings us to Skirl Records, and trombonist Curtis Hasselbring's New Mellow Edwards. Skirls website (independently owned and operated by genius reedsman Chris Speed) says this of the album:

Curtis' composing and the New Mellow Edwards' playing defies traditional jazz conventions and favors primal garage rock-derived grooves, textural explorations and classically-influenced structures. Curtis' tweaked version of a modern instrumental supergroup features strong performances from three of New York's most innovative musicians: Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle, Melvins, Fantomas), John Hollenbeck (Claudia Quintet, Theo Bleckmann) and Chris Speed (Bloodcount, Human Feel).

The album is great all around...top-notch compositions, and stand-out performances that are not surprising, but more expected from Dunn, Hollenbeck, and Speed these days. The music is varied. To call it a jazz album doesn't even begin to describe it, but it certainly has roots in jazz, but also rock, surf, electronic, new orleans, latin, and contemporary classical musics. My reason for going into all of this is because jazz is often viewed as a stale, and in some cases even a dead art form. Young audiences aren't drawn to jazz, because they think "jazz" only refers to Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and the other great artists who were in their hey-day in the 1940's, 50's, and 60's. My gateway to jazz was through that music, and I still love it to this day. But I think that the music has a much wider audience than this, and a lot of it would appeal to people who consider themselves rock fans and have never been exposed to improvised music with a wider scope.

Someone who immediately comes to mind as an amazing musician (jazz, country, rock, fusion and more), whose improvised output would be accessible to, and even enjoyed by fans of modern rock music is Nels Cline. He has performed with a number of jazz legends, has a discography or great improvised music, and many of you know him as the guitar player for superband Wilco. Some of my favorites to check out are The Nels Cline Singers' Instrumentals, and Draw Breath. Wilco fans, I urge you to download (for free, from his website here!) Cause For Concern, and Suspended Head off of Instrumentals and give it a listen. You might be surprised that you like it.

Again, my reason for mentioning this is because all of the releases on Skirl are these type of genre-bending, in-the-cracks, let-your-influences-all-hang-out type of music that I have come to love in recent years. It all has a basis in improvisation, but is the type of music that I think might be equally appealing to a rock audience (fans of Wilco, Radiohead, Flaming Lips, Pavement, etc) as it is to a jazz audience. My two favorite Skirl releases are Andrew D'Angelos' Skadra Degis, and Hilmar Jennson's Meg Nem Sa for starters (short clips can be heard through the links to emusic). The are both a little edgier, and maybe not for everyone...but they are two of my favorite albums of recent years. There are so many albums that fall into these cross-genre cracks, and many have been overlooked for lack of marketability. I couldn't nearly begin to crack the surface in this post, so I tried to (unsuccessfully) stay close to the original recommends. This is something that I think about a lot, so I apologize for the very wordy, rambly post. If you stuck it through to the end, here is a clip from New Mellow Edwards. It is called ABC's of the Future, and it's sort of like electronic music written for an all-acoustic quartet. I really love it:




On a not-totally-related, but not totally-unrelated note, anyone here seen There Will Be Blood? Did you happen to notice who wrote the fantastic score for the movie. Radiohead's own guitarist Johnny Greenwood, who is also a composer-in-residence for the BBC. Great, great orchestral and modern chamber string music, from a rock guitarist, what what? I much look forward to more of his orchestral music.

Adam was not surprisingly listening to Curtis Hasselbring's New Mellow Edwards, and Nels Cline's Instrumentals at the time of this post.