Jazz...



El-P - High Water

I've been looking forward to this one for a while, it's the latest addition to the Blue Series Continuum where Matthew Shipp and his improvisational chums enlist a forward thinking contributer to create some jaaaazz! Previous inductees include Spring Heel Jack and DJ Spooky - now it's El-P's turn. The approach is in theory straight-forward, the players are recorded live, with El-P contributing some distorted synth work that will be familiar to anyone whose heard Fantastic Damage, these recordings are then chopped up and remixed by El-Producto in his secret underground lab to create High Water - at least that's what I think has happened, I could be horribly wrong. What the listener is left with is improvisational music that has structure, the results are pretty deep in places, even more impressive for the fact that the production work is incredibly subtle in places. I've seen a lot of conflicting reviews of this CD, obviously some people hate it, but what's interesting is those that do hate it for conflicting reasons, and then there are people who see it for what it is: a daring and impressive fusion of modern jazz and hip-hop production which doesn't fall into the trap of being yet another soundtrack for bars which think they are cooler than they really are. I kind of wish he's put some of his vocals on it though...