scissorkick

While many people protest categorizing music by genre, I do belive that it is a necessity for navigating through the massive amount of music currently available to listeners in a seemingly endless variety of formats. One of the shortcomings of musical classification however, is that genres become appropriated by scenes. For instance, if I say "jam band" you inevitably think of nitrous balloons, open-toed Birkenstocks and bean burritos. Fortunately, not all jamming acts pine for the opening spot on the Ratdog bill or a second-stage slot on the Horde Tour, and so it becomes scissorkick's mission to bring these bands to you. So let me introduce Jet Black Crayon and its rotating roster of musicians including Tommy Guerrero, Monte Vallier, Gadget and others. The story goes that when Tommy Guerrero was asked to open for Isotope 217 on a short West Coast U.S. tour he opted out of the solo gig and decided to gather a group of musicians that he could do live collaborations with. Their releases on Function8 and Galaxia show a smooth fusion of West Coast downtempo and on-the-fly funk with the Chicago-bred tradition of open post-rock experimentation with enough cinematic flux to score a road trip between both points. The instrumental tracks capture all the live energy of a spirited jam session without any of the flashbacks and visuals. These two tracks are taken from the "Experiments in the Space Metal Time Signature" EP on Galaxia.

Posted by Steve on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 at 10/05/2004 01:53:48 PM | Permalink