Yesterday's New Quintet
Angles Without Edges
[Stones Throw; 2001]
Rating: 6.8
When I was four or five years old, my parents decided they'd had enough of the
city life and moved into a very rural area about 30 miles from Austin, exposing
me to a completely new side of American culture. After a few years of adjusting,
I eventually embraced simple living and, naturally, the music of the simpler
people. Then, one day, while driving into Austin, my mother was flipping channels
on the radio when suddenly, amid the rants of early morning talk show hosts and
adult contemporary, I heard the most glorious sound I have yet to hear.
"Miles Davis? Who the fuck is Miles Davis? Mom, why doesn't Rick Dees play
Miles Davis?"
When I got home I tried desperately to find that station again. Why had I never
listened to it before? I spent literally an hour tuning the knobs of my stereo
until it finally struck me that all those damn trees that provided us country
folk with clean air were also mitigating my reception. From then on, I always
attended my mother's trips into the city. It allowed me to become familiar with
all the college radio stations and the variety of music they played. Years went
by. Owning a car facilitated my musical addictions and I discovered a place in
my high school parking lot where I could pick up that one station perfectly.
And thanks to that one song ("Blue in Green"), I became the man before you
today.
I've already heard a dozen or so ill-conceived comparisons made for Yesterday's
New Quintet: DJ Shadow, Amon Tobin, Coltrane, even Squarepusher. None of these
are radically far from the group's essential style (except maybe Squarepusher)
but when names are dropped in such a succession, it usually spells out a rote,
by-the-numbers album. Congratulations, YNQ-- you delivered!
The record actually starts off fairly promising with decidedly downtempo beats
supporting a Milt Jackson vibraphone line that gives way to a female MacInTalk
voice reciting "Yesterday's New Quintet" continuously (as she does randomly
throughout the record). The first of the DJ Shadow influences becomes apparent
in the fractured beats of "Julani" (the group features a DJ in lieu of a live
drummer) as drum fills are sampled, scratched, then strangely absent. "Julani"
climaxes rhythmically and segues into "Papa," a funk jam already in progress.
It's "Keeper of My Soul," however, that sets the formula for the album. The
Quintet find a "hook" or a "groove," pummel it into the ground using the same
instrumental experiments as every other song (i.e. a wah-wah pedal and
a Fender Rhodes), and then awkwardly fade out. That said, many of the tracks
sound like excerpts from longer drone sessions. Hip-hop producer Madlib arranged
this entire album, and many times, it appears that we're listening to unused or
discarded backing tracks from his more successful endeavors as Quasimoto on last
year's The Unseen.
Angles Without Edges isn't guilty of being bad, just uninspired. Good jazz,
like good electronic music, relies on many individually unique sounds to create
something greater than the sum of its parts. Yesterday's New Quintet all too
often sounds like a simple cut-n-paste job.
-Kevin Adickes, November 7th, 2001