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A stage name such as BrassBastardz might evoke images of broad-shouldered, foul-mouthed skinheads with scant respect for primetime media. Nothing, in actuality, could be further from the truth. The artists in question, from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, are not only blessed with flowing locks; they're also fronted by a well-spoken chanteuse, Daiva Starinskaite (above).
Her faithful and equally well-behaved male colleagues are Alvydas Maciulskis (keyboards); Aurimas Rimeikis (horns); and drummer Marijus Aleksa. Given that the band weaves a pop sensibility from various core components of a jazz tradition, their lineup is fairly flexible, sometimes involving additional (or passing) acquaintances like bassist Domas Aleksa, percussionist Alexander Raichenok, and - just as importantly - the ostentatious turntablism of DJ 2Fresh. That debt to modern-day dancefloor culture will be important, as we'll see.
Generically speaking, these musicians tend to find themselves cataloged by the Baltic press as nu- or acid-jazz, often with passing reference to elements of hip-hop, d&b, and soul, also. Those shifting patterns first began to take shape approximately nine years ago, when BrassBastardz came into being. For the first three years, however, the founding members operated without a vocalist. The addition of Starinskaite, it was hoped, might make the ensemble more appealing to Lithuanian radio - any confrontational stage name aside.
Considerable patience would be required.
Despite a tentative, temporary move towards industry norms, the members of BrassBastardz have always insisted that Starinskaite's role remains that of one more "instrument" - within the framework of extended jam-sessions. The inclusion of lyrics does not imply any great concession to a more media-friendly format. Starinskaite instead improvises along with her "voiceless" colleagues - and thus, according once more to the venerable rituals of a jazz canon, free-form creativity takes precedence over the limitations of any three-minute, cookie-cutter authorship. "Each of us plays their role as they see fit. Only then do we sit down, listen to it all, and decide which sections we like most."
Each of us plays their role as they see fit
A similarly scrupulous - yet unpredictable! - process went into the recording of a debut album, fittingly titled "Waiting." The musicians admit that if they'd been asked at any moment during that process when the CD might appear, they'd have answered "Soon"! And yet they also say the tracks changed a great deal between their initial conception and their eventual release date. Put differently, the songs were simultaneously close to both completion and possible alteration. Neither habit nor disorder gained the upper hand.
Jazz continues to fuel the long-term importance of these balanced criteria. Impromptu, collective authorship and an emphasis upon mutation both play a more consequential role than any goal-driven progression towards a finished, fixed statement (locked onto hard media!). Even now BrassBastardz like to claim that their fundamental audience is made of people who regularly attend jazz festivals - and therefore gain the greatest pleasure from the off-the-cuff, potentially unlimited variations encountered on stage.
For all the TV photo opportunities, live work - or the risk thereof - still remains sacrosanct.
Recently the band stated, in related terms: "All the songs [on the last album] changed a great deal over time; we were working on them endlessly. On each occasion we'd think: 'Right. We'll get this on tape, publish it - and we'll be done!' But then we'd go back to reworking the material, over, and over again..." The musicians admit that this open-ended format only prolongs a troubled relationship with local media. Ad-libbed performances make it harder to plan the advertising breaks.
We'd constantly go back to reworking the material, over, and over again...
One broader significance of this chopped, changed, and extemporized workflow is found elsewhere, for example in a couple of new St Peterburg hip-hop releases. Addresses aside, another connection between the Russian recordings comes from the fact they both declare themselves to be so-called "volumes" in a series (even though they're full of original compositions). Both, in other words, are viewed as unfinished scrapbooks - full of interchangeable elements. They see themselves as kaleidoscopic forms of display or mosaics, perhaps, rather than as singular, linear narratives.
The first of these two northern beatmakers is Muc J (aka Dima Fyodorov). When we first inspected his catalog several months ago, we pointed out his penchant for gathering quotes. Rather than offer first-person explanations of his work, he prefers instead to collect various brief statements and/or pearls of wisdom from other sources. These aphorisms are then scattered around the pages of Vkontakte.
One of those quotes, employed not long ago, implied that music offers a fine alternative to dull and/or dangerous reality. It plots a safer, superior trajectory - one that's open to alternatives: "Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets. They startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto" (Ralph Waldo Emerson). Those same dim secrets promise a great deal.
Throwing both caution and calendars to the wind in his search for sage statements, Muc J has also cited Herbie Hancock from a very different time and place: "One thing I like about jazz is that it emphasizes doing things differently."
This lauding of endless discrepancy and divergence - as BrassBastardz note - makes it hard for primetime radio to play along, but the resulting worldview and sense of expressive liberty seem reward enough, at least for the moment. Operating along these lines - in the name of inconclusiveness and dim secrets - Muc J has produced a new album ("Mightsound, Volume Two") and given it a fitting subtitle, "Ambiguous."
Less clarity and reduced predictability equals more options. Although we remain knee-deep in jazz praxis with any such ideas, we're nonetheless moving slowly in the direction of a creative outlook that recalls Brian Eno's so-called generative music. These are works which change endlessly, with each and every listening. Not with every performance, but with each listening, since the music is programmed to rearrange its own elements, each and every time.
There's no need to figure out the secret to peace and quiet. Everything's a lot simpler...
Thus we encounter what Eno has called "evolving [sonic] metaphors." For speech and music to embody generative, if not revolutionary potential(s), it much change itself. Constantly.
Here, as in Vilnius, we're left with the impression that the value of ambiguity and (endless) alteration, found in spontaneous or generative music, is what Muc J admires the most. We should not, however, expect any wordy treatises from him on the subject. The most recently uploaded aphorism on his various webpages declares: "There's no need to figure out the secret to peace and quiet. Everything's a lot simpler..." Nature, it seems, provides the mechanics of year-long evolution that language lacks.
And so to the second beatmaker. Flaty is a figure whom we've encountered before in the context of St Petersburg's Wax Paper Cup collective. His own new collection of sounds, titled in a similar fashion to that of Muc J, is "Subflavors, Volume One (Remix Album)." Several metaphors of non-stop, "evolutionary" editing are implicit in the title alone: various audible nuances or "flavors" are seen first in terms of their stratification. And then there's the returning motif of an album or "volume," full of interchangeable fragments. Finally, of course, we encounter the explicit intention to remix. This is a celebration of multiple subjective interpretations, arranged on a whim.
The culinary sketches on the cover of various vegetables (in topsy-turvy patterns) only add to the central theme of some resulting melange or medley. The monochrome, rather severe retro-cover certainly implies that we'll be taking our samples from a very large archive. The older the design, the longer the implicit chronology.
Just as Muc J prefers to stay mum - and close to the editing desk - so Flaty has nothing to say for himself regarding these issues. Instead we're offered a few telling links to some sources of inspiration. Flaty has a special fondness for New York's Eagle Nebula, who - with the help of some "cosmic headphones" - promises to fulfill the role of "hip-hop astronaut." That penchant for cosmic motifs is evident elsewhere, in both sound and vision. The appeal of ambiguity returns.
Vinyl emanates a magic - and dim secret - of its own.
This otherworldly promise of chopped, diced, and rearranged sounds comes, it seems fair to say, from the other of Flaty's big inspirations, Sun Ra. Music is nudged directly into the realm of science fiction, through the inclination of Sun Ra to see jazz in terms of pure, unadulterated fantasy. Here, of course, issues of an "Afrofuturist" style move to the fore, in that Sun Ra employed aspects of modern technology or science fiction in order to re-imagine, redo, and improve entire swathes of Afro-American history. Free-form, endlessly reconsidered and "evolving metaphors" on vinyl not only lead to unpredictable expression on the radio; they also create an entire worldview that refuses to recognize linearity (and dubious civic goals) in any form.
Jazz, hip-hop, and a sharp pair of scissors thus combine in order to reconsider the meaning of improvisation or spontaneity in some very grand and "spacey" terms indeed. On that note, with scant commentary from our St Petersburg musicians, it remains only for us to offer one of the images currently showcased by Flaty. From broken fragments and reused shards, placed in fluid forms, there emerges a genuine sense of expressive freedom. A big picture emerge from small, borrowed, and rearranged pieces. Sun Ra would approve of such evolving, avian metaphors.
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