Let's drop the beat

I wanted to do a short post about the music I've been listening to lately. So here we go.

Lately, I haven't really been pushing myself to listen to newer things. I've been a traditionalist when it comes to jazz especially. I've been listening to Kind of Blue and Giant Steps a lot in particular. There's something about those albums that just keeps me going back and re-listening. I have tried listening to some newer jazz concerts on YouTube too. I saw a great concert of the Bad Plus playing the entirety of Ornette Coleman's Science Fiction album. Now that was marvelous! They had some extra musicians playing saxophones and trumpet. Great stuff. The Bad Plus is definitely one of the elite jazz groups in the current jazz idiom. That's the Bad Plus in the picture. In addition, I saw a great performance by Terence Blanchard. The music was mostly jazz fusion with hints of bop throughout. The guitarist Blanchard has in the group is super technical but not very emotive. However, his chops were still incredible. Like a young Allan Holdsworth or something. Cool man.

In terms of metal I've been listening to Arch Enemy. I see them as a stereotypical death metal band but there is quality to their music that you wouldn't find in younger metal or metal-core groups. They're all adults with great musical chops, and they know how to put on a show. Kind of like Slayer. I guess I could compare them to Slayer in a way because they both have a massive fan-base. Plus Jeff Loomis is in the band. He's this great shredder from a band called Nevermore. In addition, I've been listening to a lot of standard shred guitar stuff. People like Kiko Louriea (new guitarist for Megadeth), John Petrucci, Paco De Lucia, all that jazz. A lot of the metal stuff differs from the jazz so much that I feel like I can't listen to metal for all that long before I tire of all the distortion and neoclassical harmonies. There's only so much I can take before I turn that shit off. But it's still fun to listen to.

I usually listen to music before I fall asleep or when I'm writing. However, I do believe that to thoroughly enjoy music and understand it you must listen to it in a clear frame of mind without doing anything else. Sometimes I have the time for it and other times I don't. I look forward to actually listening and finding new stuff sometime soon. I'll let you know about it of course!