The Pop Corporation

Look, if you’re the kind of bozo that turns their nose up at jazz, look away now. Jeff Parker is a serious musician who likes to play. Now, you might be thinking of overtly worthy music that is meant to challenge and stimulate and all that – and while Parker is no slouch, there is an undeniable playfulness in his work that is always worth taking note of.

Parker has worked with Chicago’s finest – Tortoise – and other offshoots, notably Isotope 217, who make abstract, languid music that is a salve for the soul. However, those deeper in the record buying trenches may know him from his association with the International Anthem label. However you know him, his records and associations are always interesting, whip-smart, beautifully discordant, but very listenable. If you’re the kind of music fan that comes to these left of field records via jazz, electronica or experimental music, then ‘The Way Out Of Easy’ should be on your listening post as soon as you get the chance.

This new LP has been made with his quartet—or IVtet he calls it – and was mustered up during a residency at a club in Los Angeles, and it is this setting that sees Parker & Pals making something that throws back to the ’40s and ’50s, with their own twist on Cool Jazz. It’s patient playing – it’s got moments of aching stillness – it’s terrific stuff.

The songs are long, exploratory affairs and our favourite is ‘Late Autumn’, which is in part a piece of music that’ll make you feel instantly more smart, while at the same time, hanging like a cloud around your ears while you idle away the 17+ minutes it takes to find itself out. It’s understated largely, but a spectacular bit of playing.

Elsewhere, ‘Freakadelic’ is re-do of a track Parker has had in the arsenal for a while now, but this time, approached in such a way that it has air and new life breathed into it. There’s acid-funk and all sorts of stuff thrown in there, but it’s a terrific slab of soulful bop that opens the album out beautifully.

While a lot of our favourite new jazz LPs are busy, explosive affairs, this album is depending on your mood, something to ease into gently, or completely zone out with. Not to say that this is wallpaper music – far from it – this is music that is impressionistic, with delicate strokes bleeding into the rest of the music, and making for an endless wash of atmospherics, punctured softly by intricate guitar, snares and horns.

What is really superb is Parker’s clever use of feedback – not something you’d associate with classic jazz sounds. In this setting, Parker gets the image of a smoke filled jazz club and brings it slap-bang up-to-date, letting his modern stylings ooze out of his amplifier and directly into your brain. It’s sensational stuff, allowing you to get lost in the details while the band plays.

This is one of our favourite jazz LPs we’ve heard since Daniel Villareal’s ‘Panama ’77’, and if you’re into interesting music or are a jazz fiend old or new, you should absolutely make a bee-line for it. Like Villareal’s LP, you can hear echoes of an entire record collection bleeding through each improvisation – be it the clang of Reich, or the dub-esque effects. Such is the intimacy of the recording, you are drawn in with its quiet authority. It really is an exceptional album. One of the year’s best!