“I think we can all say in our own perfect musical setting, we would all write really challenging music for each other, and then play it because we love to play it, and that would be awesome for us,” keyboardist John Richardson told me last week when I met with the members of local space funk-jazz quartet Infinite Groove Orchestra. “But sometimes there isn’t an audience for that.”
Nor is there generally an audience for instrumental music even when it’s not so challenging. Hence, the motivation behind IGO’s debut LP, titled People Music according to Richardson “because we wanted to write a series of tunes that were more approachable for the average listener but not dumbed down. Tasty, with some edginess.”
IGO was originally formed in 2005 by Richardson (piano, organ, melodica, synths), Jon Shea (upright and electric basses, samplers) and drummer/percussionist Jonathan Priest. Sax whiz Jeremy Powell joined a few years later, Priest moved to North Carolina to study Chinese Medicine shortly after, and Adam Volpe – a longtime friend and onetime bandmate of Shea – was ultimately brought on to replace him. By the end of 2007, the quartet was digging roots deep into the local jam-jazz scene, playing a monthly residency at Yeoman’s Road Pub on Davis Islands and opening for artists like Sam Rivers, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe and Galactic while trying out and experimenting with material to find out just what got the bodies moving and connected to their audiences most.
Three of the four members are formally schooled in jazz and capable of using their knowledge and training in the genre’s theories and traditions as a launchpad for explorations into space and between grooves, all four musicians weaving elements of acid jazz, ambient rock, worldbeat, funkadelia, and electronica into their instrumentals, and incorporating modern technology, techniques and effects when appropriate. In sum, keeping an ear to the ground on what’s new while never losing sight of the tried-and-true. [Pictured from left: Richardson, Shea, Powell and Volpe; photo by Phil Bardi.]
A perfect case in point: “What Love Is,” a 21st Century ode born from the jazz standard, “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” Shea said he was listening to a recording of said standard by one of his favorite old school jazz pianists, Ahmad Jamal, “and I heard drum-and-bass. And it was recorded in 1968. Once I heard that, my mind went in a million directions.” Shea examined the song more closely, took note of the parts he liked best, then drafted his own arrangement in tribute to Ahmad Jamal. The nine-minute “What Love Is” opens with a scratchy sample from the original recording before launching into fast and propulsive drum-and-bass, the keyboards alternating between spaced-out atmospheric headiness and organ riffs dirtied up with a distorted, screeching guitar effect. Powell’s eerily dissonant sax cuts through the filth and heralds the entrance of a surreal lounge breakdown that resembles what the theme music to an off-beat adult game show from the 1970s dosed with 2011 mushrooms might sound like, the song segueing in and out of the two disparate yet complementary aesthetics to its conclusion.
This article appears in Jan 27 – Feb 2, 2011.