"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 thereafter, 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 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 training 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 when appropriate. In sum, keeping an ear to the ground on what's new while never losing sight of the tried-and-true.
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 and 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 effects. Powell's eerily dissonant sax cuts through the filth and heralds the entrance of a surreal lounge breakdown that resembles what the soundtrack 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.
The rest of the album is similarly backward and forward-minded, swaying grooves layered with outerspace synths and sax atmospherics, driving epic soundscapes swelling to lush crescendos or falling into syncopated breakdowns, jauntier numbers with buoyant hip-shaking pacing and Nola-flavored blasts of brass, stealthily racing noir-ish arrangements with wet and growling basslines, pounding rhythms, and sax notes winding and wailing eerily around it.
Infinite Groove Orchestra is a true cooperative, no player measured above another or deferred to as the leader or primary songwriter. Each shares in the creative process and brings an idea to the table knowing it's merely the framework for the rest to flesh out with their individual interpretations and creative flourishes, the end result sometimes diverging from the original idea in surprising ways but still belonging to them all. "I've written things that, once these guys got a hold of what I wrote, didn't sound like what I thought it was going to sound like — but it sounded a million times better," remarked Shea.
The band began putting together People Music more than a year ago, the process taking longer than they'd anticipated due to day jobs, family responsibilities and non-IGO gigs (each musician plays in one or more other local bands). "The good thing is we've been pumping out material left and right, and we have a whole other album in the works, two even; this is just the ice-breaker," said Richardson.
The chemistry between these four musicians comes through in the breathing, seething vibrancy of their sound and it's even more apparent in a live setting, their heightened state of awareness and ability to really listen to one another translating into a shared intuitive knack for guessing where the vibe is going at any given moment and how to follow for maximum sonic impact. "Every time you hear these songs, they're different," Shea commented, "so our music always has that freshness to it. You'll never hear a note-for-note solo because we improvise. That's what we do."
This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2011.