Kush

Artists Michael Blake, RJ Miller, Ryan Blotnick, Scott Colberg

€29,99 EUR

Tax included.

In his 2016 album of original compositions, American East coast guitarist Ryan Blotnick mines a bittersweet melodic/harmonic vein balanced by an African-influenced rhythmic elan. Conceived as an antidote to the more aggressive forms of New York jazz, Kush offers freshly-minted waltzes, haunting ballads and more than a touch of Frisellian Americana, as well as a variety of grooves combining jazz and African feels. The album is Exclusively Available in Stereo DSD 512, DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64 from NativeDSD New York saxophonist Michael Blake, a longtime Blotnick mentor and collaborator, is the perfect foil, contributing his own blend of lyricism, heat, and harmonic depth. Also integral to the record’s success is the buoyant yet laid-back rhythm team of Scott Colberg, bass (Calexico) and RJ Miller, drums. The album repays close attention for its subtle details while also rewarding listeners more attuned to moods than solos. According to Blotnick, "RJ wanted the music to simmer and just keep expanding as opposed to my natural inclination to sort of tell a succinct story and then step back. Alice Coltrane’s music (e.g. Journey in Satchidananda) is a great example of this – it doesn’t register as a series of solos and I think it has a lot in common with West African and possibly Indian classical music that way. I think RJ’s playing on this record has a constant variation that is really hard to pull off the way he does it. The groove is always very much there even if he is playing all around it. I see it as an extension of what Paul Motian and Ed Blackwell have contributed to the music.” Among the inspirations for Kush Blotnick cites guitarists Jacob Bro (“Lunenburg”), Ali Farka Touré (“May Day”) and Marc Ribot, Alice Coltrane (“Kush”, “May Day”), Billy Strayhorn (“Spring”), Wayne Shorter and Bill Evans (“Delaware”, “And Bright Snow”), Fela Kuti, and Niger’s most popular band Tal National (“DX7”). Ryan was a member of New York’s Akoya Afrobeat and has performed in South African saxophonist Duke Mseleku’s groups. “Afrobeat is an amazing synthesis of West African and African-American musics. Playing with Akoya put me deep in the rhythm section where I was stuck with one rhythm line for the whole twenty-minute song. At first it felt like jail time but after seven or eight years I found some freedom there! I guess the main thing with African music is that every style has its own rhythmic fingerprint that goes way beyond anything you could put down on paper. When the music is passed down from generation to generation there is a subtlety about how to place accents and how to feel certain rhythms that gets lost in music that is passed down in writing…I always try to simplify my music to the point where it is memoizable – I also think it speaks to the audience more directly this way.” Lee Konitz is another mentor figure: “He tried to get me to think about where the note starts – does it start in the fingers? Or the heart? Or the brain? When Lee plays he lives and dies with each note but it is also not forced – it is very heavy yet still light at heart.”

Ryan Blotnick, Guitar Michael Blake, Saxophone Scott Colberg, Bass RJ Miller, Drums Jonny Lam, Pedal Steel Guitar (on "Lunenburg")

Tracklist

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Total time: 59:14

1. Kush