Friday Top 5: Jazz Musicians/Bands

Pretty much self explanatory. Play the audio files for some examples of these folks' work.

5) Amon Tobin

Amon Tobin is an electronic artist first and foremost. The vast majority of his music sounds more like Aphex Twin than it does Miles Davis, but there are some very strong Jazz undercurrents in every track that make themselves very apparent at times.

4) Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck is usually thought of as a distant second to Miles Davis, since Miles is is the very mainstream version of good Jazz, and as such, many people consider him to be the grand-master. I tend to take a different viewpoint, however, Dave Brubeck was there for many of Miles Davis's major hits, and he has a instantly recognizable style that I feel sets him far apart from the rest of the pack.

3) Charles Mingus

Mingus is to Jazz what Rammstein is to Electronica. He is gritty, low, and guttural. I absolutely love it.

2) John Coltrane

Coltrane is considered by many to be the premier innovator in modern Jazz, and he has influenced the entire realm of postmodern Jazz groups in a very meaningful way. Experimenting with 'atonal' Jazz, he got a lot of bad press, as people found his later music hard to follow. Despite this, he is considered to be 'the man' of avant-garde Jazz. I like him because of exactly this, and because he influenced my #1 band to a large extent.

1) The Bad Plus

The Bad Plus is a trio of young white guys that likes to do cover songs. They are utterly fantastic. The songs that they perform are anything but copies, and even in a song that you know by heart, it can be difficult to pick out more than a couple of melodies from a Bad Plus cover. New, yes, but great, and very deserving of the #1 slot.

Labels: top 5

---