Kaveh Rastegar: Press

For jazz, next wave could be Kneebody





A century after Buddy Bolden, where does jazz go? After swing, bop, cool, modal, free, fusion, M-base, and a slew of other mini-movements, where now?
Kneebody has been thinking about this. The young electric quintet, four-fifths of which is from L.A., with one member winging in from New York, is something of a rock band with jazz chops and a classical obsession with structure. There are few extended solos; so long, Coltrane. Instead, there's a steady collective improvisation in which the whole musical environment - the key, the tempo, the texture - keeps shifting, often on a dime.
If that sounds brainy, it is. But it's handled with such apparent ease and infused with such thrashing grooves that it should be only a matter of time before Kneebody breaks through to a wider audience. Wednesday night at Stanford University's Campbell Recital Hall, a couple hundred cheering listeners, many of them teenagers attending the Stanford Jazz Workshop's summer camp, couldn't get enough of the group.
Mostly, I think, that was because of Kneebody's focus on rhythm. Drummer Nate Wood can take the weirdest tempo imaginable and make it sound like a tribal-punk call to the mosh pit. He is rhythmically conjoined not only with electric bassist Kaveh Rastegar and keyboardist Adam Benjamin but also with saxophonist Ben Wendel and trumpeter Shane Endsley, whose syncopated melodies, hocketing riffs and quick, concentrated solos fuel the rhythmic boil.
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also Kneebody's focus on tunes, some of which last only three or four minutes. Within that time frame, the band moves from compositional signpost to signpost, while the players feed one another musical cues that trigger instantaneous changes of volume, key, orchestration and tempo. It's as if a switch has been pulled, pointing the group toward its next destination.
The concert, part of the Stanford Jazz Festival, included Endsley's "Blue, Yellow, White," which built off a stuttering melody, rocketed up with a quick solo from the trumpeter, landed a moment later in 1975, with Wood bashing out an electric-funk groove on his cymbals (the type Al Foster used to play with Miles Davis), suddenly slowed way down with trumpet and saxophone playing a unison mantra-riff, and kept on morphing.
"Flood on 12th Street," also by Endsley (the New Yorker in the band), had trumpet and saxophone floating, like Miles and Wayne Shorter in '68, through a Radiohead landscape, then turned into a nervous rock-out. Benjamin's "Unforeseen Influences" had a hip-hop coda. His "Roll" was bouncy, droll and detached, with a nifty little melody and chord progression; Wes Anderson should stick it in one of his films.
Awash with electronic effects (everyone except Wood is outfitted with foot pedals, switchboards, assorted gear), the music stayed in flux. For me, an old jazzer, it changed gears too often, skipping from place to place without adequately exploring the intervening territories. I wanted more solos (Endsley's a beautiful trumpeter; fat tone, clean lines), more grit and intensity.
But for this band, the exploration seems to be in the process, the controlled flux, the commitment to change. Maybe it's time for old jazzers to tamp down expectations and go for the ride.

LOW ELECTRICAL WORKER
By Troy Collins
All About Jazz
May 24th, 2007

A young quintet on the rise, Kneebody's self-titled 2005 debut on Dave Douglas' then newly formed Greenleaf records was an obvious indicator of its potential. The group's sophomore follow-up, Low Electrical Worker (released on Colortone Media), is a dense amalgam of genres and styles delivered with a unified voice.
Filled with youthful vigor, Kneebody delivers a sense of palpable enthusiasm throughout these varied tunes. Weaving together an impressive collection of stylistic influences, the quintet knits threads of M-Base funk, post rock futurism, Sabbath-inspired thrash, bittersweet pop and chamber-esque introspection into a singular sonic tapestry.

Each piece runs through an array of perambulations inside modular structures; contrapuntal rhythms, polyphonic harmonies and metric tempo shifts are all part of the Kneebody aesthetic. Never just a means to an end, all these virtuosic trappings are at the service of tuneful, sing-song melodies bolstered by infectious rhythms. Accessibility is Kneebody's secret weapon.

With a distorted Fender Rhodes and fuzz-toned electric bass at its disposal, Kneebody occasionally rocks, hard. While the retro ambience of the Fender Rhodes is currently in vogue, it's nice to hear someone who really understands the intricacies and history of the instrument. Adam Benjamin is such a player. From waves of ring modulated distortion to ethereal vibe-like tonalities, he coaxes an array of otherworldly sounds from the instrument.

Bassist Kaveh Rastegar and drummer Nate Wood are an outstanding rhythm duo, interlocking in polyrhythms with an ease that belies their complexity. Saxophonist Ben Wendell and trumpeter Shane Endsley create a harmonious blend, weaving intricate dual horn counterpoint with ebullience. Always mindful of the tunes' structure, solos are thematically driven and designed to accentuate the tune at hand, not the ego of the soloist.

A heady blend of aggressive rock music conventions, gorgeously baroque pop melodies, virtuosic jazz improvisation and intricate compositional smarts, Kneebody forges headlong into the future. Low Electrical Worker is an ideal balance between popular music and jazz improvisation, fusion in the most perfect sense of the term.

Album Review on Spinner.com
8/26/10
By Tad Hendrickson

Kneebody Presents a Democratic Collective's Mix of Jazz and Rock


Jazz is traditionally a music of names and hierarchy. This goes back to great bandleaders like Ellington and Basie, but also applies to many smaller groups today where you get the Vijay Iyer Trio, David S. Ware Quartet, Wayne Shorter Quartet, or even simpler tags like Sonny Rollins or Herbie Hancock. Nonetheless, there have been notable exceptions to this premise of leadership with groups such as the Modern Jazz Quartet, Weather Report, the Bad Plus and Kneebody.

Kneebody is a New York/Los Angeles quintet of thirtysomethings that have been kicking around for 10 years. Featuring keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, electric bassist Kaveh Rastegar, saxophonist Ben Wendel and drummer Nate Wood, the band has always had the same lineup, honing its vision into something that hovers in the worlds of jazz and rock while tossing in other genre elements, as well.

"We are a democratic equally owned-and-operated band with shared ownership and leadership," Endsley points out. "Everyone brings in music and everyone votes on everything. Musically, it's a band because it's always been just the five of us."

The band returns now with its third album, 'You Can Have Your Moment,' which is an excellent new 12-song collection. To rock fans, the new offering invites easy comparisons to Tortoise and other post-rock bands thanks to Kneebody's muscular sound, interest in tricky and sometimes downright complicated songwriting, and a willingness to eschew vocals. At the same time, jazz fans will hear a different set of touchstones. There's an element of jazz fusion (without the wankiness) thanks to electric bass and keys that creates a strong groove. Of course, improvisation is at a premium as well; yet, the band also takes into account some modern acoustic jazz's interest in bold melody and innovative sense of harmony.

"I like this band because we're loud," Endsley says, weighing in on the matter. "If you want to talk a little bit, that's fine, because our sound is going to bury you. Have some fun. At the same time, the audience is tuned in if the music is engaging. I like the old-school concept that people can walk in and say hi to a friend they see, unlike jazz clubs now where you have to sneak in and be quiet on the way to the table and hope that your chair doesn't squeak."

That isn't to say that the group hides behind a wall of sound. Four of the five band members met at the Eastman School of Music and some have gone on to get secondary music degrees. The quintet's ventured into avant-garde and classical with vocalist Theo Bleckman on its last album in 2008, which was the Grammy-nominated (in the Classical Crossover category) 'Twelve Songs by Charles Ives.'

Kneebody have also created a language based on musical cues whereby any musician can play one at any time to change the music's tempo, key or song. Different bands have different strategies for conveying ideas and moving the music and improvisations forward; Kneebody's have gotten complicated and nuanced, making it downright tricky if the quintet ever has to bring in a temporary replacement. According to Endsley, that's the downside of being in a leaderless band – everyone needs to be there for it to work right, which can be complicated with members on two coasts with all of them working on outside the band as well. That being said, no one in the band would change anything.

"We've enjoyed the changes we've gone through," Endsley says with obvious pride. "We've gone out and done different gigs with different people and then come back together. This variety of professional experience makes it feel like our music is really growing and changing over the years. The band sounds and plays a lot differently and a lot better now than starting out a few years ago."

This ongoing sense of friendship serves both the band and the band concept well. It's a chemistry between the members, but it's also something more than that. Drawing inspiration from rock and pop worlds – which some members are very active in – the group's objective is to make its music as enjoyable to listen to by the audience as it is for the members to play.

"For us I think the most important thing is for people to feel pulled in by the music and enjoy it on a personal level," Endsley says. "Our music is what it is, but we want to extend a welcoming hand even if people come in and don't know exactly what is going on. I feel like some people are afraid to listen to jazz because they feel like they have to know what's going on. And if you don't know what's going on, you just don't get it. I hope that we in the jazz world get better at that."

Kneebody Featured on Jazz Session


"For more than a decade, Kneebody has been making music that’s hard to classify and harder to resist. Their new album is You Can Have Your Moment (Winter & Winter, 2010). In this interview, trumpeter Shane Endsley talks about the band’s different approach to recording the new album; the complex series of musical cues the band uses to arrange music live onstage; and how the combination of Theo Bleckmann and Charles Ives led to a recording relationship with the Winter & Winter label."

Kneebody

Cohesion is the truest constant in the music of Kneebody, a band that inhabits the borderland abutted by post-bop, indie-rock and hip-hop, without seeming to give much thought to the borders. The group released an ethereal album of Charles Ives songs last year, earning an unlikely Grammy nomination in the classical crossover field. “You Can Have Your Moment” (Winter & Winter), the follow-up, takes a screeching turn in the direction of groove. At the album’s core is a lean but darkly woozy rhythm section composed of Adam Benjamin on Fender Rhodes piano, Kaveh Rastegar on electric bass and Nate Wood on drums. The trumpeter Shane Endsley and the saxophonist Ben Wendel make up the front line, though not always with respect to melody. Everyone proves himself a resourceful improviser, but over the course of a dozen thoughtful originals — ranging from the sober hum of “The Entrepreneur” to the stuttering lunge of “No Thank You Mr. West” — their clout registers as a cogent whole.

"Kneebody Creating a New Language"

At first, it seems that Kneebody chose a name that intentionally invited anonymity. After speaking to a couple members of the quintet, it becomes clear that they also took a firm stance against presenting a single bandleader. Equally crucial is that they wanted to invent a word that conveys no preconceived musical connotations.
"It's a nonsense word that my girlfriend came up with," said saxophonist Ben Wendel. "We wanted a short, memorable word with a nondefinable genre connection."
This collaborative dismissal of categorical purity runs throughout Kneebody's self-titled debut on Greenleaf Music. Serene keyboard and woodwind lines are played on top of driving rock drums. Orchestrated electronic noise flows into classically formed melodies. Each musical shift is episodic, rather than merely contrasting.
Kneebody's hybrids stem from influences on both American coasts. Wendel met trumpeter Shane Endsley, keyboardist Adam Benjamin and bassist Kaveh Rastegar when they all attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., during the late 1990's. As the individual musicians migrated among different jazz, rock and hip-hop groups, they performed together as a part of a weekly residency at the Temple Bar in Santa Monica, Calif., with drummer Nate Wood. "We basically wanted to do stuff that was less about standard form," Wendel said.
All of which requires some rules to make it continually interesting. So Kneebody created their own. Along with the musicians' compositions, they devised a language based on musical cues that each intrumentalist recognizes as a signal for immediately changing direction.
Endsley describes how this works in terms of his composition "Break Me". "I wanted to have a middle section where we overdub these different layers and there's these short things going in and out," Endsley said. "So it's faster paced than what would normally be a solo section where it's one person at a time standing. We jump in and out and on top of each other, like people playing drum 'n' bass, but not with that stylistic sound."
While most of Kneebody has remained in the Los Angeles area, Endsley lives in Brooklyn. Trumpeter Dave Douglas started paying attention to him a few years ago and then asked if he had any projects for his recently launched Greenleaf Music label. As it happened, Kneebody had just finished recording its CD and Endsley presented it to Douglas.
"Their music is a great direction for jazz musicians to go," Douglas said. "It's spontaneous and exciting. The writing is fresh, and the way they integrate it with improvising is unique."

Jazz Times CD Review

The members of Kneebody have collectively logged hours with such a range of artists - Ani DiFranco to David Murray to Jurassic 5 - that it's tempting to write them off as another multi-hypenate in jazz's crossover era. But eclecticism isn't the point of their music, which sounds too convincingly effortless to be a self-conscious fusion. In fact, their debut on Dave Douglas' new label reinforces just how meaningless the F-word has become.

Kneebody bolts out the gate with "Break Me," a fuzz-tone funk tune by
trumpeter Shane Endsley that twists through a quick succession of formal convolutions. This immediately established the band's rhythmic prowess: Bassist Kaveh Rastegar, keyboardist Adam Benjamin and drummer Nate Wood establish a pocket and hold it tight, no matter what else happens in a tune. And that's saying a lot, considering that the band's originals rarely seek the comfort of a straightforward groove. This is especially true of those by Endsley and tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel - like a stutter-stepping "Coat Rack" and a Return to Forever inspired "Never Remember."

The full impact of Kneebody is in the ensemble. Their cohesive poise is what sells the experiment, which will hopefully yield another record
soon.

Rock, funk and electronic music commingle convincingly with jazz on "Kneebody" (Greenleaf), this quintet's recent studio debut; it's an update of the rugged, exploratory early fusion of Weather Report and Return to Forever, and just as likely to sound better live.

"The Arrival of Kneebody"

The next major quake to hit LA may have less to do with shifting tectonic plates than with a crackling quintet thundering up the jazz charts with a powerhouse collection, at once challenging and accessible. Kneebody’s eponymous album floats like an iron butterfly and stings like a diesel. “It’s got a lot of testosterone. It’s a very energetic sonic experience,” says resident reedist Ben Wendel. And while their unique soul-jazz-on-steroids sound captures a growing cadre of Knee-heads, their beautifully crafted melodic ballads, and moody impressionistic sketches are the guilty secret.

Formed by Wendel, drummer Nate Wood, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, trumpeter Shane Endsley, and keyboardist Adam Benjamin, Kneebody runs jazz through a broad collective musical background to create a remarkably potent blend whose primary flavor remains jazz. “I’ve been describing our music as hybrid music,” Wendel explains. “We’re musicians that have have absorbed a lot of different styles of music. We’re just trying to make music that is an amalgamation of what’s around us now, just like everybody’s done from whatever era they’re coming up from. So, this music is a hybrid of all the tastes we like.”

“The cool thing about this band is, everyone in the band writes and everyone has a distinct voice,” enthuses Wendel. “Not everyone in this band is coming primarily from a jazz background. Everybody’s coming from different places. We’ve all studied jazz, we all understand the language and are able to express the complexity of jazz. But then, as much as we love jazz, everybody also has equal interests in other genres of music. In my own background, my mom was an opera singer for 25 years. She sang with LA Opera. Different sounds, different sections, it’s like the process of five different musical viewpoints coming together. This band is a leaderless band. This is an equal parts ownership kind of group.”

Keyboard player Adam Benjamin agrees. “It’s such a fundamental part of our music that any of us can control the direction of it at anytime, which is why I think our live show is pretty consistent. On any given night there’s going to be one or two of us that really feel strong enough and confident enough and creative enough to do a lot of the leading. You never really know who it’s going to be in a particular song. It’s really exciting.”

“It’s a very energetic thing, especially live. The last few tours we’ve been really having fun. I think that Nate, Kaveh, and I as a rhythm section, especially with Kaveh and I playing a lot of electronics and effected sounds, really try to think of it as though we’re one unit of sound. Often it’s difficult even for us to tell with particular tones, who in the band it’s coming from. That’s really what we aim for, something where we could really get outside of our established personalities as jazz musicians and form a real identity as a band which we fit into in a very particular way.”

A listen to Kneebody, only the second release on Dave Douglas’ new label, Greenleaf, gives clear context to the musicians’ infectious enthusiasm. In the course of 12 original songs, Kneebody makes a strong case for their ear-loving take on 21st century jazz.
“You can’t escape the instrumentation,” says Wendel, “it’s a jazz quintet. But we’re not playing the traditional music you would associate with a jazz quintet. It’s funny how things change over time. I’m playing an instrument from the 1960’s. He’s playing something else, those same instruments were playing completely different music 50 years ago than they are now. It’s kind of fun that way. I like how music inevitably evolves to fit the sounds around it.
“We didn’t know how people were going to react to this music because obviously it’s not like swing. But it’s been positive. I think regardless of what people enjoy aesthetically, it’s hard to deny music that’s good on an energetic and technical level. These compositions are complex but accessible and you can tell everyone in the band is trained and studied this music. So, for someone just listening to it, or even for a more traditional hardcore jazz fan, generally they have a positive reaction hearing this band.”

They’ve honed their obvious rapport through a lengthy association. “I had gone to Eastman with Ben and Kaveh,” recalls Benjamin. “I transferred out of Eastman to CalArts, meant Nate and the whole year I was at CalArts I had this idea of putting the four of us together, because I think it matched up really well stylistically. Luckily it ended up that Ben and Kaveh decided to move to LA after graduating Eastman. Nate was staying here to finish up school and had already been working here a lot. So, we really got to do a lot of regular playing early on, before we even really took the band seriously. We played weekly at a coffee shop at UCLA, later on weekly at the Temple Bar. It was a year or so before we really felt there was a chemistry there, which is strange. Once it hit then we really got excited about composing music for our personalities and developing this new style.”

“That was the inception,” continues Wendel. “The initial group was all of us minus the trumpet player. We got a residency at the Temple Bar. That was just when the Temple Bar opened, so about 2000 and it was about a year long residency, and that’s when that stuff developed. Until the release of this album, all that we had to sell on tour was this Wendel album and Shane’s album which is essentially all the same players playing this music which is our sound, but nothing that actually had the name ‘Kneebody’ on it. It was kind of confusing at first, so we’re glad to finally have something out there that’s very clear.

“Dave [Douglas] came through Shane. He’s the guy in the band who lives in New York. Dave has this yearly thing called the FONT Festival, Festival Of New Trumpets. Basically, it’s a residency at club there called Tonic. Basically, he books the month and brings in different trumpet players that he likes to do their music. He brought in Shane, and we ended up having a tour around that time. It was Kneebody that played. He talked to Shane, he said I’m leaving RCA, I’m going to start this label, do you have anything ready to go, are interested in getting involved? It was just the timing, we had this album basically ready to go. We sent Dave the rough mixes, and he loved it. It’s cool because he’s like the dream record label owner, because he’s very supportive and very interactive. He in no way tries to affect creative control. So, we were able to do this album completely how we wanted to do it. He’s been a great supporter, it’s been wonderful in that way.”

The resulting album experienced a number of changes in its three years of development. “Theoretically, we’re coming out of the jazz thing,” says Wendel, “but in terms of how long it took to record the record it’s almost like we’re a rock band. That record was recorded here and there over a period of three years. It’s just one of those things, we’ve been consistently touring through that whole time. Everybody in the band outside of the band plays in a bunch of other groups and with other touring artists. So it’s this thing where, whenever we had a chance to go into the studio for a day or two we would track stuff, and then over the period of those three years certain material would get old, other stuff had to be mixed. Just one of those things. Then, the Dave Douglas opportunity came up, and thankfully we basically had an album’s worth of material at that point ready to go.”

“We’re glad it’s finally out,” says Benjamin, “it took us a long time to finally make it what we wanted to. We ended up with two, maybe three records worth of material. We were eliminating stuff as fast as we were recording it. It took us three years to get both the product we wanted and the right venue to release it. We have five or six full completely done songs that I think are great, but just didn’t quite fit into the album as it was. I really hope we find something to do with them at some point.”
“That’s been the other cool thing,” says Wendel, “it’s an independent label, but they have distribution through Koch. It’s everywhere, all over the country. It’s in Tower Records, Virgin Records. A friend of mine just came off tour and said he saw our album in Idaho! We were featured on NPR’s Weekend America last weekend, and we just got notification we’ve gone from #33 to #25 on the CMJ jazz charts. There’s stations all over the country rotating the album.”

Their growing popularity and the freshness of their sound makes them prime targets for the Acolytes of the Sacred Jazz Flame. “I think it’s a natural thing in society in general that at a certain point a musical genre becomes codified and it becomes a museum piece.” Wendel observes. “It’s human nature to put things in a museum., which is fine. I’m ecstatic that symphonies still exist, that we still hear music that’s 400 years old. That’s the thing about jazz in the biggest sense of the word. To me, jazz is not a specific era, like the fifties or the sixties. It’s the concept of improvising, which in one way has been around forever, but in another way was a brand new sound that happened in the last hundred years. In that sense, the idea of human interaction through music and spontaneity, that’s what we want to carry on, the spirit of what I perceive jazz to be. I think a music is not alive unless people are showing up.

“On all these tours we do clinics. We go to schools from jr high, to high school to colleges, we play with these kids and we have them play with us. And sometimes, we’ll do club dates where we’ll teach the kids one of our songs and then they’ll come to the club and play with us. It’s really fun because they have such a great open energy. They’re not jaded in any way. I think that’s the other way the music is going to carry on, for musicians to pass on the torch to the younger kids. I even remember in high school the few times that a clinician would come in and show what he does and even coach the band. You don’t forget those experiences, they have an impact.”

“It’s a big part of our touring,” says Benjamin. “At first, we came up with that mostly as a financial mechanism to finance our tours before we could get significant enough guarantees at clubs to really go on the road and make money from that. But now, over the years it’s actually developed into a pretty big part of the identity of the band. I can’t really picture going on tour with Kneebody without getting up at 7 in the morning to go to some high school or college on most days. It keeps us in touch with the fundamental aspects of music to have to present it ot a new audience and explain it in certain ways, and literally bring people into it. Have people learn the material and play with us, tryout some of our concepts kind of keeps us constantly reinventing the band, keeping a fresh attitude towards it.”
After the years of hard work and determination, the members of Kneebody know their on to something special. “It’s got an intellectual aspect to it, and it’s complex music,” says Wendel, “but we don’t want it to be something that only musicians can enjoy. Music is music. The more you play the more you realize that that’s kind of a special thing that doesn’t happen all the time, a sort of immediate natural level of communication. We said let’s keep going with this because it was fun.”

Benjamin agrees: “I think we all feel that way, especially living out in Los Angeles there’s not a lot of bands doing similar things. When we go to New York City there’s more of a feeling of kinship with a number of bands, and there’s a movement in music we fit into in a certain kind of way. We dreamed for years coming up through music school of having a band where we could play energetic music that was truly ours and really fun to play, but that was unique and had something to say, and really get a chance to perform with it and take it one the road. I think to get to the point that we have with this record makes us feel very fortunate. We’ve been pushing hard with this band for 5 years now, it’s nice to get some rewards back from it. We’re hoping that in terms of not compromising it’ll end up making the music more soulful and from our hearts, so that in that way it will become actually more accessible even though it’ll be a little harder to classify.”

"Kneebody gets funky at Modified"

Kneebody isn't lacking in credibility, not with the L.A.-based, instrumental jazz-rock fusion quintet's collective résumé that sports gigs with Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg, and jazz trumpet luminary Dave Douglas. Yet even with academic credentials from New York's prestigious Eastman School of Music for four of Kneebody's five members (the fifth, drummer Nate Wood, graduated from the California Institute of the Arts), it's the band's signing to Douglas' Greenleaf Music label that gives the band's self-titled debut CD its pedigree. While critics have had a difficult time pegging Kneebody's style and sound -- which mixes funky, off-tempo beats with the bouncing melodies of saxophones, trombones, keyboards and sonic bass lines -- it might be just as hard for Kneebody's burgeoning fan base to squeeze into Modified Arts.

"Nobody Can Label Kneebody"

I've listened to the music of kneebody several times, and it's something I can't easily categorize. Is it indie fusion? Alternative wordless funk infused with inventive solo statements? Or because the group employs daring improvisations and evokes any number of originals from John Zorn's Naked City to Carla Bley, maybe it's best billed as jazz. "This is 'new instrumental' music," says Shane Endsley, a Park Hill native whose trumpet tears through many a skillful solo on kneebody's self-titled debut CD. "It's jazz-oriented, but I don't think of it as 'jazz,' really. If I say it's jazz to the KUVO audience, they'd be surprised at our shows." I'd argue that the more open-minded KUVO listener would find much to admire in kneebody's work, particularly its smart arrangements and rockish song structures, which, on disc, provide for many engaging moments. The CD is one of the most striking debut efforts in recent memory, and it's been awarded a pedigree of sorts by being released on the Greenleaf Music label, which is run by cutting-edge trumpeter Dave Douglas. The signing to Douglas' label was "kind of lucky," according to Endsley. "He saw me (perform) on a good night and then called me out of nowhere" in search of a new project for his label. As it turned out, the kneebody disc was already finished. "We had recorded it in bits and pieces on our own. But releasing it on Greenleaf will help us with the credibility thing." Endsley is another Colorado-bred musician seeking his fortunes away from home. He lives in New York for family reasons while the rest of kneebody is based in Los Angeles. "It's a little frustrating because we want to play together a lot (this week's Dazzle shows will be their first performances as a group since the disc was released last month). But luckily it hasn't been too much of a hindrance." Before New York, he was part of the L.A. music scene, which he claims includes many a Denver-area native. "Denver's making a big mark," he says of Los Angeles. "Other musicians call players from Colorado the 'Denver Mafia."' One of Endsley's compositions on the CD is titled "Break Me."

Breaking the Mold - Flatlands Collective, Kneebody spin jazz in opposite directions.

Like fire and ice, the two emerging bands that played Wednesday night at HotHouse hardly could have been more diametrically opposed.

Yet despite stylistic differences, they shared at least one critical trait: Each was determined to toss jazz convention to the winds and did so with unmistakable eloquence.

Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra created the Flatlands Collective not long after he moved to to the U.S. in 2002 and began collaborating with Chicago musicians. But if the Midwest's topography inspired the name of the band, it had scant effect on the nature of Dijkstra's music, which was anything but flat.

Richly textured, subtly nuanced and built on multiple layers of melody, the music of the Collective merged the free-thinking nature of the Chicago avant-garde with elements of contemporary European classical composition. Much of this music suggested an intensely cerebral exercise, with carefully engineered stop-start rhythms, delicate dabs of electronically produced sound and a nearly complete avoidance of a straightforward beat.

When the band ventured into the occasional swing passage, one was startled to hear it, since practically everything else about this ensemble steered clear of the jazz mainstream.

If at first the music sounded so diffuse and muted as to lack coherence, before long the repertoire became more lucid and structured (or did our ears simply become adjusted to its aesthetic?). The other-worldly hums and drones that Dijkstra produced on lyricon, which might be described as a kind of digital clarinet wired to a computer, were answered by pungent bursts of dissonance from the rest of the band in a piece titled "Slitch."

And in the last work of the set, "Dipje," the band produced the exquisite blends of instrumental color one might sooner expect from a classical chamber ensemble.

In the end, the Flatlands Collective linked the intellectual firepower of the Dutch free-jazz scene with the instrumental virtuosity of some of Chicago's most accomplished creative improvisers, including trombonist Jeb Bishop and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm.

Though the band still must be considered a work-in-progress, it deserves respect for the unorthodox musical direction it's pursuing.

If the Flatlands Collective aimed for a studious brand of jazz, the comparably adventurous Kneebody--making its Chicago debut--strove for a much more visceral, accessible, beat-driven sound. Though not exactly dance music, the band's rock-tinged backbeats, back-to-basics riffs and motor-rhythm passages suggested it was playing for an audience that approaches jazz from a pop perspective.

Even so, there was much more here than a casual listening might suggest. Just when the band seemed to be sinking into a rhythmic groove, it sabotaged expectations by changing or suspending its tempo or meter. And by juicing up its acoustic work with keyboard electronics and other computer-processed sound, Kneebody italicized its every gesture.

Some of the most impressive work came from keyboardist Adam Benjamin, who produced a galaxy of space-age sound, while trumpeter Shane Endsley and tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel formed a taut and muscular front line.

All About Jazz
December 7th, 2005
Kneebody

When trumpeter Dave Douglas parted ways with RCA/Bluebird—which released his projects between 2000 and 2004—he created Greenleaf Music to allow him better control over both his art and its delivery. He also planned to bring exposure to other artists. The first non-Douglas release on the new label, the self-titled debut by Kneebody, fits perfectly with Douglas’ view that music should transcend labels and artificial stylistic restrictions.

A quintet of players who have worked with artists as diverse as Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg, and Steve Coleman, Kneebody brings that very diversity to its own music, combining focused yet vivid improvisational interplay with detailed writing, and a sonic palette ranging from the purely acoustic to the outrageously electric. While it's not a fusion band by any standard definition, Kneebody’s trans-genre approach is nevertheless fusion in the broader sense of the word. Much like Lost Tribe—the 1990s band which ultimately brought significant attention to its members, including saxophonist David Binney, guitarist Adam Rogers, and drummer Ben Perowsky—Kneebody manages to combine visceral groove with cerebral musical ideas, making its arrival on the scene a significant one.

With the exception of drummer Nate Wood, everyone in the quintet—keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, and saxophonist Ben Wendel—contributes compositions to the disc, but it’s remarkable how unified the band’s vision remains. While it’s difficult to avoid comparisons to Lost Tribe, Kneebody retains a sound all its own, with an even broader stylistic purview. But the way that Endsley and Wendl’s lines intertwine—winding, snakelike, between unison and harmonies that range from close to open—begs comparison to the knotty writing of Binney and Rogers.

While there’s a strong funk element, it’s often with an aggressive edge that clearly leans more towards rock territory. Benjamin’s “Never Remember” shifts from a pedal-to-the-metal groove by Wood and Rastegar to a middle section that’s lighter in texture, before heading into a hard-hitting outro featuring Benjamin’s distorted Wurlitzer. Endsley’s “I’m Your General” finds Benjamin feeding his electric piano through a ring modulator and Rastegar’s fuzz-toned bass referencing ex-Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper. Rastegar’s evocative ballad “Victory Lap,” with its memorable theme, proves that Kneebody can relax the pace and approach the lyrical with equal intent.

With nearly half of the album’s dozen tracks under three minutes, one might expect a compositional focus. Still, Rastegar’s one-minute “Wide-Eyed”—a trumpet/bass/drums trio—is more about interplay, whereas Wendel’s “Clime Pt. I” and “Pt II” both blur the line, with clearly detailed horn lines resting over the more open-ended electronic backdrop created by Benjamin, Rastegar, and Wood.

With Kneebody’s intrepid collage of influences, Douglas’ interest in the group will come as no surprise. Purists will undoubtedly be offended by Kneebody’s blending of technology into the mix, not to mention the group's sometimes aggressive rock stance; but for those who want to hear how the jazz vernacular is being reshaped and the improvisational spirit re-contextualized, Kneebody is a band—and an album—well worth checking out.

Giving the modern jazz world a much-needed kick in the ass, Kneebody has assembled a quirky brand of improv-based crossover jazz that's as refreshing as it is expressive. The New York/Los Angeles-based quintet's sound, which borrows equally from traditional jazz, hip-hop, rock and electronica, is anchored by hard-hitting beats and bass lines and tastefully bolstered by soulful '60s horn lines and ambient electronic noises. This unique approach reflects the diversity and experience of the individual members (keyboardist Adam Benjamin, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, drummer Nate Wood, saxman Ben Wendel and trumpeter Shane Endsley, a Denver native) -- who collectively have backed an assortment of artists such as Snoop Dogg, Ani DiFranco, Chaka Khan and Ravi Coltrane, among others. And unlike a lot of neo-jazz fusion groups, Kneebody's penchant for the groove never gets tedious. Although the players are apt to change keys or tempos at will -- they've developed a unique system of cues that they employ live to keep the arrangements fresh and evolving -- you don't have to wade through ten-minute-long atonal freakouts just to get back to the original jam.

Led by dynamic guitarist Tim Young (Zony Mash, Wayne Horvitz, and loads more), Thruster! earn their exclamation mark with the sort of jazz rock that stiffens the arms hairs of NYC avant-garde venue Tonic patrons. The trio (including drummer Matt Chamberlain and bassist Kaveh Rastegar) alternates between Red-era King Crimson's thorny, brainy convolutions, Hendrix's well-articulated bombast, and Calexico's blasted, beatific prairie meditations.

Tim Young is one of the most creative guitarists out there. Best known for his work with Wayne Horvitz and Zony Mash, he's been creating a very original style with his mastery of tone and effects and the near-complete absence of clichéd guitar licks. Thruster is his power trio project with bass player Kaveh Rastegar and ubiquitous Seattle drummer Matt Chamberlain. The band covers a lot of musical territory, from the Monk meets hard rock of "Green Heat" to the ominous spy-surf sounds of "The Tick" to the beautiful "Echoes of Peg." Young's playing is never less than interesting, and at times is simply amazing (check "Afterburner"). Guitar fans will surely be impressed, but this is an album worth checking out for anyone interested in good instrumental rock.