Joe Blessett - Changing Everything
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These days, jazz takes on a multitude of different faces, and almost everybody has a kind of mutually exclusive definition of the style. Multi-instrumentalist Joe Blessett, with his Changing Everything, finds a way to embrace many seemingly mutually exclusives jazz definitions, yet somehow make them fit together rather nicely.
Take a composition titled "Talking to Miles," for instance. If you had a chance to speak with Davis from the dead, he'd probably tell you that Changing Everything might just be one of his artistic mottos. Davis may have started back when straight ahead jazz was king, but along with some talented electronic instrument playing musicians, such as Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, he fully embraced the mixture of rock and jazz in the late 60s/early 70s. Before he passed on, it was not out of his ballpark to throw a Michael Jackson or Cindi Lauper song into his set. Or when I saw him one time, he could just dig into some jazz-blues. The track, "Talking to Miles," might fit on almost any smooth jazz station with its cool vibe. Nevertheless, not everything on this album is quite that smooth.
You can hear a little bit of Weather Report's playfulness in "Jazz R.I.P." It's a little bit woozy and bluesy. Another one, "Amoral Behavior" has a druggy vibe, while "White Roses" is a little electronic, a little funky as it mixes and matches styles with wonderfully reckless abandon.
When it comes to staying relevant musically, sometimes you need to take the approach of either adapting or dying. That doesn't mean you need to sell out; it just means you need to keep an open mind on how you can retain your values while augmenting your sound with modern elements. No, Joe Blessett is not changing everything. However he changing and growing and you just can't ask for more than that.
Joe Blessett - Changing Everything
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