Jazz

Voodoo Boogie is three of Melbourne's biggest and most popular blues and roots bands who have got together and created a mobile mini festival. The Theatre Royale gig in Castlemaine will be the 5th Voodoo Boogie show, it's a well-oiled Blues machine.

Roberta Joan "Joni" Mitchell CC (née Anderson; born November 7, 1943) is a Canadian-American musician, producer, and painter. Among the most influential singer-songwriters to emerge from the 1960s folk music circuit, Mitchell became known for her starkly personal lyrics and unconventional compositions, which grew to incorporate pop and jazz influences.[1] She has received many accolades, including ten Grammy Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. Rolling Stone called her "one of the greatest songwriters ever",[2] and AllMusic has stated, "When the dust settles, Joni Mitchell may stand as the most important and influential female recording artist of the late 20th century".[1]

Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and throughout western Canada, before moving on to the nightclubs of Toronto, Ontario. She moved to the United States and began touring in 1965. Some of her original songs ("Urge for Going", "Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides, Now", "The Circle Game") were recorded by other folk singers, allowing her to sign with Reprise Records and record her debut album, Song to a Seagull, in 1968.[3] Settling in Southern California, Mitchell helped define an era and a generation with popular songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Woodstock". Her 1971 album Blue is often cited as one of the best albums of all time; it was rated the 30th best album ever made in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time",[4] rising to number 3 in the 2020 edition.[5] In 2000, The New York Times chose Blue as one of the 25 albums that represented "turning points and pinnacles in 20th-century popular music".[6] NPR ranked Blue number 1 on a 2017 list of Greatest Albums Made By Women.[7]

Mitchell switched labels and began exploring more jazz-influenced ideas, by way of lush pop textures, on 1974's Court and Spark, which featured the radio hits "Help Me" and "Free Man in Paris"[8] and became her best-selling album. Mitchell's vocal range began to shift from mezzo-soprano to more of a wide-ranging contralto around 1975.[9][10][11] Her distinctive piano and open-tuned guitar compositions also grew more harmonically and rhythmically complex as she melded jazz with rock and roll, R&B, classical music and non-Western beats. In the late 1970s, she began working with noted jazz musicians including Jaco Pastorius, Tom Scott, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Pat Metheny as well as Charles Mingus, who asked her to collaborate on his final recordings.[12] She later turned to pop and electronic music and engaged in political protest. She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 44th Annual Grammy Awards in 2002[13] and became a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2021.[14]

Mitchell produced or co-produced most of her albums. A critic of the music industry, she quit touring and released her 17th and last album of original songs in 2007. Mitchell has designed most of her own album covers, describing herself as a "painter derailed by circumstance".

The Comet Is Coming is a London-based jazz-rock band who incorporate elements of jazz, electronica, funk and psychedelic rock.

The band originally recorded for The Leaf Label, on which their debut EP Prophecy was released, on limited edition 12" vinyl, on 13 November 2015, with the full-length album Channel the Spirits following on 1 April 2016.[1][2] The album was nominated for the 2016 Mercury Prize, and in 2018 the band signed with Impulse!

The members of the band use the pseudonyms "King Shabaka", "Danalogue", and "Betamax" to respectively refer to saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, keyboardist Dan Leavers, and drummer Max Hallett.[3]

In a 2013 interview, Hutchings explained the name of the band thus: "The name of the group comes from a BBC Radiophonic Workshop piece of the same name. Once we heard this piece, with its allusions to sci-fi, cosmic remembrances and general space, it instantly struck a chord. We're exploring new sound worlds and aiming to destroy all musical ideals which are unfit for our purposes so the name stuck."[4]

In an interview with M magazine, Betamax spoke of the band's genesis:

Me and Danalogue the Conqueror play as a psychedelic electro synths and live drums duo called Soccer96. We began to notice a tall shadowy figure present at some of our gigs. At some point he appeared at the side of the stage with his sax in hand. When he got up on stage to play with us it created an explosive shockwave of energy that stunned us all. A couple of weeks later King Shabaka rang me up and said 'hey let's make a record' so we booked three days in Total Refreshment Centre studios. It all came together at an incredible speed. We played and recorded to 1/4 tape with no pre-written material. By the end of three days we had recorded hours of music.[5]

The imagery associated with the band is based around outer space, science fiction and B-movies, as can be seen in the music videos for their singles "Neon Baby" and "Do the Milky Way", as well as in song titles and artwork. "Do the Milky Way" premiered on The Quietus.[6] In a feature in The Guardian in April 2016, the group were described as the "true heirs" of cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra, and praised for their "fusion of jazz, Afrobeat and electronica in an improvisational, intergalactic mash-up".[7] The Quietus wrote that although the band is "intrinsically linked to funk...and spiritually linked to all manner of cosmic music via their imagery (and love of space-creating echo and reverb effects), The Comet Is Coming has the feel of an utterly fresh sort of project".

King Shabaka elaborates on the cosmic side of the band and the connection to Sun Ra in the same article, when describing the crystal that dominates the cover of their Prophecy EP. He says, "The other thing about the crystal, metaphorically speaking, is the whole Sun Ra thing of creating your own myths. The thing I like that Sun Ra says a lot is the fact that societies that can create their own mythological structures are the ones that have their own agency. To the point at which you can dictate the terms of what's real and what's not real. The crystal in the hand forces you to create your own myth".[8]

In August 2016, the band was nominated for the Mercury Prize for their debut album, Channel the Spirits.[9][10]

In January 2017 the band was one of the recipients of the Momentum Music Fund through PRS for Music and in April 2017 the band released the Death to the Planet EP through The Leaf Label as part of Record Store Day.[11][12]

Their second full-length album, Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery, was released in March 2019 and received critical acclaim, with The Quietus noting the importance of Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane on their sound while acknowledging that "rather than being weighed down by those legacies, The Comet Is Coming have turned them into fuel, accelerating their sound, and with it, the sound of jazz today."[13] Pitchfork gave the album a score of 7.8 out of 10 and wrote, "Mostly low- to mid-tempo, the band skillfully integrates bleak and radiant tones, leading to an impressive nine-track suite of ambient, spoken-word and grime-infused compositions."[14] The album currently holds a score of 83 on review aggregator Metacritic, indicating "Universal acclaim."

Powerful, dynamic and highly energetic; Mount Kujo is a Melbourne based, internationally formed act blending Funk and Jazz influenced by Latin and Afro-beat. A collective of jazz musicians from all around the world deeply rooted in Melbourne’s music scene, playing original arrangements rich of colourful harmonic changes, syncopated rhythms with explosive horn sections and extensive solo parts.

Mount Kujo have an extensive touring record in Australia, having played festivals (Dragon Dreaming, Castlemaine Jazz, Renaissance Festival) as well as some of Melbourne’s finest night clubs (Night Cat, 24 Moons, Toff in Town, The Gaso), they are probably best known for their intimate residency shows in some of those beautiful hidden bars in the side streets of Melbourne’s underground music scene.

Mount Kujo I available on vinyl and all streaming platfroms including bandcamp.
Jazz survives gracefully into our modern age because of its flexibility as an art form. It flows through cultures and adapts with each new reinvention, thriving within or without structure. That’s a perfect metaphor to introduce the sound of Mount Kujo’s first self-titled studio album, the follow up to Live at Bar Oussou.

If the nucleus of the band was documented on that live recording from 2020, Mount Kujo’s 2022 effort bears the fruit of hard work, introspection and musical growth. Their compositions have matured far beyond the monothematic “afrobeat orchestra” ideas that bandleader Max Myland brought to Melbourne’s warmer cityscape from Berlin and now include elements of latin-rock, spiritual jazz and even drum ‘n bass. The group has embraced the true spirit of being a musical collective: a living, breathing unit that adapts to its surroundings quickly, and boasts a confident studio prowess that has benefitted from their unconfined stage style.

Awkward attempts to secure band members by inviting them to a tombstone factory / rehearsal room in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, plus the insecurities of the last years meant Mount Kujo got used to operating as a loose collective. The idea of being comfortable to play and rehearse as a larger or smaller band came out of their compulsion to continue to be creative no matter what circumstances they found themselves in. Max recruited and bunkered down with the core composers of the band – keyboardist Phil Setton (“We talked about Steely Dan all night”), trombonist Tom Panckridge (“This band doesn’t actually work on paper”), saxophonist Will Larsen (“Listening to Tom’s solos is giving me permanent stank face”) and drummer James Carman (“When we play together, it feels like this is what I’m on Earth to do”) to compose the foundation of tunes that would become this exciting album, while leaving space for rotating members of the greater collective to add their own flavor in the mix.

The first single, Orientation is a classic Kujo standard, finally fleshed out as a studio version, hails alongside Golden Holden and Move to showcase Mount Kujo’s fondness for groovy arrangements in the vein of 70s cinematic funk, bolstered by Latin and West African rhythm accompaniments. Cliffhanger proves they are masters of tension, bombastic vamps and then enthralling an audience with a four-to-the-floor backbeat.

The warm, vintage-analog feel to the album is a great credit to sound engineer Deep Sheth, who took pains to recreate many creative studio ideas from the 70s, including looping the drums in a garden hose with a mic on the end, a trick picked up from Sylvia Massy.

While the group jokes that “stage beers” are tantamount to the “Kujo Vibe”, peering into that answer exposes a greater truth about the Mount Kujo ethos: these musicians are as pure as it gets, in an industry moment where – for many – getting on Spotify playlists and selling t-shirts has become more important than the music, Mount Kujo are dedicated to honing their compositions and setting them free on stage. They savor the post-soundcheck hangs, dealing with stage and production issues and simply existing in their creative element. “No one is irreplaceable in the band, including me” explains Max, of the way they are allowed to forge forward without member’s egos getting in the way. A close listen to the immaculate Gobo River hints at this rooted, elemental part of the collective, even without lyrics or a physical manifesto and shows they are masters of quiet moments.

Another standout moment on the album is the second single Earth Hum, with an articulated and breathy pause and pedal tone mediating through the composition. It pedestals the arranging skills and depth of Mount Kujo, flexing some progressive influences and provides an exciting song to break up the set.

Max maintains his Berlin connections with renowned musicians from Germany’s jazz scenes. Contributing to the album is Benny Brown (Benny Brown Band) on trumpet, Daniel Avi Schneider (Bukahara) on violin and Niko Zeidler (Make a Move) on tenor saxophone. This inclusion gives the album a truly international feel, out of time and place upon a first listening. However, as you get a feel for the moods on this self-titled album, you will truly start to understand what is “the Kujo Vibe” – in essence, a collective dedicated to seeing their funky visions become reality, through the positive interactions of a musical family.