Ken Vandermark and Konstrukt made the coolest record of 2019
First off it needs to be said that Ken Vandermark is already responsible for my favorite two minutes and 24 seconds of music this year: Alphaville #2 off New Industries, a new album from his ensemble group Marker. Those 2 minutes are both an utter surprise as a lockstep funk groove emerges from a free jazz freakout and the fucking coolest thing I’ve heard in awhile. I mean, you feel cool when that part is bumping. Like you’re the main man in the opening scene of a blaxsploitation movie (before trouble inevitably comes calling) cool.
That said, those 2 minutes plus are in the context of an album that sprawls in every direction so it’s a fleeting sensation.
But Vandermark’s collaboration with the Turkish group Konstrukt — Kozmik Bazaar — is an album’s worth of cool that reminds me of those moments in the 90s where the punks and weirdos were figuring out how to make chill music that still had an edge: DJ Spooky drenching classic hip-hop breaks in so much reverb and echo that they were disintegrating while the punks in Tortoise were incorporating dub, electronica and krautrock and moving away from rock altogether and were indicative of a larger thing happening in Chicago—a breaking down of walls between jazz, rock and experimental music—a moment that Ken Vandermark was also instrumental in. And having been on a heavy Riddim Warfare / Incursions in Illbient / Check Your Head vibe this week, a moment that I kind of miss.
While Kozmik Bazaar actually has a broader palette than experimental downtempo jams with its blend of distorted rock and free jazz, “Semazen” is exactly what I want to hear right now: a funky bassline that’s in no hurry to get anywhere as a swirl of horns and strings fade in and out of recognition.