YETI MANE - American Classical Studies. January 17th, 2025.

This collection is heavy on pianos, drums and bass. The three octave confines of the bass is where I first came to understand music as architecture, and the drums have been banging in my head forever. This past winter, it was through the piano that I have been exploring jazz. I was scavenging in the footsteps of giants, may of them names I only just learned this winter, like George Cross, Red Garland, Mulgrew Miller, Horace Silver, Ryo Fukui, John Lewis and Earl Hines. Most especially, the compositional world of McCoy Tyner and the archived teachings of Barry Harris helped shape this tape.

Which is not to pretend any of this is remotely equal to their teaching. It ain't.

Earlier this year, a sports journalist named Matt Issa typed up the following, then sent it out into an unforgiving world: "Have you ever heard the name J Dilla? I hadn't until yesterday. But man, has he had such a huge impact..." Such glib & eager idiocy is easy to mock, but I want to be clear that I do recognize I'm being that same asshole, here, now. Better to be honest than to be cool, right?

Kool Keith is not a big jazz fan but he's still fully conversant in the history and language of the genre, because Ricky The Fly Wine Taster is a man of culture & refinement. That influence, like Keith himself, was there from the very beginning. Even the most out-there, free-jazz, violently abstracted dissonance on wax is just another Griselda loop these days. The kids are hip and so are the old heads. Time is an acetate test pressing.

I owe a deep debt here to Peter Krag, Irving Berliner, Glenn Zaleski, August Fanon, Loupo, Wino Willy, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Milford Graves, Grant Green, and most especially my friend, recording & mixing engineer Matt Scott.