Jazz for Metal 3: Stanton Moore

Photo used from press kit found on Stanton Moore's home page.

The early days of hard rock, the sixties and seventies were an interesting, chaotic primordial sludge that only hinted at where the genres would go in the future. Loudness, bombast, distortion and excess were the defining characteristics of the nascent genre. Harmonically, still grounded by the blues yet rhythmically and melodically taking flight, electrified, white boy blues, hard rock and heavy metal were just starting to take shape. Guitarists along with singers stood at the forefront, Hendrix and Jimmy Page encouraged virtuosity, mad genius.

So what about the rhythm section?

Drummers and bassists still played like they were in jazz bands, only louder. Where bassists would later break out of their traditional role thanks to imminent funk, soul and fusion revolutions (James Jamerson, Bootsy Collins, Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke), they were still boxed in by walking lines, poor amplification and hifi setups not yet capable of reproducing their representation (the excellent work of Jack Bruce notwithstanding)..

Drummers meanwhile would experience a remarkable simplification after birth. Listen to John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell and Bill Ward, in addition to playing hard they boogie, swing and play in what sounds at times like an undefined cyclone on top of, around and underneath the guitars. Time has seen a transformation in the concept of time, contemporary drummers, hemmed in by the urge to create "perfect" recordings have become far more linear, precise and deliberate. This is not inherently negative, after all even today, Fear Factory's Demanufacture still holds a powerful robotic, metronomic thrill and the crystal clear drum sounds on Behemoth's Evangelion are equally moving. Then there is Stanton Moore.

New Orleans native Stanton Moore better known for his hip hop groove and jazzy swing had a famous encounter with metal via Corrosion of Conformity's In the Arms of God. Do not be mistaken, Reed Mullin is more than a competent drummer, he has served the band well for two decades. Mullin is frequently inventive, groovy and knows how to hold the pocket. However, Moore in the same situation is a revelation on how things could be in metal if that is we want.

Moore's snare work alone is outstanding, he caresses, bashes and shakes that single drum in so many directions as to render obsolete the concept of ghost notes. Where many drummers wanting to fill would get tom happy-heavy, Moore summons up squalls of snare white noise. His hat and cymbal work is simple and unadorned yet unmistakably jazzy and where most drummers in the present tend toward double kick excess, Moore's work is an exercise in syncopated, push-pull restraint. When the guitars gallop forward Moore ducks, dips and bobs.  When he goes nuts it sounds like the drum kit is about to start falling over.

Moore is an exemplary rock, jazz, groove drummer and renowned for his ability to lay back and let others shine, yet when dropped into a hard rocking doom context he managed to recall a time, spirit and approach seldom seen today. I for one could stand to hear far mo(o)re jazzy drumming by jazz drummers in metal. Or at least more of Mr Moore in metal.

Jazz for Metal: Part 2 – Allan Holdsworth

The contributions of Allan Holdsworth to the possibilities of metal fell like two stones separated by more than a decade into the same pond. The first little pebble was articulated during the rise of early to mid nineties technical death metal (particularly Cynic and Pestilence and to a more limited extent Atheist and Death). The ripples of this first drop washed over a young Fredrik Thordendal (Meshuggah). Thordendal would go onto elegantly extrapolate Holdsworth via Meshuggah leading to a second stone – the rise of djent (some of my favourites include Tesseract, Viljdharta, Monuments and the singular Contortionist along with the Faceless and Veil of Maya) and a re-conceptualisation of metal in the twenty first century.

What is it though about Holdsworth that makes his work so integral to metal? On first listen of a classic such as Metal Fatigue the listener with little knowledge of electric guitar technique or harmony generally simply hears some pretty jazz fusion with a few odd noises not un-entirely unexpected for the genre. However, digging deeper when armed with a smattering of musicological knowledge there are two key aspects to Holdsworth’s playing which make him stand out within his chosen field and come to influence metal.

The first technique is his use of non-standard and extended range chording. Holdsworth frequently extended some of the more complex chords of the jazz vocabulary across multiple octaves and achieved their sounding via quite unique, non-standard playing. Holdsworth plucked as well as tapped out his chords to create ethereal, shimmering angels of harmony.

The second technique and perhaps the hardest to grasp for a novice listener is Holdsworth’s use of slurs, glissando and note bending. Rarely did he proceed in “proper” in diatonic harmony from A to B, he would create slippery, fluid lines that snaked in and across octaves and arrive at quite unexpected intervals yet always sound musical and accessible. Indeed such is the extent that Holdsworth’s melodies frequently defied conventional melodic tropes the result is that they can easily sneak past the listener unnoticed with their unfamiliar cadences.

The effects of these two techniques and their relevance to metal are threefold. The first two are somewhat oblivious. Non-standard chord voicing equips the metal guitarist with a new harmonic vocabulary, an opportunity to expand the metallic sonic palette without compromising on the aesthetic values of the genre. The second technique was perhaps always inherent in metal anyway, particular after the advent of thrash metal, particularly evident in the soloing techniques of Slayer where melodic progression is eschewed in favour of noisy, dangerous sounding dive bombs, outlandish vibrato and deliberate dissonance. In other words, Holdsworth’s playing, committed to modal exploration and fluidity acts as an explicit engagement with the same principles of (dis)harmony played intuitively or “from the gut” so to speak of the non-musically-schooled.

The third effect is more abstract and theoretical and can be seen to be characteristic of djent. The deconstruction and critical analysis of Holdsworth technique. Following on from non-standard melodic articulation it is performed with a kind of hyper-attention to detail with every interval specifically mapped out very much the opposite of the Slayer “gut” approach. Interesting, however, is that this form of hyper-technicality is being passed onto a new generation of guitarists as a standard technique. It will be fascinating to see where this leads as we approach the 2020s. So hats off to you Mr Holdsworth, we stand a world apart from your original creations and intentions. Your electric guitar revolution was not as loud or bombastic as that of Hendrix but for those who heard it was as equally profound.   

Stop asking! You can never know: Jazz for Metal Part 1

I have previously referred to the complex and convoluted interrelationship between the blues, jazz, hip hop, reggae and most other musical genres originating from African cultural practices and the mostly white (yet ever increasingly diverse if Metal Hammer’s Planet Metal compilations have any stake in definition) music known as metal. Reflecting on the common roots of these very (extremely) different genres and the paths they have taken through time, space and culture is a frequent personal custom. That said, for every open-minded, musically switched on metal head there seems to be an equivalent cellar-dwelling “tr00-er than you” version. This feature is not about why metal heads should listen to jazz. We tend to listen always with an agenda anyway. Instead I want to take a moment to give respect that the jazz that I have listened to which has recalibrated or otherwise changed my metal ears for the better. In this way I hope to draw more explicit lines of cultural connection that have occurred over time yet been neglected in print. While highly unlikely that I will never be “of” an African American cultural and musical context, I can investigate and connect with the myriad common historical points by better understanding the music. No hard answers, no permanence and no promises.

Miles Davis – On the Corner

Miles Davis was never square and his path quite crooked but his musical talent, his feel for his form was extraordinary, from tribute, to sideman, from interpreter to innovator Davis’ influence looms large over modern, popular expressions of jazz. However, for me, his key album was his least popular and widely disliked On the Corner. Breaking from genre confines and embracing technological advances (a truly cu and paste album if there ever was one) Davis’ 1971 masterpiece takes a very laid back, deep swinging rhythm section and plonks a tough, electrified funk, rock and blaxploitation informed aesthetic right over the top. Though the casual listener might not notice the whole affair was meticulously constructed from a number of samples/loops taken from straight sessions and then arranged for a new aesthetic. An exorbitantly priced 6 CD box set exists out there which contains the original non-edited master takes of the On the Corner sessions. Listening to the unedited versions helps to remind the listener of the classic/traditional grounding of the sound and make the edited versions sound so unique and interesting, demonstrating how cut and paste melodic and harmonic juxtaposition can create something so familiar and yet so strange and new.