void jazz by prepare thyself

At some point in 2023, I felt motivated to make some sort of jazz fusion album, though I wasn’t really sure exactly what I meant by that. Part of that came from a desire to get better at improvising on guitar and keys and break out of the patterns I felt stuck in. I also needed a break from making incredibly earnest, lyrics-based music. I certainly get tired of listening to it, from time to time. When I do, I always circle back around to jazz. It’s a genre that still has so much mystery to me, so much to discover, despite having really put in the hours as a listener. Partially because so much of it seems far beyond my abilities.

A change of heart came while listening to a reissue of an incredible 1960s modal jazz project by the Malombo Jazz Makers, Down Lucky’s Way. I don’t mean that I had that cliche thought that the average museum attendee has while looking at some conceptual minimalist painting (hey, what’s this mess, I could do that!), I just thought, I absolutely love this, but it’s not the most intricate, technical playing imaginable. It doesn’t need to be. Not every album has to be Giant Steps. I could imagine myself making something in this neighborhood; something more reliant on interlocking grooves and repetition, textures. It still seemed uncomfortable and difficult, but I tend to go looking for that kind of thing. Maybe that’s just the pursuit of the satisfaction that only comes after something taxing. Maybe it’s some sort of punishment. Maybe I just like a good, time-consuming project.

To get into the right headspace, I’d end days (and start recording sessions) by improvising for 20/30 minutes along with some of my favorite jazz records. I wouldn’t really solo over the tracks in a conventional sense, I would mostly just try to add something small and especially fitting, purposefully looking for something that felt like it was contributing and playing neatly with what was already there without demanding too much attention. I was just trying to settle in and explore those kinds of tonal worlds. Whatever repetitive riff I ended up with, I usually liked it enough to just keep playing it. Those patterns served as the basis for many of the passages here. With that in mind, here are a few other artists I would put on to get into the right state of mind:
Pharoah Sanders, Aktuala, Don Cherry, Philip Cohran, Sun Ra, McCoy Tyner, John McLaughlin, Alice Coltrane.

It’s a lot of spiritual jazz, modal jazz, and jazz that takes its primary influence from unexpected regional sources. I think that’s all in there somewhere, but at some point I let the songs morph into whatever they wanted to be, without forcing them to adhere too much. It’s a bit closer to my typical psych rock predilections than I expected, but there’s new, exciting dashes of other genres in there too. It’s jazz, but only in the loosest sense.

The main thing that I think really makes that tenuous jazz connection work—and really ties this whole project together—is Eli’s dynamic, off-the-cuff drumming. Improvising gives me a kind of immediate joy that is irreplaceably valuable to me, but I’m not trying to be a world-class improviser in terms of technique; my favorite parts of the process are finding textures, mixing, and producing. Eli, on the other hand, has the technical ability to sit in with bands from essentially any genre, from rock to experimental to jazz. He’s really put the time in on his instrument, and it shows. Usually, I’d go up to his apartment with a pile of microphones and an absolute shell of a song, just a collection of phrases and sounds strung together that I liked. With little to no discussion, Eli’s drumming would make sense of it all, finding the rhythms and throughlines that I didn’t even know were there. The drums on the first track are the actual first take, and the first thing we recorded together. I always went home afterwards with a slew of ideas for things to add, take away, or experiment with. A lot of new ideas were written just laying on the floor listening to each drum take as it happened. Even after packing my whole recording setup up twice and unloading everything at the end of a work day, I still had to start working with the drum recordings immediately, no matter how tired I was. I’d rework what I had already recorded, improvising along with the new drum parts. I chipped away and built songs up in phases, frequently returning with fresh ears after a period of separation and just trying to hear it all for the first time all over again, playing along.

So, calling this void jazz is really meant to indicate that it’s an expressive, conversational musical experience, one that leans a bit more heavily on the textural side of things than the technical. It’s going out into space a bit, and it’ll be hard to pin down. It won’t be traditional, or remind you of your favorite hard bop record. Hopefully it doesn’t exactly remind you of anything. Unless you’ve been to space and gazed into the abyss recently.

But importantly, a void isn’t just a meaningless empty expanse. The title of the first track relates to an ancient tenet of atomism, that the world is composed of atoms, void, and nothing else. I encountered this in a strange work by Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, where he utilizes it as a sort of mantra for reminding the reader of the structure of the universe, how everything works, and how things develop and relate to one another. It might not seem this way on the surface, but I do find the sentiment comforting somehow. It can serve as a reminder not to read into anything more than you need to, or a reminder not to stress about something for too long. It brings everything down to a certain level, a predictable playing field. Other song titles relate to similar concepts that contribute to my understanding of the world, and crucially, a lessening of my anxiety. Hopefully it provides a similar sort of experience for you, too.

prepare thyself is an experimental band from pittsburgh, featuring the drumming of eli weidman and the guitar/synth of andrew kruske