JJI readers should be warned by the words of New Age director Nick Austin that ‘in the English sense of the word “jazz” is hardly a sensible way to describe New Age music, however using the American definition it must be jazz if it’s instrumental – and thus New Age music manifests itself in the Billboard Jazz Chart’. But why care about the niceties of definition when one is further assured that New Age Music, according to the glossy brochure of cliche-ridden photographs that accompanies each of these first four releases, ‘follows the classic traditions of being able to evoke atmosphere and emotion through the playing of instruments’?
Not all of the music is as crass as such nonsense might suggest, although Tim Cross’s multi-tracked bastardisations of aspects of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert and Elgar are enough to make one almost forgive T.W. Adorno the rubbish he wrote about jazz and agree with his pessimistic insight into Marcuse’s one-dimensional future where music, like the rest of the production/consumption process, would assuage alienation through the total absorption of kitsch. Cross has apparently some five hundred commercials for radio and television to his credit; it shows.
The remaining three releases have more claim to consideration by jazz listeners, although they share with Cross’s sugared ‘Greatest Hits’ approach a strong tendency to wish to manufacture rather than stimulate the listener’s consciousness. Tom Newman matches Cross’s multi-instrumental cinematic facility but eschews well-tempered platitudes for more atavistic variety: echoes of the Stones and Ry Cooder mingle with square-dance memories to conjure an eerie 3-D image of the swamp-lands of the Everglades and Mississippi delta. John Themis’s atmospheric inclinations are more towards the laid-back world of rolling West Coast fog and watery sunlight; some excellent guitar playing from the leader lifts the competent band sound a little above being simply a pale shadow of late seventies Metheny magic.
Dashiell Rae’s crystal clear piano solo release completes the strong sense of deja vu: minimalist aspects of Jarrett and George Winston supply grave echoes of Liszt’s Liebestraum yearnings. Menthol freshness is not quite achieved: a future collaboration with Mr Cross would doubtless rectify that.
Discography
John Themis: Atmospheric Conditions (Nage 1)
Tom Newman: Bayou Moon (Nage 2)
Tim Cross: Classic Landscape (Nage 3)
Dashiell Rae: Song Without Words (Nage 4)
