Cornetist Rob Mazurek and drummer/persussionist Chad Taylor team up once again for an album that uses jazz to deconstruct modern music.
Right away, we know this is no ordinary jazz outing as the eponymous title track kicks into gear, revealing a groove more akin to ’90s jungle than free jazz overload. A cover of Ken Prince‘s cover follows, oddly sounding like Herb Alpert collaborating with Trans Am. Later on, “Yaa Yaa Kole,” a traditional Ghanian song, takes on an Afrobeat lilt, while “House of the Axe” treads Autechre and Squarepusher territory. “Blink Out” dons a dubstep heaviness, though “Borrow and Burry” sees the duo in their freest mode, adding guitar and voice to the musical palate.
Purists may dismiss Locus as not jazz, but just as John Coltrane played with “My Favorite Things” and Sun Ra mutated Disney standards, The Chicago Underground Duo is taking the modern electronic vernacular and bending it into something else new and exciting. To that end, it out-Diplos Diplo. Time to enter the electronic age, folks.
