Thirsty Ear
2002
The Blue Series Continuum: Optometry
About This Album
Thirsty Ear's Blue Series has already been host to many progressive jazz projects, among them albums by William Parker, Matthew Shipp, Craig Taborn, Guillermo Brown, Mat Maneri, Tim Berne, and others. The label also did a project with British DJ drum'n'bass duo Spring Heel Jack that was neither a jazz album or a DJ record, but some strange amalgam unto itself. DJ Spooky's Optometry is the next installment in the Blue Series' DJ experiments, and it's one that succeeds on every level. For starters, Optometry is fully a DJ outing and fully a jazz record. The band playing with Spooky is comprised of Parker; Shipp; Brown; Medeski , Martin & Wood's Billy Martin; Joe McPhee; Carl Hancock Rux; and others. Spooky plays bass and kalimba besides his turntables and mixing board. He illustrates, collages, paints, spindles, cuts, and mixes a live performance by the rest of the band. On "Reactive Switching Strategies for the Control of Uninhabited Air," Billy Martin cascades snares and toms in counterpoint to his ride cymbal, setting up a rhythm that is followed by Parker and Shipp. Shipp's playing fleshes out the motif and makes it a modal stretch, and the time signatures fluctuate between four and eight, as Spooky dovetails -- à la Brian Eno -- various timbres and harmonics emitted by the individual musicians, as well as the quartet sound.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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