# CD review: Kenny Garrett & Svoy – Who Killed AI? – 2024: Video, CD cover

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2024/02/18/cd-review-kenny-garrett-svoy-who-killed-ai-2024-video-cd-cover/
- Published: 2024-02-18T00:04:45+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**For more than three decades saxophonist Kenny Garrett has been on the forefront
of the most adventurous and creative collaborations in jazz, having performed with
generations of innovators such as Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Freddie Hubbard and more.
The living legend charts yet another path in his illustrious career with the release
of his first ever electronic album, an avenue to explore new sounds.**

“My palette is open to all kinds of music,” says the Grammy®-winning alto and soprano
saxophonist Kenny Garrett. Among the most compelling improvisers, composers and 
bandleaders in jazz, he broke through as a crucial collaborator with Miles Davis,
whose influence permeates Garrett’s new electronic LP, Who Killed AI?

“I don’t think a lot of people really understand my history, so this project might
be a surprise to some,” says Garrett, a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz
Master.

The Mack Avenue release, Who Killed AI? — seven irresistibly grooving, hook-filled
jams shaped with the producer-musician Svoy — is the latest juncture in Garrett’s
lifelong exploration, an additional “canvas to paint,” to borrow one of his favorite
metaphors. It is also proof of how technically commanding, hard-earned musicianship—
Garrett’s solos were captured in single takes — can thrive inside laptop-generated
sounds.

Over the past four decades, the Detroit-born virtuoso has applied his brush to an
impossibly rich range of music — from jazz icons like Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Freddie
Hubbard and Chick Corea to Guru, Q-Tip, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Bruce Springsteen 
and Meshell Ndegeocello. In any situation, whether drum-and-bass, fusion or Bruce
Hornsby, “I can hear myself on everything,” Garrett explains. “I can hear my voice.”
On recordings or on stage, that voice is frequently stunning — elegant and lyrical
and reminiscent of Coltrane-indebted power. “Like, when I heard Miles do ‘Human 
Nature’ for the first time,” he continues, “I knew exactly what I was going to play.”

Who Killed AI? arrives during a fascinating time for the intersection of jazz and
pop culture, when improvised music and spiritual jazz are covered by tastemaking
publications and finding new, young audiences raised on hip-hop and indie rock. 
In many ways, it’s an explosive, creative period that musicians like Garrett made
possible. The most headline-worthy example of this moment, André 3000’s experimental,
ambient flute project New Blue Sun, recently inspired Garrett’s wide-open mind. “
André’s doing his thing,” Garrett begins, “and I think the way he thinks about music
falls in with the way I think about Who Killed AI?: I want the people to hear this
as one piece of music, even though they’re different songs. I want them to take 
a journey.”

That otherworldly voyage was recorded mostly in Garrett’s New Jersey living room,
with a friend who lives just a few minutes away. Svoy, or Misha Tarasov, is an award-
winning multi-hyphenate who has found success both as a solo artist in pop-tinged
electronica and as a go-to collaborator across genres. A longtime Garrett fan, Svoy
worked with the saxophonist as a singer on the incantatory “Welcome Earth Song,”
off 2012’s Seeds From the Underground, and wrote a gorgeous string arrangement for“
Brother Brown,” off the following year’s Pushing the World Away.

The sessions for Who Killed AI?, as Garrett recalls, were remarkably comfortable.“
All Misha had to do was show up with a computer; we’d set up a mic and that was 
that,” Garrett says. “It was really just about having fun. It wasn’t like you were
in the studio. We’d be joking around, grab something to drink, then say, ‘OK, let’s
try this! Let me play that melody…’”

The good times and the open-to-anything vibe are palpable in the music, as is Miles’
imprint, especially early on. “The first two songs are really reminiscent of Miles,”
Garrett says. “The way I’m stretching the melody — that’s how I played with Miles.”
On “Ascendence,” the saxophonist notes, “I’m thinking about Miles … playing more
of the chromatic melodies” that Garrett would have performed between the time he
joined the trumpeter’s band in 1987 and Miles’ final concert, at the Hollywood Bowl
in 1991. The track also features Garrett doing his hilariously accurate impression
of Miles’ raspy speaking voice. “Miles used to count this strange way, where he 
would say, ‘Kenny — 10teen, 11teen, 12teen, 13teen.’ And I’m like, ‘What!? What 
is that?’” Garrett laughs. The second cut, “Miles Running Down AI,” its title a 
play on a classic modal jam off Bitches Brew, attempts to answer Garrett’s question
of “What would Miles sound like if he played Coachella?”

The poignant, drifting ballad “Transcendence” follows, and then comes “Divergence
Tu-dah,” a sultry, slow-grooving showcase for Garrett’s soprano saxophone — which
Svoy transforms into a synthlike, electric-guitar timbre through electronics. “Ladies”
underscores the pure, perfect, crystalline sound Garrett can achieve, as well as
his preternatural gift for earworm melody. (It also includes another of his spot-
on Miles impressions.) “I love melodies,” he says. “I can create melodies any time
of the day.” He borrows a beloved tune for the next track, a swirling, drum-and-
bass-fueled take on Rodgers & Hart’s “My Funny Valentine.” An intensely meditative
outro leads into the project’s closer, “Convergence,” boasting yet another of those
unshakeable, pop-worthy melodies that Garrett delivers with sparkling authority.

Throughout Who Killed AI? Svoy’s tracks demonstrate a mastery akin to Garrett’s 
on his saxophones: technically brilliant but fun and accessible, with a rare ability
to pay homage to music history on his own terms. In Svoy’s case that means evoking
everything from Giorgio Moroder’s eurodisco to Jan Hammer’s electronic soundtracks
to ’90s electronica and today’s stadium-packing EDM.

Throughout all of it, Garrett is completely at home, arguing that the best way forward
in this age of AI is to harness technology in the name of human creativity. “Svoy
trusts in me, and I trust him,” Garrett says. “That’s what makes this a special 
relationship.” Garrett plans to tour this material in a live project billed as Kenny
Garrett’s Who Killed AI?

“I think my fans will find this interesting,” he continues. “Some people forget 
that my teacher was Miles Davis. So for me, it’s not that I have to do something
different. It is just something that I do. All you have to do is present the music
and let them take the journey.”

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