Electronic jazz albums are a potentially tricky proposition based on a seemingly contradictory idea that you can create organic, improvisational music in what is usually a more controlled, production-heavy, computer-based style.
Saxophonist Kenny Garrett defies such concerns and bridges the gap between in-the-moment improvisation and beat-based productions with 2024’s Who Killed AI?. This is Garrett’s first all-electronic album and finds him working in collaboration with electronic producer/instrumentalist Mikhail Tarasov (aka Svoy).
A former student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Svoy brings both jazz and classical influences to bear on his work and has garnered acclaim as a solo artist and as a producer for other artists. All of this makes him a perfect collaborator for Garrett, a performer whose work also straddles a wide array of styles, from his early days in Miles Davis’ crossover fusion band of the late-’80s to his own heady post-bop, funk, and world music explorations.
Together, they craft sonically adventurous tracks that wouldn’t sound out of place at a rave, but they also feature plenty of propulsive, harmonically nuanced improvisation. Much of this is due to Garrett’s crisp, motivic style and his kinetic lines push nicely off Svoy’s textured, groove-based soundscapes. It’s a vibe they leap into on the opening “Ascendence,” where Garrett spirals through Svoy’s digital buzz and grind like John Coltrane plugging into the Matrix. And while a kind of jazz future shock is the aesthetic at play, they draw upon jazz history, evoking Garrett’s time with trumpeter Davis on “Miles Running Down AI,” a slippery, acid-soaked wah-wah number that works as a wry nod to “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” off 1969’s Bitches Brew.
One of the significant exponents of the alto saxophone in the 1990s and 2000s, Kenny Garrett has long taken an interest in the world of machines and production, which is not surprising, given his work with Miles Davis in the electric late 1980s. This new collaboration with programmer-pianist Svoy could be seen as a distant cousin of Tutu or Amandla insofar as Garrett’s horn is the lead voice cast against the beats created by Svoy, loosely in the role of Marcus Miller. The results are interesting, but rather inconsistent.
On one hand, the duo hit all the right notes on tracks such as ‘Ascendence’ and ‘Divergence Tu-Dah’, both of which have the hard pulsating rhythms and ferocity of timbre that characterise the best computer-based music such as hip-hop, house and drum ‘n’ bass, with the funky, brawny loops reflecting a deep dive into the world of plug-ins as well as a desire to plug in while playing.
The last piece, in which Garrett’s saxophone is so heavily distorted that it comes as a thrash rock guitar being scraped across a bed of crunchy gravel, is exhilarating.
On the other hand, some of the softer, more tender soundscapes are too neutered, or in the case of a reprise of the standard ‘My Funny Valentine’ the romanticism of the melodic line and drifting, dry ice textures don’t sit well together, so that the colliding worlds that are interesting elsewhere cancel each other out. Garrett and Svoy have a creative chemistry with potential but it needs development, hopefully before AI makes all that is real unreal.
The duo even offer a skittering, EDM-esque rendition of “My Funny Valentine” that one can only imagine might have made even the Dark Prince of jazz smile.
1. Ascendence 3:53
2. Miles Running Down AI 5:10
3. Transcendence 5:11
4. Divergence Tu-dah 5:09
5. Ladies 3:06
6. My Funny Valentine 6:15
7. Convergence 6:29
Kenny Garrett (alto & soprano saxophones, vocals)
Svoy (programming, vocals, piano)
