feature photo: Stephanie Ahn
Dan Weiss is one of those drummers who could easily make a name for himself simply by being a very good drummer but is far from satisfied stopping there. He’s led ensembles all the way from a duet with guitarist Miles Okazaki to a sixteen-piece band. He’s thrived in straight-ahead jazz, modern jazz and even Indian-influenced jazz — he plays a mean tabla — but in 2018 he took his biggest artistic risk yet, an experimental, electronic/prog-metal turn called Starebaby.
For Starebaby, Weiss put together a murderer’s row of jazz talent: bassist Trevor Dunn (Nels Cline Singers), guitarist Ben Monder (David Bowie’s Blackstar band) and two of the most forward-thinking keyboardists on the scene today: Craig Taborn (Junk Magic) and Matt Mitchell (Snakeoil). Full of fuzz and feedback, rock bass lines, rock drums, a metal guitar and electronic adornments, this isn’t the stuff you wouldn’t expect top shelf jazz musicians to play. However, these are particularly adventurous jazz musicians and even those types like rock ‘n’ roll and other forms of contemporary music.
They do bring their improvisational chops to every composition, but these compositions often don’t follow the structure of either jazz or rock. You don’t have a song figured out in the first two minutes and sometimes, not even in the first five minutes, because even though these songs are meticulously composed one never knows what lurks around the corner.
Natural Selection is the second bout with this band and concept, and it literally picks up where Starebaby left off. “Episode 18” is a direct outgrowth (what Weiss calls a ‘tulpa’) of the prior album’s final track “Episode 8.” It begins in true punk fashion, a math-rock sprint led by Weiss and Monder stopping and swiveling to a slower, mystical motif that serves as a temporary break from the heavier stuff. The constantly shifting tempos and quicksilver change of directions isn’t for feint-of-heart musicians.
“Dawn” seems built from the bass up and takes a vamp and does interesting variations on it. “The Long Diagonal” coyly combines two rhythms, and Weiss finds a role for piano and fuzz guitar in a schizophrenic but very individualistic song.
On much of this record, Weiss’s songs just go for it, but “A Taste of a Memory” is a contemplative respite, being drawn out gradually by Taborn and Mitchell. The initial appearance of Monder’s overdriven guitar signals a turn into doom territory but then a very-unrock-like rubato is tossed in the middle of it and another one later on that gathers momentum and fades away.
“Today is Wednesday Tomorrow?” gets more interesting as it goes along and adds an instruments into this elaborate syncopation (including Weiss’s tabla).
If “Accina” seems like a reconstituted “Annica” from Starebaby, that’s because it is. Weiss took this episodic, persistent piece and retained those virtues but changed up the pattern and also added more flavors to it, like the pleasing jazzy coda with some electronic swirls that appears over ten minutes in.
“Head Wreck” caps the program with the rawest energy, a nearly straight-ahead rocker that ends with the drummer/leader bashing around on drums to put an exclamation point on it.
Dan Weiss and his Starebaby band are guided by rock, jazz and a little bit of other forms but take instructions from no genre. Natural Selection is an advancement of bold ideas Weiss first put forward a couple of years ago and justifies his decision to keep going down this path.
Natural Selection is now out and available, courtesy of PI Recordings.
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