Listen: Harry Burgess - "Disarm"

One of the pitfalls of creating such a cerebral, fully realized project as art pop quartet Adult Jazz is the fact that there's a lot of time and energy put into seemingly every aspect of creating. Since the release of their debut album Gist Is in 2014, Adult Jazz has spent a lot of time facilitating not only their own creations but those of the constellation of their collaborators. They've subsequently released a follow up EP Earrings Off!, two years after their full length debut and while their next release seems to be forthcoming, they've eased the wait by engaging with other projects.

Most recently, Harry Burgess, Adult Jazz's frontman and member of experimental electronic duo Offer, played a solo set late last year, recorded it, and is releasing the results as Live Scraps/Fall of Troy, a cassette release bundled with an essay Burgess wrote about the death of his family dog who inspired the Adult Jazz track "Bonedigger". Unlike Adult Jazz's meticulously layered production or Offer's digital pyrotechnics, Live Scraps offers Burgess in an oft seen light: bare bones and simply offered. One of my favorite qualities of his growing number of projects has always been Harry Burgess' voice so it is essentially a treat to get to witness it this way, unadorned and unmanipulated.

But even as Burgess peels back the layers, his experimentalism still shines though. "Disarm", the first taste of his three song release, might just be Burgess' voice and guitar but it's not your standard fare. Burgess approaches his playing from a place of minimalism, focusing on repetitive two note chords and weaving vocal melodies around the sparse accompaniment. It's a transfixing work of art, utterly engaging in its simplicity and a testament to the strength of Burgess' vocal prowess.

Live Scraps/Fall of Troy is out July 12th on London based label Don't Delay. You can pre-order the digital album or the cassette/essay bundle now.

Listen: Offer - "Offer"

Photo by Gareth Kime

Late last year when Harry Burgess of Adult Jazz and Jack Armitage aka Lil Data premiered their collaborative project Offer with the pastoral hymnal reminiscent twelve minute debut single "Day Away", they teased more music on the horizon. Now nearly five months later, they've loosed eponymous single "Offer" which trades the meticulous unfurling craftsmanship of "Day Away" for a much more insistent slice of cacophonous experimental pop.

Where "Day Away" was narratively focused and every element of it's composition served to heighten the track's sense of drama, "Offer" is all lyrical coyness  and compositional grandeur. Trying to wrestle against and distract from its vulnerability with ear-catching pyrotechnics. Burgess quickly dispenses with the lyrics early - presenting nearly every iteration of bridge-hook-chorus before the song is even half over and that's when things truly get unpredictable. Armitage sets out a flurry of spectacular effects, previously building throughout the tracks verses and first and secondary choruses and Burgess' voice becomes but an other instrument for him to direct. They're pitched up, doubled, spliced, and otherwise affected to form a part of the track's sort of disorienting tension and compulsory catharsis. "I don't wanna offer it up to you, don't wanna offer to you" Burgess sings, trying to tramp down his feelings but Armitage's stellar production works as the response to Burgess' call as sounds zip and ping and are otherwise loosed. They never quite reach all out chaos but there's a measured sense of disorder: a lack of control without letting everything get completely away from them.

"Offer" and "Day Away" are complimentary, similar in theme if not tone and essentially having their development happen inversely. Where "Day Away" is a gentle crescendo into it's climactic moments - starting from nothing, peaking, and then ebbing away slower and slower until it's brassy fanfare brings things to a close, "Offer" is immediate, frenetic in its presentation without losing the polish on its production. "Day Away" aspired to folk ballad stature with each of its sounds intending to recall something more or less organic, "Offer" doesn't hesitate to utilize effects and sounds that are in no way meant to recall man-made ones.

Listen to the second single "Offer" now:

Listen/Watch: Offer - "Day Away"

It probably goes without saying but anyone who's encountered the music of Leeds experimental pop troupe Adult Jazz has probably been eagerly anticipating new music since their debut full length Gist Is dropped in 2014. Fans were given a brief respite in the form of their Earrings Off EP they released back in 2016 but other than that, the band has seemed to be in a perpetual state of creative gestation. And yet every once in awhile a sort of creative listlessness results in a new project or collaboration or cosigning of a new project from fellow Leeds University musicians.  First was "Other Life", a disco-fueled dance track crafted by Scottish producer Makeness featuring Adult Jazz's Harry Burgess on vocals, ambient project AEVA helmed by fellow university pal Dan Jacobs who also makes music as Glad Hand, and now Harry Burgess has teamed up with Jack Armitage of Lil Data for a forthcoming full length.

"Day Away", the first track from the duo's newly christened project Offer,  is a twelve minute long rhapsody inspired in part by Armitage and Burgess' Internet message-board born friendship and a near decade of frequent improvisations both at Leeds University and beyond with their last session resulting as a framework of sorts for their upcoming album. Burgess' voice - capable of impressive contortions and at times unflinchingly harsh, finds a wonderful sonic match with Armitage as they seem very much over the course of the song's duration to throw more and more things at it and see how Burgess' vocals fair. Burgess' vocals have always had a particularly elastic quality to them but Armitage pushes them more so with the use of a controller though not enough that they splinter from the realm of possibility. It's tension and release but a rather unexpected pacing of such - after much of the bustle and brashness of its beginning, the track gives way to a languorous, introspective quiet which Burgess infuses with virtuosity. It's a track that pretty much transcends the trappings of genre: constructed through electronic means but so sincere and human at it's core, buoyed between maximalist pop Dada and the truth-bearing spirit of folk.

Watch the video for "Day Away" featuring visuals from AEVA.